If you’re frustrated that your business results don’t match the goals you’ve set, it might be time to look at the choices you’re making along the way. In this episode of The Real Truth About Business podcast, I’m breaking down one of the most important principles in business strategy: you get to choose how you run your business, but you also have to accept the trade-offs that come with those choices. You can choose your pricing strategy, how much you work, whether you build a team, how you market, and how aggressively you pursue revenue growth. But you can’t make one choice while expecting results that require a completely different one. After 9 years of experience working with service-based entrepreneurs, I’ve seen how quickly this disconnect creates frustration and revenue plateaus. The goal isn’t to make the “right” choice. It’s to understand the reality of your choice, build the strategy around it, and own the results that come with it.

What You'll Learn:

• How to recognize when your expectations don't match the business choices you've made
• Why every pricing strategy comes with trade-offs around volume, capacity, and profit
• How to build a business strategy around the lifestyle you actually want
• Why choosing to market less can create a less predictable pipeline
• How staying a solopreneur impacts capacity and revenue growth
• The one question to ask before making any major business decision

Episode Highlights:

[00:00] Introduction: Everything in business is a choice

[02:00] Why there really aren't many rules in business

[03:00] Pricing for profit and what happens when you choose not to raise your prices

[05:30] When your pricing choices don't support your revenue goals

[07:30] Building a business strategy around the lifestyle you actually want

[10:00] The question to ask: If I choose this, what else am I choosing?

[12:00] Choosing not to market consistently and accepting a less predictable pipeline

[13:30] Staying a solopreneur and navigating capacity constraints

[15:00] Making a choice, owning it, and building the strategy around it

[16:30] Wrap-up: The three takeaways for making better CEO decisions

Key Takeaways:

You Get to Make the Choice, But You Don't Get to Skip the Trade-Off

One of the greatest things about owning a business is that almost everything is a choice.

You can choose what you charge. You can choose how many hours you work. You can choose whether you grow, scale, hire employees, stay a solopreneur, post every day, or completely rethink your business model.

There really aren't that many rules.

But here's the part we don't talk about enough: you don't get to make a choice and then opt out of what comes with it.

Every yes has a trade-off. Every no potentially closes a door. The problem isn't necessarily that you're making the wrong choice. The problem is when you're expecting a result that doesn't align with the choice you made.

If You Choose the Price, You're Also Choosing the Volume

I recently attended an SBDC event where we were talking about pricing for profit. Someone raised the concern that his clients would look at the numbers and say they simply couldn't raise their prices because the market wouldn't support it.

And my immediate thought was: that's their choice.

You can absolutely choose not to raise your prices.

But then you also need to understand what that means for your revenue, profitability, capacity, and workload.

If you choose a lower price, you're also choosing the client volume required to reach your revenue goal. If the lower price requires more clients, that means more delivery time and potentially reaching your capacity ceiling faster.

Inside the Focused Visionary Framework, Pricing cannot exist separately from Pipeline and Sales. Every pricing decision changes what the rest of your business needs to produce.

Build the Strategy Around Your Actual Life

I have a client who told me point blank that she likes living a lazy life.

And I loved that she owned it.

It isn't my job to convince her that she needs to work harder. My job as her strategist is to ask: How do we build a business strategy around the lifestyle you actually want?

If she doesn't want a calendar full of calls, we're not going to build an offer ecosystem dependent on tons of one-to-one delivery. If she doesn't want to market everywhere, we need a simpler marketing strategy.

Maybe growth happens more slowly.

That's okay.

The disconnect happens when you say you want to work less, don't want to market, aren't interested in selling, and want to double your revenue in six months.

Depending on the business, those choices probably don't support that expectation.

Ask: If I Choose This, What Else Am I Choosing?

This is the question I want you to start asking yourself:

If I choose this, what else am I choosing?

If I choose not to raise my prices, I'm choosing the volume required at my current price.

If I choose not to market consistently, I'm choosing a less predictable pipeline.

If I choose not to build a team, I'm accepting that capacity may eventually create a ceiling.

If I choose not to use Instagram, I need to choose another way to consistently market my business.

There are two sides to every decision.

Your job as CEO is to understand both before deciding whether that choice actually supports the business you want.

There's a Strategy for Almost Every Choice

You don't want to be on Instagram?

Fine. Where do you want to market?

You don't want to sell constantly?

Okay. Could retention, recurring revenue, or repeat clients reduce the number of new sales you need?

