Pricing

Every established business accumulates things it no longer wants to sell and quietly keeps selling them. Retiring one properly is a short list of decisions, and skipping them is how a tidy-up turns into an awkward month.

Three versions of the same offer, each one dying of the same disease in a smaller dose. The problem was never the wording, and finding that out cost me most of a summer.

The wrong client does not cost you one slot. They cost the slot, the disproportionate attention, the reluctance to take on more, and the referrals they will never make. That arithmetic is worse than it looks.

Every service business has a record month and it is almost always followed by a bad one. The peak was not a new plateau, and treating it as one is how a good year starts feeling like a failure.

The problem in most established service businesses is not an empty calendar. It is a full one that still produces an unpredictable month. Coaching has the cleanest data on it, and that data says something uncomfortable about where the ceiling actually sits.