When Your Warm Network Stops Being Enough
You built it on relationships. The first clients were people who already trusted you. They referred their friends, who became clients, who referred their friends. Every quarter the network sent enough work to keep the calendar full. The business was working.
Then it slowed.
Maybe the referrals got thinner. Maybe you raised your rates and the network couldn’t quite reach the new tier. Maybe you finally took a Tuesday afternoon off and realized the business doesn’t have a growth engine. It has you, and a Rolodex.
This is the wall most heart-centered service founders hit somewhere between $150K and $250K. It’s not a marketing problem. It’s a structural one.
This week on FoundHer Rising, Shenelle B., founder of B.L.A.Z.E. Careers, walked through how she scaled her HR and leadership consulting practice past that exact wall. Her path is worth paying attention to because she did it without burning down what built the business in the first place.
The First Six Figures Don’t Look Like the Second
Shenelle’s first clients came from her corporate network. Decision-makers who’d already seen her work, leaders who already knew her values, peers who’d been quietly waiting for her to go independent.
That’s normal. That’s how almost every successful service practice gets to its first $100K to $200K. You don’t need a funnel when you have a reputation.
The trouble is, that strategy doesn’t scale. You can only know so many people. Past a certain point, the next dollar of revenue has to come from someone who’s never heard your name.
That’s a fundamentally different sale. Warm referrals close because trust has already been transferred. Cold prospects close because you’ve done the work to build it from scratch.
What Shenelle did instead of doubling down on cold lead chasing is worth borrowing.
Three Shifts That Move You Past the Network Ceiling
1. Position before pitch.
Shenelle doesn’t chase leads. She picks the rooms her ideal client is already in (specific conferences, networking events, communities) and positions herself there. She knows her elevator pitch. She knows her story. The room does the warming.
For founders past the warm network, this is the most underused strategy. You don’t need more leads. You need to be in fewer, better rooms. Where is your buyer already paying attention? That’s the only question worth answering.
2. Build the proof, not just the pitch.
When buyers don’t know you, they need evidence. Shenelle leaned hard into case studies, research, and connecting her work to data leadership teams already track. That’s what turned her from “another consultant” into “the person who already understands our problem.”
If you’ve been selling on warmth and word of mouth, you probably haven’t documented your wins. That’s the gap. Build the case studies. Pull the data. Make the proof undeniable, then put yourself in front of people who need to see it.
3. Lead with the pain they’re already naming.
Shenelle doesn’t open with what she does. She opens with what they’re feeling. Burnout. Overwhelm. Stress they don’t know how to regulate. By naming the pain her audience already lives in, she earns the right to talk about her solution.
Most service founders skip this and pitch the offer. The audience tunes out. Lead with their reality, not your service.
The Reframe That Changes Everything
Late in the conversation, Christine surfaced something that hits everyone who’s tried to grow a service business past one-to-one work:
“When I find myself saying, ‘I don’t have time,’ the way I try to reframe that is, this isn’t a priority right now.”
Read that twice.
If you’re not making sales calls, building case studies, or showing up in the rooms where your next clients are, “I don’t have time” isn’t the real answer. The real answer is the business is structured around things that feel more urgent than growth. Growth is being deprioritized.
That’s a different problem to solve. You can’t fix a priority problem by getting more efficient. You fix it by changing what gets your time first.
What Comes After One-to-One
The endgame, for most service founders, isn’t more clients. It’s more leverage.
Shenelle is moving toward group cohorts, licensable frameworks, and product builds that solve gaps her one-to-one work surfaced. That’s the natural arc of a maturing service business.
One-to-one earns you the data. One-to-many monetizes it.
If you’re still trading hours for dollars, the question isn’t “how do I get more hours?” It’s “what do I already know that ten clients would pay for in a packaged form?”
The Bottom Line
The warm network builds the first chapter. The next chapter is built on positioning, proof, and prioritization. If you’re stuck at the wall, the path through isn’t more hustle. It’s structural.
If this is where you are, that’s exactly the work we do at Hakkola Horizons. Book a free Growth Clarity Call and let’s look at where the bottleneck actually is.
