From Burned Out and Undercharging to a Fully Booked Design Firm: Amy's Story

Let me tell you about Amy, a designer who had everything on paper – a full calendar, a growing reputation, a team – but was miserable at times. She wasn’t struggling to get clients, she was drowning in them. She was exhausted, irritable in ways she didn’t recognize in herself, and quietly starting to wonder if running a business was even worth it anymore.

Amy has been in my world for several years, starting as a Profit Insiders Academy member. What transpired in those years wasn’t just business growth – it was a full transformation in how she priced her work, chose her clients, and built a business that actually works for her life instead of against it.

I talk to designers every week who are exactly where Amy was – talented, hardworking, and completely spent – convinced that being busy means things are going well. But just because things are going fast doesn’t mean they’re going in the right direction. Here’s what changed for Amy (and what can change for you, too).

She Was Maxed Out and Still Not Making Real Money

When Amy first came to me, she had a nine-year business, a junior designer on staff, and more client projects than she could manage. By any outside measure, she looked successful.

Her hourly rate was just over $100 and she was selling blocks of hours – ten here, thirty there – watching clients burn through them in an endless back-and-forth. She’d take on a project, get deep into it, and realize she’d already worked past the hours she’d sold. Then she’d absorb the time, because that’s what you do when you care about your clients and your reputation.

The result? A $300,000 revenue year that still felt like she was running on empty. Jobs that looked profitable on paper – but weren’t when she did the math. Pricing projects confidently, especially complex ones with multiple phases, felt like guesswork every single time.

Part of what we worked on was how Amy thought about her pricing – not just the number on the invoice, but the structure underneath. What were her actual hours going to be? Was she even tracking her time? What was her markup? Where was the profit margin disappearing?

The KEY™ Pricing Tool became a game-changer for her, because it took the guesswork out of the equation entirely:

“I just listened to the entire KEY™ video and this is brilliant and so user friendly. I honestly have racked my brain trying to figure out how in the world I could get the remodel numbers to clients before beginning.”

But the pricing shift wasn’t just about the tool. It was about believing she was worth charging more. Here’s what I told her, and what I’ll tell you: The designers who raise their rates don’t just make more money; they attract better clients.

As of the last update I got from Amy, her hourly rate had doubled, she started making a profit from all her furniture, lighting, plumbing and every item inside her remodels. She had a full pipeline and bigger accounts than she’d ever had. That’s not an accident. It’s what happens when you stop underpricing yourself and start building real profitability into every single job.

She Learned to Say No – and Mean It

Here’s the thing about being a great designer who is also afraid to stand up for herself and say no; it will bury you.

Amy is a “textbook first-born fixer” – her words, not mine – said with the self-awareness of someone who’s done a lot of authentic work on herself. She wanted to make everything right for her clients, her employees, and her family. She was the person everyone counted on, and she wore it as a badge of honor even as it ground her down.

In our earlier sessions, she was dealing with a nightmare client situation – a contractor who’d gone MIA, a wine cellar job with $5,000 worth of problems, and a client who’d screamed at her on the phone and was threatening legal action. She’d lost money on the job. She was furious, and she still felt responsible for fixing it all.

We worked through the immediate situation – how to make it right professionally, how to communicate with the client, and how to draw a line and walk away with her integrity intact. But the bigger conversation was about what let her get there in the first place:

– Saying yes to clients who wanted a deal
– Recommending contractors based on past reputation without current vetting
– Absorbing hours, costs, and stress that weren’t hers

Amy eventually told me she’d started saying, “If you can’t afford this, find somebody else,“ to clients who pushed for cheaper options. “I’m not going to be responsible for subpar work.” That’s a complete mindset shift. And it didn’t happen overnight.

Amy learned to identify her red flags early – clients who questioned every decision, who wanted a deal from the first conversation, who brought a “how much can I get for the least amount of money” attitude into the project. Those were the projects that ate time, crushed margins, and sent her home angry.

The clients who said “just do it, I trust you” were the ones worth building her business around.

She also had to learn this with employees. Amy struggled with being the “bad guy” when it came to letting employees go who weren’t a good fit. I helped her understand that real kindness is letting someone go find the job that’s actually right for them.

Once she made this shift, everything changed. The team she built after that – people who showed up, ready to run, and didn’t need hand-holding – were the ones who helped her business actually grow.

Recently, Amy shared with me that she was conducting formal performance reviews, setting clear expectations with her staff, and holding people accountable in ways she’d never done before. She had a senior designer running projects. She had a COO managing operations. She was the CEO, not the fixer.

That’s what boundaries look like in practice.

She Built a Business That Could Grow Without Her

This is the part I love most about Amy’s story, because it’s where everything comes together.

When she first found me, Amy was the business. Every decision, every client call, every contractor issue, every presentation – it all ran through her. She had employees, but they couldn’t operate independently – they needed her approval on everything. She was the bottleneck of her own company.

I hear this constantly from designers. They hire a junior designer and think, great, now I have help. Then six months later they’re still answering every question, checking every drawing, standing on-site for every installation, and wondering why they’re not any less busy.

