Galway, Ireland
Galway, Ireland
Before I get into this I want to say that it’s okay to make mistakes.
In fact it’s brilliant to make mistakes as long as you are willing to learn from them. Making mistakes is part and parcel of the entrepreneurial journey. Trial and error. Figuring things out along the way. Making mistakes and learning from them allows us to grow and stretch and improve and become better at what we do. So this blog post is not to tell you that if you do anything on my list you’re bad or wrong but to say here’s an opportunity to learn. An opportunity to be aware of something you might be doing that is creating more work and less money.
I am on a mission to prove that it’s possible to work less and earn more. Through my own trial and error and working with my clients there’s a few things that I’ve noticed that entrepreneurs do that are literally are adding hours to their work week and decreasing their potential earnings.
I’m all about work life balance and I want to help you avoid working extra hours you don’t need to. They say when you love your job you never work a day. I know and I do love my job as I’m sure you do too. But there has to be time to unwind, time for adventure and travel, time for family, time for self care.
Working less and earning more is not about being lazy or greedy. It’s about revolutionising the way we work so that our wellbeing and our joy is at the focus. It’s about reconditioning ourselves, moving away from the institutionalised nature of employment and creating a way to work AND live. No wait until retirement.
So if you want the same as I do then please keep reading and see if any of the mistakes I’m about to discuss are things that you find yourself doing in your business. And you may be able to claw back some time and increase your earning potential.
If you are new and just starting out then also keep reading and make a point to NOT do the following.
They don’t include working ON the business in their pricing. They only think about the hours they spend facing a client. The price of your offers/services should cover, yes client facing hours, but also, all the other hours you put into your business. The time you spend creating content, writing emails, giving or holding interviews, recording podcasts, managing your accounts and invoices, brainstorming and dream up new ideas. This is all part of your business and you need to consider this in your pricing.
If you don’t what happens?
You likely have to book way more client hours than you would like to sustain an income and have to work on "days off" to be able to build a business and do everything else that needs to happen
Or you simply don’t have the energy to put in the extra hours your business needs to grow and so you find yourself stuck.
Stuck working as many client hours as you can book and stuck at the price point you started with. So account for the rest of your time. Do not charge an hourly rate that only included client facing hours. And try to let go of your conditioned idea of what an hourly rate is. Remember when you work for someone else the hourly rate is completely different.
In fact, stop thinking of your work in hours. This can be difficult especially when you are a service based business and you are literally with a client giving them a service for 60 minutes. I get it. But the value they are getting is not confined to the time you are with them. They are experiencing benefits of working with you way after those 60 minutes are over.
So consider that when you are pricing. Consider the value, the impact, the results, not the time.
When you think about it it’s actually hilarious to assume how much money someone else has. You have no idea what someone earns or what they have saved. But really when you are assuming how much money they have or can afford to spend it’s actually saying more about you.
It says more about your money beliefs than theirs. It says more about the value you place on your offer than their level of income. If you think someone wouldn’t pay X amount for your offer. Really what you’re saying is you don’t think they would see the value and therefore you don’t actually see the value.
When you allow money beliefs or a negative value concept control your pricing you will inevitably have to work more. You will inevitably earn less than you could.
If you find yourself pricing an offer by first thinking about what people would be willing to pay, take note! Stop yourself and do some work on yourself. Work on your money mindset. Change your beliefs on money. Write out the value of what it is you are offering. Remember they are paying for the result, the impact, the transformation. That is valuable. When you do that work, and are comfort table charging what your offer is actually worth, That’s when you will begin to work less and earn more.
They have lots of different offers and services. A confused buyer doesn’t buy.
This is both a niching problem and a strategy problem.
A niching problem meaning it is really inefficient to have many different offers all focused on various problems, targeting various people. The common saying is when you try to speak to everyone you end up speaking to no one.
And a strategy problem meaning if you have multiple offers, even if niched and solving just one problem, and they are all being offered at once, it creates confusion and decisions to be made, making it harder for people to purchase.
