by Karen Skidmore | 06,24 | Marketing Articles, Pillar Articles
No, it’s not a trick question nor am I about to launch into some passive-income, work-from-the-beach way of turning on the money tap whilst lounging back on a Caribbean sundeck.
It’s a serious question that all experts and service-based professionals need to answer at some point in their business.
Of course, the sum doesn’t have to be 6 figures. If you read my book, True Profit Business, you’ll discover that I am not a fan of pushing out the 6 figure business dream; it’s an ego-driven target because the reality is that most 6 figure businesses have an entirely different money-in-their-bank-account-sum when you take into account exactly what profit is made.
Too many people are working too hard to achieve the wrong goals.
If it is a genuine 6-figure sum you’re after, great, but the money sum could be that you simply want an extra £10,000 over the next few months.
For the sake of simplicity, the money sum I am going to use in this article is £100,000 because it’s as an easy number to work through.
First of all, why is this question important?
Knowing how you want to make your money from your business is important because it’s going to significantly impact your marketing strategy, positioning required, resources needed (advertising budget, hiring of team, cost of digital platform set up), skills to learn and how much time and effort you are required to get it all working.
Your business model – how you engage with your clients and deliver what you sell – is directly related to how well you can grow and potential scale your business. You have a choice in the way your design, set up and run your business.
But most people end up with a business model based on what everyone else in your profession is running, or a business model based on what you’ve been taught to be the most profitable or easiest to run.
In the first instance, you may have the same business model as everyone else in your profession not because of choice, but because you don’t know any better. What you don’t know, you don’t know and, as with most clients I work, I doubt you’ve gone to business school or have training in business processes and systems.
If this is the case, you may have spent a lot of time learning about marketing and how to get clients, but the topic of how to design, set up and run your business is something you’ve probably never given much thought to.
Doing what everyone else in your profession does has its upsides because you know what works already. However, there is a big problem with this. Just because most of your colleagues or competitors are running their business in a particular way, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are all doing it the right way for them.
80% of businesses are doing it wrong
If we take the Pareto Principle that statistically proves 80% of your outcome comes from 20% of your input, 80% of the success that happens in your profession comes from just 20% of the businesses.
Thus 80% of businesses in your profession are creating just 20% of the output.
Can you see why so many of your colleagues and competitors seem to be struggling when you get to see what’s really going on behind their marketing, promotional campaigns and brand presence?
You know if you are in the 80 percentile if you experience any of the following:
- You’re overwhelmed; you’re procrastinating over marketing initiatives and new product ideas because you simply don’t know what you “should” be doing to make your business work more effectively.
- You’re overworked; you are stuck in the day-to-day grind and feeling miserable that you can’t spend the time doing more of what you love
- You’re underpaid; you compete on price, charge by the hour or the time you spend with a client and often over-deliver so that you do far more than you originally promised thus dropping your value even further.
I know this paints a pretty depressing picture but there are plenty of you in this situation (you are part of the 80%!) and if you get a copy of my book, True Profit Business, you’ll discover the path out of this 80%.
What are the top 20% of your profession doing right?
There will be of course all sorts of reasons for their success but there is every chance that they are using technology to create huge growth advantage opportunities to allow them to stand out as a leading expert in your profession.
You’ve probably already seen colleagues and competitors create new ways of sharing their expertise. From expanding their offerings to serving groups of clients, large and small, through to creating digital content and artificial intelligence; the opportunities to do something “different” and grow the number of clients you work with are open to you if that’s what you want.
This leads me to the second instance where many of you may be.
Digital doesn’t necessarily mean better
The explosion in selling digital content since 2015 has led to thousands of marketing experts teaching digital ways of making money and growing a business from your laptop on the beach, particularly within the coaching, therapy and training professions. Because technology has been the reason for a lot of businesses’ success, it’s easy to get sucked into believing that digital is the only way to grow a business like yours. But that’s not simply the case.
Many marketplaces are now so flooded with digital offerings that it’s hard to break in and claim your space, especially when so much of the content can be of poor quality and your client base may have begun to distrust this form of learning or support.
Plus there are plenty of those 20% businesses in your profession who are running more traditional business models, but because you don’t get to see their marketing campaigns or brand presence on your Facebook or Instagram feed, you may not realise they exist.
And let’s get real about how it is to run a top 20% business. You may have a business that, on paper, is well within your profession’s top 20%, especially if you are measuring its success on traditional key performance indicators such as turnover. But the reality of running your business in the top 20% is that it may be burning you out.
You know if you are getting burnt out in the 20% if you experience any of the following:
- You’re overwhelmed; you’ve stepped up and created your expert status but you don’t like the visibility and constant pressure to perform.
- You’re overworked; you can’t seem to keep up what you’ve promised your clients and can’t come up for air long enough to hire the right people to help you grow.
- You’re underpaid; your turnover maybe 6 or 7 figures but there’s not much left for you once you’ve paid your team, advertising invoices and running costs.
