Attention, freelancers and consultants making $100K but working too much
Business Redesign is Freelance Cake’s signature group coaching program for consultants and freelance creatives who have cracked $100,000 in a year or come very close.
That milestone brings mixed emotions: pride, satisfaction, relief, discouragement, and even weariness. It becomes obvious that you can’t double your income by leveraging your own productivity and working longer hours. You’ve already maxed out your time!
If you’ve realized that you need a different growth strategy, that’s what Business Redesign supplies. The program’s backbone is the $300K Flywheel framework.
Have you become an accidental workaholic? I was.
We rail against certain jobs and professions notorious for grinding people down—for example, law, medicine, and finance—but almost no one talks about creative workaholics.
Years ago, my wife went out of town, and when she came back, she asked, “What did you do over the weekend?”
I considered the question and gave an honest answer: “I worked.”
My education was in English literature and poetry writing, for goodness sake. I never would pegged myself as susceptible to working too much, yet there I was, feeding all my time and attention into the business machine.
If I wasn’t working, I was thinking about the business:
What could I try next?
What did my pipeline look like?
When was more revenue coming in?
The line between a playful, curious creativity and creativity as a vehicle for anxiety and compulsive self-protection and problem-solving becomes blurry.
Our identities become so enmeshed with our ventures that when the business is okay, we feel okay, and when the forecast turns bleak, so does our mindset.
The tragedy is that once we hit our financial targets, we’re too busy to enjoy the extra income. That, or we don’t want the business we’ve built because we’re exhausted.
By the time we finally drag ourselves up to the summit, we realize it’s a false one.
You think to yourself, “I don’t want a more audacious goal. I want a nap.”
All this sounds pretty dreary, but thankfully, there’s more to my story and to yours. Most of us take the tortuous trail to that false summit because we didn’t see the ski lift.
Have you ever noticed that most breakthroughs come from stepping back and slowing down long enough to notice your other options?
If you’re already working too much, you won’t be able to double your revenue by doubling your time. You don’t have that amount of time to give, right?
But if you were to delegate many or most of the $10 an hour tasks eating away at your time, then you’d have more time to find a better growth strategy, right?
Delegation solves the “not enough time to work on the business” problem, and several more besides. The ski lift was right around the corner the whole time.
You may already have an inkling of how you’d spend your reclaimed time:
“I want to write a book.”“I want to get into coaching.”
“I want to scale up into an agency.”
“I want to become an online creator.“
“I want to graduate to value-priced consulting.”Meanwhile, you depend on your current income. How do you maintain the business that produces it while building the next one?
I teach a framework called the $300k Flywheel.It hinges on raising your effective hourly rate so that you can hire support, so that you can delegate more and optimize the business you already have, so that you can free up time to create the business and lifestyle you really want.
If you were to free up 10 hours a week, how would you spend them?
That's what you'll accomplish in the Business Redesign group coaching program. Have your best year yet working less.
Let's talk.
Years of freelancing and coaching other freelancers and consultants have taught me that achieving financial success, while reducing stress, doesn't necessarily bring the clarity or satisfaction we expect.
Many of my clients, after hitting their financial goals, find themselves questioning the very path that led them there. They face the daunting question: "Now what?" Does that sound familiar? Maybe that's you!
If you're navigating the post-$100K landscape and aiming for more than just income, let's talk about crafting a business that truly fits the life you want to lead.
What People Are Saying
"Your guidance from our coaching session is so appreciated. The insights and templates you shared gave me the confidence to send my proposal. Plus, what you shared about their budget not being my problem to solve really helped me lift the lid I'd put on what I thought I could charge. In case you were wondering, I sealed the deal! :)
I created a proposal that included a monthly retainer plus a separate fee for onboarding, which I would've never done without your insights. I included an option that was within their budget and one that was over budget but closer to all the social media work they requested. They picked the higher retainer, which resulted in $1200 more per month compared to the lower option. If I hadn't included the higher price point, I would've left money on the table.
