Three years ago, I was a multi-seven-figure business coach who couldn’t tell you what I was actually known for. Like, I had a program. I had clients. I had an audience that knew me. But if you’d asked any of those people in one sentence what I actually did, you would’ve gotten ten different answers. […]
How to Use Your Distinctive Edge to Scale: 5 Steps to $300K+ in Sales
Three years ago, I was a multi-seven-figure business coach who couldn’t tell you what I was actually known for.
Like, I had a program. I had clients. I had an audience that knew me. But if you’d asked any of those people in one sentence what I actually did, you would’ve gotten ten different answers. And not in a “I’m a multi-passionate creator” way. In a “she helps with… everything, I guess?” way.
That’s because I’d quietly become a basic business coach.
Helping with mindset, helping with offers, helping with social, helping with launches, helping with whatever was in front of me that week. Trying to be everything to everyone and ending up known for nothing in particular.
When I restarted my coaching program last year (twin boys, post-postpartum body, rebuilding the whole business from the ground up while solo-parenting two-year-olds half the time), I refused to do it that way again. Not because I had some grand strategic plan. Because I knew I’d resent my business in six months if I kept saying yes to coaching everyone on everything.
So I sat down and I asked myself one question: What do I actually want this program to be synonymous with?
That single question rebuilt my business.
Almost $300,000 in sales since I restarted. Forty-plus clients. A co-coach. An AI bot. A retreat where every single client I invited was able to come (which has never happened to me before in fourteen years of running programs).
These are the five steps that got me here. Steal them.
1. Find Your Distinctive Edge or Stay Forgettable
This is where most coaches get stuck. They want to scale, but the thing they’re trying to scale is some general “I help women in business” pitch that’s interchangeable with thirty other people in their niche.
You can’t scale forgettable. You scale distinct.
When I sat down to restart, I asked myself: what could I talk about all day, every day, for the rest of my life and still feel lit up about? If someone called me right now and said, “We need a keynote on this topic in 48 hours,” what topic would I say yes to immediately?
For me, the answer was helping coaches find their distinctive edge. That was my thing. I’d built quizzes around it years ago. I’d spoken on podcasts about it. And then I’d quietly walked away from it because it felt “too niche” and I wanted people to know I could help with everything.
Big mistake. Huge.
Here’s the trifecta I use with my clients now to find their edge:
Your story
Go back. Like, really back. What experiences shaped how you approach this work? What thread runs through your life that other people in your niche don’t have? That’s not your bio, that’s your edge in raw form.
Your process
What are the actual steps you walk a client through to get them to their result? Most coaches have never written this down, and when we do it together, the answer is almost always: “Wait, what I do in step one is really different from how everyone else does it.” That’s gold.
Your client (in their words)
What are they actually asking for? Not what you wish they were asking for. The real, on-the-ground problem they’re paying to solve. You start with you, but you build the offer with them in mind.
A few examples from my actual clients so you can see how this lands:
- Brittany Herzberg’s edge is simplifying SEO strategy. She helps business owners actually get found on Google without needing to live on social.
- Kayla’s edge is identity-led fat loss, helping moms who got lost in motherhood become “the baddie” version of themselves, fully, not just physically.
- Mistelle helps American moms move abroad without already having a job offer or $20K saved. Story plus process plus client objection, all baked into one line.
That’s what an edge looks like. 😎
2. Sell It Behind the Scenes Before You Touch Public Launch
I see coaches launch a brand new program to a cold audience all the time and then panic when no one buys. There’s a smarter order.
My first cohort of the rebuilt program was the lowest price it will ever be. High touch, very hands-on, basically a working VIP experience for everyone who joined. I sold it almost entirely behind the scenes: past clients, referrals, a few light DM conversations with people who’d been around my work for years.
Why? Because I needed the framework to get tested by real humans before I tried to make it look polished for a public launch. I needed to find the holes. I needed to see which exercises landed and which fell flat. I needed real testimonials, not promises.
Then I did another semi-private round. Then I did the public launch with the framework already battle-tested.
Most coaches want to skip steps one and two and go straight to public launch. That’s how you end up with a program full of pretty branding and a framework that doesn’t actually deliver the result yet.
3. Make Your Framework the Star (Not You)
This was the biggest lightbulb of my last year, and I’ve been running programs since 2017.
Your client is the hero. You are the guide. But your framework? Your framework is the star.
When I run a launch event now, I structure the days around showing people exactly why each phase of my framework solves a specific gap they have right now. Not “look at me, I’m so qualified.” Not “here’s what’s possible if we work together.”
- Phase one shows them what they’re missing on story.
- Phase two shows them what they’re missing on framework.
- Phase three shows them what they’re missing on offer.
By day three, they’re not buying me, they’re buying the process.
Here’s why this matters for scaling:
When people just want you, you become the bottleneck. Every conversation is personal, every result feels like it lives or dies on your involvement, and you can’t grow without burning out. When people want your process, you can put the process into curriculum, into a co-coach, into an AI bot, into systems, and the result still gets delivered.
It also makes editing easier. If something isn’t clicking, it’s not you, it’s a tweak in the framework. That separation is everything.
Want the strategy guide that walks you through this whole arc?
If you’re somewhere on the path to consistent $10K months and you can feel that something in your positioning is fuzzy, grab The 10K Month Strategy Guide. It’s the same framework I use with my own clients to map out exactly what their offer should be doing, who it should be for, and what they need to fix on the back end before they pour energy into more lead gen.
4. Systematize Before the Influx, Not After
This is the step that almost no one talks about and the one that quietly determines whether you actually get to scale or whether you white-knuckle through one good launch and then collapse.
Before this current chapter of my business, I knew I couldn’t operate the way I used to. Not with two toddlers at home. Not with a 30-hour work week as my non-negotiable.
