What I’d Do First to Get Unstuck from DFY & 1:1 Work (without losing income)

Most service-providers are stuck because they don't have the capacity to build the next thing while delivering the current thing - It's a brutalllll cycle. 

You're fully booked, so you don't have time to build a scalable offer. But because you don't have a scalable offer, you stay fully booked *grrr*.

In this episode, I'm walking you through exactly what I'd do if I was wanting to make the leap in 2026 without fear of disappointing clients and losing income.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Launch Loud, where online coaches come to build iconic personal brands, create year-round demand, and fill their offers with their content. Launching loudly and proudly to six figures and beyond. Hello and welcome back to Launch Loud. If this is the first time that you are tuning in to one of our episodes, hello, I'm very excited to be in your ears today. My name is Brittany and I am the host of Launch Loud. But if this is not your first time here and you are a returning listener, hello. I'm always thrilled to be with you wherever you are listening to this episode. And I'm very, very excited to be diving into this topic. And I've realized over the last few months, I mean, it's probably been a few years that I've been excited about this topic, but I really realized over the last few months working with clients how passionate I am about that transition away from done for you services and one-on-one work to finally being able to step fully into a scalable, one-to-many style business model. And the reason why I am, I think, so uh emotionally attached to it is because it was really my journey and my reality. And if you didn't know, my background, the way the the well, the format in which my business started was in social media management. And I started that in 2020 and quite quickly grew a full roster of clients and it was pumping. It was very, very successful. I had a lot of organic growth, um, a lot of just um very natural momentum based on the fact that there's only really so many clients you can serve as one person. So when when word kind of spread um quite quickly in my like amongst my clients and my local area, I I found myself booked quite quickly. Um, and the next natural step was, I guess, to hire contractors and to build out my team that way. And and I step- I took steps towards that. And at at one point I had two people working with me uh and managing quite a large roster of clients. But ultimately I was just so I was so not fulfilled by it. And I realized that if I wanted to keep going in this direction, even though I was happy with the success of it, and there were certainly elements that I enjoyed, I didn't really want to be managing people, managing clients. I I knew as well that a lot of people were coming to work with me to work with me. And it just didn't feel um aligned to be passing people off to um contractors. And at that time, having part-time or full-time staff wasn't really on my radar. Um, so what I ended up finding myself doing is that I was still kind of very much the point of contact. And I mean, like, of course, I was the point of contact, but I was doing a lot of the like the heavy lifting with the strategy and content kind of, I guess, development. Um, but I was really just passing off um content creation to contractors. So I was still carrying a lot of the weight. So I was not only managing just like the client workload, still to a to a full extent, but I was then also managing people. And I I certainly don't think like I'm not like it's not that I'm not cut out for that, but I I wasn't enjoying my days that way. And I just felt like I was on this hamster wheel of deliverables. It was content plans every single month, and then uh, you know, Black Friday and Christmas would roll around and we'd be trying to get in uh, you know, as uh in front of all of that as we could because we wanted to take time off during the holidays as well, but it was a very stressful time, especially for e-commerce, and I was dealing with a lot of e-commerce clients, and oh, I just it every month I just felt like I couldn't get on top of it. And if I wanted to take time off as well, I had to be it more in front of the work. So let's say I wanted to take a um a week-long holiday, I needed to do double the amount of work the week before just to do that. So, yes, of course, there I'm sure there were optimizations that could have been made, changes to the business model that could have been made to make that more effective, but I just wasn't thriving in kind of agency land. And I had started to dip my toes into coaching and people, I guess because I was so so full and booked, um, people were hiring me for more consultancy-based work, um, just you know, once-off launch strategy or um a content package. And that then evolved into just coaching and kind of just, yeah, very naturally stepped into this, this, I guess, coach role. That then, of course, morphed into okay, well, now it's time to create a course because everyone was creating a course, and now it's time to have a membership because everyone has a membership, and now it's time to have a group program because everyone has a group program. So it's been quite an evolution, but what I want to be quite frank about is that there wasn't this like clear-cut moment where I was like, great, done. I'm offboarding my social media