How I made more money by working less hours

The ONLY question you need to ask yourself before you make some changes towards a better lifestyle

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey Recovering Perfectionist, I'm Claire Riley and you're listening to episode 82 of the Recovering Perfectionist Podcast. Today I'm going to talk through the top five steps that I took to make more money and work less hours. Pretty juicy stuff. You can head on over to clairy.co forward slash pod forward slash 82 for the show notes and the links. Let's jump in. This is the Recovering Perfectionist Podcast, and I'm your host, Claire Riley. Alrighty, this is one of my fave things to talk about, and certainly something that having been through the process a couple of times, I trust the process a little bit more. And I really want to share with you some of the key steps and tips that I have definitely been able to implement in my business and in my lifestyle in order to work less hours and make more money, always a juicy topic. So I guess there's been a couple of things that I look back on that have been incremental changes. And every time now that I get to the point where I'm like, I need to work less hours and or I need to make more money, I go back to these five steps. So it's certainly not a do it once and then move on with your life. This will be something that continues to come up. As I said, every time I feel like I'm I'm starting to work more hours or my income's dropped off, I always look at these things and go through these steps. Oh, it's exciting. All right, so the first one is and this is really, really incremental, and I talk about this pretty much all the time. It's a really big thing that kind of makes sense in so many ways, and that is to get really clear on how you want to spend your time in your business. It sounds maybe too basic, but I think it's a really important thing where we start our businesses to do a certain thing or a certain set of things, and somehow we end up doing less of the stuff that we love doing and that we're great at, and more of the stuff that is just busy work and not actually moving the needle because we feel like that's what everyone else is doing and that's what we should be doing, and that sort of thing. So a couple of years ago, when I first was asked this question by someone else, my answers were things like writing and creating. I loved making new courses, I loved making new modules, writing webinars, ebooks, freebies. Like I love that creative process of pulling IP and information and knowledge and helpful tools and tips together in a way that other people can then use them and implement them for the better as well. Um, the other things were I love running events, I love event management. In another world, I would have been an event manager because it's just something that I absolutely love to do. Um, I love to run workshops, I used to run meetups, and now I just run retreats. Um, and the third thing was the planning and the strategy in the micro. Being a textbook Virgo, I love lists, I love planning, I love everything to do with the micro planning and all of that sort of thing. Like that just floats my boat and it makes me feel like I've got much more creativity space because all of the planning bits and pieces are kind of where they need to be, and it feels like a nice, comfy um safety net, I suppose. So, what we did when um when I was looking at that is those were the three things that I wanted to spend the majority of my time running my business. So if I said maybe I had 20 hours a week, I wanted to maybe spend 15 hours doing those things. But in reality, I was spending almost no time doing those things. I was spending my time doing other little shitty tasks that I didn't enjoy that weren't my zone of genius, that weren't really even moving the dial because I wasn't even enjoying them. Um, some of them were maybe um, I don't know, social media or um bookkeeping and all of those sort of little things that were just busy work and definitely need to be done in your business, or some of them need to be done, but they weren't the things that lit me up, you know, that they certainly weren't the reason that I had started my business and I was spending most of my time doing things that I didn't like when I set this business up to require that of me, and it didn't really make sense. So when I looked at the three things that were taking the most time versus the three things that I wanted to spend the most time on, there was no matchup. That's a nice big reality check, right? So if you haven't ever done that episode that um that activity, I absolutely urge you to get really clear on that. Like, what are the things that take up the most of your time now? And what are the things that you wish were taking up the most of your time? Adjust accordingly, right? Um, so that was the big thing. So once I got clear on you know what activities I really wanted to spend time in, the next step was to try and work out like how do I get more of that in. The second step that I did around the same time, and that I, as I said, perpetually do is I reduced the possible ways to work with me. So um I see this with I reckon pretty much every entrepreneur I've ever met that when we start businesses, we're like, oh, we'll do this and we'll do this and we'll do this and we'll do this, and we set up all these freebies, and we set up all these paid products, and we set up all these services, and we set up all these courses, and we set up all the blah blah blah, and we've got end up with 30 or 40 things that people could buy from us, and it's really confusing. It's not only confusing for us, it's really confusing for them. So getting clear on like, well, what are the things that I really like delivering? And what are the things that are profitable to deliver? And what are the things that light me up? And what are the things that I signed up for? What are the things that I, you know, incorporate those three things that I said I wanted to spend the most of my time doing? Delete everything else, right? There's ways that you can migrate people from one to another, or you can completely cut it off and with love and respect and gratitude, let those people go if they're not, if they're just there for something that you no longer want to deliver, that's completely no, there's strategies around that as well. So I reduce the possible ways that people could work with me. I think I had um eight or ten a few years ago, and it was just so overwhelming. And now there is three. There's Batch It Crazy, which is my monthly membership, which helps you create consistent content. There's VIP packages or one-off sessions, which we focus on a project or something that needs to be improved, or you know, systems and tools, or there's retreat, which I run a couple of times a year as well. So there's three ways to work with me. That's it, right? It's not confusing. There's, you