If you do nothing else, please do this. Streamline your offers. Offering everything to everyone is not a good idea. Offering multiple things at once isn’t a good idea either. A confused buyer doesn’t buy.
You cannot solve ALL the problems. Just because what you do aids and supports and heals many problems that doesn’t mean you need to advertise for them all. Pick one. Solve that.
Have different tiers of solving one problem at different levels and different price points is great. But promote them one at a time. Have a strategy that opens the doors for one offer when the doors are closed for the other. For your own peace of mind, giving you less to think about and less to do but also for the result! So you are not confusing your potential customer by giving them too many decisions to make.
Coaches and healers offering single sessions, I know it’s nice to have an affordable offer but really how much is one session really going to help someone? This could work for returning clients, people you’ve worked with in depth before. But to offer to brand new clients? Someone you’ve worked with in depth before will know when they need to come back to you. They will have enough awareness of whatever the problem is that you solve that they need to come back. But a new person will not. They might feel a change after one session and then the results will start to fade, and instead of thinking oh I need to go back, they will think oh well that didn’t work.
You are leaving money on the table. Believe in what you do enough to offer real impact and change for people.
When you are willing to package up your sessions/services you not only are able to provide a better impact for your client but you’re able to create a more consistent predictable income for yourself. Less no shows, cancellations, and customers who don’t come back. You also attract people who are more committed and ready to make a change in their lives.
Ask yourself in an ideal world, where money and time is unlimited, how many sessions would I want to spend with a client? How much time, treatments would I want to give them to give them the results they need. To create the impact they need.
Figure out what that is and do that. Price that. Package that up put a bow on it and declare that this is the way you work because you know it gives the best results.
They spend time creating a programme or course or offer and when the amount of people who buy into it is disappointing or just not what they expected they say oh well that didn’t work and go back to the drawing board. They start again with another brand new offer. Instead, when something doesn’t turn out the way you want look at what did go well and build on that. Make changes to what you did and how you did it when promoting it and go again. You can’t learn to play like a pro if you keep changing the game.
You are adding countless hours to your work week and month by starting from scratch every time. Come up with an idea and follow it through. Be curious, why didn’t it work as well as you wanted? What could you do differently? No matter what idea you move on to the same problem will arise. So figure out what the problem is. Figure out what you need to fix it. And do that. If you are going to take action then take action that solves a problem not kick the problem down the road a bit.
They either don’t schedule at all or they schedule themselves too tight overestimating what they can realistically get done in a period of time. They don’t schedule time to work on the business. And they don’t schedule in down time. they don’t schedule space in their day to unwind or energise them selves and allow creative juices to flow.
For scheduling work tasks….
I like to use a rule of 3. This may not suit everyone but. 1/3 of your work week hours are client facing. 1/3 of your work week is for working on your business, creating resources you need, developing new ideas, preparing for your client work, communicating with your clients/customers etc. And a 1/3 of your work week is on growing your business. Marketing, content creation, outreach, engagement, starting conversations with people.
P.S. if you are at a point where you have a fully booked client schedule, where there isn’t enough hours in the day, maybe look at what you need todo to hire someone, outsource some tasks, your business is trying to grow but there’s no space for it. You need space in your work week for it to grow because you are the driving force. If you can’t afford to invest in hiring or outsourcing yet and your diary is full? Look at your prices.
If you couldn’t tell I am very passionate about be able to create a business that allows you to simplify your life, one that allows you to work less that you would have every before and earn more than you ever have before.
I want to change the belief that when you’re self employed you end up working 24/7
I want to change the mindset that you have to hustle hard at the beginning for the payoff at the end.
I want to change the idea that value of what we do is defined by 60 minutes.
As always I am here to serve. You are invited to a free coaching session. Let’s chat over a coffee and zoom and tell me about your business. Allow me to see where you can carve back some time and increase the potential income.
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