When No One Shows Up: The Visibility & Courage Lesson Every Founder Needs

What happens when you promote something for weeks… and no one shows up?

In this honest solo conversation, Ruthie shares the behind-the-scenes story of hosting a Marketing Mixer where not a single person came. But this isn’t about failure. It’s about visibility, vulnerability, and the courage required in expansion seasons.

If you’re an experienced founder navigating growth, launching something new, or trying to reach a new audience while balancing real life and leadership, this episode will feel like a deep exhale.

You’ll hear:

• Why broadcast marketing isn’t the same as relationship-based marketing
  
  
  
• How avoiding direct outreach can disguise itself as “strategy”
  
  
  
• The real difference between demand problems and courage problems
  
  
  
• Why busy audiences need a longer runway
  
  
  
• How vulnerability strengthens authority instead of weakening it
  
  
  

If you’ve ever thought, “Maybe nobody cares,” this episode is your reminder: clarity and courage matter more than noise.

Listen in—and remember, you’re not building alone.

Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode, and follow along over on Instagram!
@ruthie.sterrett
@theconsistencycorner

Transcript

Ruthie Sterrett (00:01.656)

Y'all, just recorded this entire episode and didn't click record. Yep, mm-hmm, did that, did that. So here we are recording this episode, take two. my God, have y'all ever done something like that? I went to hit stop and realized I was clicking start and I had just talked for 15 minutes and didn't record anything. So there's that.

But now that you know what's happening behind the scenes over here with the tech, let me tell you about what we're talking about this month on the Consistency Corner podcast. If you're new here, I'm Ruthie. I don't normally do things like that, but it happened today. And today I'm also pulling back the curtain a little bit more on what has been happening for me in terms of visibility. And at the Consistency Corner, our goal is to lighten the mental load of marketing so your growth doesn't require more hustle.

It doesn't require more noise, more of your personal energy. And I'm gonna pull back the curtain and share with you some things that have been going on, not in a dramatic way, not in a watch me spiral way, although a couple days ago it might've been that way, but in a grounded and strategic way so you know the lessons that I've learned along the roller coaster that's been going on lately.

And if you're an experienced founder navigating expansion, meaning you're maybe launching something new, you've got an idea to launch something new, you're trying to reach a new audience, you're hitting your capacity limits, and you've got real life and leadership also weighing on your mind, you don't need hype, you need clarity and you need support. So today we're going to talk about the lesson I learned when I didn't invite anybody and surprise, surprise.

Nobody showed up. So when no one shows up to something that you put out in the world, the data is rarely just about demand. It's also about behavior. And in my case, I avoided the one channel that was most likely to convert. So here's what happened. I was hosting the marketing mixer in February. This was our first one for 2026.

Ruthie Sterrett (02:16.462)

Probably the seventh or eighth mixer I've hosted ever. Last year we did them every six weeks, plus we had done one or two in 2024. So we've hosted several. I always get great feedback. Everybody appreciates the format. We do breakout rooms with some guided networking, connection questions, and a little bit of teaching and takeaways for you about what's working in marketing in this season. I started promoting the event in early February, maybe even late January.

And I had 13 people register. While the number, to be honest, was not as big as I would have loved, I was excited to connect with those 13 people. So, you know, I created the posts, I'd sent the emails, I created my slides, I practiced what we were gonna talk about, I created the landing page, the email sequence for once you registered, mean, all the things behind the scenes that goes into putting something out there.

And as I promoted, like I said, I relied very heavily on email and social. I think I've sent seven emails. I think I made 20, maybe, yeah, probably 20-ish social media posts. So had the 13 people register, the day of the event, it's 12 o'clock, I click open the Zoom, go to look at the little waiting room to let people in. Nobody's there. I give it five minutes.

Nobody's there. I start to panic. I check my inbox, make sure nobody's emailed me and said, like, where's the Zoom link? Like, maybe I didn't put it in the emails right. I don't know. No emails. I get on Instagram. Has anybody sent me a DM? Nope, no DMs. Another 10, 15 minutes go by. Still nobody in the room.

And I start to cry because I'm like, my God, it's like being a little kid and inviting your class to your birthday party. And nobody came. That's how I'm feeling right now. I invited people to the thing. I put myself out there. I did all this work behind the scenes and nobody came.

Ruthie Sterrett (04:31.532)

So I let myself cry.

But then I had to get honest about what was really going on. Well, what was really going on, number one, my audience is busy. Stuff happens, life, life, kids get sick, other clients need your attention. You can't go to that event that you registered for. I also didn't invite my audience probably as far enough in advance as I should have based upon their busy schedules.

Yes, I promoted for three weeks, which sounds like an eternity, but really I could have started three months in advance, which is why we're starting to promote the next mixer on May 19th right now. But also the fact that I I relied heavily on email and social posts.

