3 Business Mistakes That Kept Me Broke!!! (But Here's How You Can Avoid It)

 In this episode, I’m getting real about some of the biggest mistakes I see (and have made myself) when it comes to growing a sustainable business. We’re talking about underpricing, giving away too much for free, and offering all the things to try to serve everyone. Spoiler: that’s a fast track to burnout and stagnation. 

I’m sharing some hard lessons I had to learn the hard way—and how shifting my pricing, tightening up my services, and getting intentional about how I deliver value helped me get unstuck. If you’re feeling stretched thin or like your business just isn’t moving the way it should, this one’s for you. 

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About me: I'm Kenniqua Lewter, a Systems Strategist and HoneyBook Educator, and I help service providers organize and automate systems to simplify their business (and life) and confidently serve dream clients. 

Ready to finally streamline your service-based business with HoneyBook? Head over to yoursystemspro.com to get started. 

Transcript

Kenniqua Lewter (00:00)
have you been feeling stuck in your business? You feel like you're doing all of the things, but you're just not seeing the growth that you wanted to see? I have been there. today I just wanna pull back the curtain on some of the things that I have done in my business. that have definitely kept me broke. And these are some common things. So you may be doing these things as well. So I just wanted to shed.

some perspective And maybe this listening to this episode might help you to get out of that rut. welcome back to the Systems Rehab podcast. My name is Kenniqua I am your host. am a system strategist and a honey book consultant. So I have been in business since 2017 and there have been so many iterations of my business. When I first started my business,

I started off as a virtual assistant and I was offering everything underneath the sun, everything that I knew how to do or that I knew that I can figure out how to do. I came from a call center background. I have worked as a call center worker for like 13 years. And so customer service,

has been my jam forever. So now I am a system strategist. I specialize in client management, client experience, but it has not always been that simple of this is what I do, It has not always been like that.

And so when I first started my business again in 2017, one thing that I have found that a lot of entrepreneurs, especially when they're starting their businesses, they do, and I did it too, but it just never helped me grow my business was having the lowest price in the market. When we start our businesses, we feel like because we're new at starting a business that we should offer it at the lowest price, just so we can start going through and getting clients.

That was me, I was doing that. I was definitely offering my services at a lower price point. Even during the times where I was switching from virtual assistant to then I was getting more specialized into system strategy and even website design, I was undercharging for my services. But the reason why, even though those things, it did get me clients,

did it actually get me the right clients, the right clients that I wanted to work with? And when I asked myself that, the answer is no. So when you're going through and you're offering prices under the market value price for it.

Like, so for example, if you're a company like Walmart, Walmart is a huge company, obviously. And so they kind of specialize in offering the lowest price, right? So they can undercut their competition by two, three cents and it makes them the lowest price. But us, us, you know, as small business owners and typically we're not cutting the price by two, three cents. We're cutting the price by hundreds, sometimes even thousands of dollars to appear to be the lowest price in the market to

be value-based choice. But, and a lot of times that just doesn't work because what it does is it starts to bring in people that are not actually aligned with you. They're only choosing your services because it is within their budget or how much they think that service is worth. But when your services are worth way more than that your expertise that you bring,

is way more than that. It makes it difficult for the relationship of how you're working with a client. even though you may do the work, you may enjoy the work, you may even of course do a good job and the client is then satisfied. But when you're being underpaid for your services, sometimes you just don't feel as fulfilled in doing the work when you're

underpaid for the services. And then also too, even from the client side, when you are going through and you're getting clients and you're drastically under charging for your rate, depending on what you're offering, you're not always getting the client that's willing to do the work that needs to be done in order to achieve the results. So for example, with my business, I offer system strategies. I'm not the lowest price on the market. There are some price things that of course that I can go through and adjust, but I'm definitely not the lowest, but I'm

I'm definitely not the highest either. But even coming into it, when I first started offering it, I was definitely one of the lowest prices in the market when I was kind of going through and searching around. But what I found is when I was going through, when I was telling people exactly what it was that I did and how I can go through and help them,

is that I want to see transformations. It's not just about, okay, I'm gonna put a bandaid on this issue. So like, I see that you have all of these other things going on that are absolutely not working for you. But because you can only afford this amount, let's put a bandaid on the situation and.

that bandaid can probably stay on for like two, three months and then you'll be okay. You'll, you'll, you'll be all right, right? That's actually not my goal. I don't want to do that. I don't want to put a bandaid on an issue I want to go through and I want to fix the issue. And then I also want the clients that want to fix the issues as well. so allowing and pricing yourself for me anyway, pricing myself at a level where we can fix issues.

and we can create transformations is where I wanna be. I don't want to price myself where we then have to only use Band-Aids, right? If that makes any types of sense. So going through and pricing my services at the lowest price in the market in my business throughout the time I've been doing business. Like I said, I was a virtual assistant coming in, offering everything underneath the sun, pricing myself lower. And then again,

I progressively moved up and cut things out, but that just never went through and helped me to grow my business. So if you're starting your business or maybe you've been in business for a while and you're like, hey, you know, my prices aren't exactly where I want my prices to be. I would highly encourage you to really just think about how you want to work with your clients, what it's gonna take for you to work with your clients and to be able to get them the result that you want. And also too,

based off of the price of it, is your client's going to be a participant of getting that result? Because what I found as well is that when I charged lower prices for certain things, I also didn't give the participation that I needed in order to be able to get the full result that I wanted. Because if you have clients that pay you a little bit of money, so let's say we're doing a system and...

We charge 200 bucks, which is very low. The client that typically will only pay that $200, they're not really interested so much in participating in the transformation of their services, Those ones, typically what we would get is we would get clients that won't answer questionnaires in full. we'll get these broad answers.

to questions when we needed you to go deeper so we can understand your business, we can understand what you need, we can understand your goals. We weren't getting that, but the reason why we weren't getting that initially is because the price was too low. And when it's too low, you end up attracting the wrong people. So if you're in this position now and you're not seeing the results you wanna see in your business, it could be because of the pricing and what the pricing could also be bringing in the wrong people because pricing is a part of messaging.

in a sense, and so you may just be bringing in the wrong people. And like I said, during the time of my business, that was me. I was definitely in that same position. So what I did was that I started to gradually up my prices. I'm not the person that could just like drastically do a big jump in price because I'm like, okay, that's a little bit too much. I can't just go and go from selling this at $200 to going through and selling something at a thousand something dollars, right? Like

Literally back in the day when I was doing website designs, my first website design project was only like $300. That's it. Like I was designing websites, full page websites, six page websites for two to $300. Right. And this is me running a business. This wasn't freelance or anything like that. This was me actually running a business, selling websites for two to $300. And then I'm like, you know what? This just is not.

this is not working, this is just not working. And then I would just up the price, you know, $300, went to $700 and went to $700. And then I think I went to like $1,400 and then 14 to like 25 or something like that, So I gradually moved my way up as I was getting clients and you'll be surprised as well because sometimes we don't want to necessarily up our prices because we feel like, okay, if I my prices, people aren't gonna pay my new prices. But I beg to differ with you because

I was doing that. I was up in my prices and at each point of me up in my prices, I always had someone to go through and pay that next price. And all that does was just confirmation to me that my price was too low to begin with. So that is definitely one of the things that was keeping me, and not moving my business for the next thing that I did. And this might be a little bit controversial, but I'm going to tell you why I think

this way and why to me this has been proven to me just over the course of years. I don't feel like this is something that you will notice over time. I mean something you will only notice over time. So it's not something that would just be immediate to you. So if you just start as your business, if you're doing what I'm about to say, you may not necessarily see the repercussions of this until later down the road. But again, I've been in business now seven, eight years. And so

this is something that I have definitely experienced and this has caused me to make changes in my business over the long haul is going through and free being my audience to deaf. So what exactly do I mean by free being? I mean, offering so many free resources. So this is free documents, free guides, free checklists, free master classes, free this, free that, free that. And it's like, you're just freeing your audience to deaf. And the reason why again,