Full Transcript
Christine Hakkola: Welcome to FoundHer Rising, the podcast for women founders in wellness, coaching, and consulting who are ready to build businesses that create freedom, impact, and income. I’m your host, Christine Hakkola, business coach, former psychotherapist, and mentor to women scaling service-based businesses.
Today I’m joined by Shenelle B., founder of B.L.A.Z.E. Careers. She helps organizations build emotionally intelligent leaders and stronger workplace cultures from her home base in New Jersey. Shenelle, welcome to the show.
Shenelle B.: Thank you so much for having me, Christine. I’m happy to be here.
Christine Hakkola: I’m so excited to have you and just hear all about your story and the great work you’re doing. Let’s go back to the beginning. Can you tell our listeners what was happening in your life and your career when you realized you couldn’t keep operating the way you had been, and it was time to do something different?
Shenelle B.: I imagine a lot of your listeners can relate to this, but it was the exhaustion. I was constantly feeling fatigued. I’m a very relationship-oriented person, so I noticed the toll that exhaustion was taking on the relationships I had outside of work. And to some extent, even the ones at work. My patience was lower. My tolerance for delays and bureaucracy started to come to a head, and I realized this is not sustainable.
It caused me to pause and think a little deeper about why I was making the decisions I was making, and whether this was the only way for me to achieve success. That was when I started having some really uncomfortable conversations with myself to figure out how to pivot. What does that look like? There are so many uncertainties. How do I prepare myself as best as possible for the transition, should I want to take the leap?
Christine Hakkola: It’s a huge leap from a corporate environment, a salary position, to being your own boss. What was your industry? What did you do? What kind of companies did you work for? And what were the first things you started thinking about that you would offer as an entrepreneur?
Shenelle B.: It’s a great question. My experience is human resources. SHRM certified, went to school for human resource management. I was doing a lot of HR work in Fortune 100 and 500 companies. My specialization was in diversity, equity, and inclusion, obviously before that became a no-no term.
It really gave me deeper insight into the structure and systems within organizations and how they function to encourage folks to engage and perform. Through the work I was doing, I realized there was a gap. People were struggling with their emotional regulation regardless of level, regardless of where they sat within the organization. The workplace is one of the most stressful places to exist. It was eye-opening to notice the way the stress took a toll on any given person and how their ability to navigate through that led to positive outcomes.
So I recognized there was an opportunity for me to build my knowledge and awareness about emotional regulation and how humans perform under stress, from a psychological and neurological stance, and then provide them with practical tools they could use to navigate through. It’s not a problem to be solved. It’s building the muscle, like anything else, to manage through.
Christine Hakkola: Exactly. From a skills, niche, and experience perspective, you had all the foundational ingredients to be successful building your own business. But early on, we get that quick lesson of, “Oh, this isn’t just about providing a service. I’m a business owner now.” What were some of those early thoughts and mindset shifts you had to make moving from corporate into being an entrepreneur?
Shenelle B.: For me, it was letting go of the idea that my performance and my identity were synonymous. I think that’s the trap a lot of folks find themselves in. If I was going to be helping individuals and organizations meet people in a human-centered place, it would require them to break up with that idea, because that’s the norm.
The other piece is separating the idea that success has to be linear. I’ve met so many clients who say, “I love what I do, I love where I’m at. I’m not interested in moving up the corporate ladder. I just want to master the role I’m in.” It’s like, how do I do that? How do I tell that story within my organization? And I help them navigate through that.
Then there are people who say, “I want to climb the corporate ladder, but I don’t want to do it at the sacrifice of myself.” We talk through how to create healthy boundaries, how to challenge your ego when it shows up in decision-making. And then there are people who feel misaligned. My target demographic is people who have been traditionally told their success has to look a certain way. As a result, they’ve suppressed their purpose and their passion. So I help them bring that back to the surface and give them the tools to find the work that matters most to them.
Sometimes that’s still being in a corporate space. It may be shifting into a different position. Or it may be transitioning into something else entirely. As you can imagine, lots of fear comes to the surface, which is what makes my part as the entrepreneur so valuable. I tell them, you are not alone. It’s a huge leap. Let me validate your experience. It would be weird if you weren’t afraid. Our brains are hardwired to be a little nervous when it comes to change. Grounding them in that, then letting them know someone’s in their corner to walk them through and help them set milestones to affirm they’re progressing in the right direction.
