Hey and welcome to Behind the Business. I’m Sofia Bernardi and in this episode I want to take you behind the scenes of how I’ve built a business that generates anywhere between $50,000 and $80,000 per month currently with a clear calendar, a small team and clients getting amazing results.
Today I really want to share the actual structure, strategy, and systems that make it possible behind the scenes and I’m gonna leave nothing unsaid or untouched. Because let’s be real, most business coaches are teaching you how to get fully booked—but what if that’s not the goal? What if you don’t want to be fully booked? What if you want to be able to scale your income, help clients get better results, help as many people as possible, and still have a spacious calendar where you’re not glued to Zoom every day?
Today I really want to share you the actual structure, strategy and systems that make it possible behind the scenes and I’m gonna leave nothing unsaid or untouched because let’s be real, most business coaches are teaching you how to get fully booked but what if that’s not the goal? What if you don’t want to be fully booked? What if you want to be able to scale your income, help clients get better results and help as many people as possible of course and still have a spacious calendar where you’re not glued to Zoom every day?
Because I know plenty of coaches that yeah, make $30k, $40k, $50k months, even $100k months and more but they’re on back-to-back calls, they’re exhausted, they’re burnt out, they’re unfulfilled and then what’s the point? What is the point of all of it? If the very reason you potentially got into business being to have more freedom to spend time with your kids, go on holidays, actually just live your life, go out for coffee with friends and also help people and all of these things, it’s just like you can’t even do those things and you’re just exhausted and drained all of the time.
That’s not good for your clients, that’s not good for your family, it’s not good for your relationship, it’s not good for you, right? And so this is really something I’ve come to realise in the last couple of months is something that’s quite unique and different about me as a business coach and my process. Sure, a lot of the things I teach other business coaches are teaching as well but it’s the way that I’ve systemized things, it’s the way I’ve intentionally gone about them, it’s the way that I’ve automated or delegated or simplified things that is quite unique and it’s really, really rare I see a business coach having this or teaching this.
You know, I know plenty of quote-unquote successful coaches that are making a lot of money but I don’t know many that have the spaciousness and the impact that they really want all at once. I am recording this four o’clock on a Tuesday, I have got no calls for the rest of the week. Literally, I do two calls every single week and that is it and I do them on a Tuesday and that’s it and I’ve got two programmes and I’ve got over 200 clients and last week alone I received 10 different testimonials from clients like that almost brought me to tears. People saying they literally wouldn’t have the results they have today if it wasn’t for me, if it wasn’t for being inside scale school and that their whole life has changed and that they finally get to pick their kids up from school and have weekends off again and all of these things all because of some of the systems, some of the strategies, some of the sales processes that they’ve implemented from working with me and that makes my heart so, so, so happy and I received these client testimonials of clients feeling so deeply supported whilst my calendar was clear and it’s not because I don’t pay attention to my clients, I do.
I’ve just done so in such an intentional way, such a mindful way, such a systemized way that I can support them. I don’t even have a support coach doing it, it’s literally all me but because they have everything they need in the curriculum, because we have the calls, because there is the accountability before, because they’re so clear and supported on what they’re doing and if they’re not, I’m right there and with them. It just means that I’m, you know, I’ve created a system for them that actually allows them to grow and not be so stuck all of the time, okay.
This is what I do, this is what I teach, this is what I specialise in, it’s the actual spacious business model that really I think is quite different from a lot of other coaches out there. So, that’s what I want to walk you through today, step by step, let’s dive in
So, most coaching programmes are built around doing more, more content, more calls, more offers, more hustle but that’s not scalable and it’s not sustainable either. Now, I just want to leave a disclaimer here because this episode is not about you don’t need to do work, you don’t need to put in effort. No, I work every day, Monday to Friday and I do full days but it’s out of choice, not out of need, do you know what I mean? Like from the lens of, if I have a friend call me today saying, hey can you, do you want to go like interstate tomorrow? I can say yes to that, I can literally do that but if I’m not doing those things, I love working, I love doing stuff for my clients, I love creating content, I love recording podcasts, I love, you know, doing random things and whatever.
So, I still work and I work hard and I certainly worked hard to get here and there’s been seasons of hustle but it’s not always about more, more, more, more, more. There are seasons of it where like, sure, if you’re posting nothing, of course, you do need to do more calls and more content and, you know, create an offer, right? And you probably do need to hustle a little bit and if you’re inconsistent, yeah, more is going to be helpful but after that point, when you’ve built the consistency to keep growing, it’s not about doing more. It’s about doing less, better, okay?
