A lot of service business owners chase $10,000 months by doing more. More posts, more courses, more planning, more tactics. Amanda's answer to the question "how do I get to $10K months as fast as possible?" is simpler and harder at the same time. The only thing that produces sales is a conversation that connects and converts, so the fastest path is to have more of them, and to have them well.

In this live episode of The Amanda Kaufman Show, Amanda, founder of Clairvenu, gets real about what she had to change to create the capacity for $10,000 months and beyond. She shares how she went from eight names on a sticky note to multiple six figures in nine months, the reason the quality of the room matters so much, what makes a conversation connected and converting, and the nine box structure she uses to run a sales conversation from first hello to a clear yes or no. As always, she is clear that results are never guaranteed, and that most people who set out to build a business do not succeed. That is exactly the reason to focus on what actually works.

Thinking About the Thing Is Not Doing the Thing

So many people think about doing a thing, learn about it, fantasize about it, and speculate about it, and never actually do it. Amanda keeps an old essay in a binder in her office that makes the point line by line: preparing, scheduling, making a to-do list, telling people, and reading about the thing all feel productive, and none of them are doing the thing.

How It Matters: When the goal is $10,000 months, the only thing that does that thing is having connected, converting conversations. Everything else is support at best and avoidance at worst.

How to Do It: Look at your week and separate the activities that put you in a real conversation with a potential client from the activities that only prepare you to. Then protect time for the first category.

Common Mistake: Counting research, planning, and content consumption as progress toward revenue.

Content Connects, but a Conversation Connects More

Amanda walks through a simple thought experiment. A recorded video connects a little. A live, interactive coaching call connects more. An in-person event connects more still. And a one-on-one conversation in her office would connect most of all.

How It Matters: Anything recorded, written, or posted is monodirectional. It goes out, and there is no feedback from the audience in the moment. That takes a separate skill set to do well. A connected conversation, whether over DM, a phone call, or coffee, is fully social. You make eye contact, you respond to each other, and you know whether it is landing.

How to Do It: Prioritize the skilled conversation. Amanda points out that you have been a conversationalist since before you started school, so you already have the foundation. Social media and digital marketing are valid ways to start conversations, and they work best when they lead to real two-way ones.

Common Mistake: Relying entirely on one-way content and never moving people into an actual conversation.

Other People Know People

At the start of her first business, Amanda needed to give ten complimentary coaching sessions to non-family members for her coaching certification. She could only come up with eight names and remembers being in a flat panic.

How It Matters: All eight loved the sessions, and the second person she coached said, "Hey, I have a friend." That was the moment she realized she did not have to know everybody. Other people know people. Within about nine months, talking to people had produced multiple six figures, and her husband was able to quit his corporate job.

How to Do It: Start where you stand. Get radically committed to connecting authentically enough, building rapport, and being of service, so that people are willing to introduce you to their friends.

Common Mistake: Waiting until you have a big network or audience before you start having conversations.

The Quality of the Room Matters

To accelerate, Amanda prioritized rooms full of people who were obviously committed to their momentum: events with a significant ticket price that people often traveled from out of state to attend. When the travel wore her out, she switched to local networking, and her sales dropped off a cliff.

How It Matters: The local events were often free, convenient, and low commitment, so the people there often had less motivation and less clarity about what they wanted to achieve. When you sell premium services, spending your time with people who have low ambition, low capacity to pay, or who make decisions by convenience makes success much harder.

How to Do It: Qualify your rooms. Look for places where people have skin in the game.

Common Mistake: Filling your calendar with every networking event available and treating all rooms as equal.

When a Strategy Stops Working, Go Back to the Fundamental

Amanda later learned content and digital marketing, and a group program strategy earned her a million dollars. Then it stopped working, for her and for the founders who built it.

How It Matters: Marketing trends change, preferences change, and there are macro level shifts. Even if you work hard and check all the boxes, the strategy still has to change. The core currency of a service business does not: connected, converting conversations.

How to Do It: When a marketing play stops working, strip things back to connecting authentically with people, helping, and being of service. That is how Amanda recovered her first business, wound it down cleanly, and started her next one on the same fundamental.

Common Mistake: Assuming more effort will save a strategy the market has moved past.

A Connected, Converting Conversation Starts With Calm and Agency

A connected and converting conversation is authentic, undistracted, and focused primarily on the other person's goal: the pain they are experiencing and the goal they would like to achieve.

