In this week’s episode, Anna Lundberg looks at how you can transition your existing coaching or consulting business into a model that feels more sustainable and aligned with your lifestyle. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the demands on your time and energy, this episode unveils ways to reimagine success on your terms, without losing your creative spark or ambition. Tune in to discover how to transform your business into one that truly works for you.

Key moments:

[00:00] Introduction to redefining business success

[01:24] Designing a business that works for you

[02:36] The dangers of “just one more offer”

[04:49] Defaulting to traditional models

[09:03] Aligning energy and income

[16:44] Exploring alternative business models

[17:42] Final thoughts and reflection

Resources mentioned:

• The Intentional Business Audit: onestepoutside.com/intentionalbusiness

• The Business Accelerator Programme: Learn more about supporting your transition with this tailored programme and join the waitlist OneStepOutside.com/accelerate.

• Connect with Anna Lundberg: Reach out for personalised support on Instagram or LinkedIn.

Evolve your coaching or consulting business model

This episode is for you if you’ve built a successful coaching or consulting business, but the way you’re working just doesn’t work for you anymore. So if your income depends on your input and only that your calendar is feeling really stretched and you’re craving a smarter, more sustainable model, then this one’s for you. Enjoy. Welcome to Reimagining Success, the podcast that helps you build a profitable business as an independent expert. One that works for you and your lifestyle. I’m your host, Anna Lumbo, former corporate insider turned business mentor, executive coach and mum of two. Whether you’re a solopreneur, a coach, speaker, consultant, I’m here to guide you in creating a business that gives you freedom, flexibility and the fulfilment you’re looking for, ready to redefine success and build a business that you love.

Let’s get started. Okay, so a phrase I’m using a lot since some months, really, I ran a workshop series on it, I think back in October, November is a business that works. A business that works. And it seems so. I was going to say silly, but I hope it doesn’t seem silly. It certainly seems simple in that okay, of course a business needs to work, but there’s so many levels to this, so many dimensions. The business needs to work financially, commercially, technically, practically. But the aspect, the dimension I think so many of us miss is that it needs to work cross.

And that means in terms of our preferences, our personalities, skills, strengths, family situation, income, aspirations and needs and so on. So this is about choosing and designing and evolving your business model into something that serves you not just that sort of is reactive to whatever clients happen to ask for. Which of course is a good sign if they’re wanting something from you. But really thinking, especially as you become full of. If you become full. It’s funny phrases today. If your calendar fills up with clients and you know when you’re first starting out, or if you’re having some slower months, by all means doing some one off sessions and so on is a great way to get the cash flow. But a big sustainable business doesn’t.

Sorry, I’m laughing. I was going to give a metaphor about pyramids, but. But I don’t think I could see that through. So bear with me. We’re just going to stick to the facts. A sustainable long term business isn’t going to be built on those one off things. Right? Because if you’re designing bespoke, if you’re doing everything completely reactively completely, like, oh, now I’m going to do this and I’m going to do this other thing that’s. That’s not a sustainable model.

In fact, let’s go straight to the first trap that I want to talk about, which is exactly this. Just one more offer. Maybe this is the thing that’s going to unlock, you know, ease and income. So we’re just constantly creating, partly because we’re creative, interesting people, we have lots of ideas and. But, you know, creating more packages because someone’s come and, oh, they’re not quite right for this programme. So I’ll just tweak it for them like this or, you know, or the price. They said it’s too much, too little, so I’m going to change it, I’m just going to customise it more. But what we’re really doing is kind of papering over cracks in the model.

It’s a model that doesn’t scale delivery, that drains your energy and there’s no space left to lead, to rest, to grow into the business person you want to be. So more really isn’t the answer. Better is. And that sounds, again, overly simplified, but it’s really thinking, okay, what at least are the core. What is the core of your model? What are the core offers? That by all means we can adapt and tweak a little bit, you know, but once you get clear on really what you stand for and the things that light you up, that energise you and so on, you can translate that into different delivery modes, into, you know, marketing different people, different types of clients and so on, using all your expertise and your frameworks and materials. So you’re not reinventing everything and you’re repurposing, reusing, reapplying, but you are still adapting, by all means, and responding to specific briefs. Does that make sense? So it’s not just adding an offer for every single client, it’s sort of having flexible containers, I suppose. And I always like flexible structure.