Thank you so much! I can't wait to continue implementing what I've learned!"
“The coaching has been a very, very good investment of my time and financial resources. Looking back to when we started, I can’t help but ask, ‘If I hadn’t done it, where would I be now?’ Probably still spinning my wheels, not really knowing what to do next, and maybe even saying, ‘Is this a viable path?’ Instead, I'm seeing the payoff from my decision. Doing the right things and applying the principles pays off.
Austin taught me to think on a different level that's more strategic and to see ways to provide value that I didn't see before. Just last week, I reached out to a past client who hired me to write case studies and offered to pull the best quotes and turn them into social posts. That add-on wasn't in the original agreement, and it’s opportunities like that I would never have noticed or pursued before. I would have simply left the money on the table.
This coaching has been a change-of-plane kind of experience, like, ‘Wow, here's all this stuff I didn't know was there before!’”
What is Business Redesign at a high level?
If you’re reading this, your problem likely isn’t doing too little. It’s doing too much.
What’s the point of the extra income and freedom if you’re too busy and stressed to enjoy it?
Burning out hard in 2015 and 2016 showed me what doesn’t scale:
❌ Doing every part of every client project myself
❌ Doing all admin, bookkeeping, and scheduling too
❌ Obsessing over small gains in quality, not well-defined process.
Here’s what does help us maximize income, freedom, satisfaction, and impact without feeding more and more hours into the business machine:
✅ Using well-defined processes to improve efficiency and quality
✅ Learning to think less like a technician and more like a CEO
✅ Looking for better leverage and pulling the right levers
✅ Delegating effectively to people you can trust
✅ Spending more time in your zone of genius.
What Nathan Barry said about doing less in an episode of the Billion Dollar Creator podcast hit me like a pie to the face:
“At every stage of the business as CEO, you actually have to do less. That's what makes the business operate.”
It’s true, right? The people at the top of any industry aren’t the ones doing the most.
Doing less means finding the right leverage points and focus effort there, and in order to do that, growth-minded consultants and freelancers must get away from what I call “magical thinking”—that is, expecting the system you built to suddenly produce different results.
Instead, we must purposefully redesign our businesses to give us the lifestyle we really want.
Enter the $300K Flywheel, which is fundamentally about lifestyle design. There’s more to life than work, and there’s more to work than money. Business Redesign will help you optimize for impact and true fulfillment.
This is a “program” in the sense that each month you’ll go through specific training designed to help you achieve specific outcomes.
What will you accomplish?
What does Business Redesign involve?
- Group Coaching – 60-minute group sessions every 2 weeks; ~30 minutes of training followed by ~30 of implementation, discussion, or workshopping)
- Guest Experts – 1 session per month (e.g., Nick True at Mapped Out Money talking about cash flow management)
- Office Hours – 1 60-minute block per month; drop by if you need to
- Private Circle community
- Training – Access to the videos and everything else you need each month
- Library / Toolshed – Access to the templates, checklists, scripts, cheat sheets, and other tools that will save you significant time and accelerate your progress (e.g., playbook for hiring a virtual assistant)
What isn’t included in Business Redesign?
Here is what is not included in the program:
- Accountability. You’re an adult. I cannot make you do anything. I can, however, help you get clarity around what is holding you back and define the steps forward. I can help you remove obstacles. I can give you the right training at the right time, and I can let your internal drive do its thing.
- 1:1 coaching calls with Austin. You can pay extra for these, or you can earn one every 3 months as a reward by hitting your milestones.
- 24/7 access to the team. We’re here to support you, but we need our weekends, holidays, and vacations in order to do that effectively. We cannot encourage you to use your business to bankroll a lifestyle you love and not lead by example.
What does Business Redesign cost?
My 1-on-1 coaching packages start at $1,500 per month, so that was my starting point for figuring out what to charge for a group program like this.