Again, another pretty depressing picture.
But as before, you aren’t the only one to have created a business that is burning you out because this practice of growing a business based on following someone else’s formulas and business model is rife. This is why I want to open up your eyes and see the possibilities available to you on your path to creating a True Profit Business. My aim of my book is to help you to avoid following someone else’s proven business model and systems, just because they are telling you it works for them.
You have a choice
You have a choice on what business infrastructure, processes and team to have in place to give you the right business to help you achieve your creativity, purpose and money aspirations.
You can choose the design, set up, and how you run your business based on who you are and how you want to show up. It’s just the way you can decide on the right vehicle you want to drive day-to-day.
There are so many different types of vehicles on the road because each of us has a different reason for choosing our mode of transport, and at different stages of our lives. Starting out, you’ll drive any car you can afford; a small hatchback or perhaps stick to your bike, especially if you live in a city. Families may drive a big SUV. Some may like fast cars. Others choose their mode of transport based on environmental impact and may even decide they don’t want to own a vehicle but use uber or rental cars for longer journeys.
There’s no one vehicle that’s right for everyone or for a specific profession.
And so it is with your business model and revenue streams.
There are four critical decisions to make to help you decide which business model you want; your role in the business, the number of clients you want to serve and then consequently at what price point, how you deliver your service or products and which selling system you decide works best for you. In my book, True Profit Business, I take you through in detail all four of these decisions.
So for now, let me take you through a couple of examples.
The passive income dream
Someone I spoke to recently had recently spent a significant amount of her investment cash setting up a new membership website. She had read a lot about membership sites, had joined an online business mentoring programme to teach her the basics of setting up digital products and thought this would be a perfect revenue stream to have around being a mum at home with two young children. She wouldn’t have to travel anywhere and could do everything her business needed her to do from her kitchen table.
There was no questioning her passion for helping the audience she wanted to reach out; she knew they were desperate for clear signposting and easy to access advice. But 14 months in and her beautifully designed website was verging on a marketing disaster. Although visits to the site were climbing and she was good traction in the forums, database building was almost non-existent and her offer just wasn’t compelling enough.
She planned to start with the freemium model and then charge £27 monthly. She dreamed of having a 6-figure business, but to make £100,000 would mean 309 members, assuming that all 309 would stay a minimum of 12 months. That’s a whole lot of leads to get that many customers and a whole lot of customer retention strategy to keep them being members.
Of course, long term, this kind of membership model can work, but you need a big bucket of resources (advertising, customer support, time, energy and hours and hours of screen time) because your marketing strategy is focused on a high volume, low pricing model.
It’s highly unlikely that any decent profit will be made for at least a year or two (probably many more!) if you rely solely on this revenue model. And this person was burnt out after 14 months of struggling to build up her tribe on a bootstrap budget and a lack of skills in digital marketing and advertising.
Let’s go to the other end of the scale.
I recently worked with a client for many years in the publishing industry. I am sure you know the massive changes that have turned much of the publishing sector on its head. The problem was that she was still stuck in the traditional, old-school business model where very little revenue was created until a book was published and sold. For her business to make £100,000, it was all about book contracts, working hard upfront, and only seeing rewards when (and sometimes only if) the book was successful. Plus, it was a cost-heavy business, so profits were tight.
When we started diving into the process she went through with her author clients; it was apparent to me the value of what she did even before the content was written. Of course, being surrounded by the traditional – and very much outdated – publishing business model, it was a classic case of “what you don’t know, you don’t know.” But having talked through all her options and what role, client capacity and the delivery process would work for her, it was as if a searchlight was beaming through the fog, and a new path became clear.
Offering her services as a book coach and mentor at the start of the process was an obvious place to begin; charging for the 6 months run-up to get the book ready for editing was not only profitable for my client but incredibly powerful and instrumental for the success of her author clients. Again, it was not a holy grail solution to making 6-figures – there was still a lot of thinking and doing to be done around her positioning and marketing her new offerings – but she could see clearly that this additional revenue stream could be a far simpler way of growing her business revenue than sticking to what everyone else in her industry did.
And without distracting her from her core revenue base or burning herself in the process.
The price you decide to charge has much to do with your success.
Before I send you off to think about your potential revenue streams, let’s deal with the elephant in the room: the price you charge. When creating new revenue streams in your business, it’s often perceived as easier to start at the lower end of charge of the price scale. I’m sure you have seen, and perhaps even bought from, the classic product funnel that starts with a £10 introductory product, which leads into a £295 course and then takes you into a premium programme of £1,000 and more.
So what many do and are taught to do is start creating your £10 introductory offer because you believe you need to build your list. And a £10 product is so much easier and safer to create, is it not?
Coming back to the question on hand – how do you go about creating £100,000 … that’s a lot of £10 sales you need to make to build enough momentum to move people up to your next mid-level product. You’d probably need 500+ sales to get you the conversions to that £100,000. That’s exhausting (and I speak from experience!)