So a bit of structure, but it’s also a little bit bendy, a little bit expanding and contracting and fluid. And so try not to fall into that trap of, you know, let’s just add one more thing to the mix. And I’m just going to distract myself, not just grow this one programme into a great programme, but add all these other things as well. A second, I don’t say problem, but a tendency, I suppose, is that we default to certain models. And I think I talked about this a few weeks ago, but coaching, we come out of coach training Like I’m a coach. Okay. All as ex corporate we go, I’m going to be a consultant. We really start with what you know.

Right. So one to one coaching done for you. Freelance services, that’s the other go to. And consulting retainers. I think those three are kind of the natural. Yep, I can do that. Let’s go into that. I know how to do that.

People want it and so done. But here’s the thing, when how you deliver is becoming the thing that drains you, you know, you haven’t really escaped the 9 to 5, you’re just rebuilding it under your own brand. So if you’re just as I. I mean I’ve given the example before, I took my digital marketing actually kind of intrapreneurial consulting, I suppose to some extent and turned it extrapreneurial, took it out into the real world and consulted clients. It was to some extent on my terms. Um, I travelled in between contracts, I earned the money, it was exciting projects, but essentially I was still doing the same kind of work for the same kind of clients. And that wasn’t the reason why I took this massive leap of faith into working for myself. Likewise, the coaching.

I mentioned this many times too when, when I come out of my Coach qualification in 2015, I think it wasn’t say, hey, I’m a coach. I did actually have a few very brave souls who came and worked with me right away and paid. But really, you know, just announcing that you’re a coach and I see it again and again with new coaches, we’re so evangelical about it because it is such a powerful thing. But to come out and just say, oh my gosh, this is why you need a coach and this is what coaching can do and I’m going to help you live your best, most fulfilled life. Yes, we can. But unfortunately that’s too vague and fluffy and in fact, I’ve had a few clients recently say to me, oh, coaching is just not quite a thing in the uk, which is interesting and America is definitely a bigger market and they’re more into their coaching, but I think it’s around how we position it and people don’t necessarily yet or still whatever go, oh, I want to work with a coach. Some of us do. And coaches tend to want to work with coaches because we understand the value and there’s a bit of integrity too, that if I’m going to ask someone else to work with a coach, then I’d better have my own coach.

But the reality is that we’re not paying for coaching. I’M not like, oh, I want to be coached. Some of us do, but that’s not the, the large majority of the population, the rest of us, the rest of the clever people who don’t just pay for coaching for the sake of it, are wanting to solve problems, they’re wanting to hit goals, they’re wanting to be what they can be and yes, live their most fulfilled lives, but something very tangible. Right. In a sea of coaches and experts, you need to really stand out as someone who gets what they’re experiencing, who they can really sense. Wow. Yeah, I can see this journey I’m going to go on and they’re going to get me X, Y, Z results. So just to say, yeah, coaching, okay, yes, by all means, coaching schools.

We come out, we want to coach. It’s such a powerful tool, but is one of many tools in your toolkit. I can sometimes lean more into business mentoring. I can facilitate workshops, which is more coaching, but in sort of a group session, group setting. I can do speaking, which is talking at people. Although more and more of that is more interactive in workshop forms as well, you know, so there are different ways in which we can support people and again, keeping it creative and interesting for ourselves, but expanding and adapting our expertise, our models to different delivery formats and things rather than being locked into, I only coach or I only consult because I think then you kind of get a bottleneck and a ceiling as to how much you can achieve and it’s not so fun, I think, but that’s me. I suppose there’s a really simple way to do it. I love a matrix.

But you could map things like, for example, your energy versus your income. Right. Um, so you can really look at, okay, what are the offers that give me the most energy and what are the ones that generate the most income and do they overlap or do they conflict? Which is a bit of a problem if, you know, I’m loving this and I have a client at the moment and if you’re listening, hello, love you. Who is constantly in this tension of, oh, I love this stuff, my heart is going here, but I feel commercially that is going to be easier. And that’s where I go. Another client years ago who had that came straight out of corporate was like, yeah, I’m going to do this kind of consulting, but through our work together, realise, no, just because you can do something doesn’t mean it’s what you want to do. And she’s realigned to something much more values based and, and aligned for her. So it might be energy, you might plot it against values, but energy is a really nice one, actually, because usually if your energy is tight or down, then that is reflecting something like all the ethics, the integrity isn’t there, or the, you know, the shared values.