And if you’re anything like the coaches I work with, they don’t want to be doing more, more, more, more, more, more, okay? You didn’t start your business to burn out. You started it for freedom, for flexibility, for impact, for income, right? And so, what I’ve found after coaching hundreds of coaches and building this for myself is that you can absolutely have all of these. You can have the impact, you can have the freedom and you can have the income all at once. You can scale to 30k, 50k and even 80k months without sacrificing all of your time, your health or your client results.
My health has personally never been better in years. I’ve got, I sleep eight hours a night. I have, like I said, a clear calendar. I just booked an overseas trip with my whole family for in October and I booked a whole bunch of interstate trips over the next couple of months. Like, this is my life. This is, this is what I’ve created and this is what I’ve built. I’m so proud of it and I love teaching it for that reason, okay?
So, the first thing that you need to shift when it comes to having a more spacious business model is having a scalable offer structure. So, so many people are like either working one-on-one and they have this belief that more one-on-one clients equals more money model which is just not true. I’m not against one-on-one. I think there’s a time and place for it. I certainly started with it and I think it’s amazing but it’s not true that more one-on-one clients equals more money, right? Because you are capped at your one-on-one time.
Whereas a group business model or one to many business model or offer model, should I say, is a lot more sustainable and scalable, okay? Because one-on-one will just simply cap your, your income and your time. So instead, we want to create a group-based model that actually protects your time and creates better client results. Like personally, I only ever invest in masterminds and group programmes because it is that valuable. I find it to be, in some cases, more valuable than one-on-one coaching for a variety of reasons that I won’t bother going into right now.
But my point is, is that you would be wrong if you had a belief that one-on-one coaching is better than group coaching and that your clients will get better results as a one-on-one client. Like that’s not true, okay?
So with how I’ve designed my two programmes, I’ve got a programme called the 5k Fast Track for new coaches. It’s a three-month programme. There’s one call a week in it and it’s honestly just a scale school call. So I’m not even doing an extra call just because I have two programmes. So again, working smarter not harder. The difference is that scale school has two calls a week plus a whole bunch of other inclusions, right? But that’s one off of the 5k Fast Track.
Three-month programme, perfect for coaches between zero and 5k months. And the programme’s designed to get them to hit consistent 5k months, which is amazing. And then my other programme is called Scale School. Now this is, you know, a bigger programme in terms of the duration, in terms of the investment, but then also the inclusions. And the goal is to get you to 30k months. So that’s really who that is for.
Now I just run two calls total per week. So for Scale School, they get one Q&A call and then they also get one workshop and the 5k Fast Track just gets access to that workshop. So just two calls per week, even though I have two programmes, right? And that’s it. And you know, then they have the course curriculum for both programmes, which is really in-depth and thorough. I give all of my templates, all of my scripts, I literally give them everything that I use in my business. They get it all.
All the walkthroughs, everything. And so they’re busy. They are not at a lack of things to do and implement. Like they have everything they possibly could need. This was something that was really important for me to create when I created this offer is I wanted it to be a one-stop shop. So they didn’t need 15 other offers that they or like investments that they made to like get their business to function. Like I just teach all of it in the one place and that’s why I have so many clients that have stayed with me for literally three plus years, which is the duration of the programme that I’ve had.
Like it hasn’t existed for longer than that. So and then, you know, I’m really clear on like boundaries and standards and everything like that. And, you know, that way people don’t cross those boundaries because it’s like clear communication and yeah people know exactly where to go where if they want support and I respond to everyone every single day, Monday to Friday. And yeah, people can get support off the calls and, you know, in between the calls and on the calls. So it’s really awesome.
And I don’t even need a support coach for this at this present time. And it’s just because it’s designed so well, okay? And because I have spaciousness in my calendar, I have capacity to serve a lot of people because I haven’t done a one like one-on-one offer. And so what’s powerful is that because I’m able to give so much because of the way I’ve designed my business, like my clients get really great results and because they’re not just learning from me, but they’re also learning from everyone else in the community.
You know, they’re being held accountable multiple times per week and they’re guided through a proven process like the scalable system instead of just like reacting to whatever feels urgent that week. So you don’t need more one-on-one calls to make more money. You just need to restructure your offer suite. So I recommend having one programme at a time. I have two now because again it’s designed in such a way that I barely put in any extra effort, you know, because of the way that it’s designed.
