[00:00:00] It’s the beginning of October, which means your inbox, your feed, is probably about to fill up with Q4 planning. New goals, strategies, content plans, funnels, offers, new things you’re apparently supposed to start doing before the end of the year.

But before you add a single thing to your Q4 plan, I want you to do something else. I want you to look backwards, because I think one of the biggest mistakes we make in business is treating every new month, and especially every new quarter, like a fresh start. Your business isn’t supposed to start again in October.

October is supposed to benefit from everything that you built in September. And before you decide what you’re going to be consistent with for the next three months, I think we need to figure out what exactly deserves your consistency. Let’s dig in 

Are you a female business owner frustrated with battling the algorithm and looking for growth strategies that don’t involve awkwardly pointing or dancing online or throwing cash at paid [00:01:00] ads? Welcome to the Email Growth Show. I’m your host, Kylie Kelly, visibility and email marketing strategist. I grew my email list from zero to almost 10,000 subscribers in less than two years, and the same is possible for you too.

Are you ready to build your email list and start making more money in your online business? Let’s head into today’s episode.

Hey, hey. Welcome back to the Email Growth Show, my lovely friend.

I am so glad that you are tuning in. So we are officially in Q4, which is slightly terrifying because I swear it was January about three fucking weeks ago, but here we are, October. We’ve got Black Friday coming, and then Christmas, and apparently we’re supposed to have our 2027 goals figured out?

Absolutely not This week, I’ve actually been doing my September recap. Now, I send these emails every month where I basically pull back the curtain on what happened in the business, what happened in life, and all the messy bits [00:02:00] between where those two things overlap. I love sharing that with my email list, but also it’s a really good prompt to make me sit down and actually do the reflection myself as well. And let me say, September was actually a really full month. I launched Black Friday Made Simple. I finally launched Find Colab, which has been a huge project that I’ve been working on behind the scenes to help other people find new collaborations to grow their email list.

There is a link in the show notes if you wanna go and check it out. We had the Black Friday case files. Obviously, podcast episodes went out, emails went out, normal business stuff continued happening, and then outside of the business, it was also a really full month. We had lots of soccer, Spencer is obsessed, lots of family stuff.

We actually bought a new car, which has literally been on our vision board for years, and then school holiday started. So I am sitting here at the beginning of October in the middle of the school holidays, looking back at everything that happened in September, and [00:03:00] also thinking to myself like, “Okay, so what do I want Q4 to look like?”

And it made me think about one of the most common pieces of business advice that we hear, which is just be consistent. And I’m starting to think that’s actually pretty useless fucking advice on its own. Because consistency, it’s not a strategy, right?

Consistent at what? Like, you can consistently post on Instagram to the same 20 people. You can consistently send nurturing emails without ever making an offer. You can consistently record a podcast that nobody new is discovering. You can consistently make new lead magnets that you never promote. You can consistently create new products while ignoring the five perfectly good ones that you’ve already got sitting in your shop.

You can consistently tweak your website, redesign your branding, watch business training, sign up for summits and bundles and conferences. Like, you can consistently do a lot of things. That doesn’t mean that those things are actually moving our business [00:04:00] forward because consistency isn’t the strategy.

Consistency amplifies the strategy that we’ve chosen. And what if you’ve chosen the wrong thing, right? You can be incredibly consistent and still wonder why the fuck nothing’s changing. That’s the bit I think that we don’t talk about enough, right? We give ourselves gold stars for showing up, which again, is great, it feels productive, right?

you know, I sent my newsletter this week, gold star. I posted three times, gold star. I recorded my podcast, tick. I made a reel, tick. I updated my website. Look at me being fucking consistent, like gold star. But every now and then, I think we need to stop looking at whether we did the thing and ask, ” What did the thing actually do?”

did it bring new people into my world? Did it deepen the relationship with the people already here? Did it create an opportunity for somebody to buy? Because if it’s doing none of those things, I wanna know why I’m spending my limited fucking time actually doing it, gold stars or [00:05:00] not, especially going into Q4 and speeding towards the end of the year.

and again, you might feel the same, but this is probably the biggest thing that I’m feeling right now. I don’t want October to be like, “Okay, new quarter, let’s try seven new strategies.” Like, I don’t have the fucking capacity. It’s school holidays. I’ve got two crazy kids. I’ve got a business. I’ve got customers.

I’ve got Find CoLab. I’ve got products. I’ve got a podcast. I’ve got an email list. I’ve got Black Friday coming. I don’t need more things to maintain or even think about. I wanna get better at using what I’ve already built, and I think that’s a very different way to approach a new quarter, especially going towards the end of the year, right?

