From $3K Months and Late Night Hustling to $15K as a Meta Ads Manager and Mom of Four
What if I told you that a mom of four, working what she called “the night shift” and barely pulling in $3,000 months, could nearly 5x her income and actually work less in the process?
That’s exactly what happened to Emily, one of our Strategist Society members, and y’all, her story is one that I think so many of you need to hear right now. Because if you’re sitting there thinking you need to hustle harder, stay up later, and take every client that comes your way just to make it work, Emily’s transformation is about to flip that belief on its head.
Emily is a meta ads manager who also offers email marketing and funnel strategy. She’s a mom of four (with ages ranging from 3 to 19, so she’s literally living every parenting season at once), she lives in Texas, and she came into my world as a complete stranger. I didn’t know her from anyone. And now? She just hit her highest revenue month ever at $14,750, she’s renewed for her second year in Strategist Society, and her biggest problem is figuring out how to stop working because she has so much free time.
Let me tell you how she got here.
Working the Night Shift and Taking Any Client She Could Get
Before Emily joined Strategist Society, her business was running her instead of the other way around. She was primarily managing ads, had just landed one email marketing client, and was taking whatever she could get. Her words, not mine.
The clients weren’t aligned. The offers weren’t fully proven. And the results were harder to deliver because of it.
But the part that really gets me? Emily was working what she called “the night shift.” She’d spend all day with her baby, homeschool her 14-year-old, handle life with four kids, and then try to cram all her work in at night. There were mornings her husband would get up for work at five or six a.m. and ask, “Have you slept?” And she’d still be up working.
She was making around $3,000 a month consistently. She’d had one $5,000 month and was proud of that. But she was charging $350 to $500 per month for her retainers and was thrilled when she landed a $1,000 client.
Sound familiar? Because I see this all the time. Service providers who are talented, getting results, but drastically undercharging and overworking to compensate. And it’s a cycle that will burn you out if you don’t break it.
The Moment She Almost Didn’t Join (and What Changed Her Mind)
Here’s the thing I love about Emily’s story. She didn’t have some instant “heck yes” moment. She actually ghosted me for a month.
We had our call. She was excited. And then life happened. It was around the holidays, things were expensive, and she couldn’t justify the investment. I get it. I’ve been there.
But Emily prayed about it and told herself, “If I get a client that covers the cost of this, I’ll join.” And wouldn’t you know it, the very next day she landed a client that did exactly that. She emailed me and said, “Can I still join?”
I’ll be honest, when she came back, I was a little skeptical. As women, “life happened” can sometimes be our scapegoat answer instead of just saying, “This isn’t the right moment for me.” But Emily followed through. She showed up. And what happened next was pretty incredible.
If you’re sitting on the fence about investing in yourself right now, pay attention to what comes next.
Nearly 5x-ing Her Income While Working Less
Since joining Strategist Society, Emily went from $3,000 months to hitting $14,750 in a single month, her highest ever.
Let that sink in for a second.
And she’s not grinding harder for it. In fact, on our last strategist call, her biggest challenge was that she has so much time now and her brain isn’t used to it. She’s literally having to reprogram herself to not be in hustle mode 24/7.
Her retainers went from $350 to $500 per month to a minimum of $3,000 per client. She told me she can’t even imagine signing a new client for less than that now. It’s just her normal.
I remember our very first conversation. She was telling me her clients and pricing, and I was like, “I’m no expert in email marketing pricing, but I’m pretty sure this is not the going rate and we need to raise these prices.” And to her credit, she did the work to get there, even though it was a major mindset shift.
“Once I started letting go of some other clients and bringing on new ones and actually pricing what this service is worth,” Emily told me, “I realized I can’t ever go back. It doesn’t serve me, and it doesn’t serve my clients.”
And she’s right. When you’re undercharging, you’re usually attracting clients who shouldn’t be running ads in the first place. Raising your prices protects them and you.
The “Boring” Strategy That Built a $15K Month
Y’all, this is where it gets good. Because Emily didn’t hit $15K by doing some big, flashy marketing strategy. She did it by being consistent with the fundamentals.
One of the things I teach inside Strategist Society is what I call the Standards of Excellence. And I’ll be real with you, most people fight me on this when they first join. They want the big swing. They want to dive into all the trainings and learn the fancy tactics.
Emily was the same way at first. She told me, “At the beginning, I was like, oh, I’m gonna go watch all these trainings and learn all these things. And then I realized that those are important, but the other stuff has to be the foundation. You can always plug in expert knowledge where you don’t have it.”
What she found was that the Standards of Excellence became her anchor. She calls it her lighthouse. When things get foggy, when life gets chaotic, when she’s feeling friction in her business, she comes back to the Standards of Excellence and everything resets.
“When I look up and I’m like, ‘why do I feel friction in my life, with my clients, with my results?’ I look and realize I haven’t done my Standards of Excellence in a couple days. That’s really my route back.”
And here’s what makes her story even more impressive. Emily had her best month ever right after we wrapped our Standards of Excellence challenge. But during that same month, she was hospitalized for a pinched nerve, took almost half the month off, and then Texas got blanketed with snow and ice for five days. And she still had her highest revenue month.
That’s the compounding effect, y’all. It’s not about one perfect month. It’s about months and months of consistent daily actions that stack up over time. Emily compared it to the book The Slight Edge, and it’s the exact same principle. The boring, mundane, seemingly small actions you take every single day are what lead to the big results.
How Theme Days Helped Her Manage ADHD and Build a Business
One thing Emily is really open about inside Strategist Society is that she has ADHD. And I know so many of you come in wondering, “Can I actually do this with ADHD?” The answer is absolutely yes.
