It’s getting more popular than ever for service-based entrepreneurs to leave their businesses behind in favor of selling online courses. But the question is: which one is more sustainable?
Abagail Pumphrey has unique insight into this question. As a former service provider turned online educator, she sees the best (and worst) of both worlds. In this episode of The Business of You, Abagail will share the wild and wonderful ride behind launching her brands and help us make more informed decisions about pricing, marketing, and booking clients.
Abagail is the Founder of Boss Project and a Co-host of the chart-topping podcast, The Strategy Hour. She is internet-famous for the program she created with her Co-founder Emylee, Trello for Business, which breaks down tedious and complicated systems into bite-size chunks for entrepreneurs.
To date, Abagail has helped over 15,000 creative small business owners create simplicity and ease in reaching their goals. Abagail allows other service-based business owners to reignite their offer, develop systems for client experience, and get more of their time back inside their program, The Incubator. The team at Boss Project is truly revitalizing the service-based industry through strategies that don’t require flashy marketing, a huge audience, or full-time hours.
Life and business comes full circle
As a child, Abagail was encouraged to work towards a career in STEM. Instead, she whimsically told her mother that she’d like to design cereal boxes someday.
From the beginning, Abagail had a creative eye and a passion for design. While her parents instilled practical knowledge and strategic thinking, she also longed for a business beyond working 9-5. She pursued work in marketing. After a long road building her resume, a surprise layoff forced her to get serious. She accepted the challenge. Determined, Abagail launched her business and spent every waking moment in launch mode. She replaced her corporate income in a matter of months. She was popular on social media and carved out a niche in the food space – finally venturing into the packaging design field!
Making the switch from services to sales
Abagail was thriving in her career. But despite her passion and hard work, she had yet to realize she was neglecting a key opportunity.
Her Co-founder pointed to their marketing plan and suggested that many of their followers were not their clients and would never book them for their services. They were other business owners…and were missing out on significant opportunities to sell them what they needed the most! They decided to make the switch to educational programs to help entrepreneurs thrive.
Should you pivot to programs?
The switch from services to courses took a lot longer than their initial business launch. Creating infrastructure to sell online courses was a lot of work, but it paid off when it began to pay their salaries.
Abagail says yes when asked if it was worth it – but only because she enjoys both businesses! She shares the pros and cons, emphasizing that while selling courses seems like passive income, most service providers make more money with less effort.
This educational episode will help you decide what’s right for you on your entrepreneurial journey. When it comes to business, one size does not fit all – especially when it comes to strategy, systems, and scaling!
Quotes

“On a whim, I told my mom that I wanted to design cereal boxes. She was like, what are you talking about! But someone has to design the boxes that things go in.”
“I jumped headfirst into building my business. It was a time of my life in which I had the most time and needed the least amount of money to maintain the lifestyle I had. In 30 days, I had replaced my corporate salary.”
“It is a hard switch. Especially when you’re not marketing to the same group of people. Making the switch into education meant I was unsure when I was going to have that income again.”
“We switched gears. We put all our time and energy into the education part of the business. We stopped taking client work. It meant slowness and took time to pick up momentum…we were launching all the time!”
“We were doing live workshops every two weeks, presenting on webinars, speaking at summits and conferences. We eventually started our own podcast. It was a lot of getting in front of people to start to make a reasonable living. It took us a long time to get to where the education part paid us the same as what the service side did.”
“Our initial course was called Pricing for Profit, designed to help photographers with in-person selling and how to utilize those strategies to create an actual career and money. We took that program and extrapolated that out to be for all services, using the psychology of selling.”
“We have worked with over 15,000 businesses all over the globe over the last eight years.”
Links mentioned in this episode:

Podcast Resources
Visit the Boss Project website at https://bossproject.com/
Check out the Boss Project ultimate template shop on their website at https://creativetemplateshop.com/
Follow Abagail Pumphrey on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/abagailsays/
Connect directly with Abagail on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/abbiep/

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