Like, instead of asking ourselves, “What am I going to start doing in Q4?” I’m more interested in, “Okay, what worked in Q3 that then deserves my attention going into Q4?” And this is where I’ve landed on a phrase that I really love is that your business should have a memory. Because I think sometimes we run our businesses like they [00:06:00] have amnesia, right? Like September ends, gone. New month, like what are we doing now? Then October will end. Gone, new month. What now? What strategy?

What plan? Like, we keep starting over and look, I get it. If we have a shit month, like I don’t wanna think about it either, but it might’ve been shit for a reason. And if we’re gonna avoid another month that’s shit, we probably need to work out what that reason is. So If we’re always forgetting what has gone before, that’s the opposite of compounding, right?

Like October should remember September. Like Q4 should remember Q3. 2027 should remember what’s happened in 2026. The email that you sent that got a ridiculous number of clicks, remember it. one of my premium Skool members had just posted yesterday that she had an email that got a 65% open rate or something super high.

We need to remember that. The offer that sold really well, again, remember it. The podcast topic that got more downloads than anything else, remember it. The collaboration that brought you in hundreds [00:07:00] of really aligned subscribers, remember it.

The launch that completely flopped, you’ve got to remember that too because, again, there’s information there. whether you’re winning, whether you’re learning, like, there’s information in the good and the bad, the things that go our way and the things that might go to shit.

Like, we need to remember it all. your business is constantly giving you clues, and I think we spend far too much time looking outside of our businesses for the next strategy, the next coach, the next thing to do, instead of looking inside them at what our own data is telling us. So before you open Instagram and see what everyone else says your Q4 strategy should be, I want you to open your own numbers.

Look at September. Look at your whole Q3. What happened? Where did new people come from? what did they opt into? What did they click? What did they buy? What didn’t they buy? What did they reply to? What did people ask you about? What did you love doing? What did you absolutely hate doing? What took 15 [00:08:00] hours and produced basically nothing?

What took you an hour and somehow you made $2,000? Like, that information is so much more valuable to me than seven marketing trends you need for Q4 because they’re talking about somebody else’s business. I want to know what’s happening in yours. So when I look back at my last few months, there’s always patterns.

As you guys know, audience growth is a huge focus for me. Collaborations are continuing to work. They’ve worked for years. That’s part of why I built Find Collab. So I’m not entering Q4 saying, “Huh, maybe I should jump over to TikTok.” No. Why? I’ve already got evidence telling me where my strengths are. I’ve got an email list.

I’ve got the podcast. I’ve got collaborations. I’ve got products in my shop. I’ve got a Skool community. I’ve got things that already work. My job isn’t adding, uh, something else, isn’t adding another channel. My job is to make the things I already have work even better together, and that’s where I want to put my attention.

[00:09:00] Now, last week we talked about this exact thing with email, right? Your subscribers can love your emails and still not buy, and one of the things that I’ve been looking at in my own business is, am I actually giving people enough opportunities to buy? Because I can be incredibly consistent with my newsletter, right?

But if I’m consistently nurturing and inconsistently selling, I shouldn’t be shocked when sales are inconsistent. Again, consistency isn’t the strategy. What I’m being consistent with matters. so something that I mentioned last week is I’m going to start a weekly sales rhythm.

I think I’m gonna send it out on a Saturday, make it a Saturday, like, shopping kind of vibe. I’m not adding another offer. I’m not adding another platform. I’m taking something I already have, my email list and my existing products, and using them more intentionally. That’s the kind of thing I want Q4 to be about.

So how do you know what deserves your consistency? I can hear you asking already. This is where I want to give you something really [00:10:00] simple, because I don’t want you leaving this episode thinking, “Huh, great, Kylie. Consistency is meaningless. Everything I’ve ever known is a lie.” No, consistency absolutely matters, But I want you to point it at the right things, and I think there are three areas I would look at. Really simple: discovery, relationship, and revenue. That’s it. If your business isn’t growing the way you want it to right now, I would try to work out where the bottleneck is across those three things before you decide what you’re going to do in Q4

So firstly, number one, let’s talk about discovery. So are enough new people finding you? This has been a massive conversation on this podcast this year because I genuinely think so many business problems are actually discovery problems, traffic problems. You think, “My offer isn’t selling.” Okay, so how many people saw it?

