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Welcome to Issue 19 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about a good brand move that helped grow a small business. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.)

Hello Reader,

Lifestyle businesses are so in right now. If you’re not spending half your year on a beach while “working,” are you even an entrepreneur?

Kidding! (Kind of.)

In all seriousness: So many founders, freelancers, and fractionals aren’t just measuring success by how much money they make. The ultimate flex is how much time they get to spend on all the other things they love doing—including growing their business.

This year I’ve witnessed several friends and people in my professional network pivot their businesses to work smarter, not harder. (Myself included.)

They’ve either rebuilt from the ground up or tried a little something new—a new offer, a new target market, a new position, a new launch.

I pivoted from offering fractional content marketing services to strategy sprints, brand workshops, and a new 1:1 service for founders who want to use their stories to stand out on social.

Why?

Because I was stuck in a cycle of working in my business without any time left to work on it.

And that’s why I was so interested in profiling Carly Jefferson for this week’s issue.

A brand strategist and growth marketer for early-stage tech startups, Carly figured out a way to double her profits while working 50% less last year.

Her approach to doubling her boutique agency wasn’t a branding move or niching down—it was pivoting her business model.

Here’s how she did it.

A Good Story

Like many 20-something-year-old graduates unsure of what they want to do with the rest of their lives, Carly figured it out through the process of elimination.

Her parents told her she was good at arguing, so she started there. She studied for the LSATS and landed her first job as an assistant at a family law firm.

But after being tasked with doing the firm’s dirty work—like digging through people’s personal Instagram accounts to find evidence of cheating spouses—Carly decided family law wasn’t for her. (Fair.)

So, she tried corporate law, where she quickly learned that lawyers spend most of their free time sleeping on their desks. (Read: they have no free time.)

Not wanting that for her future either, she moved into the law firm’s marketing department, where employees seemed to have a better work-life balance.

This was her first pivot.

After a few months of learning the marketing ropes, Carly left the legal industry altogether and traded it in for the fast-moving world of early-stage tech startups.

This was her second pivot.

As she made her way up from marketing manager to head of marketing, she learned a universal truth about her new line of work:

If you don’t get your branding right, your marketing spend is a big, fat waste.

And branding, she realized, isn’t just your visual identity—it’s your positioning, your messaging, and the overall experience your customers have with your business. (Preach—it’s all about that reputation.)

She realized that so many startups—especially in the early stages—miss this critical component before jumping into tactical marketing plans and then wonder why their customers don't understand what they offer.

So, Carly teamed up with a graphic designer friend and launched a branding agency to help more businesses at that critical reputation-building early stage.

This was her third (yet not final) pivot.

After getting clear on her own branding, Carly and her partner started as most startups do—cold emailing anyone they could find.

She searched for stealth-mode startups with bad websites and reached out to say, “Do you want some branding help?” Enough said yes to get the business going.

By the end of her first year, Carly’s little agency hit six figures and started getting referral business from earlier clients.

From the outside, all looked great. But inside, she faced a common problem:

She was too busy. It was getting hard to work on the business because she was too much in it. As for time off and holidays? A pipe dream.

And because projects would drag on—sometimes taking up to 6 months to get a website live—she was cutting into profits and stifling her ability to take on new clients.

If she wanted to grow (and take a vacay) Carly needed a better way to do business.

She needed a good model.

A Good Approach

Startups, Carly realized, have to move fast and experiment quickly. It’s why she loves working with them. (This resonates.)

Essentially: they work in sprints. So why, she figured, should building a brand be any different?

Instead of working with clients on long retainers and launching websites after months of back and forth, her goal became to launch them in a week.

So, she did just that. And the result was nothing short of life-changing—for Carly and her clients.

In year two, Carly doubled her revenue while cutting her client work in half.

How?

With a 50/50 approach.

By delivering projects in a week, she was able to block out her time so that half was dedicated to client work and delivery and the rest to marketing and business development—things like attending networking events, prospecting, sales calls, and creating content.

Carly had so much extra time outside of client work that she even launched a retail side hustle. (It didn't last, but the point is that she had time to do it.) (A story for another day.)