Over the course of my years, I just found that this has not worked, but I'm going to tell you why, because a lot of people will tell you and they will say, well, you have to give value. And I'm, I'm on green's of that. I do feel that you do have to give value. You do want to, however you give value. So that's creating content, whether that's video content, written content, whatever it is that you do. I do believe there is a place for you to go through and

give your audience value, right? I definitely believe in that. But I do believe that there is a point where it is too much value and not. And I don't even want to use that word value. I think that it can come to a point where it's too much free stuff. And what I mean by this is because I'm going to give myself as an example, and I'm going to tell you what happens when this when you do this. And this can be something that

you may be doing in your business that may be keeping you stuck of why you might not be seeing the max amount of growth that you can have is that I do content here. do content like I'm doing this video, this podcast episode, and I've been doing YouTube for about four or five years at this point, and the podcast is relatively new. We're like on episode like 20 or something like that, So it's relatively new.

But then before, so you have the YouTube podcast, hop a funnel, right? And then simply what would happen is listeners or viewers could go and they can go to our website. Now we used to have a full page, free resource page on our website where on that particular page, there were various freebies. There were like six or seven different freebies that you can get from guides to checklists to even like a 90 minute masterclass that you can review.

for free, And so there were so many guides and then you could download one or two or download them all, which I've had plenty of people go to the website and download them all. Some of which I'm pretty sure that they didn't take action on. They just downloaded them all because they were what? Because they were free. And then from there, of course, that would give them onto the email list, which is then what? It is then another source of free content where you're going through

You're nurturing your audience with email sequences where I'm sending out weekly emails again of free content. So I rarely sell in my emails, And so, and I, I honestly say it, I sell probably more now than I used to before. Like you would rarely get a sales email from me, which is kind of terrible because you do have to sell it's a business, right? You have to sell, but I would rarely go through and sell. So again,

mostly free content. And then every now and then I would go through and I would host a free masterclass again, free. So what this does is you have this, you've, you've lengthen out your clients, your lead journey, right? So your lead journey has been extended of a whole bunch of just free stuff. You have

the free YouTube, free podcasts, free guide, free emails. And so as you're going down, down your funnel, right? Just imagine going down the funnel, you're bringing in leads down the funnel. Let's say you have a hundred people that come through and they listen to the podcast. And then from that hundred, maybe you get only 20 people to actually go through and get the free resources. Now from that 20, then you're, as you're going down that funnel, you're going and less people, less and less people.

are actually getting to the bottom of the funnel, which is for your paid clients, right? But if you keep taking them through different stages of a whole bunch of free stuff, all you're doing is lengthening that process between your content, your free content and your paid resources. Thus,

you're getting less clients that's actually coming into your business. And in turn, you're getting less money, Instead of just going through and shortening that timeframe. So I'm not saying not to go through and offer value or offer free resources. Definitely. For me, it just, I was offering way too many. was so many, that I was offering that I was going through and I was crippling myself.

by going through and offering so many free things. It's funny because I was listening to a podcast I listened to her almost every single week. It's a podcast by, Abigail Humphries. It's the boss project. And she talks about this a lot on her podcast about how 60%, I think it's like 60 % of the people that are on her email list of thousands of people.

have actually paid to be on her email list. And it's not like paid as they paid to join that newsletter. No, they actually paid for a product that then landed them onto her email list. So she's always provided value. Her podcast episodes, like I said, probably one of my favorite podcasts that I listen to and I listen to it every single week. She gives so much value. And then she also gives a lot of content and value and tips on social media.

But from there, you're literally going through and it's like, Hey, buy this product, That might take you to the next level because our content is so rich. It's so valuable. Then the next thing you want to do is how can I go through and resolve this one issue? And maybe it's a guy that may only cost you maybe only seven bucks, but now you have actually gotten into the habit. It's going through and getting your audience in the habit of pulling out their wallet.

to work with you and get information from you, And I think that is in the long term what it's about. So initially when you're first doing this, if this is something that you're doing, like offering so many free things is that you are in turn in the long haul, you're conditioning your audience to only want free stuff.