The problem isn’t the employee. It’s the system – or the lack of one.

What Amy and I worked on through coaching was building the infrastructure that lets a business run without the owner’s hands in everything. Standard Operating Procedures, aka, SOPs. Clear roles. Job descriptions that actually match the tasks. Accountability systems. A pipeline that didn’t depend on Amy personally going out and selling every single job.

“I just need somebody holding the strings of all the balloons so I can be sent out,“ she told me. She knew exactly what the vision was. Getting there required building the systems first.

She moved from selling small blocks of hours to building toward a hybrid fee structure of flat-fees and hourly engagements. She restructured her team so that her senior designer ran projects and she reviewed them. She let her COO manage operations. She moved out of a shared office into her own space with a door – and immediately felt the difference.

“The first three years I didn’t have a door,“ she told me. “I’d have to go sit in my car if I wanted a private phone call. Now I’m spending the same amount but I can breathe.“

That’s not a small thing. Your physical environment reflects how seriously you take yourself as a CEO. And taking herself seriously as a CEO was the biggest shift Amy made.

By the end of 2025, she had become a 7-figure studio, and signed a five-year commercial lease in one of the best areas in her market. She had a full, performing team. She had a pipeline she was proud of. And she had space – real mental and scheduling space – to start thinking about what’s next.

For Amy, “what’s next” is speaking. She’s always known she was meant to be on a stage. She spoke at one of my events years ago, and something clicked on in her that she hadn’t felt in a long time. She’s now booking keynote appearances, building toward a podcast, and thinking about how to turn her decade of hard-won business experience into something she can share with other women.

That future only exists because she built a business that doesn’t need her in every room at every moment. And she’s still going.

“It has been amazing coaching with Nancy! I am so happy I did this… it’s been incredible how much I’ve learned and how much she’s helped me!”

What Amy's Story Means for You

Here’s what I want you to take from this.

Amy didn’t walk into my world already having it figured out. She walked in exhausted, underpaid for her skill level, dealing with nightmare clients and a problem employee she couldn’t bring herself to let go of. She was a nine-year veteran who had built a business that worked against her.

What changed was not one big moment. It was the accumulation of coaching calls, accountability, honest conversations, and having someone in her corner who knew her business well enough to tell her the truth.

– She raised her prices – and her calendar didn’t empty out. It got better.
– She started saying no to the wrong clients – and the right ones showed up.
– She built systems and a team – and got her time back.

That’s what Profit Insiders Academy is designed to do for you.

Over the course of a year, you get twenty group coaching calls, a 45-minute 1:1 Strategy Session, two 15-minute 1:1 Quick Win Strategy Sessions, real-time Voxer access to me and my co-coach Lesley Myrick, professional audits of your social media, website, and SEO, access to our full resource vault including the KEY™ Pricing Tool, templates, scripts, and so much more – plus a private community of designers who are in it with you.

It’s a small-ish group coaching experience designed to change how you run your business, for good. We keep it smaller intentionally so that every member gets real attention and real results.

If you’re ready to stop being the bottleneck of your own business and you want the pricing strategy, the client standards, and the systems that let you actually build a business you’re proud of – here’s how to get started:

Book a free 15-minute Clarity Call with me.

We’ll discuss where you are right now in your business. I’ll give you a little strategy you can start using immediately, along with my honest recommendations for what your next steps should be. No pressure, no pitch. Just a real look at your business and what it actually needs.

FAQs

1. Is Profit Insiders Academy only for designers who are struggling?

Not at all. Amy wasn’t struggling when she found us. She was fully booked. The problem was that her business was working against her instead of for her. Profit Insiders Academy is for designers who are ready to grow smarter, whether that means fixing a pricing problem, building better systems, attracting better clients, or finally getting out of the day-to-day grind.

2. How long does it take to see results in Profit Insiders Academy?

That depends on where you’re starting and how you implement. Some designers see shifts quickly: a pricing change, a better client conversation, a boundary they finally held. The deeper transformation Amy experienced happened over time, through consistent coaching, accountability, and doing the work in Profit Insiders Academy.

3. Is Profit Insiders Academy a good fit if I'm a solo designer with no team?

Absolutely. Many designers come into Profit Insiders Academy as a one-person show. The goal isn’t to tell you to hire people – it’s to help you build a business model that’s sustainable for where you are right now and scalable for where you want to go.

4. I've invested in coaching before and it didn't stick. What makes Profit Insiders Academy different?

Most programs hand you information and send you on your way. Profit Insiders Academy is built around accountability, community, and real-time access to coaching when you actually need it – not just on scheduled call days. Voxer access, 1:1 strategy sessions, group calls, professional audits – all designed to meet you where you are and keep you moving forward.

5. How do I know if Profit Insiders Academy is the right fit for me?

That’s exactly what the Coaching Fit Quiz is for. I personally review your answers and follow up with honest feedback on what I think your business needs – whether Profit Insiders Academy is the right next step for you or not.