Or, “My lead magnet isn’t growing my email list.” Okay, so how many new people saw the lead magnet? “My webinar didn’t convert.” [00:11:00] Okay, so how many people are actually registered?

Before we start changing everything downstream, I wanna know what’s happening at the top. How many new people are entering your world? Now, this doesn’t have to mean Instagram followers. You know how I feel about that. It could be podcast listeners, website traffic, collaborations, PR, Pinterest, Google, guest podcasting, bundles, summits, referrals, like, whatever your discovery channels are.

But if you’re looking at your business and hardly anyone new has entered your world in the last three months, that is where I would focus Q4. Not another offer, not a prettier sales page or an updated website, not a new email platform. Discovery. Traffic. Let’s get more of the right people through that front door Then we move on to the second part, number two, relationships. People are finding you. Amazing, great. Are they coming closer? Are website visitors joining your email list? Are podcast listeners [00:12:00] downloading your free resource? The link to mine is in the show notes. Are new subscribers opening your emails?

Are people clicking, replying, coming to your events, joining your community? Are they moving deeper into your ecosystem? because you could have incredible discovery and terrible conversion. Maybe 10,000 people are finding you every month, but 12 people are joining your email list.

That’s a different fucking problem, right? Like, I wouldn’t necessarily go looking for another 10,000 people. I’d ask, ” why aren’t more of the people that are already finding me not taking the next step?” Maybe your lead magnet isn’t right. Maybe the messaging is unclear.

Maybe there’s no obvious next step. Maybe you’ve created 17 different options, and nobody knows which one to choose. Maybe you’re sending everyone to Instagram instead of somewhere you can actually continue the relationship, right? If that is resonating with you, if that is speaking to you, that is your Q4 problem to solve.

Then we move on to the third piece, which is revenue. So let’s say people are finding you, They’re [00:13:00] joining, they’re opening, they’re clicking, replying. They’re telling you that they love you. Amazing. And they’re not buying. This is last week’s episode.

This is a revenue problem, And again, I don’t necessarily think the solution is find more people. Like maybe, first, I would wanna look at the people that are already here. Are you selling consistently? Do they know what you sell? Does your messaging clearly connect your offer to the problem that they want solved? Are you giving them reasons to buy? Are you actually asking for the sale? Is the path to purchase easy? Because if you’ve got 5,000 engaged email subscribers and hardly anyone buys, I’m not gonna tell you to go and get another 5,000.

I wanna fix what’s happening with your existing 5,000, right? Now, this is why I think this framework is useful, because the same revenue problem can have three completely different fixes, right? Let’s say three business owners come to me and say, “Kylie, I need more sales.”

Business owner number one has 100 people seeing their stuff each month. 20 join the email list, and two [00:14:00] buy. Their conversion isn’t actually terrible. The biggest problem with that is not enough people are finding them. Discovery. Let’s say business owner number two has 10,000 people visiting their content, and only 50 join their email list, and a couple buy.

Their issue could be the bridge between the discovery and the relationship. They’re getting the attention, but they’re losing people before they come closer. And then business owner number three has thousands of engaged subscribers, great opens, people reply, people click, but hardly anyone buys.

Now we’re looking at the offer, the messaging, the sales rhythm, and the conversion. Three people, the same complaint, “I need more sales,” but three completely different Q4 strategies. This is why blindly telling everybody to just be fucking consistent isn’t enough, Consistent at what? Right? This is also why you can’t put every business owner into a box and say, ” Follow this process,” because every single business and every single business owner [00:15:00] will have a different problem, a different thing to tweak, a different focus they should have, It is definitely not a one-size-fits-all. Now, this might be the biggest thing I want you to take away from today as I start to wrap up. Stop fixing the part of your business that isn’t broken. For the love of Ted Lasso. If people are finding you but not joining your list, you don’t need more visibility.

If they’re joining and engaging but they’re not buying, you don’t need more subscribers. If the people who see your offer convert really well, but hardly anyone sees it, please don’t spend October rewriting your sales page. Get more people to see the bloody thing, Now, I know it sounds obvious when I say it like that, but how often do we do exactly this?

We work on the thing that we’re comfortable working on, and I’m including myself in this, instead of the thing that’s actually broken. We default to our comfort zone, and I think that’s part of why, like, again, the just be consistent can keep us stuck because we’re usually really happy to be consistent at the thing that we already like doing, creators love [00:16:00] creating, writers love writing, designers love designing, people who love Instagram post their heart out. People who love learning take another course. I’m talking to myself in that one. I will happily build another product. You know this about me. But if the bottleneck is selling, creating isn’t gonna fix it.