And I have, you know, even if I talk to established coaches, like the reality is is I’m gonna have new coaches come to me and, you know, I can serve them and it would be such a disservice for me not to do so. So that’s what I do. And the cool thing about the scalable system is that it does work no matter your stage in business. It’s just obviously the more reps you do with the system, obviously the more results and better results you’re going to get.
So that’s that. Next I want to talk about, you know, who’s doing what in my business. So if you’re the one creating the content, sending the emails, replying to DMs, running the sales calls, onboarding the clients and updating the tech, it’s no wonder you feel so maxed out. That’s not a business, that’s just a job with a way too many roles where you’re being underpaid as well. So to simplify this and improve this or fix this, we actually want to build a lean team.
Now I was very much in the beginning like, I don’t want a team, like I want a high profit margin, I can do it all myself, like a bit controlling. But then I realised like that’s not how you grow and scale. Like and I had a client like just message me or sent me a voice message just today actually saying that she’s so grateful that I encouraged her to hire a VA because she just didn’t realise how much it was holding her back from making more money. And she was like, I love working with you, I’m so grateful, like I’ve been pushed to do this for so long and now like in other programmes and now I’m finally doing it and she’s just so happy.
And all she’s done is hire a virtual assistant and it hasn’t been very long at all and she’s already feeling like bucket loads lighter. And this is really what a team allows you to do, like I am so grateful for my team I could cry, like I am just so lucky with who I’ve attracted as my team, like so this is what my team looks like. I’ve got an ads manager who honestly like that’s not even the right title anymore, he does so much more than just run my ads. Like he is a second brain in the business, he’s pretty much feels like a business partner and a friend all in one and just amazing, not one problem the whole time we’ve worked together which is so so good.
And his role, well his main role is to run all of the ads, like he’s fully in charge of that. So I don’t do anything to do with the ads other than film some of the ads if need be but he creates the scripts for them, everything, very lucky he only works with me as well which is really awesome and then supports my clients. So I’ve got an ads manager, I’ve also got an appointment setter, so this is someone again incredible, couldn’t do my business without her, who like starts conversations, not cold DMS but like starts conversations with people that like have opted in for something of mine, whether that’s a free resource or registering for an event or something, she’ll send that first initial message or if I’m doing like a big follow-up process with like all of my leads that like I need to follow up with, like she will send that kind of more generic message and personalise it where necessary of course but then I’m doing a lot of the in-between stuff, so the voice messages and the conversations in between.
So if you’re having a DM conversation with me, it’s with me, don’t worry. But just that initial first message that if someone joins my group like I don’t need to send that same cookie-cutter message of like, hey welcome to the group or whatever, like so she just sends that for me and that just helps me so much and she’s like involved in getting sales calls booked, which is really really awesome. So like if I run an event and the call to action is to like comment below, like message me a word, like roadmap and we’ll send you a link, like she’ll send the link but I take the call you know.
So that’s what she does and then I’ve got an amazing virtual assistant, obsessed, would die without her, she does everything for me like from editing these podcasts and scheduling them to posting all of my content, creating all of my graphics, creating all of my reels, sending my emails, like managing the support inbox, navigating payment failures, she does everything. I literally couldn’t do this without her, she’s that important to me and I’ve worked with her for years. I’ve worked with now all of my team for a couple of years, which is so so awesome and my team allows me to stay in my zone of genius, like my zone of genius is not doing all the admin things.
Can I do them? Of course I can. Do I hate doing them? No not really, I actually don’t mind it. But does it support me to scale and build a spacious calendar? No it doesn’t. If I was doing all of that, I would not have a spacious calendar, it’s just as simple as that. So hiring often before you’re ready, not all of these people at once but one at a time in the right order, is really really important. I would say for most people that first hire they should make is a virtual assistant, right? Because that admin stuff is pretty important as you start to scale.
So I am in my zone of genius and I have a lot of freedom because I have an amazing team that I pay and incentivise as well and there you know we’ve got a really good deal going on and it just allows me to not wear 12 hats a day and actually get something done and actually be able to breathe because I do hold a lot of space for a lot of people. Like I you know manage my team, I manage myself and do the big-picture thinking that allows the business to grow so I can continue to pay my team and support my clients and I’ve got hundreds of clients, right? So if I was to do all of those things, I just wouldn’t have this business, I just wouldn’t.