management clients, and I am now fully reliant on my coaching services. And that is something that I think I was very fortunate to not get stuck in that for too long. I I really did feel like I had um, I was supported in that transition and I was very strategic about how I did that and how I slowly scaled down the done-for-you work and scaled up the coaching side. But when I speak to other people who maybe are in a similar position, maybe they are also a social media manager or a virtual assistant, or they're a graphic designer, or a web developer, um, but they're trying to move over into more of a coaching or consultancy-based role or get that course up and running, that membership, that group program. They very much struggle to do so because their time and capacity is just completely strapped. They are stuck in delivery mode all of the time. Um, they're finally getting a little bit of breathing space to maybe work on curriculum development or post a little bit for their own content, but they're not able to fully dive into it because they are just time poor. And as well, it can be a little bit scary when there's a little bit of the unknown and uncertainty of, okay, well, when is my next course sale coming through? When will the next time someone join my membership be? Um, as opposed to kind of a little bit more of the security in a retainer contract that you might have with a client. It might be three months, it might be six months, it might be 12 months, whatever it is. So it's a very scary jump to make. And I don't see a lot of people talking about it. And what can be even harder is kind of having your feet in both buckets. I don't know if that is a real analogy, but having your kind of saddling both and you are kind of chipping away with maybe a group offer of some type, maybe even it might even be still in its one-on-one format, um, but it's a coaching, um, you know, more scalable one-on-one coaching style offer, uh, versus still then having your done for you retainer clients and you're kind of managing both, but neither are really thriving. You're kind of capped, obviously, financially with how much more time you could do with done for you, but because you don't have any more time available, you also don't have time to pour into scaling that group offer. So I want to talk about it today because I want to talk about through like exactly what I would do again if I was to do that transition and probably how I would be um get through that transition a whole lot faster, and just talk about some of the things that I think a lot of people wanting to make this transition um can maybe hold back from because again, of that uncertainty or fear and not wanting to kind of move away from that security of, you know, really regular revenue. I get it. It is certainly a comfort. But if you are serious about having a more like freedom-based business, um, being able to not have a week that is fully defined by deliverables and content calendars and dedicated hours to a client, it's really important that you have an exit strategy or a transition strategy. So I'm gonna talk about exactly what I would do if I was you and I was stuck in done for you and one-on-one work, um, and I wanted to really go all in on my on my one-to-many offer, whether that is still in its one-on-one form or it's in a group program form, a course form, whatever it is, um, and how to do that without losing income and I guess without losing confidence as well. So the first thing, and I I work with a lot of my clients inside the Instagram Launch Lab who joined because yes, they are joining to scale their group offer, but they probably are still supplementing with a lot of done for you work or one-on-one work. Um, and they come in and they are really gun-ho about doing it. And a lot of the time I need to have a very honest conversation with them about it and say, okay, how much time do you realistically have in a week? What do you have available capacity-wise, time-wise, energy-wise, to dedicate to the coaching or the course or the membership side of your business? Because a lot of the time they are fully capped at capacity with being in delivery mode, with either running meetings with clients or creating assets for clients, doing client hours, whatever it is. And it's really, really hard to move out of that if you don't create space for something else. And that is just the harsh reality in that if you want to have the time to launch properly and successfully a group offer, you need to create time for it. Let's say that you actually do make sales with your launch. That's amazing. That's great. Now you have a program or an offer or a scale, you know, whatever it is that you need to also have time to deliver and facilitate. So it's really important you have this slow transition in how you create space without, of course, losing income. So, how do you do that? And what did I do? Well, basically, you want to look at, okay, what money do I need to keep bringing in? What clients am I currently working with? And how can I buy back, let's say, two to five hours in the beginning into my week? How can I find that time? Does that look like dropping a client? Maybe yes, okay, I'm I'm might be losing income for a month or two. Um, but is it worth it for me to have that time and fast track my progress in other areas to be able to make more money in less time? Um, and certainly letting go of a client is a hard thing to