"You can’t call yourself luxury but price yourself at a Kia rate."

She said it like it had been sitting inside her for years just waiting for permission to come out. And maybe it had.

Kim had spent almost twenty years building a luxury interior design firm on word of mouth, almost at seven figures yet barely profitable, and pricing her work based on what she thought she could get away with charging rather than what her business actually required. We had done the deep money story work in the Manifest phase of my Manifest. Manage. Multiply. framework, uncovering the beliefs and stories that had been quietly shaping her pricing and keeping her exactly where she was. And now she was finally able to see her business with the clarity it deserved, sitting down with her numbers and letting them tell her the truth for the very first time.

The problem was not that Kim lacked talent or clients or reputation. The problem was that she had been pricing her work with one eye on what she thought the client would accept rather than what her business actually needed to generate in order to be profitable. She was making pricing decisions based on what she believed her clients would say yes to, and those beliefs were coming from her own internal stories, not from her numbers, not from her market, and certainly not from the clients themselves who were already saying yes without flinching.

When we built Kim’s Signature Profit Plan together and she saw her numbers laid out clearly for the first time, something shifted that no amount of hard work or hustle had ever been able to move. She could see exactly why she was not profitable. She could see exactly where the revenue was going and what was not coming back. And for the first time she could see what her pricing needed to look like in order to build the business she actually wanted.

This is the Manage phase of Manifest. Manage. Multiply. Profitability becomes intentional not accidental. And it starts with seeing the full picture clearly for the very first time.

When Kim saw her Signature Profit Plan for the first time she went quiet. And I have learned after years of doing this work that quiet is where the real shift happens. Not in the conversation. In the moment after it, when a woman is sitting with something she has never been able to see clearly before.

Then she said something that I hear often in that moment and never get tired of hearing.

"When you put pen to paper it is just amazing."

That is what I love most about the Signature Profit Plan. It is one page. Black and white. Simple and clear and yet so profoundly powerful for the women I work with when they finally see it laid out in front of them for the first time. It is one of the biggest aha moments I get to witness in my work. And it never gets old.

If I am being honest it is a toss up between this moment and the moment in the Manifest phase when a woman first sees the money story that has been quietly running her life and her business. Both are profound in their own way. And neither works without the other. You cannot build a Signature Profit Plan that truly lands until the story underneath the numbers has been heard. And the story work alone means nothing until you can see the evidence of it right there in black and white in front of you.

Because for almost twenty years Kim had been carrying her business in her head, working from scraps of paper and mental calculations, making gut decisions about what to charge and holding onto quiet hopes that it would all work out. And now for the first time everything was right there in front of her. What her business actually cost to run. What it needed to generate to be profitable. What her pricing had to look like to get there. And what she needed to finally pay herself what she was actually worth.

And that is when she saw it. The disconnect between the luxury brand she had spent twenty years building and the prices she had been quietly apologizing for her entire career.

"You can’t call yourself luxury but price yourself at a Kia rate."

She did not need me to tell her that. The Signature Profit Plan told her. I just gave her the space to finally see it.

From that moment everything about how Kim approached her pricing changed. Together we built what I call a flat fee hybrid model, designed specifically to support both her genius and the very real potential for scope creep that comes with the kind of complex, long term luxury projects she takes on. A design fee for the creative phases, a monthly project management retainer during construction so she had predictable recurring revenue coming in every single month, and markup rates that reflected the value of what she was delivering rather than what she was afraid to ask for.

For the first time in almost twenty years her pricing was not built around what she hoped her clients would say yes to. It was built around what her business required in order to grow, to be profitable, and to finally pay her what she deserved.

And her clients did not flinch, because luxury clients never flinch. They had been waiting for her to charge what she was worth the entire time.

The business that had been barely profitable began to turn. The following year revenue grew from just under $1 million to $1.7 million and this year she is on track for multi-million dollar revenue. And her profit soared by over 1000%, and no that is not a typo.

And this is what my work actually does. It does not just give you a one time increase in revenue and profit. It gives you something far more valuable than that. It gives you the clarity and the tools to finally understand how to build a business that supports you rather than drains you. And once you have that, everything changes.

Kim had a CPA and a bookkeeper for almost twenty years. She was not ignoring her finances. She was not careless or irresponsible or unaware that the numbers mattered. She had the professional support that most people would assume was enough.

And yet no one had ever sat down with her and built out the full picture in one place, in a way that was simple enough to actually use and powerful enough to change everything. No one had ever shown her exactly what her business needed to generate in order to be profitable, what her pricing had to look like to get there, and what she needed to pay herself in order to build something that was actually sustainable.

That is what the Signature Profit Plan does. And that is what your CPA and your bookkeeper were never designed to do. Your CPA manages hundreds of clients and focuses on taxes. Your bookkeeper is excellent at data entry but often does not have the education or financial acumen to go deeper than that. Neither of them is sitting across from you asking what you want your business to look like and building the roadmap to get you there.

That is a different conversation entirely. And it is the one that changes everything.

And you do not have to wait until you are barely profitable and seriously considering shutting your business down to have this conversation. Kim’s return on investment was extraordinary, so extraordinary that maybe I should start charging based on ROI instead. But in all seriousness, if you have a multi-six figure business and you do not have a CFO level partner on your team helping you understand the financial information in your business, you are stunting its growth. Every single client I work with sees a real return on this investment, without exception. That is where I am different. The ROI is real and I will show you.

If you read this and found yourself wondering what your own Signature Profit Plan would reveal, that curiosity is worth following.

A complimentary 20 minute Financial Clarity Session is the place to start. You can schedule yours at AudreyFaust.as.me/FinancialClarity.

Stay tuned for next week’s newsletter because what happened next in Kim’s journey is completely counterintuitive to what most people think will grow their business. And I think it is going to surprise you.

Choose to Be Financially Powerful.

Audrey Faust, MBA is a CFO strategist and Certified NeuroCoach who works with women business owners at multi-six to seven figures and above. She is the only CFO strategist who works with financially phobic women business owners, creating the clarity, confidence, and profitability that turns them into financially powerful CEOs.