How It Matters: If you go into a conversation complaining about your own problems, you put yourself in a "life is happening to me" frame, and the other person starts wanting to rescue you. If you sell expert services, that does not work. Amanda replaces the advice to "be confident" with something more useful: stay calm and retain your agency, your ability to make decisions and affect the world around you.

How to Do It: Earn the rapport. Start with small talk, build to medium talk, and pay attention to how you handle the news people share. Respond from calm and agency rather than big reactions or visible judgment. Remember that the people you work with often have plenty of confidence. Their insecurity comes from not yet achieving a goal they care about, which Amanda calls the problem of appropriate magnitude. Listen for it, and ask one or two questions about what they are doing to solve it.

Common Mistake: Blowing past small talk and jumping to incredibly personal questions before you have earned the trust to ask them.

Invite, Don't Pitch the Whole Sale

When someone shares a problem of appropriate magnitude and is open to a next move, that is the moment to offer your services. Amanda's version is simple: mention what you do, share that you offer free sessions, ask if it could be interesting, and find a time.

How It Matters: Most relationships need two or three quality interactions. People are checking whether you are who you say you are, and they look for consistency across your DMs, emails, social media, and how you show up at events. Trying to get all the commitment in one breath sounds desperate.

How to Do It: Invite from confidence and agency, and go with their timing. If they are about to leave on vacation for a month, get their contact information and grab coffee when they are back. Then ask yourself how many of these conversations you can create in a day, a week, and a month. The more connected, converting conversations you have, the more you make.

Common Mistake: Pitching the entire offer in the first interaction.

The Nine Box of Sales Gives Both of You Clarity

Amanda's nine box structure organizes a sales conversation into three parts: the frame, the gap, and the close. The goal is a clear yes or a clear no, not "maybe later."

How It Matters: Like a ballroom dance, the conversation goes smoothly when one person leads. Leading is not bossy. It creates a positive experience for both people. The gap matters most: if your service will not make a meaningful difference in someone's life, nothing you say will make them buy. As Amanda puts it, without emotion there is no motion.

How to Do It: Set the frame with the first three boxes. Set the agenda and ask if it sounds good. Ask "how come now?" to learn what makes this timely. Ask "how come me?" so they say out loud the reason they chose you. Open the gap with the next three: their goal (by the numbers or as observable as possible), the blocks they have hit and what they have tried, and what happens if they don't work it out, in their own words. Then close: explain your process in three steps, pause to ask if a process like this could work for them, clear the obstacles, and ask for the sale at least twice. When an objection comes up, ask what makes it important, because the first thing people say is usually not the real issue.

Common Mistake: Skipping the agenda or the gap and finding out in step nine what you could have learned in step one.

Conclusion

Amanda's path to $10,000 months comes back to one fundamental. Stop counting preparation as progress. Use content to start conversations, and then have real ones. Start where you stand, let other people introduce you to people they know, and spend time in rooms where people have skin in the game. Show up with calm and agency, stay focused on the other person's goal, invite instead of pitching, and use a structure like the nine box to reach clarity together. Results are never guaranteed, and the more connected, converting conversations you have, the better your odds.

To hear the full conversation, listen to Episode 377 of The Amanda Kaufman Show on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the fastest way to reach $10K months in a service business?

Amanda's answer is to prioritize connected, converting conversations. Content and marketing can start those conversations, but the sale happens in a real two-way exchange. The more of those conversations you can create each day, week, and month, the more you make.

What is a connected, converting conversation?

It is a conversation that is authentic, undistracted, and focused primarily on the other person's goal and the pain they are experiencing. You earn rapport through small talk and medium talk, respond with calm and agency, and invite them to a next step when it fits.

What is the nine box of sales?

It is Amanda's structure for a sales conversation, organized into the frame, the gap, and the close. The frame sets the agenda and learns what makes the call timely. The gap explores the goal, the blocks, and what happens if nothing changes. The close explains the process, clears obstacles, and asks for the sale.

How do I handle "I need to talk to my spouse"?

Amanda treats it as part of someone's buying process rather than an obstacle. Ask whether there is anything their spouse would want to know before they sign up. If they say their spouse would be skeptical, that is often their own concern, and you can address it directly.

Where can I get help building a system that creates more of these conversations?

Amanda's free live training, How Serious Service Businesses Build High-Converting Funnels & Acquisition Systems That Run 24/7, walks through how the pieces of a service business fit together so growth is built on a system you can measure. Register at https://clairvenu.com/training. If you want an outside perspective on your specific situation, apply for a free Revenue Clarity Conversation at https://clairvenu.com.