Again, this kind of product funnel works like the membership offer example above. There’s no doubt about it. But starting with the perceived easier end of the funnel is not always your most straightforward path to growing your business. A far quicker, simpler, and easier way to do this is to flip your funnel on its head and start at the top end of the scale. Even if you decide to start small and create a programme or service at around the £2,000 mark, it becomes obvious that you have to sell to far fewer people to get yourself to your £100,000 goal. Plus, you’ll gain valuable experience, build your credibility, and see better results for your clients at this level.
Now, of course, I’m starting to sound like the rainbow fairy.
“Just wave your wand, burn your candles and the unicorn will come and poop out those clients for you.”
You know clients aren’t going to magically appear with intention alone (don’t you?!). There is a need for focus for your overall strategy and positioning, a clear offer to be created, and an understanding of what your marketplace really wants. But I hope that you get the point I am making here and that you realise you have a choice about how you design, create and run your revenue streams in your business.
Think carefully about your pricing and offers as you grow your business.
You mustn’t just follow someone else’s system or stick to what your industry does because what works for others may not always be the case for you.
Always come back to where YOU want to go in your journey and what income and impact goals you want, and work backwards from there because that’s when you can build a business that will work for you sustainably.
by Karen Skidmore | 06,24 | Business Process, Leadership, Stories, inspirations & thoughts for the day
Everyone doubts themselves at some point in their business journey.
Sometimes these feelings of fear and doubt can come from nowhere; one day, you feel great about your business growth plans, and then the next, you feel overwhelmed by your ever-increasing to-do list, or you get cross with yourself because you haven’t got what you wanted done that day.
It’s easy to get triggered by what you see on social media. You’re scrolling through your Facebook news feed, and you see someone pictured holding their new book. Now, you may not have *really* wanted to write a book, but suddenly, you feel inadequate.
‘How did she achieve all that AND find the time to write a book?’
Everything you have achieved so far gets forgotten. You get frustrated with your progress. You berate yourself for having not worked harder or taken bigger action.
You pull back.
Maybe all that you need is to feel more motivated; to be braver, to do something to feel stronger.
But the truth about using motivation to get back on track is that it is a short-lived tactic.
Using motivation to overcome your fears and doubts and shake yourself into action is like trying to mix oil and water. At first, it mixes. But, in no time at all, the molecules separate and the two layers of fear and motivation can be clearly seen again.
Because motivation is a short term fix.
You can feel motivated after attending a high energy workshop or weekend retreat, or having listened to an inspiring podcast.
They can all give you a boost but it’s short-lived unless you keep giving yourself repeated hits, similar to drinking more cups of coffee to keep you awake; at some point, you’re going to give yourself the caffeine shakes and then feel even shittier the next day.
So what’s the answer to dealing with your fears and doubts if more motivation isn’t the answer?
I have had my fair share of fears and doubts. They’ve shown up in bucket loads over the years and have often appeared as a gentle tight grip on the inside of my throat. I used to let this feeling in my throat silence me and pull me back, like a bungee cord.
I’d come up with an idea that initially excited me. I would let my motivation play with the idea for a short while, maybe for a few days or even a few weeks. But as soon as the motivation wore off, the bungee cord of fear and doubt would snap me back.
Each time this happened I’d either dilute the idea to end up with a smaller, simpler version of it or would decide not to do it at all.
Yes, these bungee cord moments have been frustrating phrases in my business. But these moments have provided valuable lessons to help me learn how to feel into my uncomfortableness; the feeling of vulnerability, shame, guilt and whatever else my inner shit throws up at me every time I’ve wanted to step up and grow.
What I’ve learnt over the years is to see that gentle tight grip on my throat as my sign that, whatever I was thinking when I felt it, it was actually the right thing for me to do.
The fear and doubts I felt were actually signs of my potential stretching as I started to feel uncomfortable with growth and thus help me see where I needed to take a risk and step up.
Much of what I teach on business growth focuses on the practicalities of business structure, systems and processes. But in order for you to move forward and grow, you also need to go within and feel into when your fears and doubts appear to realise the power of your potential to expand.
Yes, fear is a helpful emotion to help keep you safe at times. If you were to find yourself wanting to take a short cut home, down a dark alley late at night, fear and doubt would probably reason with you that it would be safer to stay to the lit roads.
But if you let your fear and doubt help you take only the safe roads when you go about your day to day business, then what potential growth are you missing out on?
Fears and doubts are often your body’s way of telling you that you may be on the right path.
They are reminders that you have the potential to stretch and even though you feel you don’t have the answers, it’s a sign that your heart, body and soul wants to grow.
So if you’ve been using bursts of motivation, either from listening to inspiring podcasts or reading motivational books, to try to give you the courage and bravery to step up and grow and wondering why it hasn’t been working, maybe it’s time to open yourself to feeling into your fears and doubts, and exploring what your body may be trying to tell you.
