My client Rosa made 61K in six months — and said “book a call” less than ever.

Rosa Revuelta is a leadership coach for first-gen nonprofit leaders, working with both individuals and organizations. Before this year, 90% of her business came from relationships and referrals.

It worked, but it didn’t feel stable, especially with her being a single mom and breadwinner.

So even thought his referral/retention model had technically "worked" for the first 3 years, she wanted that to shift.

Here’s what we actually did inside Category of One to get her there.

1. First, we got her offer specific — not just “leadership coaching,” but a result she could say with confidence, tied to a problem she already knew how to solve better than anyone else.
2. Then we made her content consistent across every platform, telling the same story in different words instead of a little of this and a little of that.
3. From there, we shifted her content’s job: instead of pushing people toward “book a call,” every piece invited them into a conversation — through her LinkedIn lives, her follow-up system, the relationships she was already building.

That’s what created the inquiries. The inquiries created the sales.

In this episode we talk about -

• Why Rosa left a 12-month program halfway through, and how she decided to invest in CO1 when she could've "taken a break"
• How getting clear on her actual result statement changed her confidence and her marketing
• Why consistency without positioning wasn’t the answer, and what she changed instead
• The shift from “book a call” to building a system of real conversations across LinkedIn, lives, and follow-ups
• How she went from 90% of her sales coming from relationships to 50% coming from LinkedIn (now it's 50/50 relationships and LinkedIn) — and what that did for her sense of safety in her business

If you’ve ever felt like you did everything right in an investment and it still wasn’t working, or like your business is stable but not stable enough, this one’s for you.

Listen now.

Category of One is open now.

If you join by this Friday, October 30th at 11:59pm PST, you’ll also get my 10 Done-For-You Six-Figure Storyselling Angles — your thought leadership mic drop moments in a bottle, for hooks, email subject lines, and conversation starters.

Join Category of One! Doors close Wednesday Nov 4th.

Connect with Rosa:

• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Listen to her free series, The Authority Shift — five episodes on why leadership has been feeling so hard for first-gen leaders of color in nonprofits, and what to do about it

Last week my client Jess landed four sales calls in a week, while having a 9-5. Not because she went viral. Not because she finally cracked some algorithm trick. Because she decided at the beginning of the summer that sales would be her goal.

And then, in Category of One, we went step by step to make that happen, which we cover in this episode. And every action she took lined up with that decision.

I brought Jess on the podcast because she’s proof of something I tell my clients constantly: leaning in is most of business. Not the framework. Not the investment. It's leaning in and getting help filling in the gaps that you can't always see.

Jess is a Career Coach and Leadership strategist for ambitious women of color, and she’s been in Category of One since round one.

In this episode, we go back through exactly what she changed - her mindset, her marketing, and her sales process - and trace it all the way to those four calls.

• Why “post and wait” is a death trap, and what Jess did instead once she stopped relying on it
• How she stopped sending people a book-a-call link and started having real conversations about their problems, and why none of her four sales calls came from a link in her bio
• The moment she realized her 10 years of healthcare consulting experience wasn’t separate from her coaching — it was the thing making her a better coach
• How she learned to tell the difference between coaching someone for free in the DMs and inviting them onto an actual sales call — and why that distinction matters
• Why I told her to record solo podcast episodes, write more sales emails, and run a summer sales challenge, and what happened when she actually did it

If you’ve ever felt like you’re trying everything and still wondering if you’re solving the wrong problem, or if the real issue is that you haven’t fully leaned in yet, this episode is for you.

Listen now.

To join Jess and the next round of incredible coaches and consultants selling high ticket offers with story and leading with their expertise, doors to Category of One on Wednesday Oct 28th by registering for my free training:

Sold Out through Story: 3 Steps to Selling High Ticket Offers Through Content

Connect with Jess:

• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• The Ambitious Woman of Color podcast
• Grab her Paid & Promoted 5 Day Series — her money, authority, and visibility framework for women of color going after their next promotion or raise

This move wasn't a "rebuild". It came from the happiest season of my life.

I was living in San Francisco, in a condo on a hill with a 180-degree view that people would film when they walked in. I'd hit a million lifetime in my business. I hit three six figure launches from that house. By every account, I was the picture of success.

And I still felt the tug to leave.