If the bottleneck is discovery, rewriting your nurture sequence for the fifth time isn’t gonna fix it. Q4 does not need more on your to-do list. it just needs you to work on what the actual bottleneck in your business is So let’s make this super tangible before I let you go. So if you were sitting down this week to plan the final quarter of the year, which I hope you all are, here is what I would do.

Before you set the goals, before you choose content pillars or buy the planner or create a new funnel, I want you to look at Q3. Ask yourself, one, discovery. Did enough people find me? Where did they come from? Which channels worked? Two, [00:17:00] relationship. Did those people come closer? Did they subscribe? Did they engage?

Did they stick around? And three, revenue. Did enough of the people already in my world buy? What sold? What didn’t? And how often did I actually make offers? Then I want you to ask, where is the biggest leak? And whatever that answer is, that is where I would put majority of my attention for Q4. Not all three equally, the weakest one.

And here is what I love about this, because once you do this activity, your Q4 might actually get smaller. Wouldn’t that be nice? Maybe it’ll get more simple. Maybe you’ll realize, actually, discovery is good. My list is growing. Engagement is strong. I just need to sell more. Great. You don’t need Pinterest.

You don’t need YouTube. You don’t need another lead magnet. You just need to make offers. Or maybe your sales are actually pretty good when people see the offer, but your audience has barely grown all year. Okay, [00:18:00] then Q4 is all about collaborations, podcast guesting, SEO, like whatever makes sense for you to grow the list.

Instead of seven different priorities, you’ll just have the one. And that’s where consistency can become useful, because now we’re saying, “I’m going to consistently work on the part of the business that actually needs my attention.” That is very different from just showing up for the sake of it and the other thing I want you to do is look at what worked in Q3 and make sure you keep it.

Please carry forward what’s already working. This sounds so obvious, but honestly, we’re, we’re all terrible at it. Something works, and instead of thinking, “Amazing, let’s do that 20 more times,” we think, “Amazing, what’s next?” It can’t just be me. No, I want you to do it again. So the email that worked, use the angle again.

The podcast topic people loved, talk about an adjacent problem. The collaboration that sent brilliant subscribers your way, like work with that person again. The three-day launch that made money without [00:19:00] exhausting you, run another one. You’ll see me doing that. The offer people keep buying, sell it again.

You are allowed to repeat yourself, and you’re allowed to keep doing something just because it works. This is how business compounds. My old business coach used to say that the businesses that are successful are super boring. They’re boring businesses because they figure out what works, and they just keep doing the same thing, right?

Like, that’s what we want, a boring business that’s compounding And I know for me, again, coming back to this idea that October should benefit from September, I think that’s what I really want to take into Q4 myself, right? Like September was busy. Like I shared at the start of the episode, a lot happened. I launched things, I learned things, I built things.

I have new assets now that didn’t exist at the beginning of September. So I’m not starting October from zero, And my love, neither are you. Like even if September wasn’t a huge month, even if Q3 didn’t go how you perhaps wanted it to, you still have information.

You [00:20:00] still know something now that you didn’t know three months ago. Carry it forward because again, your business should have a memory. Q4 should benefit from what you learnt in Q3, and eventually next year should benefit from everything that you are learning right now. So my loves, as you head into Q4, again, I don’t want you asking what else could I be doing? At least not yet. I want you asking, what is my business actually asking me to do more of? More discovery, more relationship, more revenue. What is it? Find the bottleneck. Look at what’s already working. Carry that forward and then decide, okay, what deserves my consistency for the next three months?

Because like I said, consistency absolutely matters, but consistency itself isn’t a strategy. Consistency makes a good strategy compound, and that is what I want for you going into Q4. Not more for the sake of it, not another complete reinvention because the calendar says October. More of what works [00:21:00] and less of what doesn’t, and your attention on the part of the business that will actually move the fucking needle.

All right? That’s it. That is your mission. And now, because it is still school holidays over here, I’m going to go and see what chaos is currently happening in the rest of my house. But I love you so much. I hope you have found this helpful, and I will see you again next week.

Bye for now.

Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Email Growth Show. I hope you found valuable insights into the next steps you can take to grow your email list and boost your business without relying on social media or paid ads. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review the show and share it with others.

Your feedback helps me reach more female entrepreneurs just like you who are ready to say goodbye to social media and leverage email marketing to grow their business and make a bigger impact. Thank you so much for listening, and I’ll see you in the next episode.