It could be your sign that you are ready to take action!
by Karen Skidmore | 03,24 | Business Planning, Ebb & Flow, Marketing Articles
Have you ever considered the timings of your monthly cycle when planning your business or deciding when to launch your next programme or speak at an event?
(Yes, this article is written for women, but if you’re a guy with women in your team, please read on because this is a serious post and can be incredibly enlightening if you’ve never considered this in your business!)
Cycle tracking is becoming an everyday conversation, at least with our clients.
It’s one of the ways you can track how your energy flows naturally and responds to external influences, such as what food we eat and how we look after our bodies, and since doing a lot of research in this area and bringing it into the work that we do with our clients, I’ve seen that creating sustainable business success is more than a well-put-together business plan or marketing funnel.
Being aware of what affects your energy and how you approach certain decisions in your business can help you design, create and run your business so your work fuels you rather than burns you out.
Why track your monthly cycle?
If you’ve ever tracked your cycle, you’ll know your energies have ebbs and flows.
I’m now post-menopausal, so I no longer have a monthly cycle; I tune into different things to track my energy flow now. But in the last few years of menstruating, I tracked my cycle to help plan my marketing campaigns and promotional events as it became a helpful barometer to tune into my ebb and flow of emotions, creativity and periodic stuck-ness.
I started to be aware of the exact dates of my cycle when my husband and I decided to start a family (ah, those fun days of taking one’s temperature to confirm ovulation days!). But it wasn’t until my adrenaline reached boiling point and my system crashed back in 2012 that I started seriously to research my peri-menopausal symptoms. I began to track my monthly cycles again.
Tracking my emotional and physical changes throughout the month helped me make sense of what was going on inside of me; the feeling of being out of control one week focused and in flow the next, often followed by a severe energy crash, irrational mood swings and my inner critic shouting down any great ideas I had for my business.
In my experience, knowing where I’ve been in my cycle at any given point in my working week has helped me enormously over the past few years to deal with things that haven’t gone according to plan … as well as helping me realise I wasn’t going mad; I’m simply a woman!
The four stages of your cycle
Your cycle has four distinct stages, each affecting your energy, emotions and physicality.
Of course, not every woman has a regular 28-day cycle; we all have our unique pattern, sometimes so irregular that it’s hard to track. But if you are still in menstrual flow, the first step in taking this approach with your business is to track and record how you feel and what symptoms you experience.
Plenty of apps to choose from today include tracking your symptoms and moods, too.
If you prefer a ‘paper’ version, I have a brilliant 28 Day Energy Tracker here that you can download for free.
Phase 1: Menstruation
Day 1 of your cycle is the first day of menses. I often found a massive sense of relief on this day, followed by a few days of general yuckiness, bloating and tiredness that worsened as I got older. It felt as if my body found it tougher each month to kick start the engine as I get closer to menopause each year.
Day 2 or 3 was a day I could have quite happily stayed in bed all day, and although walking and getting out and about brought relief, it was always vital for me to lower my pace and keep rested. I learnt from experience that to go full pelt during these days would have a knock-on effect of being knackered for weeks or even picking up a bug and getting ill. So, instead of pushing through with complex tasks, I leant back and took everything at a slower pace during these times. When I did this, it often turned out to be an incredibly productive time for me, as I pondered more, avoided making decisions and focused on creative projects such as writing, content and programme design.
Phase 2: Follicular
This phase usually lasts 7 to 10 days of your cycle, and it’s when your oestrogen and testosterone levels start to climb, getting you ready for ovulation.
I used to feel wonderful during this time, but as my peri-menopausal symptoms kicked in, the lack of oestrogen made this week tough for me for some months. It was often when I felt the most frustrated; I’d been used to surging ahead with plans and action-taking with my brain going full steam, but my body did not respond in this way in my last few years. And if I’d pushed through in my menstruation phase, I would feel a bit shit during this time!
Phase 3: Ovulatory
Lasting only a few days, your body produces your egg, and you may feel incredibly powerful; able to take on the world and say yes to everything.
It’s Mother Nature’s way of making you attractive to the opposite sex and ready to mate, of course, so this can be a fabulous time to run an event, negotiate with a new contract or even pick up the phone to prospect you’ve been putting off for an age.
Phase 4: Luteal
Typically lasting 12 to 16 days, this is the remainder of your cycle. Oestrogen and testosterone decline, and progesterone, the heat-inducing hormone, kicks in, preparing your body for a potential pregnancy. Often, you feel the most tired because Mother Nature is preparing you for ‘rest and nest’.
This phase can become an excellent time to brain dump to-do lists, clear up clutter and re-align yourself before taking action on any new projects or ideas.
And, of course, PMS can start to kick in towards the end of this last stage; from chronic back pain and stiff joints to raging anger and mood swings. So be aware that this can be a particularly stressful time to think straight or do projects such as the end-of-month accounting! So perhaps it is not the best time to reconcile your banking or respond to a negative comment on one of your Facebook posts.
