Build ease and sustainability into your business by creating packages and offerings that honor how you like to work.

I’ve offered everything under the sun over the last 5 years as Christine Marie Studio – from a website in 10 days to discount packages for new businesses to 5-figure custom work. Figuring out what to charge and how to package my offers has not been easy. Some flourished, some flopped.

My advice… Experiment. Experiment. Experiment.

It’s the quickest way to get clear on what your ideal clients want from you. Some offers will resonate and others will not. Some will sell easy and for others each sale will feel hard to come by.

The video below details how your current services page might inadvertently be attracting the wrong type of clients to your business and what you can do to fix it. Consider the following questions as you watch…

What would you like to take home each month?

Most entrepreneurs under $250k will take home half of what their business actually makes. According to Profit First by Mike Michalowicz (a book I highly recommend), most of us can breakdown our income accordingly:

• 50% – “Take home” income
• 30% – Business expenses
• 15% – Taxes
• 5% – Profit

Talk about an eye opener for me in structuring my offerings! You know that feeling of not enough money at the end of the month? I felt that because a) I wasn’t taking home as much as I thought I was and b) I always felt guilty about spending what I did make on business expenses.

When I understood that business expenses are a necessary part of driving my business forward – and it was normal for me to take home 50% of all I was making – I was motivated to buckle down and figure out how I could increase my overall business income.

How many hours do you realistically have to work each week?

Determine how much focused work time you have in a week. Be honest with yourself or this won’t work. 2 hours a day? 4 hours a day? 20 hours a week? It’s not as many as you think.

Be realistic about what you can accomplish and expect client delays. Say your project takes 20 focused hours, and you have 3 points where clients have will take 2 days each time to review and get back to you. That’s 20 hours + 6 days. That’s a week of working and about a week of waiting. So don’t expect you can finish this project in 20 hours. You’ll just end up frustrated. Make sure you’ve got billable time from another project that you can work on while you wait so you don’t miss your income goal.

What packages would you like to offer?

Structure your offerings around the way you like to work. There isn’t a wrong answer here.

• Do you like to help people with emergency hacks? Don’t create long drawn out custom packages.
• Do you like margin and flexibility for your client to discover and grow? Make sure you include extra margin in your pricing or prepare your client for scope conversations.
• Do you like well-defined projects that finished in a specified amount of time? Create a process with strong systems and boundaries.

When you create packages and offerings that honor how you like to work, you build ease and sustainability into your business.

Watch the video to learn more about what type of clients different types of offerings attract.

Watch the video here.

Create offers that allow you to do the work you enjoy with the people you enjoy.

What service(s) do you currently offer? Are you attracting the clients you enjoy working with? If not, what do you think needs to change? Head on over to the Drama-Free Design Collective on Facebook and tag me. I love to talk about this stuff.