I’m Looking at an Empty Pipeline

This week, in episode 228, Lena McGuire—in her first appearance as a regular on this podcast—tells Paul Downs and Jaci Russo about her plans to turn her hobby, remodeling homes, into a real business. In just her third full-time year of building Spóca Kitchen & Bath, Lena says she has already experienced both a quick rise in revenue and then a surprising decline, a decline she attributes mostly to marketing issues. One of those issues, she says, is that she refreshed her website and it started producing more prospects—but fewer qualified prospects. That said, Lena is off to an impressive start, having targeted a well-defined niche, having created a clear process to connect homeowners and contractors, and having demonstrated both a real need for her services and an ability to learn from her mistakes. “I don’t look at failure as failing,” she says in a conversation we recorded in December. Plus: Paul tries to explain why his revenue surged 50 percent in 2024. Now there’s a problem we’d all like to have.

Om Podcasten

The 21 Hats Podcast presents an authentic weekly conversation with small business owners who are remarkably willing to share what’s working for them and what isn’t. Unlike many business podcasts, which tend to talk to highly successful entrepreneurs whose struggles are in the past, the 21 Hats Podcast features a rotating cast of business owners who are still very much in the trenches fighting the good fight. Every week, our regulars gather to talk about the kinds of important issues many owners won’t even discuss behind closed doors: whether their businesses are as profitable as they should be, whether they are willing to give up some control to an investor in order to grow faster, why they had to lay off employees, how they wound up with way too much inventory, why they don’t have a succession plan, and even why they are concerned about their own mental health. Visit 21hats.com to hear all of our podcast episodes, read episode transcripts, and learn more. The show is produced by Jess Thoubboron, founder of Blank Word.