What about you?
Every woman’s monthly cycle is unique to her. You will have your own symptoms and experiences; and some months go better than others. But the more aware you become of your cycle, the more effective and productive you can be in your business decisions and marketing activities.
And as marketing can be such an emotive part of your business, from deciding what price to sell at and whether to record a live video when all you want to do is climb into bed with a hot water bottle, here are some of the lessons I have learnt along the way of planning my marketing and my business around my cycles.
Lessons learnt from tracking my cycle
1. Stop beating yourself up
You can stop beating yourself up when you get frustrated something’s not working.
Being “on your period” is not about making excuses but when you are aware of how your body is responding to which hormones you are producing, it can clarify why you may be screaming at your laptop for deleting your file (because, quite obviously, it had nothing to do with you!).
2. Give yourself a break when you need it
You can give yourself a break when your body needs it most and plan to deliver your best work when you are at your best.
Planning a two-day event in the fourth week of your cycle may not the best time if you’re contending with stomach cramps and irritability so if you have control over your work calendar, choosing days in your follicular weeks could allow you to rock your best work in front of an audience.
3. Stop taking yourself so seriously
Nothing … and NOTHING … is more irritating than someone (AKA your partner) asking you if you’re PMSing … when you are PMSing.
I would often head this off at the pass once I became aware of my mood swings. When I got that first sign of irritability, I was off to check my period tracker, and then tell my husband and my children that I was on the way. I found that I could laugh about it if I were the one to bring it up first … funny how that happens!
4. Take days off when you need them
Running your own business gives you the enormous benefit of controlling your diary, so don’t make it more difficult for you or your team members than it needs to be. If you have a particularly bad PMS or find it tough on other days of your cycle, factor those days into your working calendar. Your body and brain will thank you for it when you come to your productive days, and you can turn up the energy dial.
In corporate life, taking a sick day for bad period pains can be challenging to negotiate, especially if it’s as regular as clockwork and it’s the same day of every month. Plus, trying to explain in a board meeting why your brain fog is so thick and why you have no idea why your sales figures are down this month may not go down well. However, I remember one lady who worked as a Communications Director for a small company. She began to add her cycle in her work diary after a conversation with me about his topic so she and her team could see her predicted cycle. This may be one step too far for you, but I believe the more we normalise our normal cycles as women, the better support we can get from others.
5. Get braver on your brave days
This was a game-changer for me!
Add this cycle time to your diary if you know you’re raring to go during your follicular week. Plan your sales days during this time. Or your business planning or creation of a new programme. Let Mother Nature help capitalise on these days and help you do your best work.
Making periods part of the business conversation
This topic of periods and hormonal cycles is incredibly important, and although it is easier to bring this topic up than it was a decade ago, I wish more people, men and women, could discuss this in the context of business.
As we grow into a more feminine world and more female leaders rise to the top, this topic must be discussed openly to enable us to develop and grow our businesses without burning out.
If there is one thing I’d love you to take action from reading this article, if you don’t already, it is that you start to track your cycle.
It can be as simple as writing in a journal, or if you prefer a piece of tech, then there are plenty of period tracker apps you can get for your phone (you get the added benefit of the apps automatically calculating your future due dates based on your cycle dates).
Or download my free 28 Day Energy Tracker.
Self-awareness is powerful; gathering evidence, rather than wondering what is going on with your energy roller coaster, can give you specific patterns to look out for and help you plan your marketing WITH your menstrual cycle rather than run your business against your natural ebb and flow.
POST EDIT: Originally published 17th January 2009. Updated and republished 5th March 2024.
by Karen Skidmore | 02,24 | Business Planning, Pillar Articles
As a woman of a certain age, I’ve grown wise to the fact that two things are most precious to us: time and energy
But we can often spend our whole lives giving them away without a moment’s thought.
When we feel we have lots of time and energy, we can take them for granted.
But when we don’t have much of either, we grind along, working to other people’s schedules and demands. They exist as a finite resource for everyone, no matter where you live, and yet we can’t make more of either of them when we run out.
They are the most valuable resources we have in our lives and businesses, and yet without some fundamental boundaries in place; we will under-value them and give them both away to anyone who demands them of us, without recognising the need to use them first on ourselves and what’s important to us.
In my 20s and 30s, I often felt I had boundless amounts of both. If I felt tired, I would grab another cup of coffee. If I were hungry and didn’t have the energy to cook a meal, I would throw a ready meal in the microwave or eat a sandwich on the run.
We could do that then, couldn’t we? Without much thought to the consequences or long-term impact.
But as I woke up to my 40s, kicking off the decade with a young family (2 kids just 22 months apart), reeling from losing my dad to cancer and a business to run, my time and energy resources were suddenly depleted.
That coffee fix or sandwich on the run didn’t quite do the job as it had in my 20s, and I spent most of that decade crawling my way through quite extreme peri-menopausal symptoms, over-worked adrenals and wearing my Superwoman cape to get by every day.