So I did something that felt counterintuitive: I built the back end before I needed it.
- I hired a co-coach before I needed her.
- I had a systems person come in and clean up the entire delivery flow.
- I had an AI bot built into the program so clients can ask “where do I find the lesson on domino belief?” and it just tells them.
- I built homework templates and example videos for the things I was repeating myself on in calls.
All of that took a real investment of time and money before I had the revenue to “justify” it on a spreadsheet.
But here’s the thing…
The first round of any program is going to feel hands-on and chaotic. That’s normal. That’s the round where you find what to systematize. The mistake is staying in that mode forever. The mistake is waiting for the influx to systematize, because by then you’re already drowning, your clients are getting a worse experience, and you’re the reason your own program can’t grow.
We can now hold space for 40 to 50 clients in the program and I’m not spending meaningfully more time on it than I was with eight people. That’s not a flex, that’s the math of having actually done the systems work.
If you want to scale, sometimes the move is to take a month, not sign new people, and just build the back end out. I know that feels backwards. Do it anyway.
5. Onboarding Is the Quiet Lever Most Coaches Miss
Right around the time I switched my program to evergreen, I spent an entire weekend (every spare minute over two days, probably eight hours total) just on the onboarding flow.
- What email do they get the second they sign up?
- What gets them into the portal? What’s their first action? Their second?
- Are the next steps clear if it’s evergreen versus a launch cohort?
- Where do they ask questions?
- Where do they go for tech help?
- What’s the cadence of how they hear from me?
We had one week of coaching with the new evergreen clients before this feedback started rolling in:
“I have never taken so much action in a program before.”
“I’ve never felt so clear.”
“I’m so happy I joined. This is exactly what I needed.”
We didn’t even ask for feedback. It came unprompted, in week one, before we’d done anything fancy. That’s onboarding doing the work.
Better onboarding means better action means better results means better testimonials means more referrals. It’s the quietest growth lever in a coaching business and almost no one prioritizes it.
While you’re in here, build a tracking system too. I review the same staple things with every client (their story, their framework, their bio, their domino belief, their offer), so I know exactly who’s behind and where to nudge. If a client goes quiet for two weeks, I message them. Slack, Instagram, sometimes email. Just a “hey, noticed you’ve been quiet, what do you need?” People are floored every time. That tiny touch keeps the program from leaking.
6. Then, and Only Then, Ramp Up Lead Gen
Once your edge is locked, your framework is tested, your back end can hold the weight, and your onboarding is delivering action in week one, that’s when you pour gasoline on the fire.
Four buckets I look at:
- Organic short form (Instagram, TikTok).
- Long form (podcast, YouTube, SEO blog).
- Email.
- Other people’s audiences (collaborations, summits, podcast guesting, bundles).
- And then paid ads on top — if it’s the right time.
The hack inside the hack is repurposing. This podcast episode you’re reading the blog version of right now? It’s an example. One anchor piece of content (the podcast) becomes a blog post for SEO, becomes an email, becomes one or two Reels, becomes a section in my paid newsletter.
I’m not creating five different things, I’m milking one thing five different ways.
But the lever I’ve been leaning into hardest this year is other people’s audiences (OPAs). Roughly half of my clients now come from OPAs: collaborations, summits, podcast guesting, bundles. The clients who come in through OPAs are pre-vetted by someone they already trust, so the conversion is faster and the relationship starts warmer. And it doesn’t require me to be on social all day to make it work.
The whole reason this lead gen step is not step 1 is because none of these levers work very well if your edge is fuzzy.
Once your edge is sharp, every podcast pitch, every guest spot, every freebie, every reel hook just snaps into place. Nine times out of ten when I’m on a podcast, I’m talking about story or framework, the same two signature talks. That’s it. That’s what I’m known for, that’s what I get invited on for, and that’s what funnels back to my offers.
Frequently Asked Questions About Sustainably Scaling a Coaching Program
How long does it actually take to scale a coaching program from scratch?
In my case, going from a restart to almost $300K in sales took about a year, with the framework, systems, onboarding, and lead gen all built in that window. Yours will move faster or slower depending on whether you already have an audience, an edge, and a tested framework. The biggest accelerator is clarity on your edge. The biggest delay is staying a generalist.
Do I need to have a big audience to scale a coaching program?
No. I scaled most of this with an audience smaller than people assume, and roughly half my clients come from other people’s audiences (collaborations, summits, podcast guesting). A clear edge plus a tested framework plus OPAs will outperform a big audience with fuzzy positioning every time.
Should I scale through a group program or one-on-one?
You can scale either. One-on-one scales to a ceiling fast (your time), so most coaches eventually move to group, hybrid, or evergreen. The order I’d do it in: prove the framework one-on-one or in a small high-touch cohort, systematize the lessons into curriculum, then scale into a group container with onboarding and team support behind it.
What if I don’t know what my edge is yet?
Start with your story (what shaped you), your process (what you actually do step by step with clients), and your client (what they’re paying to solve, in their words). The intersection of those three is your edge. If that still feels foggy, that’s exactly what The Distinctive Edge program is built to walk you through.
It’s Time You Become the Only Obvious Choice in Your Market
If reading all of this made you feel a little exposed about how interchangeable your messaging currently is, that’s the work to do.
The Distinctive Edge is the program where I walk coaches through the exact process behind everything in this post:
- finding your distinctive edge
- building your framework
- locking your messaging
- turning all of it into a program clients pay for and refer
It’s the same process that took me from “basic business coach” back to being known for one specific thing.
It’s the program my mastermind clients have used to rebuild their entire offers around a single distinctive line. And it’s the program built for the season I’m in right now: rebuilding to $100K cash months at 30 hours a week with twin toddlers at home.
If that’s the season you’re in too, this is your next step:
