The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 105: Making More Money While Working Less

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Today I will be talking about one of our favorite things, which is making more money! I’m going to dive into how making more money does not always mean working more. I’ll brush on a few examples of how to make money doing what you love without working yourself to the core. All this and more!

Make More While Working Less

By: Melissa Lin

Today we are diving into all things and everything about scaling. How to make more money. How do you serve more people while working less? Sounds crazy. It's not. It's so possible. It's exactly what I help my clients with.

It's exactly what we've been able to achieve in my business. And I can't wait to dive into this with you! So we started our online businesses so that we could start living that lifestyle that we had always been dreaming of. Right? We want to create a bigger impact. But in order to do this, how much of our lives do we need to sacrifice?

You Do Not Have To Work All The Time To Be Successful

Something that has been coming up a lot lately as I've been interviewed on other podcasts these past few weeks has been that story that's told in the entrepreneur space that you must, (and I'm air quoting right now,) that you must hustle like crazy 24 hours a day, seven days a week, lock yourself in your office, don't see your friends for months at a time, maybe peep out of your office door to see your partner to order dinner that night to be successful.

How many times have you heard this? I know I've heard this. We've all heard it. We've all seen it. And I'm even going to admit that this was my thought process a few years ago. And it's exactly how I used to run my business years and years ago, because that's what I thought entrepreneurship looked like. I thought in order to be successful you had to do these things.

So I'm going to say back in 2016/2017, I thought in order to be successful, you had to be hustling. That word hustle was very big in my business and I was working hard. And I felt that I would never again "make it". And I couldn't have been more wrong about that. And here I am, I'm working literally the least I've ever worked in my business. I'm playing the most I've ever played in my life. And I have my own me time every single morning. Like, I literally sleep in every single morning. I wake up to no alarm clock unless I have an early team meeting, then yes, alarm clocks happen. (I Love you team.) But other than that, usually not. Does some of it account to the systems that I've added in over the years and team members?

Yeah, most definitely. And with all of that, we're continuing to grow without having to add more to our plates. And this is exactly what I teach my clients to do at all levels in their business. It's not just once you hit the 20K month level or the 10K month level, you can start adding some of these things in today to your business. Even if you're just starting. So that way you can start to make more serve more people while working less.

So again, whether you are just starting your online business or your years into it; two things that I truly believe is number one, you are more than your business. Going to say that again. Let's write this down. You are more than your business. And number two, the more fun you have in your life, in your business, the more money you make.

Changing Your Mindset

So today, I want to take you through some action items that you can do in your business so that you can, (no matter what level in your business you are,) you can start making more money while working less. Because you can. It's possible. I've created the evidence for you. My clients created the evidence for you. Now it's your time to create your own evidence in your own life, in your own business.

So if you believe you need to work your booty off to grow your business, you're going to prove yourself. And if you believe that you can make your business scale with balance, you will also prove yourself.

It all starts with you and your belief and what you choose to do and how you choose to run things. You see so many people hustling. Literally in their businesses they're at six figures and they're hustling 12 to 14 hour days in their business. But that's a choice, right? There are so many things they can do to tweak how their business runs so they can work less. They're choosing to work those 10, 12, 14 hour days in their business. You can build a successful business and have balance at the same time. Again, I work 20 hour work weeks and I take afternoon naps, probably going to take one a day. Binge Netflix. Currently I'm actually rebinging. Just because, you know, with COVID there's not too many new shows coming out. But I'm re-binging Jane the Virgin right now. I absolutely love that show. And I run a multiple six figure business. It's all a choice. It's your choice. And if you're anything like me and on board with a 20 hour work weeks then this is the perfect podcast episode for you.

Outsourcing, Batching and Automating In Your Business

So the first thing I want to get into is I want you to start to think about hiring, delegating, outsourcing, automating and also trashing, removing things from your business that maybe you don't actually need. And so what do you want to start to think about? Or what you do want to start to think about is how can I take some things off my plate? Does this mean that you need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars every month and hire 10 new team members? No, not necessarily. You can start to take things off your plate without spending much money, especially if you're in the beginning stages. And you can start to take things off your plate without spending any money actually. For example, you can start to do something that I love to do, which is batching stuff. You can batch things in your business and create less for you to do. And so what happens if you start to record a podcast episode?

Do you usually sit down, record a few back to back? Or do you start recording one and then your ringtone on your phone goes off? You answer that, you get interrupted. You go off, you start doing laundry because maybe the washer just dinged at you. I'm not sure if your washer dings, I'm not sure.

But your process flow gets interrupted, which makes things so much more time consuming in your business. So sit down and batch things two to three episodes back to back instead of getting interrupted and adding an additional hour or two to your day because of all of that interruption and having to get back into flow. It's going to save you so much time throughout that week. Another example, instead of you going outside and maybe trying to take a picture for your Instagram photo or your Facebook photo every single day, what you could do instead is take one afternoon off. Then have your partner, your sister, your mom, or your best friend come with you with a few different outfits and grab 20 or 30 photos. And then, boom, you are set for the month instead of trying to spend 30 minutes a day taking a photo every single day.