do, breaking up with a client. And a lot of the time I notice that um service-based business owners are holding on to clients that really just aren't serving them anymore and really end up just draining them. So a lot of the time, before I would even say like renegotiate, um, I would say what clients are just not worth keeping on in this new era in your business. So deciding, okay, who can we just really let go of? Who is it not worth to me to renegotiate, to kind of restrategize or repackage what it is that I do for them? Um, and then looking at, okay, of the clients that I would like to keep, can I find even more time by repackaging, by looking at the services that I provide with them, um, by maybe consolidating, by tightening up the offer. And the way that I do this with my clients is to help them to repackage and then again, kind of repitch themselves in a way that is not going to seem to the client, oh, you're just like taking away all of these services or you're reducing my hours or whatever it is, but positioning it in a way you're gonna get more value out of this. Um, it that may also be coming with a price increase, but due to X, Y, and Z and what you'll be getting out of this, the ROI is even better. So actually having a plan to decide, okay, who is not aligned anymore? Who could I potentially let go of? And of those clients that I want to continue working with, how can I maximize my time and actually increase my pricing to, again, not lose that income, but ensure that I'm getting some hours back. So I do work with clients and looking at, okay, tell me your client roster, what are you working on? What are your weekly deliverables? What are your monthly deliverables? How much time are you spending on them? Um, and actually really deciding, okay, well, we need to make this amount of money to pay the bills, to pay ourselves, and to keep the business running. How can we shuffle things around to actually get some time back? Because creating space before you go into really scaling this other side of your business is so essential. A, not only to have the time and space for those scaling activities, but B, when you are scaling and you bring in clients into a membership or you bring in students into a group program, you need time to facilitate that, especially because likely you're not going to have everything completely hands-free and automated in the beginning. So making space is so essential and you can be strategic about it. You can be a little bit ruthless about it, um, but having a plan and that might not look like dropping all of your clients in the same month, but slowly scaling back and then slowly scaling up when you are ready for it. And certainly there is nothing wrong with holding on to a small handful, one or two uh VIP clients that you love working with. It's, it's, it's seamless. You've been working together for a long time, they respect you and they are willing to pay what you're worth so that you can have that little bit of security while you do focus on your next chapter. Which brings me to that next chapter. And maybe you're in a position where you have a group offer idea. You know, it's still in a Google Docs somewhere or your notes app, and maybe you haven't um kind of brought it to life yet, or maybe you are someone who is doing the juggle, you're dabbling in both, you've kind of launched this thing, um, it kind of did okay. Maybe there are a few clients in there, but it's not really a living, breathing thing that could stand on its own yet. And you need to decide, okay, how am I going to relaunch this and bring this back to life? And again, when you are in a position where you do have a roster of other clients to be mindful of and you have other things that are going to be filling up your calendar initially, you don't want to kind of put too much pressure on yourself to have this huge, big blowout launch, like you might be able to a little bit further down the track when you have the capacity, when you have the energy for that. And when I am working with clients that are in this transition phase, we really scale up their launch strategies just like we scale up the offer. We like to start lo-fi, something that is going to be able to integrate into their capacity, their available capacity, really, really well. And also tap into the kind of warm audience that they already have. And a lot of service-based uh business owners don't actually realize how many people are following them who probably weren't ever going to be ready to invest a premium price point for done for you services or one-on-one, but are actually really interested in what you do. They align with you and they just haven't seen an offer that makes sense for them to join yet. So there are actually a lot of warm, hot leads that you can tap into. And this is especially true if you have never launched a group offer before yet. Um, and that's what's really important with these lo-fi strategies that we we lean into your existing audience. But it's also still true if you have launched it maybe even once or twice before. There are people in your audience ready and waiting to buy if you have been still showing up and posting consistently and keeping them somewhat toasty and warm. It's just about having the strategy there and basically shaking the tree first. So before getting too fancy with things like complex webinar funnels and maybe a multi-day challenge and, you know, doing a podcast