You don't want to raise your prices?

Fine. Can you handle the volume required at your current price, or can you improve your costs and profitability somewhere else?

You want to remain a solopreneur?

Great. Then we need offers that allow you to increase revenue without continually adding more delivery hours.

This is why I always say that every strategy works, but they're not all going to work for you.

Your job isn't to follow someone else's business strategy. It's to understand your choices well enough to build the right strategy around them.

Your Expectations Have to Match Your Choices

This is where facts over emotion matters.

You can look at the numbers and decide you aren't comfortable charging the price the calculator recommends.

That's okay.

But if that lower price means the big wish-list goal you've created will take longer to achieve, you need to be willing to accept that too.

You have two options.

Change the choice.

Or change the expectation.

What doesn't work is holding tightly to both when the numbers tell you they don't coexist.

Make the Choice and Own It

There are three things I want you to take away from this episode.

First, you are the business owner. You get to make whatever choice you want.

Second, you have to be willing to accept what comes with that choice. Ask yourself, “If I choose this, what else am I choosing?”

Third, once you've made an informed choice, own it.

Don't immediately second-guess yourself because someone else is doing something different. Don't abandon the strategy because somebody got in your ear. Constantly changing your mind makes it incredibly difficult to build a predictable pipeline, market consistently, and maximize your profitability.

Make the choice. Understand the trade-off. Build the strategy around it. Then take action.

That's what it means to operate like the CEO of your business.

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Resources Mentioned

• Get your FREE Ceo Income Plan
• Book a CEO Strategy Call
• Learn more about The Missing Piece Intensive
• Learn more about The Focused Visionary Accelerator
• Download the FREE Lead and Conversion Tracker
• Subscribe to the Sunday Morning Brew Newsletter

About the Host:

Michelle DeNio is a business strategist based in Sarasota, Florida, specializing in helping service-based entrepreneurs break through revenue plateaus using her Focused Visionary Framework. With over 300 podcast episodes and 9 years running her consulting business, she helps coaches, consultants, and service providers scale sustainably through strategic planning, pricing optimization, and sales process development.

Connect with Michelle

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One of the absolute greatest things about owning a business is that everything is a choice.

And we get to make our own choices every single day, right?

You get to choose what you charge.

You can choose how much you work or don't.

You can choose whether or not you want to grow, whether or not you want to scale, whether or not you want to hire employees, stay a solopreneur, work 10 to 15 hours a week or work 40 to 60 hours a week, right?

Like, you literally get to make choices about every single thing in your business because there are very few things that you actually have to do, right?

Like literally everything is a choice.

But here is the part that is not talked about enough.

And what we need to talk about today on the show is that you don't get to make a choice and then also opt out of what comes with it, right?

Your results, your expectations have to be in alignment with the choices that you make.

Because everything has a trade off, right?

Every yes has a trade off.

Every no has potential to close the door.

And sometimes the problem isn't that you're making the wrong choice.

It's not that at all.

It's that you're expecting a result that doesn't match the choice you've made.

So I saw this play out in real time a couple times in the past few weeks.

And you know, when that happens, it lands on the show.

So here we are, let's talk about it.

If you're ready, we're diving in.

So first and foremost, I just want to like address the fact that like, there really aren't any rules in business.

We've talked about this a lot on this show, right?

Like there really aren't.

You don't have to scale your business, right?

And honestly, what's the definition of scale?

Everybody has a different definition of it, right?

That's a choice.

You don't have to raise your prices, you don't have to build a team, you don't have to post every single day, you don't have to work 40 hours, right?

Like you literally don't have to do anything.

You don't have to maximize your profit if that's not what you want.

You know, like some people, that's not important to them, right?

You are allowed to decide whatever kind of business that you want.

But once you make your choice, then we build the strategy around the reality.

So here's an example.

I went to that SBDC success summit a couple weeks ago.

Depending on when you're listening to this, it was an in person event and we were I was in one of the breakout rooms and it was all around pricing.

Pricing for profit.

I don't think that was the name of it, but they had this like pricing calculator very similar to the one I already have.

If you want it, I'm happy to send it to you.

I have two versions of it, but it was very similar to the one that I have and use an F. So that's why I went.

I was super curious about what it was, what included because it was built more for in person businesses that have overhead and different like supply costs and different things.

So I really wanted to see.

And they had supposedly built this chat bot for it.