That thirty minutes a day for an entire month, that's fifteen hours that you can go and spend maybe three or four hours one afternoon and batch these photos in one session. And for free with a friend, sister, mom, or whoever you want to bring with you. So that's definitely something that you can start to do very quickly. And I highly, highly recommend it. Before we hired photographers to do a lot of our shoots and things like that, I would batch all of the time. And there is this one time my boyfriend and I, we went up to a little get away, super cute Airbnb. This was a few years ago. And he batched tons of photos for me right there. One afternoon before we went out to do our wine tasting, we batched like twenty or thirty photos in one afternoon. Just a few hours inside the super cute Airbnb that we were already going to be staying at. So you definitely can get creative and you can definitely do it on a budget. You do not have to spend tons of money to start to do some of this and save and get more of your time back. Because time is the one thing you cannot get back.

So ask yourself, is there something that you're doing every single day that maybe you can start to automate in your business? Your social media, for example, scheduling your social media? You can hop on to a few different apps or software that actually help you schedule and even recycle or repurpose your social media content for you. We want these softwares and platforms to be working harder for us than us doing it ourselves. So you can sit down, you can batch your content and have it already and scheduled for the entire week in an hour or less.

It Really depends on how much premium content that you have or what you can possibly repurpose into content, captions, things like that. And if you want to learn a little bit more about repurposing content, go and check out some of my past podcast episodes. We actually dive into that exact topic. We did step by step for you, and I believe that this was also a question that was asked in one of our more recent fierce business Q&A. Which you can find over on IGTV, over my Instagram or on the business Facebook page. We have got two areas you can go and find that.

And then, of course, all of the podcast episodes because we're over one hundred episodes. Still so crazy and I love it. I am always celebrating it. So automation is huge. There's so much that you can automate. It's absolutely incredible. I love technology. And so maybe you're a little further into your business; that's awesome. Maybe you're at the point where you can hire; that's amazing. Start to ask yourself who can you hire to give you some time back each week? Maybe this is a virtual assistant. Maybe this is a podcast editor. Or you hire a virtual assistant potentially to do some of your podcast editing for you, depending on that person's skill set.

Maybe you are looking to hire a support coach to help you inside of your programs or a sales team member to take some of your sales calls. Do you do a lot of sales calls in your business or are you on the phone constantly on sales calls? Maybe this is something that gets outsourced. Or you can also tweak your sales process that you aren't doing many sales calls at all. You can still very easily move it over to the DM's or other things to move your client through your funnel.

So tons of thoughts about when it comes to, OK, what can I start to get off my plate? How can I start to be a little more efficient with my time? Doesn't necessarily mean that you need to hire. However, you can start to batch, you can start to automate some things. So there are some things you can start to think about and sort of brainstorm. And I'm sure you're writing tons of notes down right now to start to brainstorm. "Ok, how can I make things easier for me?" Because at the end of the day, you've got to make things easier for you. And they can be easy for you!

Creating Boundaries

Now, the next thing that I want to go into to help you make more or serve more people while working less is starting to think about creating some boundaries. Boundaries everywhere. In your life boundaries and boundaries on social media. I see so many entrepreneurs get sucked into the cycle of people pleasing and breaking their boundaries. They'll say they have boundaries on social media with their clients, but they don't actually hold true to them or hold their clients to that expectation. So, for example, I know this happens, because I used to do this back in the day. The minute a notification comes through on your phone or maybe your Apple Watch, they drop everything. Like, literally it's like stop, drop and roll and get back to their client. Which means whatever they were doing initially when that ping came through is now getting interrupted. And it's going to take even more time to get back into that flow to finish. And I actually talked about this over on Instagram on a mini training a few weeks ago. And I got so many people DMing me asking questions about this and thanking me that I wanted to bring this up today in this episode. I know how it is when you are feeling the need to get back to your clients very quickly and right away.

However, you get to have boundaries about when you respond to your clients. Right? Your clients know that you're not going to get back to them 24/7. You can go in and get back to your clients when it fits your schedule and your day. Right. So let's figure out how you can add some of those boundaries. And if you have those boundaries, I do want you to ask yourself, are you actually sticking to them? Are you holding your clients to them as well? Or are you allowing them to reschedule calls two hours before your call is scheduled? Start to look at the insides of the business and how that's running as well.