Her secret sauce is surprisingly simple:

First, she has a clear offer ladder. Since her sprints start at $8k and go up to $25k, she needs an easy entry point for potential clients.

So, she offers a low-ticket “brand blueprint” to show customers what they’d get from her high-ticket offer by laying out the exact steps they need to position themselves for growth.

The best part?

This $500 blueprint takes 5 hours to complete, but seals the deal and convinces customers to buy the full package 90% of the time.

It’s like a lead magnet on steroids. It’s smart, too.

The formula goes like this:

Show clients what’s possible, then give them a choice: We can either complete this work for you or you can do it yourself.

The 90% close rate is possible because she’s earned her client’s trust and proven her worth—the $8k upgrade is a no-brainer.

This step also makes her expedited service possible by pre-qualifying clients. She only works with the ones ready to make fast decisions.

From there, her sprints focus on making quick, impactful choices by using a framework called Gestalt Design. In a nutshell, it emphasizes the brand as a whole rather than getting lost in minute details.

From the start, clients are given a clear roadmap: decisions are made in real-time, there’s no going back once choices are finalized, and the process builds on itself. Basically, no one leaves the room until a decision is made.

To avoid scope creep, Carly keeps clients on track by focusing on the big picture and setting tight timelines.

For indecisive clients, she provides structured options (like logo designs with distinct directions) and gently guides them toward a decision while reminding them that simplicity is key.

Carly’s approach transformed how she works—compressing what used to take months into just 2 to 4 days, all while maintaining quality and avoiding endless back-and-forth.

And there's another thing:

By working with only one client at a time in these intensives, Carly says she’s able to go deeper and give her full focus to projects.

And because she’s no longer working on long retainers, she can take time off whenever she wants.

In short: She successfully built herself a no-strings-attached business without sacrificing profits or the ability to scale. Or, as she puts it, a freedom business.

The ultimate entrepreneurial dream? I think so.

A Good Lesson

Carly’s now in year three of her business and has pivoted once again. She split from her partner (different time zone issues) and opened a new solo boutique agency.

Same business model—new name, new brand.

Even though she’s following the same playbook, Carly says she’s in the “messy middle” of figuring it out.

She’s realizing that—even though she’s an expert in this—branding a business alone is a new challenge.

Every entrepreneur I speak to struggles with the same thing—whether it’s branding, messaging, positioning, strategy, or figuring out the best next step for their business.

I remind them (and myself) that building anything is a process of discovery—whatever you’re struggling with becomes more obvious as you do it.

A Good Lesson

Carly’s success in pivoting to a sprint model highlighted a few things for me:

1. Efficiency is much more attainable when you’re focused. (Duh, right?)
2. Working in intensives with one client at a time allows you to go deeper and faster, without wasting time context switching.
3. An “entry-level” product or service could give prospects a taste of what you can do (and help you build an irresistible offer ladder).
4. Building a business that allows you to work on your business (and life) is the holy grail of owning your own thing.

Most importantly:

Whether you’re building brands, offering consulting, pushing a product, or selling services, there’s profitability in constraints.

Ultimately, less time spent hesitating or revisiting decisions means more time scaling, experimenting and growing.

The whole idea is doing less, better.

I don't know about you, but I can't hear this message enough.

I can see that beyond the wins for my business, my clients could benefit from my full focused attention.

For me, this approach might look like one client project per week, instead of juggling multiple in a day. What could it look like for you?

For Carly, pivoting to a sprint model drove more business and more freedom—full vacations, long breaks, and plenty of time to focus on growing.

If your current setup leaves you constantly tied to client work with no room to breathe, it’s worth reevaluating your model.

Because a business that scales and succeeds financially should also support the way you want to live. It might not last, otherwise.

A Few Good Resources

1. If you want to work on building a business that works for you, there are less than two weeks left to join me in Costa Rica. (Final mention, I promise.)
2. If you want to geek out on the Gestalt principle and understand how it influences your brain, this breaks it down.
3. Who knew a Google doc could make you 6-figures?

Hope you have a good one,
Renee