In this episode, I'm telling the real story of moving my daughter and our whole life to Mexico City and a homeland I never grew up knowing - not the logistics, but why:

Why the decisions that change your life the most rarely feel exciting when you're making them. Why I kept returning to Mexico City for over three years before I understood what it was calling me toward.

And why this move, more than any other I've made, felt ancestral.

• Why I started questioning if San Francisco was really the home I'd have chosen, if my family didn't already live there
• Treating it as a 6-month "trial" made the leap feel easier
• How I knew my definition of success had shifted now that I was no longer in survival mode
• What happened the day I made an appointment with a shaman, and what showed up in my inbox the next day
• Why the biggest decisions of my life have never felt exciting to make — they've felt like grief
• What I'm sitting with now, as I anticipate my parents coming to visit us in week, knowing my dad has not been back to Mexico since he emigrated in 1971.

If you've ever built a life that looked right on paper and still felt the pull to leave it, this one's for you.

Listen now.

Work with me:

If you're looking to build (or re-build) a business with a multi-six figure foundation that also supports a full life, private coaching is where we do this work.

If you've been selling yourself — your access, your time, your proximity — and wondering why scaling feels impossible, this episode is going to reframe the whole thing.

This is Part 1 of Behind the Scenes: 100 Clients in 2026, an ongoing series where I'm sharing what I'm actually changing in my business, my process, and my mindset as I work toward a goal I've never attempted before. In Q1 alone, I brought in 30 clients — and I did it by making shifts I want to walk you through in real time.

In this episode, I'm breaking down the five business shifts I made to go from selling proximity to selling a process — and why that distinction is everything if you want to grow without burning out or capping yourself.

I talk about:

• why documenting your IP is an act of service, not a loss of the human element — and how to deliver your expertise without being in the room every time
• how to tell the difference between demand you manufactured and demand that already exists — and why launching to the wrong one costs you more than you think
• what it means to message for strangers instead of fans, and why the language your audience is actually shopping in is not the language you're probably using
• why testing demand before launching saved me from the warm-leads-run-out trap — and the two low-stakes ways I validated my method before selling it at scale
• the one system every business owner needs before posting on social media becomes their entire marketing strategy

This one is for you if you're ready to grow beyond what your time and proximity can hold — and you want to see exactly how that happens from the inside.

Listen now.

Work with me:

If you want to build a story-led content system that brings in clients consistently, join Category of One here

To work together privately on your offer, your process, or your next level, learn more about private coaching here

Free resource: Download the Six Figure Storyselling Bundle — 60 days of storyselling prompts and the Sellable Stories GPT, so you can start identifying and telling the stories that actually sell

What if you’re not actually confused?

What if you already know what needs to change, but you’re afraid to feel the grief, guilt, or fear that comes with saying it out loud?

In this episode, I’m sharing from a very personal place.

I’m currently sitting in a big decision about whether I’m leaving San Francisco, the Bay Area, or even the country. And what I’ve realized is that the hardest part of a decision like this isn’t always the logistics. Sometimes it’s admitting that you’ve outgrown something that still looks beautiful, successful, or meaningful on paper.

I’m talking about what it looks like to make identity-shifting decisions when you don’t have the full plan yet. The kind of decisions that ask you to trust yourself before you have proof. The kind that come with grief because they affect not just you, but your daughter, your parents, your hometown, your identity, and the life you’ve worked so hard to build.

I also share how this has shown up in other major decisions across my life, from leaving a 13-year relationship, to quitting jobs, to solo travel, to starting over, to building a business and a life that would have made no sense to the version of me that was once just trying to survive.

In this episode, I talk about:

• how to tell the difference between confusion and avoiding your feelings
• why you usually know what you don’t want before you know exactly what you do want
• how grief, guilt, and fear can keep you stuck in a decision you’ve already made privately
• the reflection questions I ask myself when I know I’ve outgrown a season, identity, city, or way of living
• what it looks like to trust yourself when the emotional truth arrives before the logistical clarity

If you’re in a season where something no longer fits, but you haven’t been ready to fully admit it yet, this episode will hit.

Work with me:

If you want to sell more through your story and build a brand around who you are, join the waitlist for Category of One

To work with me on an identity shift you're going through, learn more here and schedule a call.

Free resource: To uncover your most sellable, high converting stories, download the Six Figure Storyselling Bundle here. It includes 60 days of storyselling prompts + my custom Sellable Stories Coach custom GPT.

Your content isn’t random.

But your results feel random.

And even when people are viewing, it’s not always turning into clients.