It all sounds very idealistic, I suppose, but I’m really a profound believer in the fact that we can and should be working with people who share our values. And the whole business will just be so much more enjoyable working with people who believe in what we believe and who, you know, are working towards the same aspirations and good, good things in the world, I suppose. Otherwise it’s going to be just, you know, you go up against a total worldview clash every time and people who are, you know, infiltrating your boundaries and won’t respect the fact that you’re family first or whatever it is. So have a go at that. I’ll give you, actually, while I’m chatting to you, and it’s a bit of a stream of consciousness today. I’ve got an intentional business audit that you can do. Sounds very fancy. It’s a few pages asking you questions and one of the questions is indeed energy.

And of course, one is finances as well. If you go to onestepoutside.com intentional business, onestepoutside.com forward slash, intentional business, you can just answer those questions and see, you know, okay, given my existing offers. So this works for you. If you’ve got an existing business, which of them are giving me the most energy, income and so on. So a few different dimensions. Because the more and more I say this now, it’s a meme, but it’s true. And if it’s not working for your life, then it’s not working. If, if it’s not successful in any meaningful way, you know, it’s.

It’s just not successful at all, I think. And then really it’s thinking actually just about the whole concept of business model. Because I think again, this tendency just go, I’m coaching, I’m consulting, or this is what I’m selling. That’s not really a business model. It’s, you know, a business model is more the structure that supports that particular offer, which is the product or service you sell. So the business model is thinking about all sorts of things in terms of how you’re delivering it, what you’re having to invest in and setting it up and how people are coming to you and, and so on and so on. Right. So specifically, lots of things like, of course, pricing, but not just the level of pricing, it’s how they’re paying.

So are they paying a flat fee, a retainer, revenue share? Are you getting paid in equity? If you’re working with, you know, with startups, maybe, what does that look like? Do they pay before or after you’ve worked together and so on in terms of access, you know, and this is also to do with how much you enjoy it. Is it high touch, is it totally self paced, is it group based, one to one and so on. And then in terms of scope, is it so called done for you? You know, where you’re delivering a service for someone like a service provider, a freelancer, a graphic designer, is it done with you? You kind of supporting them along the way? Are they doing it totally themselves? You know, what does that look like? And delivery, of course, in person, digital hybrid and so on. So really taking a step back and looking at the business model, the whole ecosystem, who you’re working with, what the journey is for them to come and find you, to get to know you, to trust you, to buy from you, how you support them, so on. So obviously the best business models in this context are going to be designed around your goals, your energy, your season of life, not just around client expectations. And then, you know, just throwing out a few alternative ways to monetize your expertise. And I don’t want to complicate things because in a way the whole point is, you know, just like when we were little and we wanted to be a firefighter or a nurse or a vet or an astronaut, you know, that’s very black and white. So I think we go coaching, consulting or I’m going to be an entrepreneur.

And it’s all these big black boxes. Once we get into the world, there’s so many nuances. And that was my alarm telling me to put the chicken in. There you go. An insight into my life. The do not disturb clearly does not stop alarms from going, I’m going to put the chicken in the oven in a moment. However, in the meantime, different models are more nuanced. And I’m such a fan of what we call a portfolio career, right? A renaissance man or woman who really has these different strings to our bow.

But it could be advisory retainers, you know, really high value but lower time models that are based on strategic input and decision making, not actually implementing stuff. And I think a lot of people I work with, you know, they are more interested in the big strategy than they are in the day to day of showing up as we should be at this higher, more older, more experienced level of our careers. Now we don’t necessarily want to be the ones who are posting to Instagram or whatever. Unless it’s our own business, in which case we can do all that, we can wear all the hats. But we’re not the social media manager, we’re rather going to be the fraction marketing expert, the cmo. You know, strategy intense is if you are a coach then rather having, you know, focused VIP sessions. It could be with one individual, it could be. And to be honest, the VIP session is a very Americanism.

I haven’t really used that in my own programmes, but that kind of thing. The intention is that it’s really intimate, I’d say, and really big transformations in short defined containers. So maybe, I mean, I love working with people for longer term because it means that of course you can get bigger transformations, you get to know them, I get to know their business and so on. But there’s also something amazing with really getting together. You know, I had a 90 minute call with some a few weeks ago, not my favourite format, but oh, he came away saying, wow, I’ve been thinking about these questions for years and you just helped me unlock all this potential, you know, and answer those questions. So that’s hugely rewarding and it’s not a huge amount of work for you. You set it up, you do the call done. Obviously more passive ish things like licencing models that are based on your IP and so on.