Anyway, so they're going through their whole spiel, their whole presentation and they're showing exactly how this calculator that they developed really points out exact costs and prices and everything else, right?

And one of the guys in the audience raises his hand and he's like, well I can tell you right now that if I bring this to my clients, they're going to tell me that they can't raise their prices, that their market's not going to support it.

There's no way they can raise their prices.

They're going to get out, you know, they're going to get outbid by their competitors.

He had all these things, right?

And he's like, so what do you, what would you suggest I do to that?

And the literal first thing that came to my mind was that's a choice.

That's their choice, right?

Like literally that's their choice.

You can present them the facts on this calculator.

This is black and white spreadsheet style.

Like I literally started laughing.

I was like, what do you mean?

What, what are you supposed to do about it?

Like you are presenting facts to somebody as a business owner and literally showing them exactly how much something costs and then saying, well, they don't want to raise their prices.

And you know, okay, well if that's what they choose, they're the business owner, they get to choose that.

But what's on the other side of that is that then they have to understand why their revenue isn't growing, why their profit isn't increasing, why they're busier and not making more money, right?

Like all these things, everything has a choice that comes from with it.

I also had a client that did the same thing with my calculator inside of FEA and the price per hour that came up because the calculator basically comes up with like this break even cost, right?

And so when we look at this break even of like what your hourly rate needs to kind of average out to.

Again, I know we're not trading time for dollars, but we use it as a basis for pricing.

She kind of said to me, she goes, I don't feel comfortable with that price.

And I said, okay, that's fine.

Like, you absolutely have that choice not to feel comfortable.

And I understand it.

She had some valid reasons why I said, so we can change your pricing, but then also understand that is going to affect the revenue coming in based on.

She had some pretty big wish list items and was like, so something's got to come off or you've got to realize that that's going to take you longer to achieve because you don't want to charge the price.

That is all encompassing of everything that you are truly desiring.

Right?

And again, like, it is not my job.

It wasn't the people hosting this seminar.

It wasn't even the guy that's asking the question.

It's not our job and it's not our responsibility to try and force you to raise your prices.

Right?

That's.

That's it.

Right?

Our responsibility is to show you at this price, here's how many clients you need.

You get to choose whether or not you want to take that many clients on.

Here's how many hours is going to require you work.

Again, your choice.

Here's what your profit margin looks like.

Here's how this is going to affect what you pay yourself.

Here's the capacity that you're going to hit, the ceiling that you're going to hit.

And here's what's true.

If you want to reach the goal and then you get to choose and then we create the strategy.

Right?

Like, it's literally your choice, but you don't get to say, I don't want to raise my prices and then I still want to hit these certain goals.

Right?

This is where there's a little bit of disconnect.

And so again, this is not an episode to sit here and like, bash you for your choices by any means.

My point is make your choices and stand by them and then also make sure that your expectations, your results are in alignment with the choices that you make.

Right?

Because I just think that there's a lot of noise.

We always talk about this.

There's so much freaking noise in the online space.

And that's fine, right?

Like, it is what it is.

We're not going to escape it.

But it's like you get to make all these choices, but then chase 30k months or you get to make these choices.

But yeah, you know what I mean?

And so it's like there's just this, this like disconnect of like, oh, we get to make all these choices and we get to have all this freedom as business owners.

But then we also have all of these expectations.

And some of these expectations are just imposed expectations because of what people are saying, putting on you, whatever.

But again, if you are presented with facts, like I just said in this, this example of like, here's exactly what it looks like and you choose to make a decision that goes against the facts, well, then again, that's your decision.

But be also responsible for the results that are going to come with it.

Okay?

I had another example is I have a client who like point blank said to me, she's like, michelle, I am lazy.

Like, I am, I am lazy.

I know who I am.

I like living a lazy life.

And I loved it.

I was like, you know what?

Own that.

Like, I love that you are willing to admit that.

And she was like, it's not, this is who I am.

Like, I'm okay with it.

Like, I know who I am.

And I was like, okay, I, I'm not going to sit here.

There's.

It's not my job to talk her out of it.

It's not my responsibility.

That's a choice she made.

Right?

But what my responsibility was, is to say, okay, well, how are we going to build a business strategy around this lifestyle that you want to live?

Because again, that's part of being a business owner is we get to choose the lifestyle that we want.

Right?

And so I was like, let's do it.

But we've got to really be mindful of that.