So very grateful for them and then I help my clients to do this exact same thing when they’re ready to start growing and hiring a team. So it’s not about building a huge team and lowering your profit margin so much, like we actually still have a very highly profitable you know business, just ask my accountant, she’s the one that tells me that. It’s just about having the right people doing the right thing so that you can breathe, right?
So that’s like delegation that buys back a lot of my time. Now let’s talk about marketing. So most coaches are stuck on this never-ending constant like hamster wheel mode of creating content. They are creating something new every day, showing up constantly just to stay visible and feeling like that if they stop posting their leads will dry up, which for some people is correct. But that’s not really a sustainable system, that’s just survival.
So instead I help my clients and I do this myself, build a marketing system that works harder than they do. So one thing that I personally do that—and by the way just disclaimer I got to over a million dollars organically but now we run paid ads because we’ve got so much cash flow to do so and it’s just working smarter not harder. So we run ads, again my ads manager does all of that which is really awesome and that drives consistent traffic.
With that being said of course I still believe in organic and collaboration marketing and so I love to do that as well. So what I find to be the most sustainable route about doing this to work smarter not harder is to create long-form content. So I will record something like I’m doing right now, like I’m recording a video which goes on to YouTube and it goes on to the podcast which so that goes on Apple podcast and Spotify. So that’s three places for one piece of work and you know the good thing is that YouTube drives random people to your channel if you get the thumbnail right, the episode right or the video right and the title right and all of that sort of thing.
I mean if you market it but you know that gets a lot of new people so hello if you’re new. And same with the podcast like that doesn’t attract as many new people like we still have a good like podcast audience size but I find that YouTube is more of a search engine you know whereas podcasting is more of a nurture thing. But nonetheless one piece of content goes three different places but then my VA will clip this video into like 10 different clips and now that’s 10 pieces of content that can go on Instagram, it can go on LinkedIn and it can go on Facebook and it can go on TikTok.
So four different platforms again all from one video and I’m not even doing that. So there’s like one piece of content that just goes on to so many platforms that goes TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and Spotify and Apple. That is seven different locations if I’ve counted that correctly and I haven’t missed anything. Seven places for one piece of content that takes me between 15 and 30 minutes of my time and it doesn’t cost a minute longer than that.
And then we use AI to like create captions for that content and all of that and so we can easily repurpose and schedule that content and I don’t do any of that either. So this means that I stay visible my clients that do this also stay visible without having to be online all of the time and without having to chase the algorithm to stay relevant because long-form content will always work and being smart with how you leverage that like is a very smart thing to do.
So it’s really just about making your messaging and your content work for you every single day every single week without you having to start from scratch. I know some people that create new content every single day and that works for some people’s energies and personalities and strengths and like there’s nothing wrong with that but I personally would find that really draining and exhausting and I would find that I’d be more inconsistent if I didn’t do this all in bulk because that’s just not how I roll.
I like to do it all at once like I typically will create a month’s worth of content all in a few hours and then I don’t worry about it until the following month and that’s just what works really well for me and then everything I do in addition to that is just a beautiful bonus for everyone and I’ve got the energy and the capacity to do that. So yeah that’s basically my marketing strategy and how I do that as I leverage long-form content.
Now I want to talk about like a simplified sales engine so like once we’ve done that and you’ve nailed the offer and marketing now it’s time to set up a sales system that will do the heavy lifting. I’m not talking about cold DMS or awkward triage calls I’ve never done a triage call and I don’t send cold DMS so I’m talking about evergreen training so I’ve got an evergreen training which is just like a 10-minute pre-recorded video that again I put in a lot of effort to once and now we just direct people to that in the DMS and in my marketing and then that video will take people to the next step like booking a call and they’re on my email sequence after that and all that sort of thing so that’s like working smarter not harder because instead of like constantly going live and constantly doing all these things we just direct new people to that place.
Then I run a live event pretty much once a month and some people find that so exhausting and I’m like I literally run the same event once a month it’s not hard at all you just again put in the effort like once and then so much of that you can use again and again so even if you were to change the title or even the script of the event like so much is repurposed like the actual landing page just duplicate it, the nurture emails, the reminder emails, the cut open emails all of that is a literally the same every time so I just don’t find it exhausting at all when you have a system and you’re working smarter not harder.