You know, turning your framework and methodologies into assets that can be taught, delivered by others. Daniel Priestley, the homme du jour very much in the UK, is talking about, he has a book called 24 Assets which is all around exactly this, creating those assets for your business, digital delivery, hybrid delivery, you know, yes, courses are not the magical ticket to passive income, but there might be some combination of self paced bits, communities, templates, frameworks, toolkits and so on with then optional live touch points. Right. So if you find yourself repeating the same things again and again, probably there’s a way to systematise that, standardise it. And then, you know, I mentioned obviously speaking, you know, brand collaborations, content sponsorships, expert in residence roles, there’s all sorts of things that you may have heard, not have heard of. There are so many ways to make money from your brain that aren’t just, just hey, pay me X amount per hour. Right. So it’s really thinking and researching beyond or just creating, imagining what would be your ideal kind of state or models.

And then again, if you have a look at the. The audit that I shared. Onestepoutside.com intentionalmodel that might help you to at least choose among your own existing offers. But really it’s not just about revenue, right? It’s about your lifestyle, your personality preferences, strengths, skills, ambitions, all these things. And really then about your positioning and your authority. So the right kind of business model is going to protect your time. It’ll position you as the expert, not the person who executes, the person who’s kind of doing all the dirty work, the lower level stuff. Unless you love that kind of thing, by all means.

But even then, you probably want to leverage it more. You want to be building more long term rather than short term busyness and activity. And you want to attract clients, again, as I said, who value you, who share your values, but also who value your thinking, not just your time. So like I said before, you didn’t leave the 9 to 5 to rebuild it just under your own brand name, right? So it’s not just about repackaging your skills into a consulting or coaching parcel. We’re really redesigning how we’re working. We’re not adding more offers. We’re taking it a step back and looking at how can we build this in a way that works together. We’re not just chasing scale to be bigger, bigger, bigger for no reason or just for the reason of, you know, money or whatever you think you’re going to get from scale.

And we’re looking for sustainable solutions. It’s about doing better, more intentional work, really. And again, in that business that works for you that I keep talking about. So do check out the intentional business audit one step outside.com intentionalbusiness and of course, if you are further along and have an existing successful and you can’t see my quotation marks, business, but you’re looking, hang on, how can I pivot? How can I scale? How can I kind of unlock that next level now in a different, more meaningful way now that I’ve proven that it works? I just need to, I want to step into this other kind of stage of the business and of me as a business owner, as a CEO. Then you might want to consider more one to one strategic mentoring. So to explore what that could look like for you, you know, just reach out. You can get me at podcastonestepoutsci.com or on social channels, Anna Selundberg on Instagram where you’ll find me hopefully on LinkedIn as well. But do get in touch and we can have a call to discuss your particular situation.

Hope that was an interesting episode. I think it’s an important one. I had a few little off piste moments when I got distracted. So apologies for that, but isn’t that what work life integration is all about? Thanks so much for listening and I’ll see you next week. Bye for now.

All right, so if any of this resonates and you’re ready to build a business that truly works for you, without the overwhelm, without the hustle, all that constant second guessing, then I’d love for you to join us in the business accelerator. I’m bringing together a small group of like minded experts, coaches, consultants, solopreneurs who want that personalised support, clear action step and above all, real accountability. If you want to get in early, then head on over to onestepoutside.com/accelerate to register your interest or join the waitlist. Let’s create the business and the life that you have always wanted. Can’t wait to see you inside.

WORK WITH ANNA

Let us help you design a business and a life that gives you freedom from the 9 to 5. There are several options for how you can work with us. Choose the programme that’s right for you.

The Outsiders Business Accelerator

A mastermind for service-based business owners, freelancers and online entrepreneurs who are ready to achieve success on their own terms. onestepoutside.com/accelerate

The Outsiders Business Academy

A self-paced course for you to work through in your own time, to learn – and implement – the foundations of building a profitable business that lets you escape the 9 to 5. onestepoutside.com/course

1:1 Coaching & Mentoring

If you’re looking for one-to-one support to help you achieve your specific life and business goals, Anna has a limited number of spots for individual coaching and mentoring. onestepoutside.com/coaching