This program costs $1,000 per month.
You pay for the first 3 months up front, and after that, you pay monthly.
We show up at our level of investment, so I want the first payment to hurt a little so you’re really invested. My personal trainer taught me this lesson.
Who is Business Redesign for?
- You’re a creative or consultant, averaging more than $8K per month, which means that you’re in a position to invest in group coaching, which is itself a form of better leverage.
- You’ve got a strong work ethic, but you aren’t always sure how to optimize your time. You waste time trying to decide what to do next.
- You tend to overcommit and say yes to too much, including small projects. That leaves you too little time to develop and test ideas to grow your business.
- You want to get control of your schedule without sacrificing financial upside. You want more free time and flexibility and less density in your calendar.
- You’ve tried to delegate with mixed success. You’ve mostly defaulted back to your comfort zone of doing everything yourself. You’re willing to try delegating again.
- You want to think and act more like a CEO but aren’t sure how to change your thought process.
- Paralyzing optionality has been a problem for you. You’ve got too many messes (and opportunities) to choose from, which makes it hard to know which problem to fix or opportunity to go after first.
Who is Business Redesign not for?
- Brand-new freelancers
- Anyone prone to making excuses
- Anyone looking for a get-rich-quick scheme
- Creatives and consultants averaging less than $8K per month
- Anyone who won’t show up to group sessions and put in the work
Who is Austin?
You may be wondering who I am and why the heck you should listen to me. Those are fair questions. Here’s the short version:
- I’m an author, marketing consultant, and business coach.
- After finishing my M.A. in Literature in 2008 and getting laid off from a marketing agency in 2009, I started freelancing. I got into iOS and Android apps and eventually sold my portfolio of 30+ apps (Bright Newt). In 2013 I co-founded a tech startup (Closeup.fm).
- In 2017 I started my consulting practice (Wunderbar).
- In 2018 I co-founded a branding agency (Balernum).
- In 2019 I launch a media and education brand (Freelance Cake).
- In the last 15 years, I’ve made over $1.8 million as a freelancer, consultant, and creator while learning what not to do. In 2023 I published a pricing and money mindset guide (Free Money) and passed $300K in revenue.
- I’m passionate about showing freelancers, consultants, and creators how to stack up specific advantages, pull specific levers, and find their income-lifestyle sweet spot.
If you’re wondering if I’ve been able to help other consultants and freelancers transform their businesses, then watch this short video from Josh Monen.
Ready to get started?
I send you an onboarding questionnaire in advance. You pull back the curtain on your business and goals. Then, in the Kickoff Workshop, we identify your best opportunities—i.e., low-hanging fruit—as well as any obstacles or sources of stress. We combine our insight and expertise to create an actionable Growth Plan for your freelance / consulting business. The roadmap covers specific goals you will meet and steps you will take during and after the BBFF core program—e.g., replacing the income from your current job, hiring a virtual assistant, making yourself location-independent, growing your LinkedIn network. etc..
45 minutes every 2 weeks for 6 months. We discuss your progress, figure out how you can overcome roadblocks, and set your new priorities. I will also help you get out of your head and process sticky situations.
All my cheat sheets, checklists, email templates, and playbooks as needed. For example, how do you ask for testimonials? Do you have a solid process for getting really juicy sound bites from past clients? What does your introduction request email template say? Do you have scripts for cold email outreach? I can save you time and wasted effort by hooking you up with stuff already proven to work.
What if I don’t like Business Redesign?
My style isn’t to hold people hostage. Plans, needs, and budgets change. (That said, I believe Business Redesign will help your budget go up.)
If you find yourself second-guessing the commitment, you and I will talk. You’ll tell me what’s going on, and we’ll figure out the best path forward.
What did Austin forget?
You tell me. If you have questions, concerns, or ideas about Business Redesign, I’d like to hear them. Drop me a line: hello@freelancecake.com.