About My Business
Beyond the Hourly Rate® is a business accelerator for self-employed professionals providing a service who want financial certainty and to be in demand. Service business expert, strategist and Business Accelerator Founder, Sarah Davies, works with solo operators and small businesses to help them turn their knowledge and expertise into profitable businesses. Sarah is an expert in service-based business growth. With decades of experience working alongside businesses of all shapes and sizes, she brings her international agency experience working with global brands and skills in PR, marketing and coaching to help business owners attract leads, win clients and generate consistent revenue. After building and selling two of her own successful businesses, Sarah developed the Beyond the Hourly Rate Business Accelerator. Since 2023, Sweet Spot Business Coaching has used this accelerator to help over 140 business owners bridge the gap between their talent and commercial success. New Zealand has 617,000 businesses, and 74 per cent are solo operators. In 2025, for the first time in over a decade, more of these businesses closed than opened. 93.9 per cent were solo operators. Built on Assumption Special Report, by Sarah Davies, May 2026 Sarah spent 25 years working with self-employed professionals, and the pattern she kept seeing was consistent enough to demand a proper examination. Solo operators didn’t need more information. They needed a business growth engine that turned insight into action and action into momentum. That’s exactly what Beyond the Hourly Rate® provides. They combine expert coaching, step-by-step tools and a community that thrives on momentum, so growth isn’t left to chance. The problems they solve: You are talented but invisible. The best-kept secret in town. You waste time and money chasing tactics with no strategy. The clock is ticking. Without change, you risk giving up and going back to a job. Move beyond time for money and become in demand using the Proof 1st Method. Beyond the Hourly Rate®
Why We Should Win The Peoples Choice Award
Why vote for Beyond the Hourly Rate®? Somewhere in New Zealand right now, there is someone sitting at their kitchen table wondering if they made a mistake. They are talented. They are qualified. They care deeply about the work they do. But the clients are not coming in fast enough, the money is not stretching far enough, and that little voice in the back of their head is getting louder, the one that says maybe it is time to give up and go back to a job. That person is not failing because they are not good enough. They are failing because nobody ever taught them the business side. Being brilliant at what you do and running a profitable business around it are two completely different skill sets. Most self-employed professionals only have one of them. That is not a personal failing; it is a gap in the system. And it is a gap that Beyond the Hourly Rate® has spent years working to close. Three out of four New Zealand businesses are solo operators. These are the HR consultants, the leadership coach, the web designer and the therapist supporting a family; they are woven into the fabric of everyday life - the people communities rely on, the people who keep industries running, the people that New Zealand cannot afford to lose. They are not a footnote in the economy. They are the economy. And right now, more of them are closing than opening. Too many walk away from businesses they were more than capable of succeeding in - not because they lacked talent, but because they lacked the roadmap. They second-guess themselves, run out of time and eventually give up on something that deserved a real chance. Beyond the Hourly Rate® exists to change that. Since 2023, over 140 self-employed professionals have come through the accelerator. They do not just get training - they rebuild confidence in how they position themselves, how they attract the right clients, and how they create businesses that actually work in the real world. One client tripled her client portfolio in six months. Another grew her revenue by 70% and built an entirely new income stream she had never previously considered. Another uncovered two major strategic partnerships through the process alone. These are not lucky breaks. They are what happens when talented people finally get the right support, in the right order, at the right time. What makes Beyond the Hourly Rate® different is not just what it teaches, but what becomes possible for people afterwards. Stronger businesses. Stronger confidence. And a ripple effect that extends far beyond one person - into families, communities and industries that depend on these people every single day. This sector has been left largely to fail without support for too long. A vote for Beyond the Hourly Rate® Business Accelerator is a vote to change that.