Do you have work hours? And if you do, do your clients know what your work hours are? That's a big question. Do they know that if they send you a Voxer at nine p.m. that you most likely aren't going to be getting back to them at nine p.m. or 10 p.m.? Especially because so many of us are in different time zones, because we are in the online space. Do you give yourself an entire day off from the business each week on a minimum? So there are things you should start to ask yourself that you can create boundaries around your life, your clients, social media, all of the things. And one of the biggest things is, (I know so many have resistance around this, but once they do it, it changes everything.) turning off your social media notifications as well. Turn them off, babe. It's going to be a game changer for you.

Increasing Your Prices

Now, the next thing I want to go into and chat with you about and get you to sort of think about is "OK for me to make more or serve more people and work less, what can I do with my programs, my services? How can I start to make some tweaks and shifts there?" One of the things you can do if you haven't done this yet, is increase your prices. I would say about roughly 80 percent of coaches or online service providers are undercharging, especially in the beginning stages. And so increase your prices. You're going to be able to really deliver and show up and be excited to show up when your prices are actually where you want them to be.

I know sometimes you tell yourself one thing and then this happens: you know, maybe you're on the sales call and you're about to tell your potential client what the investment is. And you want to say it's two thousand dollars, but then you drop it to fifteen hundred last minute because you're afraid of rejection. And all of these things apply to holding true to your boundaries. Increase your prices and hold true to the prices that you want to charge. Because it's not just for you, it's also for your client. For them to show up, right? It gets them to commit to you as well. But increasing your prices can help you, of course, make more.

Serving More People

And then also, how can you start to serve more people? So maybe we need to make tweaks inside of your programs. Maybe we need to restructure your program so that you can serve more people. For example, maybe you give One-on-One Voxer access to each individual? Is that necessary? Is that something that they need in order to create that transformation or to move from point A to point B? If it's not, then let's remove it. And maybe your next level program, or your higher level program clients receive Voxer private with you instead of the group program that's a lower investment. The higher the investment, usually the more access they have to you. And I really dove deep into this type of conversation and an older podcast episode where we went deep into product suites and how to make different tweaks to your programs. So ask yourself, "how can I restructure my programs so that I can serve more people?" Because yes, we do want to work less. But it's more about how I can serve more people. You don't have enough time in your day to serve 300 clients in Voxer. We just don't. You are going to go crazy. You're not going to have any time to live your life and run the other things that you get to run in your business. So how can you start to restructure some of your programs so that you can serve more people?

Adding Systems In Your Business

Then start to think about systems you can start to add in. If you haven't listened to a few episodes ago, we dove into six figure systems and what this can actually look like. So your content marketing systems, your sales systems and processes that you have. How can you start to dive into those and add some of those? We talked about this a little bit earlier, but automation, for example. You can automate your onboarding process. You can automate your offboarding process. There's so much that you can do as you continue to grow your business. And all of these things you can do even in the beginning stages of your business. We want to start to take things off your plate so that you don't get too used to the entire solo-prenuer. Because I know I spent my time being a one woman show for way too long and I don't want you to be stuck in that same story of what I told myself back then. You can start to hand things off much sooner. You can start to automate things much sooner.

There's so much for you available out there to simplify things in your business and to take things off your plate for you. And adding some of these new things that we've mentioned today: hiring, delegating, outsourcing, automating, removing things from your business, also creating boundaries in your business, increasing your prices, tweaking programs so you can serve more people. And even adding systems and as well. All of these things are going to help you serve more people while working less. And it's so possible.

If you want to get to that point in the 20 hour workweek or less, maybe you want to have a two hour workday. Amazing. We can most definitely get you there. At the end of the day, it's what you want to do. You have the choice to build a business the way that you want to build it. And that's what I love so much about entrepreneurship and creating your own businesses is you are running the show. You get to build the business you want to. You make up the rules. So what rules do you want to make up? How do you want your business to run? And then let's start to build your business around that lifestyle of where you want it to go, because it's 1000 percent possible. I know it, I see it every single day, and it's so possible for you as well.

So your action item for today, go ahead and brainstorm two ways that you can make more money while working less this month. What are two things you can do? Whether it's adding one tool of automation into your business to help you get some time back, such as that social media tool that we were talking about. Can you batch some of your photo taking? Batch some of your podcasts recording? We're going to actually record another episode right after this. So I'll be batching that.

We love our coaching calls. We do full on coaching days so that we can really batch that and support our clients in one or two days, every single month. So start to ask some of those questions and do that. Let me know over on Instagram. You know where to find me. I don't bite. I cannot wait to hear all about what you're going to do with those two things that you're going to start doing this week so that you can start to make more and serve more people all while working less!

Topics we cover include:

Steps to Making Your Business Less Hands On
Serving More People
Boundaries In Your Business

And so much more!

Times to check out:

(6:03) The hustle

(7:28) You are more than your business

(8:05) It’s your choice

(9:29) Improving your process flow

(12:50) Automating

(14:20) Outsourcing

(15:45) Boundaries

(21:58) Solo-prenuer

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