Ep #136: Freedom-Based Scaling: Why More Clients Isn’t the Answer

Hey woman entrepreneur, if scaling your business sounds like more clients, more calls, and more on your plate, I want to interrupt that thought. Because at a certain point, yeah, growth starts to feel like more. More to manage, more to deliver, more to keep up with, and it stops feeling like the kind of business that you actually want. I'm Kendall, and in this episode, I'm showing you how to scale your income without increasing your workload by shifting how much each client is worth instead of how many clients you serve. It's all here for you in this episode of The Money Coach School Podcast. Let's dive in.

Welcome to The Money Coach School Podcast. To really excel at coaching women, you have to be skilled, confident, and even fearless at money coaching. If you're passionate about women holding genuine money power and love supporting women entrepreneurs, then this is the show for you. Now, here's your host, money feminist Kendall SummerHawk.

Hey woman entrepreneur. Today we're talking about scaling your coaching or consulting business, but from a very different perspective than the typical scale by adding lots more clients approach. Now, I'm sure by now you're hearing that word everywhere. Scale. Scale your business, scale your income, scale your impact. And what it often sounds like is this: more clients, more people, more volume, more team, more on your calendar. And if you're being honest, that doesn't feel exciting. It feels exhausting. I know I've been there, I did that, and I walked away from it. I walked away from a multimillion-dollar income stream for exactly those reasons. It was exhausting. So if you've ever thought, well, I want to scale, but I don't want more and more clients to accomplish it, this episode is for you.

In this episode, I'm going to be covering what scaling actually means in a coaching or consulting business, why adding more clients is a very difficult game to build and sustain, the real shift that increases your revenue without increasing your workload, and specific ways to increase how much you earn per client and how to define scaling on your own terms.

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All right, so let's start with what scaling actually means and defining it in a way that truly supports you. Scaling is not about stacking more onto your calendar. It's not about filling every open space, squeezing in more client sessions, or stretching your capacity just a little farther. That's a volume game. And volume takes a lot to make work. You need consistent leads, you need consistent conversion, energy to deliver at a high level over and over and over again. And even when you do this type of scaling well, it asks more and more from you just to keep it going. So yes, you can definitely grow that way, and for some of you, you may say, you know what? Bring it on. I'm all in on that. But I will tell you that it's demanding.

And I had a business that looked like that, made a ton of money, and would I do it again today? No way. Am I glad I did it? Yes, I learned a ton. But would I do it again today? No, absolutely not. Because I so value freedom, open calendar, open space in my life on a day-to-day basis. And that kind of a business rarely creates the kind of business that feels spacious or sustainable.

What I recommend is something else entirely different that aligns with a freedom-based business and aligns with creating financial freedom at the same time. And I call this profit-rich scaling where your business grows through higher-value clients and stronger profit, not more volume. This is when your revenue grows without your time increasing at that same pace. It's when your business starts to generate more and you're not the one carrying all of it. So that's what scaling the Kendall way looks like.

So, what does it look like when you're still in that volume approach? If you're already making money, which I assume that you are, this is usually where things begin to feel a little off. Yes, clients are getting results, you're doing great work, and yet your income is still closely tied to how much you're doing. More clients equals more revenue, or to put it reverse, more revenue has to mean more clients. And then of course, fewer clients equals less revenue. So growth starts to feel like more, more calls, more conversations, more to manage. And there's a point where that stops feeling like expansion and just feels like pressure. And that's a signal. Not that something is wrong at all, but that the way you're approaching scaling needs to change.

And here's the big shift. It's not necessarily a volume of more clients that you're envisioning. It's more income per client. Let me say that again because that is so important to embrace. It's not a volume of more clients that you're envisioning, it's more income per client. Now to get there, this is the question I want you to start working with, and I'm going to give you the question in a second, because it will change how you scale your business from the traditional burnout way to the profit-rich way. So the question is, instead of asking how do I get more clients, which I hear from people all the time. How do I get more clients? How do I get more clients? And instead, you're going to ask, how do I increase the value of each client I work with? That's the better question. That's the million-dollar question, right?

You actually don't need a ton more clients. What you need is a higher-value way to work with the clients you already have and the new ones that you will attract. Because when that number goes up, everything changes. Your revenue grows, your calendar opens up, and the quality of your work actually gets to deepen, which is the part that I get so excited about.

So let's make this very concrete and see how it applies for you in your business. I want you to think about your current clients. What do they typically invest total with you over the course of the two of you working together? So in other words, not just the first sale, but the full relationship. And just, you know, do some quick math in your head and write that number down. That number tells you a lot about how your business is currently set up. And if you want to scale, that's the number we begin to expand.

So how do you do that? How do you actually increase revenue per client? There are many, many ways, but I'm going to give you four specific ways today to increase how much you earn per client because remember, the goal here is not a high volume of clients. The profit-rich strategy is that scaling happens when each client is worth more, not when you have more clients. Really take that in, okay? So here are the four ways. They're like ridiculously simple, okay? You're going to hear each one and say, oh yeah, I actually already knew that. But I want you to hear these in this context, and I think it's going to land really differently for you.

So, the first method is your pricing. Of course, I'm going to talk about pricing. I'm the queen of pricing. If you've been delivering stronger results, working with more experienced clients, or bringing more depth into your work, your pricing needs to move with that. A lot of women outgrow their prices long before they change them, and they feel it. So there's a disconnect between the level they're working at and what they're charging. And closing that gap is one of the fastest ways to scale your income. You know, I've done so many episodes, more than I could even list here on pricing, so I really invite you to scroll through wherever you're listening to this from, scroll through that feed of my past episodes and start listening to all these episodes that I've done on pricing.

