A group conversations at Summercamp 2023

Does this sound familiar?

You want to grow your business and increase your impact.
So you create more offers.

A community, a program, a course.
Or broaden what you do or who you appeal to.
Or squeeze in more 1-to-1 clients.

And then comes the burnout.

You end up pushing through your exhaustion to keep every plate spinning and never feel like you're truly “off” work.

You're at full capacity when someone mentions the idea of running a program.

But you immediately worry.

“People only get value from me if I give them my full personal attention.”
“If I scale, I’ll lose the intimacy and depth I love.”
“I’m not ready / big enough / clear enough to run a group.”

Because surely scaling means

Becoming less personal and more corporate
Losing the intimate connections that make your work meaningful
Having to promote even more aggressively to reach more people
Sacrificing the depth that your clients love about working with you

So you stay small.

You keep doing one-to-one work or small workshops, telling yourself that at least this way you can give people proper attention.

But deep down, you know you're limiting your impact and burning yourself out trying to serve everyone individually.

What if there was a completely different way?

When everything felt too much

One of our amazing Summercamp workshop leaders, Gemma Gilbert, knows this struggle intimately.

As a business coach who cares deeply about her clients' results, she'd built what looked like a successful multi-offer business.

She had one-to-one clients, a membership, multiple group programs of different lengths, and was having £20-30k months. From the outside, everything looked perfect.

But Gemma was miserable.

As an introvert, the back-to-back client sessions left her completely drained. She was constantly launching something to keep all her different offerings filled.

Her marketing messages were all over the place because she was trying to speak to so many different ideal clients.

She was making good money but was on a fast route to burnout.

She valued simplicity and time freedom, but her multi-offer business wasn't giving her either.

The turning point came when she realised she was trapped in exactly the kind of always-busy, always-stressed, always-scrambling business she'd never wanted to create.

The counter-intuitive solution

Here's what Gemma discovered: the secret to scaling with soul isn't adding more offers or reaching more people.

It's the opposite.

She made a radical decision. She closed down her membership (cutting £10k in monthly revenue) and simplified her entire business around one core offering: a group program that new people could join any time.

Instead of running programs in fixed start-and-stop cycles, she created what's called an “always-open” or evergreen group program. New people can join each month rather than having to wait for the next big launch.

The results were transformative:

She now works just 3-5 hours per week on client delivery
She serves her clients more deeply than ever before
She takes one week off every month and the entire month of August
Her income stayed consistent at £20-30k per month
She became known as the go-to person for one specific thing

But here's the most important part: her clients get better results.

When you focus all your energy on perfecting one offering instead of juggling five, everyone wins.

And the beauty of an always-open group program is that it solves the problems that keep most of us stuck:

No more launch pressure. Instead of needing 15-20 people to sign up at once, you just need 2-5 new people each month. Much less pressure, much more achievable.

No more scattered marketing. You become known for solving one specific problem really well, so people start referring you naturally.

No more reinventing the wheel. You create your curriculum once and refine it over time, instead of constantly creating new content.

More intimacy, not less. Working with smaller groups (8-12 people) actually allows for deeper relationships than trying to serve hundreds in a membership or dozens of one-to-one clients.

And your marketing becomes easier because you know exactly who you're talking to.

By making this change, Gemma is able to take her son to school every day, walk her dog, go to the gym, and have time for unexpected collaborations and creative projects.

This isn't about working less and earning less.

It's about working differently - focusing your energy on the things that create the biggest impact for both you and your clients.

When you stop chasing every possible client and start serving the right clients deeply, everything shifts.

Your marketing becomes easier because you know exactly who you're talking to
Your content creation becomes simpler because you're building expertise in one area
Your confidence grows because you start getting known for your particular genius

Starting where you are

Don’t worry, you don't need to blow up your entire business tomorrow. But you might want to ask yourself:

What's the one transformation you help people with most effectively?
How could you serve a small group of people working on that same challenge together?
What would it feel like to focus all your marketing energy on talking about one thing you're brilliant at?

The goal isn't to reach everyone. It's to reach the right people and serve them so well that they become your biggest advocates.

If this resonates with you, come and meet Gemma.

She'll be exploring how to scale with soul at our Tribe Tipi at Summercamp this September; it’s the perfect opportunity to hear more about her story and to ask her questions.

Sometimes the most profitable path forward is the one that honours both your energy and your impact.