visibility tour, all of these things and having, you know, the sales page and a really cinematic trailer, all of those things. Those are great. Um, but again, when the goal is to bring in money into your business fast in this new revenue stream to either supplement or make up for or replace your service work, it's really important that you keep it lean, you keep it light, um, and you basically just have the highest profit margin absolutely possible, right? Um, the other thing I think is important to remember with your first launch, if it's the first time you're going into it and it's the first time you are putting together a group offer of some type, whether that's in a membership format, it's going to be a live delivery format, or you're going to, you know, go all in. I'm pre-recording everything, it's going to be a course, whatever it is, it's very likely, and I'm going to say this just the only way to say it, it's very likely that your first launch is going to be a little bit ugly. It is not going to be smooth and perfect. It is not going to be having margaritas on the beach while the stripe sails ping through. You need to be hands-on with the launch. Yes, you can still be uh a light launch and a lo-fi version of it, but it's going to just from a practical perspective need you to be involved. It's going to need you to kind of be creating the content and kind of figuring out the onboarding for clients and figuring out, okay, um, when is module one dropping all at the same time? And even though I don't, and I don't say this to scare you, I say this to be really upfront. And I actually had a conversation with a client today about it. Um, she said, I'm I'm actually just so glad I'm doing it this way because if I wasn't and I didn't have people who I had just sold my program to, I would never create this program. So a lot of the time, and the common kind of practice with beta rounds is that you don't have every single resource or module or lesson completely finalized. Um, you are kind of creating as you go. But the idea is that you have pre-sold those spots and you have validated the offer before you do that. So, again, that is why it's important that you're not going crazy with sales pages and fancy assets when ultimately you probably need to focus on, okay, what is the MVP, the minimum viable version of this offer? How can I get that return on my investment as quickly and efficiently as possible? And how can I also prioritize the delivery of this program to these new clients who are experiencing it for the first time so that I can very quickly get testimonials, get results, get some social proof and be able to turn it around, improve it, optimize it, and launch it again even faster. So your first launch certainly is going to be a little bit ugly. And even if you've launched before and you've kind of been a little bit um, I guess you've kind of had the patchwork approach before, when you do start to implement systems and processes the first time, it's still gonna be a little bit clunky because you need to take the time to install that. And a lot of the time I will tell clients, we need to slow down to speed up because they are like, I want to jump to this and I want to do this and I want to have this type of launch and we have this type of results. And a lot of the time they are missing just some of the foundational elements, like having a lead tracking system, like knowing, okay, how do I plot this launch and these dates to allow myself enough time to have the leads I need. Um, so a lot of the time people will go, well, I'm just gonna launch it like in two weeks, and that way I can make some sales and I can kind of cover myself and then I'll launch it again properly later. But that kind of just ends up backtracking them even further. And if they just gave themselves a bit more time, um, yes, it might not be perfect, it might be a little bit patchworky. Um, but if you take the time to launch well in the best way that makes sense for your goals, you will then have more to work off in the future for future campaigns, instead of kind of then like disappearing off the face of the earth off the internet because you kind of just threw it all together, it didn't work, and you didn't have that payoff. So for launches, again, whether this is you're someone who already has a group offer, you're wanting to just really get it off the ground, or you're needing to create this for the very first time because you're finally ready to shake those done for you clients. I still recommend a lo-fi launch format that again helps you to get that ROI, the sales in the door without kind of having to put so much on the line. And because you're probably gonna have to again focus and have that time and capacity still to manage any clients on your roster as it is, but also those incoming clients into your program. And then the third part of this is kind of where people can certainly start to get a little bit impatient. But as I was saying, um, you know, scaling uh your launch strategy slowly, you also want to scale the offer slowly. And a lot of the time people go, Well, I want to create a mastermind and have this full curriculum that's self-paced and uh live coaching calls and then guest training sessions and a resource library and tech tutorials and all of these things, which are amazing. And if you've invested in any program before where you've been like blown away by what is inside it