Part of that is messaging -

👉🏽If someone new lands on your page, can they immediately understand who you help and feel a connection to you beyond your work?

And part of it is structure -

👉🏽Right now, most people are posting and hoping someone connects the dots on their own.

But when the only next step is “book a call,” most people don’t take it.

That’s what we’re fixing on this episode.

In this free live training, I’m walking you through how your story, your messaging, and your content can finally work together so you’re always leading the right people towards with working with you.

This is bigger than better hooks.

Bigger than posting more often.

Doors to Category of One (CO1) are now open.

CO1 is a six-month program where your story, messaging, and content finally work together to grow your audience, generate leads, and land clients more consistently.

If you’ve been thinking about joining, this is the room to be in.

Learn more about Category of One: www.marieladelamora.com/category-of-one

One of the biggest mistakes I see business owners make is creating offers they want to sell — without having a real process for listening to what people already want. They don't have a Demand Validation process.

They feel excited about the idea. They believe people need it. They assume demand will be there.

But they don’t validate whether it aligns with demand.

And the result is they spend months trying to create demand instead of tapping into where it already exists.

This doesn’t always require changing what you're selling. Sometimes it’s just how you talk about it or position it.

But either way, skipping the listening and Demand Validation process almost always means you’ll have to manufacture demand instead of meet it.

In this episode, I’m walking you through a behind-the-scenes breakdown of how I launched a brand new program and exceeded my stretch goal:

1. 14 beta enrollments
2. 95 new leads before opening cart
3. 56% conversion from my interest list

And even though storytelling has been a core concept in my business for SIX years, I did not bypass the Demand Validation process.

So if I can’t skip that process, no one can.

This episode will show you exactly how I approached it — and how you can stop guessing and start listening.

If what you heard in this episode sounds like what you've been looking for, here are two next steps -

Free offer: Grab the Six Figure Storyselling Bundle - 60 days of prompts and a custom Sellable Stories Coach GPT to grow your audience, build demand, and sell your offer through your most sellable stories

Group program: Join the Interest List for Category of One, a content-to-leads storyselling program for high ticket coaches, consultants and service providers. Doors open March 12.

If Instagram stopped feeling fun, if your account stopped growing, or if you used to land clients from it but that has slowed drastically— this episode is your reset.

In this episode, I’m sharing how I’m actually shifting my content strategy going into 2026 — not based on trends, but on what’s working. This isn’t about being viral or cute for the algorithm. It’s about building connection, getting strategic with content that has different jobs, and making your IG feel fun again by turning IG into a funnel vs something that carries your whole business.

We talk about:

1. Why not every post should be about selling (and what to do instead)
2. How Instagram’s 2025 algorithm update changed everything
3. What “top of funnel” content really is and how to use it to grow your audience
4. Why storytelling is non-negotiable (and what kind of stories to share)
5. How trial reels + better hooks = more visibility and more aligned leads
6. How to turn IG into a funnel that grows your list and converts — without hard selling

Whether you’re burnt out on IG or ready to make it your most powerful tool again, this episode breaks down what’s working right now and how to implement it in a way that feels sustainable and aligned with your identity.

GRAB YOUR FREE STORYSELLING BUNDLE -

That's why I created Six Figure Storyselling Hooks - 60 days of prompts that will grow your account, build high ticket trust and authority, and convert followers to clients - all through your story.

https://marieladelamora.myflodesk.com/storyselling-hooks

And in the emails that follow the Storyselling Hooks, you'll receive a limited time bonus that's normally only available in my paid offers - my Sellable Stories Coach custom GPT.

It's designed to position you as a Category of One (through your story) and extract your top 3 sellable stories. Grab it now - it's an insane amount of value that will totally change the way you market on IG.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 – Intro: Why Instagram Feels Different

02:15 – What Changed in the 2025 Algorithm

06:58 – Why Your Posts Need Different Jobs

09:25 – The 50/30/20 Rule for Content Strategy

12:44 – Why Storytelling is STILL the Move

16:40 – Writing Better Hooks (and Why They Matter)

20:01 – What Top of Funnel Content Actually Looks Like

25:00 – Why Trial Reels Are Your New Favorite Hack

28:45 – The Funnel Mindset: Using IG to Grow Your List

33:10 – The Freebie You’ll Want (Six-Figure Story Selling + GPT)

35:00 – Why This Gets to Be More Fun (and Strategic)