But what has all this got to do with business?
There’s a magic word that I want to share with you that has become one of the most essential strategies to my business growth and comes up repeatedly in our coaching conversations with our clients.
Boundaries
Without boundaries to protect and fuel your time and energy resources, you will often end up working like a ‘busy fool’, as one of my clients called herself before we began working together. You may be making money, but the amount of hours you put in and the money you pay yourself at the end of each month doesn’t feel worth it.
In this article, I’d like to share the top 4 work boundaries I’d recommend you have in place to increase your profitability and avoid burnout.
1. Hours Worked
What hours are you prepared to work?
Very few clients I have worked with have ever stopped to think about how their ideal week could look; they have allowed their weekly routine to be shaped by what their business gives them.
When you started your business, your work diary probably looked very empty. It’s not until you begin marketing, start working with clients and become able to attend various events or conferences that you find your diary getting booked up. Meetings are being scheduled to suit other people. You don’t consider the preparation or rest time you need between appointments. Your once-open diary is now pulling you apart; you’re wearing your busy badge of honour, and you don’t have the time to focus on projects that could grow your business.
The irony of time management is that you can’t manage time; you can only manage yourself.
To stop this, I’d recommend you take a breath and work out your ideal week. If a week feels too routine for you and you imagine different things happening at other times of your working month, change the time frame to an ideal month.
Here is a list of questions to help you define your ideal week.
- My ideal working week starts on …
- What would I do on my first working day to set the right tone for my week?
- How would I spend the other days? (For example, are certain mornings or afternoons important to keep clear for certain activities?)
- My favourite day of the week is … and this is the reason why …
- The days and hours I want to work with my clients are …
- I am most in flow during this time …
- What I love to be spending most of my time doing is …
- Who I want to be spending more of my time with is …
- When I am not working, I want to be … (This question is crucial for those of you who don’t have other commitments, such as family members to look after, to pre-determine your working hours. It can be far harder to switch off from work when you only have yourself to be committed to, so decide what you want to do when you are not working.)
- How I want to feel at the end of my ideal week is …
- What do I want to do or achieve daily?
- What do I want to do or achieve weekly?
- What do I want to do or achieve monthly?
- What are you not prepared to sacrifice? (Are your Fridays sacred? Do you have to pick up children every day at 3.30 pm? Are you happy to work during the weekends but you have to have two days off during the week? Decide what time you aren’t prepared to give away so you can set those boundaries in place now and avoid frustration or resentment at a later date.)
Once you have answered these questions, could you decide what changes you can make to your scheduling and working hours? Do you need to block out certain mornings or afternoons for routine activities, such as content creation or team meetings?
If you cannot make any immediate changes, at what point can you introduce this new schedule? Can you add this to your diary right now?
You control who and what takes your attention during your working week. Some may not feel this is the case, especially if you are fully booked with clients for the next weeks or months. But when you decide what’s important to you in spending your time, you set the necessary boundaries to create the space to grow. You will realise that the right clients will want to work with you when you are available rather than you being dictated by their schedules.
2. Capacity Available
What is your capacity and availability for taking on new clients?
I often hear business owners asking for more clients, but they haven’t stopped to consider how many clients would give them a ‘full’ business. Think of your business like a hotel booking sheet. A hotel will have a finite number of rooms to sell for every day of the week. No matter what you sell, you will find an optimum level of clients, products, or programs you can sell while maintaining the service level you want to give.
If you choose to maximise your sales and compete on price (AKA always sell at lower prices because you feel it’s easier for you to sell), you are going to find this a challenging marketing strategy; competition is going to be tight, and you have to ensure you have the distribution channels or delivery systems in place to keep up with the demand.
For most of you reading this, you will have better success in optimising your sales and deciding how many clients or customers you can serve in any one week or month. By doing your sales numbers this way, you can work your charge rates back from here once you’ve decided how much you want to earn and thus set your boundaries on how many clients you can effectively onboard each week, month or quarter. This simple exercise can radically change your profitability overnight, and if you need help working this through, get in touch.
Please email me at karen@karenskidmore.com, and I’ll happily arrange for one of our coaches to talk you through the process and help assess your profitability options.
3. Communication Channels
Technology is a double-edged sword; it’s made communicating and corresponding with clients and prospects more accessible than ever … but that’s also meant that you are in danger of managing multiple platforms, never being able to follow a message trail, and constantly switching on.
The first rule of communication is that you DON’T have to be everywhere or have every messaging app switched on at all times.
Yes, your clients may have their preferences, but if you allow them to communicate with you on their messaging channel of choice, you will let your precious time and energy run out each day. You decide which communication channel(s) you want to use and set your working hours.
For example, you may want to only use email for all communications on the projects you are working on, and you promise to respond within one working day or the same day if you get their email before 2 pm. And for all quick messages or check-ins before meetings, you keep your WhatsApp between 9 am and 5 pm, Monday through Thursday.