So they only want to show up when it's free. And when you ask them to then pay for something, it's like, well, hold on, this is normally free, Why are you charging for this, And it just makes it more difficult for you then to convert your audience because you've conditioned them to always want something for free. So what are we doing instead based off of this? Because like I said, this is something that

this has happened to us over the years and it's my fault obviously, but it's something that has happened to us over the year. So what we've decided to do is because I'm gonna continue to show up on YouTube and doing podcasting and I'm not gonna hold back on the content that I'm providing. I've always kind of overshared on these networks and I feel like.

I'm going to continue to go through and do that. And that's totally fine. I feel very comfortable and doing that and providing value. There are going to be people that watch my content, that listen to my podcasts, that are going to learn a lot, which is what I want you to do. And there's going to be some people that take action and are going to be people that are going to take action without me, Without ever paying a dime. And that is totally fine. That is why I'm here and I'm giving the information away. But then there's going to be others that want my support and want

my step-by-step of how systems actually go through and apply to their unique business, right? And those are the people that are going to want to go through and take the next steps with me, which is awesome, So what I'm going to be doing instead to shorten this ladder and this basically mistake or error that I have made is just to shorten this span from content and value to down the funnel of becoming a kind of some sort.

So that's gonna look more so like, okay, I have the YouTube content, podcast content, however you're connecting with me. Of course we have social media, but I don't necessarily count that so much at this point in the funnel because I'm not as active on social unless you're talking to me on threads, which I'm there every day posting. But as far as like Instagram and stuff like that, I'm not as active. I do plan to become more active.

but let's just say YouTube podcasting, right? And from there, the free resource is going to be, we're going to be creating a quiz. So a quiz, a systems quiz where you can diagnose your systems and your use of systems and what's the next logical steps for you as far as systemizing your business. So that is what we're going to be creating. That is going to be the free resource. So all of these other free resources.

those resources, they're not needed. We're gonna have that one resource to then put people onto our email list, which they'll still get that nurture sequence as well,

Now that kind of leads me into the next thing because the next thing that I was doing during the course of my seven, eight years of business is just going through and just offering too many services. And I think when we first started our business that we feel like the more services that I offer, the more opportunities that it gives me to be able to work with clients.

So when I started my business again, as a virtual assistant, I was offering everything underneath the sun. So I was offering calendar management, inbox management, I would do social media graphics, and I was of course, doing it, I was always doing systems, and I was doing website, I was doing everything, I was doing everything.

I know sometimes that we don't necessarily want to pin down ourselves into like these niches, I don't want to just do this one particular thing because I am multidimensional and I love to do a lot of different things. And for me, I found that, yes, there were so many different things that I was passionate about and that I wanted to do.

But what I just found just over the years that me offering too many offers, it really just did not work to actually grow my business because then the messaging was different. Like I offer systems now, right? But I was also offering website design. So my messaging for website design is totally different for my messaging for systems. Or if I'm offering virtual assistant services, that messaging is different than

offering those other services. And so if I had my ideal client in mind, I would think having multiple offers requires you to have multiple ideal clients that actually would need that particular offer. And so over the years, I just started just cutting down what I was offering. So virtual assistant, like, hey, let's go through and let's just scratch this because those things, they're cool. They're going to bring in clients here and there, but

Are you going to give the most qualified clients that actually are our ideal clients based off of this? Not necessarily all the time. Of course you'll get some hits and then there'll be some misses. But if we can narrow ourselves down to just a few different offers and specialize in just a couple of things, or if not one thing. And so over the years,

I went through and I just start cutting things. Like if you've been following me for a while, you could definitely know inside the com, let me know inside the comments or send me a text if you're listening to the podcast. But if you've been following me for a while, then you know that I have been offering a lot of different things. And over the years it's like, nope, let's cut this. I don't want to do this anymore. Do I, do I have the ability to do this? Absolutely. I have the ability to do this.

And over the course of just even here recently within the last six months, I offer systems as a system strategist, of course, and then even website design. But in the last six months, I've decided, you know what? Let's cut website design too. Let's cut it. Let's only focus on systems because I believe that systems are so important.

Systems are so important for business owners because this is the one thing that's going to help them organize their business, automate their business, simplify this business where they can go through and they can work with their dream clients. They'll help them be able to bring in more money. And this is way more important than almost any other thing that I can think of that they could be doing. So let's focus on systems to help them simplify their life. And so I'm like, let's cut website design.