Like, we can't sit here and build a bunch of offers that require one to one time when you don't want to have a bunch, a bunch of calls on your calendar.

Right?

Like, that's not going to work for her.

Okay.

And so again, it was taking the, the choice and saying like, maybe we're just not going to build towards aggressive growth and you're, you know, you're going to build a little bit slower just because of how much you're willing to work.

Right.

And that we need to make sure that the few offers that you have are profitable and maximize your time because she doesn't have a ton and a lot of time.

Right.

We've got to simplify out marketing because having to post a million places, be here, be there, be all the places.

That's not a reality for her.

So again, create this strategy around your reality, okay?

And just accept that it might take a little bit longer to reach your goals, right?

But the disconnect happens when somebody was like, I want to work less.

I don't want to market.

I really am not interested in selling.

I generally want to do less, but I want to double my business income in six months.

Now, I'm not saying that that can't happen.

It can depending on where you're at in your business, right?

There are seasons where we get to kind of take a step back and do less and all the things, but the most part, like, those two things do not go together, right?

Like, those two choices do not coexist, okay?

Like, that's all this.

That's all this is, right?

And that's where I come in as a strategist to say, okay, what are we actually working towards?

What are the choices that you're making?

What are the choices that you have made based on, right, the facts.

What is the desired outcome?

And then me to help you create the strategy to.

To get you there.

Okay, so if somebody is saying to me, like, I want more clients, but you're choosing not to sell, okay, well, then we've got to look at how are you going to get those clients?

Do you need to come up with a repeat client?

Do you need to come up with a monthly reoccurring revenue?

Do you need to come up with a retention strategy?

Right?

Like, what is the strategy there?

Okay, so again, I want you to really think about this and say, like, if I make this choice, what else am I choosing?

Right?

Because for every choice, there is a.

There's two sides to every choice, right?

So if I say I really like for.

I'll give you a perfect example.

I don't want to be on.

I do not want to be on Instagram.

You guys know how I feel about it.

I love being in the DMs on Instagram.

I even love hanging out on stories once in a while.

But I'm just not interested in being on Instagram fully in all the ways, right?

So if I make this choice and I say I'm not going to market myself on Instagram, what else am I choosing, right?

I've got to market myself somewhere else.

I've got to figure out how else I am going to market.

If content strategy is not going to be part of my goals, right?

And not something I want to do, that's a choice I get to make.

But then what other choice do I have to make in order to get to my goals?

Because I'm not saying I don't want to market my business on Instagram and I'm saying, but I expect clients to come from Instagram.

I'm saying I don't want to market my business on Instagram.

So that means I have to make another choice because I do still have big goals of taking on new clients.

Right.

So again, what if I make this choice?

What else am I choosing?

If you choose not to raise your price, you're also choosing the volume required at the lower price, right?

Lower, lower price, higher volume.

That's just a, that's just the two sides of that story.

When you choose not to market your business consistently, you're choosing a less predictable pipeline, which means you're going to probably ride that wave of clients.

No clients, clients, no clients.

Right?

You're going to ride that and you're going to have to be okay with the wave.

Like if you don't want to market yourself consistently, then, then that's okay.

And some people really do well with that.

That's why the launch method works really well.

That's why people do cohort based.

Right.

Because they don't want to market all the time.

So again, there literally is a strategy for every side of the choice.

You just have to make sure that both sides are in alignment with what you want.

Okay.

If you are choosing to stay solo, like I am, I really have no desire to build up a big team in my business.

I don't want to.

It's not something I want to do.

I do realize that that's going to cap my income eventually.

But I have other strategies in play to work with that.

Right.

I have fba, it's tiered levels.

So you know those, the first two tiers don't really add any time to my calendar.

So again, there's no real capacity constraint there.

I've built my offers for that.

If I continue to only do one to one or I am going to, because I want to stay solo, I am going to cap myself and have a constraint with my capacity around how many done for you clients I can take on on the profit cash side, right?

Like because I'm only one person and I don't want to outsource any.

I can outsource certain tasks, right.

But I don't want to have other team members.

I don't want you coming to me to help you manage your cash and optimize your profitability and maximize that and then give you to somebody else.

I'm not interested in that.

Right.

Like I, when you hire Me.

You get me?

That is something that's very important to me.

Okay?

Right?

Like, so again, I am choosing to stay solo, and I know that that's going to require some.