Over the years, I have had many clients complain of having to answer WhatsApp messages on Sunday mornings or late at night. But the truth is that they have allowed that relationship to happen because they didn’t have clear communication channel boundaries set up at the start of their relationship.
If these boundaries slip as the relationship goes on (as often is the case if a client forgets or gets comfortable with working with you and treats you as they would any other team member), you can remind them of the original agreement and reset the boundary again.
For those of you who run a business that serves hundreds of customers online, the same principle applies to customer support and help desks. Could you clarify what support your business offers and when so your customers know what is expected? Lousy customer support happens when there are no clear communication boundaries set up, and the customer will ALWAYS have higher expectations of response than you can give them. So, avoid this from happening by setting clear expectations upfront.
4. Holidays & Time Off
Last but not least is the need for holiday boundaries. I see only a few self-employed business owners rarely plan their holiday times.
If employed, you would automatically get 20+ days of holiday a year. And yet, when most people want to work for themselves because of the freedom of choice, they rarely take holidays. The irony!
For many, holidays and time off are forced upon you, either by kids’ school holidays or you end up booking a week off just as you reach breaking point and the holiday becomes a necessity before you keel over in exhaustion.
Holidays and days off need to be planned.
Without this, you will keep working and working and working. Set the boundaries now, and look ahead over the next 12+ months and decide which days you want to set clear for holidays.
You don’t have to book anywhere, nor do you need to decide what you want to do with that time off. But without blocking these days out in your diary, you will automatically fill up the space with more work and more work. I have to do this myself every 3 or 4 months, on top of our family holiday time. If I didn’t block out chunks of 2 or 3 days around the flow of our business, I would keep on trucking, which I know is not suitable for me over a long period.
What Now?
These four boundaries may be just the foundation for you to work on more, depending on your business model and how you work with your clients. But if you have found yourself working like a ‘busy fool’, starting with these will hugely help shift your patterns of work and help reclaim your time, energy, and precious resources.
Now that you’ve read through this, I recommend you schedule the time to work through each. You will need time and energy to do this, a clear space to think and reflect on what’s important to you. Some of you will think you won’t have the time, but this will be because you need to have the proper boundaries for yourself and your business. You need to take this critical time out to avoid keeping those wheels spinning.
If you are super busy, start with a small slot of just 20 minutes – just the right amount of time to sit down with a cuppa – and work through the first one, Hours Worked. This is the most doable one to put into place, especially if you start to change your schedule two months hence. This may not make an immediate difference, but if you do, you will thank yourself for your forward thinking in just two months!
by Karen Skidmore | 02,24 | Business Planning, Business Process, True Profit
Have you ever stopped to think why you run your business the way you do?
Most people have ended up with their current model based on one of two reasons;
- It’s because it’s what everyone else in your profession is doing
- You’ve followed advice to teach you what is the most profitable or easiest to run
Running your business like everyone else
First, you may have the same business model as everyone else in your profession, not because of choice but because you don’t know any better. There’s no judgment here; what you don’t know, you don’t know. You may have spent a lot of time learning about marketing and getting clients, but you’ve probably never given much thought to how to design, set up and run your business.
Doing what everyone else in your profession does has its upsides because you know what works already. Why reinvent the wheel? However, there is a big problem with this. Just because most of your colleagues or competitors run their business in a particular way doesn’t necessarily mean they are all doing it correctly.
But … 80% of your profession are doing it wrong
If we take the Pareto Principle, which statistically proves that 80% of output comes from 20% of input, then we could theorise that 80% of the success in your profession comes from just 20% of businesses in that profession.
If we flip this the other way, 80% of businesses in your profession create just 20% of the output.
Hmmm …
Let’s stop and think about this and wonder how true this is.
Could we conclude that no matter which profession or business sector you operate in, too many people seem to be struggling? Look around at the faces at your next networking event or industry conference; how many of those businesses would you say are flourishing?
The reality is that many are experiencing one or more of the following:
- Overwhelm; procrastination over marketing initiatives and new product ideas because busy-ness is taking over the day-to-day, and there’s no space to work creatively on projects that will grow the business
- Overworked; stuck in the never-ending to-do-lists and client delivery
- Underpaid: competing on price and charging by the hour or the time spent with clients, which often leads to over-delivery and doing far more than initially promised to try and keep clients happy
This paints a pretty depressing picture, especially if you realise you may be in this average 80%!
What about the top 20% of your profession?
Are they creating 80% of the output?
There will be, of course, all sorts of reasons for the success of these top 20%, and yes, there is every chance that they are using technology to create massive growth advantage opportunities to allow them to stand out as leading experts in your profession.
You’ve probably already seen colleagues and competitors create new ways of sharing their expertise. From expanding their offerings to serving groups of clients, large and small, through to creating digital content and cutting-edge use of AI, the opportunities to do something ‘different’ and grow the number of clients you work with are open to you if that’s what you want.