Christine Hakkola: What I’m appreciating about your story and how you work with clients is that it really starts with validating where these folks are coming from. Not only that, but what they want, and that that’s okay. Their success and their growth doesn’t need to look a particular way. Where you start is by honoring that, then creating a plan forward that works for them. It sounds like you did that for yourself. You realized that corporate was not aligned with you, that you had something else to offer.
When you first went out on your own, what informed who you wanted to work with and how you would work? How did you get some of those first clients?
Shenelle B.: The client piece was tapping into my network. As I mentioned, I’m a relationship-oriented person. Through the work I was doing, I was able to touch so many different leaders and partners within the organization, and they were able to see my work at a large scale. They had an understanding of what I was capable of, and they knew the passion I had for helping others.
When I told them I was going into coaching and consulting, they said, “This makes total sense, you’ll be phenomenal at it. Please tell me how I can help.” Some said, “I wish I would have known sooner. There are so many people I know who could use your services.” Introductions would happen, and I’d take it from there. Get a sense, ask a couple of questions to understand what they were looking for, what felt out of alignment, and what they were actually trying to accomplish. That allowed me to create a workshop if it was an organization, or a plan for the individual to help them achieve specific goals within a specific timeframe.
It was a really great way to show a little of myself and tell my story, which helped build trust. I’m a huge fan of not taking the beaten path. For me, it was never, “let me chase leads.” It was, “what are some unconventional ways I can get my message out there?”
In the current climate, everyone can relate to feeling burnt out, stressed, or overwhelmed. If we’re self-aware enough, we recognize sometimes our response to that stress isn’t always healthy. That’s the part I use to draw people in. If you’ve experienced this, have you ever considered this? Here are some practical approaches. That would pique people’s interest in better understanding how I could help them and their organizations.
Christine Hakkola: You mentioned a couple of times how you see yourself as a relational person. I can hear that in the way you talk and the way you’ve built your business. I’ll reflect back. You did a really wise thing early on. You already had a great network. You did something many business owners do and also overlook, which is leveraging the power of your warm network to start getting your first clients.
Now, you had something interesting happen. Part of your work is your focus on DEI. As we all know, the political climate has changed significantly in the way that work is now viewed and the desire for it is different than it has been. What has your experience been of somebody working in DEI, especially being an entrepreneur, through this political climate?
Shenelle B.: It’s been an interesting time, to say the least. I’ve been able to flex a lot of my coaching skills. When I talk to CHROs or remaining chief diversity officers, I try to ground them. This was always going to happen. It’s calling us to reimagine the way we do this work.
If I can be transparent, a lot of organizations took the easy way out in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. They were doing diversity, equity, and inclusion work because they felt like they were reacting to the social climate. It’s great that motivated them to do it. But because of that reactivity, they weren’t intentional about the way they were embedding DEI into their organization. It was a lot of surface-level solutions.
Christine Hakkola: A lot of companies were doing it more as a marketing strategy, almost, to slap something on the face of the company to look good.
Shenelle B.: Exactly. It’s really about embedding the principles into the organization. In the spirit of meritocracy, if DEI principles were embedded intentionally, that would already exist. The foundation would already exist. But because of the approach taken, where everybody had to have a specialized community group initiative, it created more division than it did bring people together. There’s a fine line between understanding the lived experience of those around you and motivating people to want to show up in an environment where there are actual feelings of belonging.
It became more about checking a box than about the intentionality of changing behaviors within the culture. That’s where companies are struggling now. They realized that happened, and they’re looking for someone who can help them actually build human-centered practices.
Christine Hakkola: This is a complex topic. It’s the water you swim in, the world you live in. I’m relieved to hear leaders out there are now taking this as an opportunity to realize the work they did was on the surface and there’s an opportunity to go deeper. From your perspective, even though the surface of DEI work has changed drastically, what are you finding behind the scenes? In the work you do with leaders, has the work really changed, or is it the way you talk about it that’s changing? Or is it more systemic?