Then the actual pre-sales call process I did an episode on this last week so I would go listen to that if you haven’t already because that does the heavy lifting for you in terms of the you know confirmation video once someone books the sales call then the assessment video and form the reminder emails all that sort of thing again I explained it all in last week’s episode so go listen to that but it does it make makes 90% of our leads or more show up to our call ready and on time and they actually like no one trust me already and ready to say I’m in and that’s you know really powerful so that’s that and this just means that you’re not explaining your offer ten times a week and it means you’re not guessing what to say on sales calls you’re not hoping that people get it your actual systems do all of that for you so that when someone books a call and they go through that process again you don’t have to be involved in that at all they already like know where they’re at and they’re a much warmer lead than if you weren’t to do that.
Then I want to quickly speak about the automation that saves us time and elevates delivery so this is the last piece that makes all of this run smoothly and it’s like automation and AI and I think so many people are scared of this stuff and like I’m not really a tech person either but this is essential unless you want to do it all manually and have a full calendar up to you but I don’t want that so we use tools that just really elevate our client experience so I have a template for everything now this is something I’ve obviously created over the years I’m always creating templates anything that I have to do more than once you best believe I’ve got a template for and I just give it all to my client so they don’t even have to do that that’s the that’s where investing in yourself becomes a smart decision because you fast-track your results because you don’t have to do all of that like I’ve obviously invested a lot of time and money creating these templates like scripts email stuff whatever and my clients don’t have to do that so that’s kind of the power of investing in yourself like yeah you can ask charity anything these days but you know if you want like higher quality more personalised approach and you even know what to look for and what to ask and where to be guided then you want to be in someone’s programme.
So I’ve got templates for everything and then we use tools that you know integrate things so for example when someone joins my programme I don’t have to do anything they automatically get sent their invoice they automatically get login details to my course they automatically get a welcome email and then they’re on our email list as a client and everything else is handled from there I literally don’t do anything because of you know email marketing and using Zapier and all that sort of stuff so super super powerful and then we also have like clear SOPs to make it easy for me and my team to do things without everything depending on me so if I ever you know want to introduce a new system or whatever SOP stands for standard operating procedures by the way sounds so fancy I actually never use that word but it’s just the term is correct if that makes sense but what I was gonna say is like if ever I create something new in my business that I want to delegate I’ll just film a loom video which is like a standard operating procedure like explaining like to my VA like this is how we do this or whatever and now we have this so that let’s just say worst case scenario one day my VA was to leave I would cry if she did and hopefully she doesn’t Vada please don’t leave but if she ever does because there might come a time where she you know needs to or wants to that I wouldn’t have to now just like do all that stuff myself I could hire someone else and we would already have all of these step-by-step processes on how to do things that they could just go straight to the process.
So this isn’t actually about cutting corners it’s just about working smarter so that you can scale sustainably and your clients benefit too because you’re not stretched so thin and stuck in chaos like you’re actually able to be present with them you’re calm and then you’re just delivering powerfully because you’ve got the capacity to do so.
So what does this business model this spacious business model replace well it replaces the need to code em do triage calls or discovery calls that don’t convert spending hours and hours a week on Canva inventing a new strategy every month because the last one didn’t work being the bottleneck in every single decision reinventing your niche and your offer every time growth feels slow and creating success at the cost of your capacity that is what this business model replaces it’s not the business I’m built that’s like just not the business I’m building right and it’s not what I want my clients to have either I don’t want them to have to do things they don’t want to do and spend time on things that they shouldn’t be spending time on but might need to be done and this is where delegating automating deleting simplifying structuring things organising things become so so important and just working smarter not harder.
So if you’ve ever felt like scaling your coaching business means giving up on your life or trading time for money I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way and I’ve actually never had as much time as I have today and this is the best my business has ever been you can scale your income you can simplify your business and you can serve your clients better than ever without working more hours this is the spacious simple sustainable and scalable way I love alliteration if you can’t tell if this has resonated with you and you’re ready to build a business model like this and you don’t want to guess your way there and you want support and all of this handed to you on a silver platter and that’s exactly what we do inside scale school I would love to help you to create a spacious business model you can learn more by booking a roadmap call with me in the link in the show notes and we can have a chat about what working together would really look like you’ll see my booked call process from going through that and if you’re unsure on anything or have any questions or you just want to give feedback come message me on Instagram I’m at Sofia Rose Bernardi and I would love to hear from you thanks for tuning in to behind the business and I’ll see you next week bye.