All right, number two, how your offers are designed. You look at what someone is actually paying for when they are working with you. So for example, and I'm going to use very simple numbers. Your numbers may be much higher. That's fine. This is just to illustrate. So if you're offering, for example, six one-on-one sessions for a total of fifteen hundred dollars, that's a 100% time-based offer. No, you don't want that. Instead, that could become a three-month container or a six-month container priced at three thousand or six thousand dollars, where the focus is on a specific result or outcome. If you haven't shifted into this yet, you've got to shift into this now, okay? Same work, deeper engagement, higher value. When your offer is designed around the result instead of the sessions, your pricing has room to expand exponentially. And that's the better way to scale. All right?

I just had a wonderful success with one of my clients inside my money coaching program, and she just signed a very, very high-level client, one-on-one work in the well over six figures for a year's worth of work. That's the kind of work that I'm talking about. That's the kind of way of designing an offer and your pricing where it comes together that's possible.

All right, number three are your containers. How are people working with you? This is a little different than the offer. So in other words, is there a clear path for someone who gets great results with you to go deeper or to stay longer or to access a higher level of support? On the flip side, do you have a way for someone to start with you that's an easy yes? And that doesn't mean the ninety-seven dollar low ticket. It doesn't mean that at all. It can be a short-term engagement that is positioned as your first step of your overall process and it's priced profitably and it's still an easy yes for your client to sign up. And it's positioned as that. It's positioned as the first step. So they understand the constraint around what they're getting and they also love that they are getting something very specific.

And you know, this is not rocket science in the coaching world. I've been in business 20, I think it's 25 years now, I'm actually forgetting. Very, very long time. And so, you know, at the end of the day, even today, the different ways that you can mix and match what you put into a container, there's only so many things that you're going to put in, so many elements. So for example, a VIP intensive or even a single power hour. So these types of ideas are easy to enroll clients into because they have their short time frame, they're very focused. It's a fairly low commitment on the part of a new client, but it's still priced very profitably. It's not low ticket in the sense that it's fifty-nine dollars, ninety-nine dollars, that type of thing.

So they're profitable and they typically convert into longer-term clients. We see these converting at the rate of about two out of every three. So two out of every three VIP intensive or power hour clients, they're going to convert into something longer term. That's awesome. That's the kind of scaling that you want to focus on. So the point here is that if every client relationship ends too soon, you're constantly starting over. When you create depth, you increase both revenue and continuity.

All right, number four is how you stand behind your pricing. Now this is more subtle, but it really matters. If you find yourself adjusting in conversations, explaining more than you need to, or feeling a pull to make it easier for someone to say yes, that directly impacts how much you earn. When your pricing is decided and you hold it steady, your business and of course your income reflects that.

So, what this looks like as you shift. As you start making these changes, your business begins to feel different. You don't need as many clients in order to reach your goals. You have more space to do deeper work. Your revenue starts to move in a more intentional way. You're not having to focus on Facebook ads and other really expensive, time consuming and high-risk ways to bring in a volume of clients and you don't have to have all that internet marketing and technology behind you because that is expensive and very time consuming.

So instead you're focused on client longevity and every client being worth more for you in your business. Isn't it a great thing to know that you're going to on average work with clients two, three, four years? I love it. It creates such connection, such intimacy in the ability to go really deep with your work is really special.

Now, there's an emotional side of scaling this way. This is also where you get to define what scaling actually means for you, not based on how many clients you can handle, but based on how much value you create, based on when you want to work and how supported you want to feel inside of your business. This kind of scaling asks something different of you. You're no longer relying on effort and becoming a marketing expert to grow. You're relying on strategy and on clear intentions. You're relying on being masterful at your craft of coaching or consulting because that's what clients love and are paying for. And you're trusting the level that you're stepping into. You're scaling in the most feminine, time-freedom way that gives you the spaciousness and pays you to do your work in depth and to do quality work with your clients.

All right, so to wrap up here, scaling your business isn't about doing more. It's about allowing what you're already doing to generate more. That's a writer downer. It's about allowing what you're already doing to generate more. More revenue from the same or even fewer clients, more depth in the work you're doing, more space in your calendar and in your business. And when you begin to operate this way, your business starts to feel like something you can grow into, not something you have to keep, you know, running the hamster wheel to keep up with. And that's where scaling becomes really powerful. And that, my beautiful soul, is where your next level of income starts to open up for you.

And this is where your pricing becomes such a powerful lever, because the fastest way to scale your income is to raise what each client is worth, and that starts with your pricing. So inside The Pricing Room, this is exactly what we do. The Pricing Room is where we take your current pricing and we refine it, we up-level it so that it reflects the level of results that you're delivering and it reflects the level of income that you're ready for. The Pricing Room, technically it's a monthly membership, but it's so much more than just a membership. It's really a money revolution because let's be honest, you've undercharged long enough and it's time to start pricing in full alignment with the income that you desire and to embody the conviction to really fully own it.

So I encourage you to go to PricingRoom.com or KendallSummerHawk.com/pricingroom, either one will get you there. KendallSummerHawk.com/pricingroom, and I'll also put the link in the show notes and check it out. As of the time of this recording, the founding member rate is still active. It's not going to be this way much longer. We're coming up very soon. We are going to be raising it across the board here, but the founding member rate is thirty-eight dollars a month or you can do three hundred for the annual option which gives you two months free. There's no contract, you can cancel any time. So again, that's KendallSummerHawk.com/pricingroom.

All right, and just remember, you can have a business that scales not by the craziness of chasing volume, but by the intention and the strategy of each client being worth more. All right, my beautiful soul, you've got this. Thank you so much for being here, and I will see you in the next episode.

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