I recently set one of my biggest goals for the next 12 months. And yes, that kind of thing is usually reserved for January 1st, but why wait? There’s no rule stopping us from setting an annual goal on a random day in October 😅
The goal is simple: double revenue from my care plan clients over the next year.
Simple… but probably not easy.
The obvious move is to double their rate. But I don’t think I’m in a position to make that kind of jump, and the clients I’d lose would probably offset whatever gains I made.
My average care plan is $100/mo. Finding another $100/mo add-on that every client would sign up for? Also pretty unlikely.
So, I had to think about it differently. That’s what I really like about bigger, scarier goals. The obvious answers probably won’t work… So you’re forced to think a little further outside the box than you typically would.
But it occurred to me that $100/mo is just $1,200 a year. Getting each client (on average) to spend an extra $1,200 over the course of a year (or $300 each quarter) feels a lot more doable, doesn’t it? It doesn’t have to all come in one big chunk, and it doesn’t have to be another subscription.
This, for me, was a huge unlock.
It caused me (and my friend Claude) to start digging. I went through client sites (front-end and back-end), Search Console, analytics, and old email threads making a list of any and every opportunity I could come up with.
Things like AEO/GEO audits, accessibility scans & remediation, content strategy, feature upgrades, and a few rebuilds that are long overdue.
Reaching out to my clients about these ideas was pretty low-key. Just starting a conversation and bringing some concerns or ideas to their attention.
Most clients said no. Not in the violent, explosive way we fear will happen 😅 No one threw a fit and fired me… They said things like “Thanks, but we’re not interested right now”, which is totally fair.
But some clients… some of them were open to the idea. A site rebuild, a AI visibility audit, a handful of AI-readiness scans, accessibility remediation, and feature upgrades.
Between the work I’ve already closed and the projects clients have expressed interest in, I’ve uncovered around $22,000 in potential revenue. And I still have another $30K worth of ideas I haven’t even reached out about yet.
Not all of that will turn into revenue, of course, but none of it would’ve existed if I’d just sat around waiting for clients to ask for it. And it puts me much closer to my goal.
I started this exercise thinking about how I could make more money from my existing clients. But what I really spent all my time doing was figuring out more ways I could help them.
Those are not mutually exclusive ideas.
I think we’ve all told ourselves that our clients are happiest when we leave them alone. That pitching them on additional work will bother them.
But our clients hired us because we know things they don’t. We see problems they might miss and opportunities they don’t even know to look for.
Of course, not every idea is going to interest them. That’s fine.
But if we’re sitting on ideas that could genuinely help our clients and keeping them to ourselves because we’re afraid to “sound salesy”, who are we really trying to protect?