This leads me to the second instance, where many of you may choose your business model based on what’s been taught to you as the most profitable or easiest to run.
Running your business because you’ve been taught this is the way that will make you the most money
The internet became mainstream in the late 1990s, changing our lives. When I started my first business in 2004, email marketing and blogging began emerging for small businesses. When the doors opened to mainstream social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, digital growth skyrocketed and advances in technology today, don’t seem to be showing any signs of slowing down.
Unsurprisingly, the explosion in selling digital content since 2015 has led to tens of thousands marketing experts teaching digital ways of making money and growing a business from your laptop on the beach, particularly within the consulting and coaching professions.
Because technology has been the reason for the success of a lot of businesses which are very visible online, it’s easy to get sucked into believing that digital is the only way to grow a business.
But this is simply not the case.
Many marketplaces are now flooded with digital offerings that it’s hard to break in and claim your space, especially when so much of the content can be of poor quality. Your client base may already begun to distrust this form of learning or support. I am sure you have already experienced digital learning and Zoom fatigue over the past few years.
You also have to consider that plenty of businesses in this top 20% bracket are running different or more traditional business models. You may not even realise they exist because you don’t get to see their marketing campaigns or brand presence on your Facebook or Instagram feed.
I remember a client told me once that she was impressed by the number of people I would attract at my live training events despite her needing to see more marketing about it. She wasn’t seeing it because I wasn’t targeting her; she was already my client. So be aware that there is plenty of success around you that you are not even aware of; because it’s not being marketed to you, you don’t see it.
Let’s get honest about how it is to run a top 20% business.
On paper, you may have a business that is well within your profession’s top 20%, especially if you are measuring its success on key performance indicators such as turnover, market share or social media followers. But, if you are a regular reader of my blogs and articles, the reality of trying to run a business in the top 20%, measured in this way, is that it may be burning you out.
If you feel you may be getting burnt out by trying to run a business in the top 20%, you will probably be experiencing one or more of the following:
- You’re overwhelmed; you’ve stepped up and created your expert status but don’t like the visibility and constant pressure to perform.
- You’re overworked; you can’t keep up with what you’ve promised your clients and can’t come up for air long enough to hire the right people to help you grow.
- You’re underpaid; your turnover may be great, but there’s not much left for you once you’ve paid your team, advertising invoices and running costs.
Again, another depressing picture, perhaps.
But you won’t be the only one to have created a business that is burning you out because this practice of growing a business based on following someone else’s formulas and business model is rife.
This is why I want you to see the possibilities available by a business model that allows your business to give you the time, money and energy you want and not have it running you into the ground.
You have a choice.
It may be that you are still looking for a formula to follow because you don’t know which direction you should be going in. And creating a formula for your success is what I want to help you with, but based on a choice that gives you the freedom to grow.
You have a choice on what business infrastructure, processes and team to have in place to give you the right business to help you achieve your creativity, purpose and money aspirations to be your authentic self, do good in the world and make money in the process.
You can choose the design, setup and how you run your business based on how you want success to look for you, just the way you can decide on the right car to drive every day.
Choosing which car to drive is similar to choosing what kind of business to run
There are so many different types of cars on the road because each of us has another reason for choosing our mode of transport and to varying stages of our lives.
Starting out, you’ll probably drive any car you can afford, a small hatchback, or even stick to your bike, especially if you live in a city. Families may drive a big SUV. Some may like fast cars. Others choose their mode of transport based on environmental impact and may even decide they don’t want to own a vehicle and instead use Uber or rental cars for longer journeys.
No one car is right for everyone.
And so it is with your business model.
You can decide on several different business models, but that’s not to say you have to pick just one.
You’ll likely decide you want a hybrid, like many electric cars are entering the market. But a word of caution here: be careful of mixing in too many as you may be in danger of creating a convertible SUV that runs on pedal power; no matter how innovative that may be, you’ve got very little chance of getting it off your driveway!
There’s every chance your business model will also change and evolve as you go on your business journey, just as a couple may swap their compact convertible for an SUV when they begin their family, or a city dweller who relies on their bike may realise they need a car when they move out to the suburbs.
As you and your business grow, you may develop new skills or be attracted to new marketplaces and audiences. You will also stretch your thinking over the years and imagine more significant and different opportunities as you grow confident and shift many limiting beliefs.
So, it’s essential to know that your choice of business model becomes part of your longer-term thinking. You may even need to swap your small hatchback for that super fast sports car quicker than you thought if your business takes off!
If you would like to know more and want help with how you shape the way you run your business, then I invite you to join me on my next live Ignite Workshop. It’s a great place to learn more about how business can work FOR you rather than have a business that works you into the ground.
Click here to see the next dates and book your place.
Meanwhile, I hope this has helped you step back from doing what 80% of your profession does or try to work hard to follow the latest marketing formulas and digital trends.
Has this opened your eyes to realising that you can grow a business to suit you and how you work best?
Until next time,