Shenelle B.: A lot of organizations want to do the work. They just don’t know how. So that’s where I come in to get a better understanding. Talk to me about your culture. Talk to me about the organization. What are the pain points? What data have you collected that can help get a clearer picture of what’s happening for your employees? How can I help you translate that into objectives and goals that create a culture where people feel they can succeed and they’re supported?
There are also organizations that started well before 2020, and if anything, took it up a notch in 2020. They had leaders who understood the value of inclusion and equity in the workplace. There’s a good number of organizations who are still committed. They’re just not necessarily talking about it publicly, partly because of advice from their legal team, partly because of the current climate. It’s risky. It’s hard when there’s a potential for a small thing to be taken out of context and blown up by the media. It seems like they’re playing it safe, but the work is still happening.
Christine Hakkola: That’s so heartening to hear. My hope and trust is that it’s not always going to be this way on the surface. At the same time, I’m heartened to hear there are good leaders out there committed to doing this work regardless.
If something in this episode feels uncomfortably familiar, that’s not an accident. A lot of the women who listen to this show are at that in-between stage. The business works, but it’s heavy. You’re the bottleneck. You’re stretched. You know something needs to shift, but you’re not sure what the right next move is. That’s exactly why I offer free connection calls with my team. It’s not a pitch. It’s a real conversation about where you are, what’s actually in the way, and whether I’m the right person to help you scale this without burning out or compromising your values. If you want clarity instead of more guessing, book one. The link’s in the show notes.
Let’s keep going. What I’m curious about is, you were going through a pivotal time of starting and growing your own service-based business, and your industry has been significantly impacted by changes in the political climate. What has your experience been as a business owner, and how have you pivoted, changed your offerings, grown into today as a result of how things have unfolded?
Shenelle B.: I haven’t had to shift too much. As I mentioned, a lot of companies now realize they had the best of intentions but didn’t have the best execution. They’re looking for folks like me to help them figure out how to navigate forward, what it looks like for AI to be integrated into some of the things they do, and how that influences DEI and inclusion. For me, it’s actually been pretty great.
Christine Hakkola: It almost sounds like it’s made your work easier. People are waking up and coming to you saying, “We really need this. Come help us.”
Shenelle B.: The barrier has been that the consulting space is just very oversaturated. That’s a truth we can say out loud. As a result, I have had to pivot, but it’s not so much about the products. It’s about my approach.
It’s making sure that it’s clear I understand the work, I understand the pain points, and I have a clear direction about how I can help them move forward. Building a repository of case studies I can leverage to show them the way I’ve helped other organizations. Talking thoughtfully about the connection between leadership development and inclusive culture. The reality is, if your leaders aren’t intentional, if they don’t understand the way they show up and how it impacts the teams they support, that creates a performance and engagement issue.
I’ve also been leaning more into data and research. I joke with people all the time and say, I never thought I’d end up being a researcher. It’s such a huge part of my job because it’s important for me to have advanced knowledge to bring to organizations. It’s not that those organizations don’t want the information. They just don’t have the time to stay up to date with all the things happening, with the rate of change being as aggressive as it is. It gives me an opportunity to slow things down and say, hey, I got you. That trust is what helps solidify the contract or the partnership.
Christine Hakkola: Some of these shifts remind me of a natural stage I see entrepreneurs go through. You wisely leveraged your warm referral network when you first started. The digital equivalent of hanging the sign on the door is saying, “Hey, I’m here, here’s who I am, here’s what I do.” After that, you intentionally engaged in conversations with people who became clients or referred you to clients.
A lot of business owners reach a point, sometimes within the first 12 to 18 months, where they’ve tapped out their warm referral network. Now they have to develop relationships with people who don’t know who they are. What that’s all about, and what I hear you talking about, is trust. It’s easier to land a client, have someone say yes, when they already know who you are. It’s harder with somebody who doesn’t know those things. So a lot of growing your business beyond warm referrals is leveraging trust and relationship-building skills to help those folks understand that we get them, we understand their problem, and we have the skills and expertise to solve it in a way that works for them.
What would you say has been your experience starting to move outside your warm network, and what have you had to pivot as a business owner to build those relationships?
Shenelle B.: It requires intentionality and a little strategy. I’ve been thoughtful about, and this goes back to research, doing market research to get a better sense of where my target audience is hanging out. Where do they like to be? What kind of spaces are they in where they’re learning more about how to navigate their emotions, how to understand themselves better, doing the personal growth work? Then positioning myself in those opportunities.
