Ep 84: What 104 Service Providers Told Me
Over the last 18 months, I've worked with more than 104 service providers. Thirty-four of those clients are from 2026 alone, and when I realized how much information I had sitting inside their onboarding forms, I started digging.
I ask clients a lot when they come into SOS. I want to know their monthly revenue, average client revenue, lifetime client value, how many clients they're serving, what their revenue goals are, what feels stuck, and what they wish was different. I also ask them to score how confident they feel about whether their service is defined, valuable, repeatable, and sellable at scale.
Put more than 100 of those responses together and you have something far more interesting than one person's opinion about what service providers should be doing.
You start seeing patterns.
The 90-Day Revenue Goals Got My Attention
One of the first things that caught my eye was the 90-day revenue goal.
I saw a number come through once and thought, okay, let's go. Then I saw it again. Then again. Eventually, I couldn't treat it like a random answer anymore because enough people were telling me some version of the same thing.
That made me curious about what service providers want from their businesses right now.
I've spent years around different business models. I started as a photographer, moved into coaching and strategy, built courses, ran an education company, worked with tens of thousands of people in some capacity, worked one-on-one with clients, and even had a physical product business for a couple of years.
I've seen what happens when the business gets very small and intimate. I've also seen what happens when the goal becomes reaching a massive number of people through offers built for volume.
I've learned enough about myself to know the kind of business I want now.
I Want a "One-to-Medium" Business
For a long time, service providers seemed to get handed two very different pictures of success.
One picture was the highly bespoke service business, where a handful of clients receive a huge amount of access and customization. There can be a weird badge of honor attached to keeping the client roster tiny, as though working with fewer people automatically makes the service more valuable.
The other picture revolved around audience size. Bigger lists, more subscribers, more buyers, lower-priced offers, and a business where the owner can have less contact with the people purchasing.
Neither picture gave me the business I wanted to run.
I love service work. I want kickoff calls. I want onboarding forms. I want to know my clients and understand what's happening inside their businesses. I want long client relationships, and I want enough proximity to see where my skill matters.
I also want big revenue goals, enough margin to pay a team, room to create, and the ability to work with more than three people at a time.
I've started calling that a "one-to-medium" business.
It's a model where I can stay close to the work while serving more people than the classic tiny client roster allows. I can borrow strategies from other business models when they make sense, too. I can run a live event to sell a one-on-one service. I can create a useful free resource for a service provider. I can launch, collaborate, teach, speak, and still build the business around client work.
There is no rule saying service work has to stay small.
The Client Data Is Showing Me Where the Gaps Are
The other reason this data has been so interesting is that I can compare what service providers say they want with where they currently feel confident.
Inside SOS, clients score their service across four areas: defined, valuable, repeatable, and sellable at scale.
One of those areas gets the lowest score across the board, and it wasn't the one I expected.
That matters because a service provider can be very good at the work and still have a business model that makes growth harder than it needs to be. If the offer depends on reinventing the process for every client, if the positioning makes selling harder, or if the owner stays involved in work that doesn't require their skill, capacity gets eaten up fast.
The answer isn't automatically hiring a giant team or turning your service into a course. There is a lot of room between those extremes, and I think service providers have barely started exploring it.
That's the part I care about.
Bigger Revenue Doesn't Require Leaving Service Work
I've been open about wanting consistent $25K months and continuing beyond that. I like seeing revenue grow. I like having enough cushion to support my team, my clients, and the business itself.
I also know what I want my role to look like.
Just because I can do something doesn't mean my skill is required there. I want to spend my time in the advisory, strategy, and guidance work where my involvement makes a difference, then create support around the rest.
I'm seeing versions of this happen with clients, too. Inside SOS, I've watched a client increase revenue by 340% within 90 days. Another landed a $10K client and, less than 16 days later, landed a $38K client. I've seen someone tweak their positioning and land a cold client that same day.
Those examples don't give us a paint-by-numbers formula, and I wouldn't trust anyone who tried to turn them into one. They do give us useful evidence to study.
What changed? What made the service easier to sell? Where did the lead come from? What helped the client support additional work? Which pieces can another service provider test inside their own business?
Those are questions worth spending time on.
I'm Paying Attention to What Service Providers Want Next
When I left the seven-figure company I'd helped build and run for eight and a half years, I wanted a different relationship with my business.
I wanted the work to feel fun again. I wanted a smaller business than the one I'd been running, while still giving myself room for serious revenue and impact. I wanted to work closely with clients, make things, teach, collaborate, and experiment with ways of selling services that didn't require me to squeeze myself into somebody else's definition of a service business.
A few years into building this version, I have enough client data to see that I'm far from the only person interested in that middle ground.
Service providers are setting bigger goals. They're asking different questions about capacity. They're figuring out how to stay in client work while building offers and delivery models that can hold more.
That's what I'm digging into in Episode 84 of Sell the Damn Service, and it's the conversation I'm continuing inside State of the Damn Service.
If you've been wondering what other service providers are earning, where they're getting stuck, what lead sources are working, and what they're aiming for next, listen to Episode 84. Then come be nosy with me at State of the Damn Service on August 13 at 10 a.m. Central, where I'm sharing more of the data and what I think it means for the back half of 2026.
Chapters
00:01 - State of the Damn Service and why I'm sharing the data
02:25 - What 104 service providers told me
04:13 - The lead source and service metric I'm watching
06:34 - Why I started questioning the traditional service model
08:53 - The two service business camps I don't want
11:20 - Building a "one-to-medium" business
13:48 - What the revenue goals are starting to reveal
16:12 - The client results I'm seeing inside SOS
18:36 - Finding the fun in service work again
21:01 - Building toward consistent $25K months
23:23 - Live bonuses and the service provider lead tracker
Ready to Restructure and Productize Your Service?
Inside Sold Out Services, I help service providers examine who each offer serves, what happens after someone buys, and where qualified clients are being left without a clear next step.
You do not need to create an entirely new business every time you reach capacity.
There may be more revenue, impact, and long-term client value hiding inside the client relationships you have already built.
If you’d like to see a library of all published episodes in a gallery with easy-to-find links to all listening platforms be sure to check out the Sell The Damn Service Episode Library.