from the moment you logged in, it's so inspiring, right? And you go, well, I want to create this for my clients. But the reality is that that is actually years and years and years and years in the making, and you can't spend that much time putting all of those elements together to make a sale. A lot of the time, your first few launches and the offer itself are gonna be quite bare bones, and that's what people are investing. In right, um, they want the outcome, they want the transformation. If you can deliver that, great. If you have a huge bonus library of extra masterclasses and guest coach trainings, that's also really great too. That can supplement and really add to the experience. But I always recommend keeping it simple, not fussing over what type of community portal should I have. Slack is fine, WhatsApp is also fine. As long as it works for you and your future purchaser of your program is like, great, I feel supported, I know how to get help and I feel clear and confident in this space. That's all that really matters. So the first stage of your offer might be, it might even be still one-on-one. That's quite normal, but a lot of the time we use that to document your process and create some structure and a rhythm. Then it might be moving it to a small group cohort, or you might start here. You might be comfortable with being able to manage five people. It might be eight people, it might be 15 people. Again, there's really no right or wrong. Um, and everyone's slightly different, but I always still recommend having a goal for that. And sometimes that, you know, those 10 spots don't get filled. And you do need to pivot to making it a premium one-on-one offer. And that's totally okay too. But really having clarity in the process, how you're going to lead these clients through it is so, so important. And being mindful if you set a very ambitious goal for 50 sales in your first launch, have you got the processes in place to manage 50 clients at this, you know, capacity in this format? It's very different to having, you know, five social media management clients or 10 graphic design clients, right? It's a new space. It's delivering and facilitating in a new way. And jumping straight to 100 clients or 100 students or 100 members. Um, it's actually that could be quite overwhelming for you for the first time if you haven't really ever facilitated in that way. A lot of the time, just like as we launch, we get data, just like as we run our offer and we deliver to clients, we learn more too. So we find out, okay, where did they get stuck? What speed bumps, you know, did I not really account for? Uh, what questions were always coming up? How could I make this process faster for them? Uh, what needs more, um, I guess, more robust support? Where could I make this easier for people to navigate to if I'm offline or I'm not, you know, available for whatever it is? So just like we learn in launches, we also learn in offers. And I do usually recommend a cohort-based program for the first few campaigns, only then really moving into things like um ever enrolling um and having more kind of, I guess, self-paced elements as the launches go on, because we we are always learning. And the funniest thing that I when I work with clients who are scaling their group up from the very beginning, starting it from scratch, is they are always so surprised about how their students and clients learn. They're like, oh my gosh, like no one's, you know, um finished like module two and we have like module three dropping next week. And I'm like, it's very interesting, isn't it? Right. And they say, oh, you know, only a few people turned up to the call, or no one's using the community like I thought they would. And it is really interesting what you learn and observe. And um, a lot of the time it's kind of a bit of trial by what is the, what is the saying? You kind of just need to learn on the job a little bit. And that's that's a great thing, right? You're getting paid to learn and observe. Um, but that first cohort, the second, the third, it's really for about learning, finding out how you can optimize. And then slowly in the future, as the delivery side of that gets easier and as you are also able to scale back on your done for you services and finally let go of those clients, then the time comes for you to be able to be like, great, okay, my offer is validated. It's getting great results for my clients. I feel I can manage this level of clients. Now it's time to scale. And that's when you start to scale the sales systems and the launch systems. So we look at lead generation, we look at the launch process, we look at, okay, how many um sales do you actually want to make every single quarter, every single month, whatever it is. And looking at then, okay, what are the compatible launch strategies for that? What is the volume that we need for those goals? And that's when launching can get really fun and it becomes repeatable because again, you're not worried about, okay, well, I need to make this many sales to make up for this. And I'm not uh worried about, okay, but I'm gonna be, you know, stuck in um, you know, live delivery of my curriculum or I need to update module two, all of those things so they start to fall away. And you really just get to dial in on sales. And I truly think that when you are in a place in your business where you just get to focus on marketing and selling, you have one. When