Can I build websites and design websites? Absolutely. I even have the credentials of a Squarespace expert and Squarespace circle member and all of those titles. But at the end of the day, it's like, I want to be able to make sure that I can bring in the most aligned clients into my business and be able to provide them the transformation that I want for them to see in their business and into their life. And so having too many offers, just never worked.

for aligning everything together. And so once I started to eliminate the services that we were offering, it makes it now so much clearer when clients come to me to say, how can you help me? It's easy. It's easy because now you know that I am your systems girly, I'm your system girly that specializes in client management,

So I'm going to be creating various templates for systems related things.

But I will also I have website templates that I have designed already already that will be putting up on our new website that will be available soon depending on when you're listening to this episode or watching it and may already be out. But within the next couple of weeks, the template shop will have some of those things on there where you can plug and play your own website template. But as far as me.

designing them for clients and getting all their assets and stuff like that. That's not what we want to focus on. We really want to focus on the systems in the back ends for our clients to help them really to be able to simplify and run their businesses more efficiently. And so when we were able to go through and now cut that down to size is it allowed us to be able to create an offer ladder that just makes sense. So.

When clients want to work with us with systems, now we have, okay, this is our DIY systems. Because if you come into us, like we want to be able to help clients at all different levels, all different levels of systems of where you need systems. So it can be systems for clients that have no systems. There's no systems in place. Then there's those clients that, okay, I have systems in place. Now I'm ready for a software or tool to be able to go through and streamline this.

but also in places of budget wise, I understand that everyone is in different positions in their business and in their life where certain things that they can spend their resources on, it has to make sense as well, right? And so we still want to be that resource available for clients of all different levels. And so we have now our offer ladder where it's like, hey, this is how you can do systems and get great results at a DIY level.

This is how you can work with us at a done with you level. Okay. So this might be a little bit more, but you can get some hands on support where we're doing this together. And then we have a little bit more when you pay a little bit more for the done for you services where we're doing everything for you, Of course we're getting your input, but we're doing everything for you. So creating this offer ladder now has been, it's so much clearer because now even with going through and creating content,

I can create content on one thing. I don't have to worry about creating content on anything else. All of my content is going to be surrounding systems and how systems can create freedom, how you can streamline your systems, how your client experience and client management, business related stuff, but still stuff that kind of relates all into systems because systems can be wide and systems can be broad.

but it allows for me to be able to give myself the space to create the content that I wanna create, but also narrow enough where I'm reaching my ideal client. And so if you're feeling stuck in your business, you may feel like, okay, I don't wanna necessarily go through and niche down. You don't have to niche down if you don't want to. But maybe just think about your offers. If you're maybe offering too much, because it's kind of like the saying that goes

when you confuse, you lose. That's what it is. So if people, go and they look at your website, they go to your service and they look at your services. And if they're confused and they don't realize where they fall in or how you can go through and help them, then you're going to lose the lead. They're going to just bounce off to someone who they know can actually go through and help them.

I want you to understand this too, as I'm going through and I'm sharing this is that everything that you can do as far as your business, I feel like everything can work. Everything can work. It's really just about having

the right strategy in place for your business and being sure that you are doing what works best for you. Because the things that I said even in this episode is these are things over time I found that didn't work for me. These things may work for you. And so it's about going through and testing and trying what works for you. What's the magic pieces that kind of fit together that works for you, your business, your life and.

progress through your business and operate in that way. And don't be afraid to go through and make tweaks. Don't be afraid to pivot if you need to and just make it ultimately just make it work for you. Everything does work. Everything works when you put in work in your business, whether you're doing podcasting, you're doing YouTube, TikTok, it doesn't matter what you're doing that it all can work. You're doing paid ads. It all can work.

So I hope you found this podcast episode helpful. Please go ahead and give me a like, a share, a follow and I will see you back in the next episode. And just let me know too in the comments or send me a text if you're listening on the podcast, what is one thing that you've done in your business that has kept you broke or you felt like hasn't actually grown your business either. So we can kind of.

talk about a little bit more inside the comments, but I will see you in the next episode.