How to Simplify Your Service Menu in 10 Minutes
Streamline your offerings to build momentum and conserve precious energy.
Have you ever gone to the grocery store to purchase something like ketchup or salad dressing, and been overwhelmed by just how many choices exist?
Decision fatigue can quickly set in when presented with too many options.
Have you ever considered that your own prospective clients might have the same challenge with your service offerings?
For example, consider an energy healer and yoga instructor that runs her own studio. On her website, flyers, and social media, she may list a menu of options for clients like this:
Private yoga sessions
Small-group yoga series or themed class cycles
Breathwork instruction
Guided meditation or visualization journeys
Somatic awareness sessions
Nervous-system regulation coaching
Energy clearing
Chakra balancing
Reiki or biofield tuning sessions
Space clearing for homes or studios
Intuitive readings (tarot, oracle, runes, pendulum)
Astrology or human-design consultations
Spiritual mentorship or intuitive development coaching
Integration support after retreats or major life transitions
Sound healing sessions
Yoga nidra or deep-rest practices
Hands-on or hands-off subtle-body healing
Group healing circles or intention gatherings
Ritual, ceremony, or seasonal observance facilitation
Journaling workshops or reflective writing circles
Retreat leadership
Community workshops on boundaries, embodiment, or intuition
Couples or partner energy-connection sessions
Therapeutic movement for stress, grief, or burnout
Sacred art, altar-building, or creativity sessions
Herbal or plant-ally consultations
That’s… A lot.
As a practitioner, yes, it’s your job to consult with your clients and prescribe what is best for them. But if a prospective client sees a long list like this, it creates some questions in their mind around your competency in specific areas. They wonder what you’re actually masterful in. While they may ultimately need sound healing and not know it, showcasing so many modalities in your marketing communications really generates confusion or overwhelm.
When I worked with tax professionals, I was a major advocate for reducing public-facing service offerings to one thing. Tax planning or tax resolution or audit defense or financial statement preparation. My advice was always to lead with one thing. Yes, other services are ultimately rendered, but start with the one thing.
But how do you get down to exactly what you lead with? Here’s a simple, 10-minute exercise that, combined with your intuition, will guide you to a simplified menu of services.
Minute 1-2: List everything. Write down literally every offering you currently provide, no matter how infrequently, no matter how small, even if you consider it just a component of a broader service.
Minute 3-4: Circle the revenue leaders and joy sparkles. Mark the services that either bring in the most revenue per client, and for a more heart-led approach, the services that really cause you to light up.
Minute 5-6: Cross out the energy leaks. If it drains you, it goes. If the thought of doing a particular thing for a client causes you to tense up, demands disproportionate effort, doesn’t generate the pay rate for your time that you prefer, or just doesn’t spark joy, then it gets lined out.
Minute 7-8: Combine cousins. Some things are naturally related. If two offerings overlap to a significant extent, combine them. Similar siblings swim better together. As an aside, this is also one way to create new types of offerings that your competitors don’t or can’t offer.
Minute 9: Clarify the core three. It’s best to choose a primary offering, a lighter option, and a deeper option. Most practitioners never need more than three variations, packages, or unique services.
Minute 10: Rewrite each into a single sentence. Remember that part of the purpose behind all this is to create clarity, both for yourself and your future clients. If an offering can’t be described in one crisp line, then the water is still too murky. I admit this might take longer than one minute, but it’s an exercise worth doing. If you’re stuck, try using an AI tool such as ChatGPT to generate twenty one-sentence versions for you from your longer description, and pick one that you like.
Going through this process might bring up some emotional responses for you, and that is OK — you don’t need anybody else’s permission to feel what you feel. Sit with it as you need to, and modify the exercise as necessary to meet your needs. It’s fine if you end up with five offerings instead of three, but that’s better than 20, for example.
Once you’ve reduced your list to something more manageable, then it makes nearly every other decision about running and growing your practice simpler, faster, and cheaper.
Would you like a group of other practitioners to help you with this exercise? Got any questions about the steps, or want feedback on your final list? Join me and other small business owners for our next Open Waters Q&A on December 15. Details and registration here: https://pod.bizorca.com/events/17A871