Some different strategies on my end to get to where I want to go.

Okay?

So again, like, and then when you get to that whole choice, right, then you say, yep, that's exactly what I want.

If it's not exactly what you want on both sides of it, right?

Like, if you say, I'm going to make this choice, but because of that, this is what's going to happen, and you can't say, yes, I'm good with that, then you've got to look at one or the other, right?

You either have to look at the choice you just made and figure out why you made that choice and is there any room to make a different choice?

Or you can stick with that, but you have to change your expectations.

Like, that's.

That's really just what this comes down to, is just making sure that you are living in alignment on both freaking sides, right?

And I want you to always come back to that question.

If I choose this, what else am I choosing?

All right?

And then if you're willing to live with the answer, like, make a freaking choice and own it.

Right?

That's the piece, too.

Like, that's the second side to this, is like, make your fricking choices and then own them and operate from that place, right?

But don't sit there and then second guess it.

Don't challenge it.

Don't say, but everybody else is doing this, or, I should be doing this, or what if I tried this?

Or I think, no, like, make your freaking choice, own it and then take action based on the choice that you just freaking made, right?

You are the CEO of your business.

You get to do this.

You get to make those choices.

So own them, right?

Don't sit here, make choice and outsource all the.

All the thoughts to everybody else.

Like, that's.

I see that happen all the time, too.

It's like, yeah, but I thought we made this choice.

I thought we decided this.

And then somebody's like, yeah, but so and so said this, or I was thinking about this, or I thought about, no, no, no, no, no, no.

We don't.

We don't do that, right?

We.

We make choices and we stand on them.

That's why I literally was like, when that guy asked him, was like, I'm going to present all this to my clients and they're going to tell me they can't raise their prices okay, well, then what your job is, is if I were up there leading the.

Leading the presentation, which I could have done a better job because they literally had somebody walk out.

That's a whole nother.

That's a topic for a whole nother discussion.

But I literally would have looked at him and said, well, then your job is to help them accept that choice, right?

And work the strategy around it.

If they.

Because there is some truth to that, right?

Like, there is absolutely some truth to that.

I don't know what industry he works in, but, like, if you're in, like my.

The industry my husband works in, which is painting, like it is a price game, right?

There are certain industries where it is straight up price.

Yes, quality matters.

Yes, relationships matter.

Those always, always, always matter in every business.

But there are also certain industries where price really does play a role, right?

And so if they're bidding up against big, huge jobs and they know that there's a difference of, I mean, 10 to 30 cents can make a massive difference.

Like, there is like a lot of.

There's a lot of fact behind that too.

Like, if we raise our prices, we're going to start losing jobs, okay?

But then we look at it and go, all right, but if we raise our prices, can we do less jobs making the same amount of money?

Right?

Like, that's the thing is like, okay, if you want to continue to do this, then is there a way that we can say, okay, we're okay with making less money and we're okay with taking on less clients and we're okay with losing jobs?

Or do we say, okay, we're not okay with that?

And then you got to figure out how else to make up the money, because they know they're going to lose money on that end.

So then is there.

Can you make up the money in your costs, in your labor?

Can you negotiate your cost?

Right?

Like, that's what I mean by strategy.

Like, there's a strategy for every single freaking choice out there.

You just have to stand in your choice so that you can then create the strategy.

But when you make a choice and then reneg on it and then make a choice and then decide, I don't know, and then make a choice.

You know what I mean?

It's this constant changing of our minds that depletes, you know, your profitability that makes it impossible to market, right?

These are the things when you're constantly changing your mind.

So there are three key takeaways.

Here is one, you as a business owner get to make whatever freaking choice you want.

Number two, though, is you have to own that and you have to be willing to accept what's on the other side.

So, again, if I choose this, what else am I choosing?

And then number three is, once you make that choice, own the damn thing and don't freaking change your mind because somebody else got in your ear, okay?

Make your choice, own it.

Create the actions around it.

Because as I always say, every strategy works.

They're just not all going to work for you, right?

And if you need help creating a strategy because you've made a choice and you don't want to market your business on Instagram, or you don't want to raise your price, or you do want to be lazy, like I'm your girl, I'm going to help you.

I'm going to help you create the strategy to actually grow the business, and I'm going to help you create the strategy to keep and maximize all your profits.

Right?

Those are the two things.

So make your choice and then own it.

All right?

I love you, I believe in you, and I will talk to you soon.