you're out of build mode, which is true rite of passage for everyone, and all you need to do is just focus on how can I market better? How can I sell better? How can I sell more? That is just such an exciting stage, such a brilliant stage and something really worth celebrating after going through those stages of the build mode. It's no small thing. Um, and truly one of the things I am most proud of with my clients is when they get to that, when they're like, yes, I'm finally letting go of those clients. Yes, I'm done with my one-on-one. I'm finally able to rely on my membership. I'm finally able to rely on my group program. I have a system around launching. I bring people in every single month, whatever it is. That is such a thrill and a joy for me and truly something that just lights me up in so many ways. And that's really when the opportunities just open up again. We can look at Evergreen, we can look at more hands-free sales systems, we can look at bringing on people into your team to be able to manage your launches and assist you with that and really be able to blow things up, of course, in a way that still feels totally aligned for you without managing a huge team. Um, but that's really when things get super, super exciting. But those slow stages, I kind of think of it as like a seesaw, you're slowly tipping the Cesaw in the other direction. You're letting go of those clients, you're scaling back on done for you, and you slowly start to scale up your group offer with every cohort, with every launch slowly. And eventually, you are running that business that you were kind of waiting to happen one day. It just, you know, imagining that we're just magically land in your lap, but you actually took the right steps and now that you have it. So, you know, it's not like one day you're finally gonna be able to fire all of your Dunfor You clients. You're not just gonna go from a fully booked service provider to a fully automated course creator in one leap. That's just not the reality. It is a process. It does not need to be a long process. That is definitely a misconception. Um, but it's really important that you think about okay, what is my actual plan here to scale back and then to scale up? And that does look like moving through a few seasons really strategically and smartly. Um, and I really just I'm doing this with my hand. Obviously, you can't see me because it's a podcast, but it's kind of like a there's a tipping point. Um, it's a bit of a see saw, and balancing that seesaw is um a journey that it can feel risky, but when done right, you actually feel really confident and you don't have that fear of, okay, but you know, where's my money coming from? Or I'm worried about um, you know, getting rid of that client and having that security, but actually having a revenue plan that is going to not only be able to replace what you're making, but then also scale you beyond that without you having to give up more of your time or having to bring on a whole bunch of contractors. So yeah, I I I've never really shared that kind of, I don't guess that point. Um, and kind of again, uh my process and journey in that. But it's actually something I work with um with a lot of clients who are wanting to scale their group offer. Um, but a lot of the reason why they haven't been able to is because they are stuck in done for you mode, in service mode. So if that at all resonated with you and you're again, you're someone who's like, I'm I'm hoping for this business model, but it's just not happening for me yet, or you're in the straddle kind of position where you're like, I'm half in service mode, I'm half in coach mode. Um, please let me know. Reach out to me, send me a DM over on Instagram at the SocialBritify. I would love to know because I have been in your boots. And one of the things that I wish I just didn't delay for the longest time was really being smart in that scale down, scale up strategy and that seesaw approach. Um, eventually I got there, but I was probably a little bit scared to take the leap because I didn't trust that process. I wasn't really trusting, but if I had known, I would have done it a whole lot sooner. So thank you so much for tuning in to this episode. Um, like I said, and I've been saying with these first comeback episodes, uh, we are back into our weekly scheduled programming. Um, and to celebrate the return of the podcast launch loud, I am gonna be doing an Instagram audit and choosing one person to win that. So all you need to do to enter for the chance to win is screenshot where you are listening to me, whether it's on, I don't know, your dead does anyone listen to anything other than like their phone? I'm not sure. But screenshot if I'm listening to your phone, take a photo wherever I might be. Maybe I'm on a different device. Uh, please make sure you are not driving your vehicle while you do so. Upload it to your Instagram stories and tag me at the Social Britify. Let me know you're listening. Let me know what you think of the podcast. I'm gonna be choosing one person for a full Instagram audit from me. I'll be choosing by the end of the week. So make sure that you get your entry in. Should multiple entries count? Sure, why not? The more you enter, the more chances you have to win. So I would love to see your stories, and I just really love to know that you're listening. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode of Launch Loud.