More clients = more money, right??
Not always.
Here’s how one designer doubled her income by cutting her client list in half...
Bridgette was juggling 20 small projects a year. On paper it looked like she was doing well i.e. she had plenty of work and a steady pipeline. But under the surface it was chaos and she was stressed.
Each project was a low fee, high maintenance job. Clients with small budgets wanted way too much from her, there were constant emails, she was doing unpaid revisions and she had no mental space left for strategy or creative thinking. She was working late most nights and despite being constantly “busy” her bank balance never reflected the effort she was putting in.
The turning point came when she made the decision to stop playing the volume game.
Instead of trying to say yes to every client with any budget, Bridgette raised her consult fees so only serious clients booked in. She restructured her fee proposals around clear project phases, scope and deliverables, rather than vague “design packages” and she put stronger boundaries in place e.g. paid revisions, variation orders for changes and firm timelines for client feedback.
Here’s what the maths looked like when she made these changes:
Bridgette Before
20 projects a year at $5K each = $100K in revenue
Working hours for Bridgette = 60+ hour per week
Bridgette After
10 projects a year at $20K each = $200K in revenue
Working hours for Bridgette = 25 per week
By raising her prices and positioning Bridgette was able to make more money with less work.
She also was now working on projects that she could photograph for her portfolio and that she felt proud to add her name to.
The lesson
The lesson here is that profit doesn’t come from saying yes to every project or by doing more and more low value projects, it comes from pricing strategically and being selective.
The more you spread yourself thin across dozens of small jobs, the less chance you have of breaking out of the hamster wheel.
But when you start saying no to the wrong projects, you create space to say yes to the right ones i.e. the bigger, better paying clients who actually value your expertise.
If you’re stuck chasing too many low fee projects, you need to fix your consult process, your fee proposals and your pricing.
If you need help with any of this, that's what my business mentoring program, Bootcamp, is designed to help you with.