If that means there’s a specific networking opportunity, or there’s a particular conference where it makes sense to spend the money to have a table, that gives me the opportunity to get in front of those folks. Making sure I have my elevator pitch ready so I’m able to share that. Tapping into the storytelling element, because that’s where people are looking today. In a space where everybody is doing their own thing, social media has made it easy to have a presence and a voice, people are able to see through the fluff.
I pride myself on showing up as my authentic self and trusting that the people who need my support will find me, and I can be okay if my message isn’t for everyone. That’s part of the reality of being an entrepreneur. It would be great if every single person loved whatever you’re putting out, but that’s not the reality. Getting through and being okay with the fact that if I can meet the people who need my support the most, that’s enough.
Christine Hakkola: That’s actually what makes businesses successful, getting clear about not just who they serve but who they don’t serve. Very few successful businesses serve everyone. The ones I see that are most successful get really clear. Would you say that’s one of the biggest shifts you’ve had to make as a business owner? How do I niche, identify my target audience, and put myself in spaces and have conversations to keep growing the business beyond the warm network?
Shenelle B.: It’s been a learning curve. With the work I do, you’d think most people would say, “Yeah, I do want to understand my emotions better.” But there’s a large portion of folks who aren’t ready to take that on. That’s not how they conceptualize the problem out of the gate. They can get there with support, but it’s not what’s top of mind.
Because of the state of the world, so many people say, “This is not something I have time for.” That’s part of my philosophy and conversation with those individuals. Is it that you don’t have time for it, or is it that you haven’t given yourself permission to choose you? Because this is about you. This is about how you show up. This is about how you take back your agency so you can live a more purposeful life. Usually that’s when it’s, “I never thought about it that way. You’re saying something, and now I’m intrigued.” Sometimes it really is just meeting people where they are.
About my warm network, even if they weren’t introducing me to people, they invited me to events. If they knew there were people who could use my services or they wanted to get me into a room with certain decision-makers, they’d say, “Yeah, I can get you into this space so you can talk about what you do.” That opened doors to people I wouldn’t have otherwise had access to.
Christine Hakkola: Going back to what you said about not having time. One of the lenses I look through, and I personally find this helpful, whether it’s a sales conversation or my own business, is when I hear folks say, when I find myself saying, “I don’t have time,” the way I try to reframe that is, this isn’t a priority right now. Then I get curious, especially for myself. If this isn’t a priority, what is? What is taking my time that I’m putting as a priority? Because we always have time. Everybody has time. We have time for the things we choose to be priorities.
I’ve found that very helpful as a business owner. If I don’t have time to do something I said was important to me, what is the thing my actions are saying is more important? That’s actually helped me shift my relationship with time. I don’t have more hours in the day, but I do accomplish things differently and make different choices when I recognize it’s not about how I manage my time. It’s about what I prioritize.
When you think about what’s most important to you, what you’re focused on in the next 12 to 24 months, what do you see changing? What are you focused on? What are you wanting to grow and build with your business?
Shenelle B.: My ultimate goal is this larger ecosystem where people understand the connection between how they show up and the waves it creates externally. The more kindness we bring into those spaces, the more positive change we’ll see. I was reading a book where the author made the point that we cause 99.9% of our distress in any given day.
Christine Hakkola: I can get behind that.
Shenelle B.: It’s largely because we don’t understand the way our ego gets activated, or we take things personally we don’t need to take personally, or we don’t have the language to articulate what we’re feeling. There’s not always a safe space to do that, so we’re less inclined to be that honest.
For me, it’s about scaling the impact to get people to understand we’re all capable of doing it. We’re all capable of coming back to our agency and our shared humanity so we can create the spaces we’re looking for, because humans are designed for connection. We’ve allowed all these societal norms to create this division. There’s an opportunity for us to find our way back. I was reading another book that talked about how often people are more inclined to change in crisis. To me, what we’re living through is a humanity crisis. So this calls for us to consider what’s important. What do we need to prioritize?
Christine Hakkola: I love this message. How do you see your business model changing in the future to scale and have a bigger impact on the people you serve?