What that was actually covering up was the fact that I avoided direct outreach. I was broadcasting that I was hosting this thing, but I wasn't inviting anybody to this thing. And direct outreach for me is really, really hard. I do not like it. I do not like sending what we call in the old network marketing days the hey girl DM. Even if

I know that my audience is full of nice people who are not gonna be rude. Even if I'm not bothered when somebody invites me to a thing that they're hosting, I avoid like the plague doing direct outreach. So about a week before the event, I knew in my gut that we needed to be doing direct outreach. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna have my admin assistant do it for

Ruthie Sterrett (06:18.87)

And not in like a weird pretend to be me way, but like she signed into my Instagram, sent some DMs and said, Hey, this is Serena. Ruthie's hosting the marketing mixer. We would love to have you in the room. And most people were either like, Hey, great. I would love to be there. I'm not available that day. Yeah, Ruthie, because we started inviting a week or maybe five or six days before the event. And here's the other thing that I really had to sit with after spiraling.

was that I didn't even reach out and invite my closest friends. You know, the five, six, seven people that I am cheering for the loudest, that I'm always gonna double tap their posts and comment and, you know, we have a relationship, we've done masterminds together or things together, collaborations together. I didn't even directly invite those people. And if I had done that, they probably would have come.

And then I wouldn't have been sitting in an empty room trying to network all by my lonesome self. I would have had an hour and a half blocked out to hang out with my friends. So why didn't I do that?

The real lesson was not that nobody wants this, that the market rejected me, that my offer is bad, or the quiet part that...

It's hard to say out loud, but I'm thinking during this, you know, spiral in an empty Zoom room that nobody cares and I'm not good enough. That's not true. What is true is I avoided proximity. I avoided discomfort. I avoided direct asks. I avoided inviting. I didn't have a visibility problem. I had a courage.

Ruthie Sterrett (08:17.602)

Busy audiences need a longer runway, so that's a takeaway. And relationship-based marketing converts differently than broadcast. If something requires connection, you can't just rely on volume and noise. And I was avoiding, this is really important, I was avoiding the hard thing by

showing up as strategic, meaning I wrote 118 carousel slides. I perfected the copy. I spent all of this time writing the emails, the messaging, figuring it out, the funnel, all the things. But what I was actually doing was avoiding vulnerability.

And here's something that I found really interesting as I was reflecting back over the last couple of days on this flopped event is that even large audience creators are navigating unpredictability in this market right now. One of my favorite people to follow and learn from is Colleen Nichols, who is the...

founder of the direct sales growth club and her Instagram handle, her business Instagram handle is no shame sales game. And she has an audience of over a hundred thousand people. And over the past month or so, two months, maybe even she has been working on and promoting and opened a peer mentor membership program, high ticket for established entrepreneurs. And she shared in an Instagram post that

She opened the doors, was so excited about it, had spent months behind the scenes working on it, had gotten great feedback from people that they were interested in, and she had two people join. And she was like, my God, nobody wants this. I can't host a peer-based community for two people. That's not a community. And so she refunded those people and went through a very similar spiral to what I went through.

Ruthie Sterrett (10:28.386)

but launches our experiments and buying behavior is more nuanced than ever. So if there are creators, business owners, influential industry people who are having a hard time selling something with an audience of 100,000, I have to know that I'm not the only one going through this. So what I'm doing differently is inviting now,

doing personal reach outs, even if maybe that means Serena is doing it for me, or at least starting the conversation for me. But I'm treating connection as a strategy. And when I talk about connection,

Ruthie Sterrett (11:20.086)

That requires vulnerability. I didn't have a demand problem for this offer. This offer has converted before. People have come to it before. People paid to come to my mixers. But I did have an avoidance problem this time. And I was avoiding vulnerability. And one of the things that I want to kind of leave you with, one of my favorite creators, thought leaders, authors, Brene Brown.

talks about courage and that courage is not the absence of vulnerability. Courage is being vulnerable and doing the thing anyway.

Ruthie Sterrett (12:05.75)

And I think about that because we've had that conversation with my kiddo. And if you're a parent, I'm sure you understand that you want to teach your children to be courageous, to be confident. And confidence comes from being courageous. But it means showing up, even when it's uncomfortable. And as a parent, you want to model that behavior for them, right? Which means I have to do the thing.

And it's uncomfortable and it's challenging, but good Lord, let me tell you, entrepreneurship, it's going to stretch you. We all know that it is going to stretch you and help you develop into a better human more than you ever realized, which you become a better human. You're a better parent.

Ruthie Sterrett (12:54.786)

But in that moment of vulnerability, what I also have to remember is that I'm not the only one that you are being vulnerable to. Brene Brown talks about like being in the arena and that she made a vow to herself to only take feedback from others willing to show up and be in the arena. So for me, that means other entrepreneurs, other mom founders. And I, I want you to know that I see you being vulnerable.

and I'm cheering you on and I know you're here with me and I'm not the only one. So if you know another founder who is carrying maybe more than she lets on, she's being vulnerable behind the scenes but not talking about it, reach out, encourage her, let her know, listen to this episode. That might be some comfort, but we gotta talk about this stuff because

moms are going change the world, mom business owners for sure, but we need a little support, right? And part of that support is supporting each other and even just saying, I see you and I want you to keep going. So if you're in an expansion season, we're going to be unpacking this all month. I'm talking about messaging, talking about vulnerability, talking about marketing strategies and what that looks like real life behind the scenes, not just what the glossy Instagram guru tells you to do.

So I thank you for being here, listening to me on my take two of this episode, since I got to record it twice or talk through it twice and only record it once. Reach out, say hello on Instagram if this message resonated, please share it with another founder who's carrying maybe more than she lets on and I'll see you in the next episode. And remember, I am always in your corner cheering you on. Thanks for being here.