Emily told me that one of the biggest game changers for her was learning about theme days, which I teach inside Conversions for Clients. Instead of time blocking (which can feel rigid and impossible when you have a brain that wants to go in a million directions), you theme your entire day around one type of work.
“I’m not going to marry myself to a time on my calendar that I’m gonna go pull my reporting,” Emily explained. “But I do know I’m gonna set aside this day for reporting. And even if my week shifts, as long as I stick to that principle, I’m not bouncing between reporting and creative and reporting and creative.”
This eliminated the context switching that was making her ADHD worse and helped her become dramatically more efficient. Her week can flex and flow with the realities of having four kids and a full life, but the structure is always there.
It’s actually been really interesting to me over the last year. A lot of the systems I use in my business, the theme days, the Standards of Excellence, the tools and frameworks, our Strategist Society members with ADHD consistently tell me these systems work incredibly well for them. And I think that’s because the approach isn’t about rigid schedules. It’s about flexible frameworks that actually work in real life.
If you have ADHD and you’re wondering if you can build a successful service business, take Emily’s word for it. You can. You just need the right tools.
What Really Scales a Service Business (Hint: It’s Not What You Think)
When I asked Emily what made the biggest impact in her business, she didn’t name a fancy tactic or marketing strategy. She named three things:
Direct access to coaching. Being able to Voxer me about tactical questions, ads strategy, funnel questions, or mindset stuff. Because at this level, the mindset work is just as critical as the strategy.
The community. Having other women to collaborate with, bounce ideas off of, and grow alongside. Emily said she craved that before she found us. She knew she was good at what she did. She also knew she was going to plateau without the right room.
The foundation before the tactics. Emily’s favorite training is our funnel mapping training, but she’ll be the first to tell you that the Standards of Excellence and the daily fundamentals had to come first.
And here’s something Emily said that I think is so powerful. She told her husband at the beginning of the year when they were talking about renewing, “In order of priorities for me when it comes to expenses, it’s four walls, like the house and utilities, and then Brandi.”
Y’all. Four walls and Brandi. That’s when you know someone is serious about their growth.
When Your Problems Change (and Why That’s a Good Thing)
One of the most real conversations Emily and I had was about what happens when you start making more money while working less. Because here’s the truth: when you grow, your problems don’t disappear. They just change.
It used to be that Emily was undercharging and taking misaligned clients. Now she has premium pricing and aligned clients. But then the new challenge becomes the mindset work of believing you deserve it.
Emily talked about her best friend who cleans houses, works incredibly hard, and makes far less. And how working less while earning more created this internal conflict. “That is a mindset shift,” she said. “It makes me honestly want to make more money just so I can help others.”
And I think that’s something so many of us who come from families where hard work equaled more money struggle with. I watched my dad do very manual labor his entire life and still live paycheck to paycheck. So when you start making more money by working less, it’s like a shock to the body. Your brain is telling you this can’t be real.
But it is real. And the work at this level is about retraining your brain to accept it. Every choice you make compounds over time. Emily put it perfectly: “At any given point in time, you are the sum of your choices for the last however many months.”
So ask yourself: are the choices you’re making right now leading you toward the business and life you actually want?
Emily’s Next Goal: $20K Months as Her New Normal
When Emily first started her business, she would have laughed at the idea of $15,000 months. “What do I need to make that much for?” she would have said. But now she sees the bigger picture. Her ultimate goal is $20,000 months as her baseline, with bigger months sprinkled in. She wants to pay off debt, travel again, and build the life she and her family have been dreaming about.
And if Emily’s story proves anything, it’s this: you don’t have to know what’s possible for you when you start. You just have to start. You build those first few clients at $3,000 to $5,000 months, and then you see it. The bigger vision clicks into place, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Emily said it best: “Once I started pricing what this service is worth and demonstrating an ROI for my clients, I realized I can’t ever go back.”
If you’re a service provider sitting at $3K to $5K months wondering how to get to the next level, that’s exactly what we help you do inside Strategist Society. You get direct coaching access, a community of growth-minded women, the frameworks, the mindset work, all of it. And if you’re earlier in your journey and still building your foundation, Conversions for Clients is where you need to start.
Either way, stop waiting for the “perfect” time. Emily ghosted me for a month, came back, did the work, and nearly 5x’d her income. Your story could be next.
DM me on Instagram @brandimowles and tell me what resonated with you from Emily’s story. I’d love to hear from you.
Now go do the dang thing.
This post is based on an episode of the Serve Scale Soar podcast. If you loved Emily’s story, search for Serve Scale Soar wherever you listen to podcasts for more real stories, strategies, and tough love to help you build a service business you actually love.
** This post may contain affiliate links which means I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you if you use one of the links to purchase. This helps keep the podcast going and I only share products I have used, tested and love.”
Listen on Your Favorite Podcast Platform
Follow & Review on Apple Podcasts
Are you following my podcast? If you’re not, I want to encourage you to do that today so you don’t miss any future episodes! I already have so many amazing guests and topics lined up, I would hate for you to miss a single one! Click here to follow on Apple Podcasts
Could I ask a big favor? If you are loving the podcast, I would LOVE it if you would leave me a review on Apple Podcasts. I read each and every review. Plus, you get to pay it forward because it will allow other service providers like you to find the podcast! Wondering how to leave a review? Click here to review, then select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”. So easy and so appreciated!
Meet Brandi
Brandi Mowles is the host of the Serve Scale Soar® podcast which is a podcast dedicated to helping service-based entrepreneurs scale their online business to five-figure months so they can soar into six-figure years. Brandi is a wife, mom and in less than one year, created a six-figure business. Now she is spilling all her secrets so you can too.