Shenelle B.: There will certainly be more group coaching cohorts.
Christine Hakkola: More one-to-many.
Shenelle B.: I imagine there’ll be opportunity for me to license specific frameworks. There are leaders in organizations who love the message and want to take it and run within their organization. I trust them to do that. Packaging it up nicely, making sure they have all the resources they need. There are also a couple of gaps I’ve noticed in tools in some of the systems I support organizations with. For example, in the talent terrain, leaders often say, “We want to mitigate bias in this process so everybody has an opportunity to move through the organization.” But the tools they currently have to facilitate those processes aren’t designed to be equitable. So what does it look like for me to come in and create a product that can help them do that?
Christine Hakkola: I can totally see how you’re going to become a researcher with that kind of motivation.
Shenelle B.: I’m currently in school for my PhD, so it’s getting me there. I’m able to get into the weeds of research and build new concepts and frameworks. It’s how we reimagine the workplace. When we talk about scale and long-term impact, once we get through the individual, it’s, well, now let’s talk about the systems and conditions that exist, because that’s the other side of that coin. That’s the focus for the future.
Christine Hakkola: Shifting some of your offerings from one-to-one to one-to-many, creating licensable frameworks, developing tools that don’t exist to better support leaders. I love all of that. What do you imagine is going to be the biggest challenge or the next big learning curve for you as a business owner as you venture into that?
Shenelle B.: Honestly, many entrepreneurs are probably thinking the same thing. AI. Better understanding AI and how it’s going to impact the workplace. A lot of leaders who have started to think about that have been asking questions about compliance, risk, and bias. Sometimes we don’t think about the fact that this is a machine created by another human. So it’s likely going to have some bias. It’s been a lot of research, understanding the different types of AI and how they show up in the workplace, so I can prepare and provide appropriate recommendations.
Christine Hakkola: There’s a lot of talk out there about the jobs AI is going to replace. I think that’s valid. There will be a lot of change. But a conversation I’ve been intentionally engaging in more is, what kinds of jobs is AI going to create that have never existed? It sounds like you’re already on this train. The role of an AI consultant is going to be in really high demand as organizations and people figure out how to be in relationship with and utilize AI. Somebody in your field as an HR consultant is perfectly positioned to adopt that role.
Shenelle B.: The foundation is understanding HR in the workplace. This added layer comes in, of let’s talk about what AI looks like in some of these systems, how it can better support employees. Tech enablement has always been a conversation. All of us can relate, if you come from corporate space working at least one job where it’s, “Why is everything so manual?”
Christine Hakkola: Flashbacks.
Shenelle B.: It’s, yeah, we understand this has always been a pain point. We’re positioned to figure out how to use this tool to simplify some of that work in certain areas, in the spirit of innovation. It’s important for leaders to understand those structures and systems so they aren’t as resistant, and they can connect the value it brings to the workforce. Lots of interesting conversations, but it’s exciting because sometimes when I talk to people who bring me into their organization, they’re like, “We just need you to back up what we already said, because we know it sounds different coming from someone else.” And I can be the person to help build this or execute, because their internal teams may have the desire but don’t have the capacity or time. Right now, we can focus on getting this part done.
Christine Hakkola: Speaking of conversation for another time, I feel like we need a whole other show just to dig into the implications of AI on service-based businesses. For now, Shenelle, thank you so much for sharing your story, your expertise, and your journey. If there are folks listening who want to learn more about you or get in touch, what’s the best way for them to find you?
Shenelle B.: You can reach out to me on LinkedIn as Shenelle B., and you can follow me on Instagram. My handle is @_withshenelle. Would love to see you on there. There’s a lot of posts where I talk about some of what we touched on today, share parts of my story and things I’ve learned along the way.
Christine Hakkola: I think I’m already following you, but if I’m not, I’m going to make sure I am so I can keep up. Thank you again, Shenelle. Thank you, listener, for tuning in to FoundHer Rising. If today’s episode resonated with you, follow the show, share it with another founder, and leave a quick review. It helps more women find these conversations.
You can connect with me on LinkedIn or learn more at HakkolaHorizons.com. Until next time, keep rising and keep building the business that gives you freedom to live, lead, and create on your terms.