know, A, B, or C. It's really, really simple. It's simple for me to talk about and it's simple for my audience and my clients to pick which one works best for them at whatever time. So that definitely made a massive difference. And at the same time, then I'm not trying to service 10 different products with a couple of people in each one of them, which then just makes me feel depleted and adds up to more time and less money because it's just too confusing, right? The third thing was that I increased my prices. Now I'm not going to go into the strategy of this, this is a whole big thing, and there's a lot of people who are much more strategic about increasing their prices than I am. Um, but I absolutely guarantee you, after the first time that you increase your prices, it will never be that hard. Um, the very first time I increased my prices, I agonized over it for about eight weeks, sending um, you know, some current clients, the strategy and the, you know, the um the price increase information and also just getting over that mindset wobbles of no one's going to work with me because they'll be too expensive and that sort of thing. And the first time that I did that, I I it was a Friday afternoon, I'll never forget it. I was so I was absolutely panicking. Um, and I sat down and I had drafted these emails and I drafted them and drafted them and drafted them over and over again because I thought they didn't sound nice and they sounded like I was being arrogant or like I was being rude or ungrateful or any, you know, all of those sorts of things. And I finally um sent them out, hit send, send, send to my current clients, and I slammed my laptop shut and I went and poured myself a glass of wine and I swiftly drank that and I waited for all of the emails to come back to say, How dare you? How can you put your prices up? And what happened was I got emails back from everyone saying it's about bloody time you put your prices up. I was wondering when that was going to happen. Ah, so it was all good. And so every time after that, I still had the wobbles until maybe the fourth or fifth time, which is where they're at now. And it was just like prices are going up, end of story, off you go. No one is gonna bat Nile it. It's totally fine. So putting your prices up so that they're in line with how many uh ways that people can work with you, how many hours you have to dedicate to that, and what your income goals are makes it a really easy decision eventually as well. Cool. The fourth thing is the master schedule. Again, um, this is one of my favorite tools. It's boring as anything to create, but it is a beautiful jumping off point. So, what a master schedule is, is something that I do for myself about once a year, and I do with pretty much all of my new VIPs when they first start working with me, is it's a really nice layer of the land. So, where we pull everything in in one place, all of the things that you want to be doing in your business on a daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, six-monthly, and yearly or project basis under whatever uh sort of departments. So it might be under customer service, it might be under course delivery, it might be under your VIP, content, social media, whatever it is, whatever kind of makes sense. And we put in all the things, all the tasks that we need to be doing or that we think need to be done for our business to keep the doors open and to deliver the sort of business to our clients that we want to be delivering. What that does, number one, is it gives us a bit of a reality check of why we are working 60 to 80 hours a week on this beautiful business baby that we've created that it now demands that much time from us because we've chucked everything in there. We want to be doing all the things. So that's the first thing it does is we go, like, oh, I wanted a 15 to 20 hour a week business, and now I've got a 60 hour and now I know why, because there's so many things that I'm trying to do. The second step that we do here is we get really clear on identifying what are the things that we need to do and what are the things that someone else should be doing, that we should be outsourcing, potentially that we should be automating, or things that should just be stopped altogether. Um, and getting really clear on that. So, this is where we then can start to create job descriptions for other people. Um, episode 66 and 81, I think. We talk I talk a lot about creating job descriptions for people in your team so that you've got support, VAs, that sort of thing in your business. Um, so check those out. And um the next step with your master schedule is we get really clear on how we're going to batch some of these things. So some of the things will be batched, like um creating your content, planning out your social media content, maybe doing your newsletters, maybe creating a course, maybe updating your website, those sorts of things. What are we going to batch and how are we going to do that? You might put it as a recurring two-hour spot in your calendar at the end of every single month. Or you might put aside a whole day every quarter to do whatever it is. So what do you have what sort of comes out of the master schedule is a very specific set of rules or not rules like um uh processes that you can put into your calendar so that it doesn't, you don't get to 12 months down the track and you're in the same um you're in the same spot because you've actually made a plan, not just set some goals. So that's that. And then it also helps you to work out exactly what um what the priorities are for you to outsource, automate, or stop altogether. So they are the steps. I'll just go through those again really quickly. Um so number one is to get really clear on what you want to be spending your time on in your business. Number two is reducing the possible ways that people can work with you. This doesn't apply to everyone, obviously, but I would absolutely urge you to do a bit of an audit, a bit of a stock take of all the freebies that you've got available for people and all of the paid products that you've got available for people and see where the disconnect is and if you can smush some together, or if there's some that are a bit redundant, don't need to be done anymore, or if there's some that you're going to focus on for the next period of time as well. The third thing is to increase your prices, and the fourth thing is to get really specific on your master schedule and all of the things that need to happen in your business to keep the doors open and to keep delivering the beautiful service that you want to deliver. All of these things, when you consistently are doing them, do definitely conspire to helping you have stronger boundaries around your hours and what your income is. So these are the things, as I said, every time that I'm like my income's dropped a little bit or my hours are creeping up a little bit, it's one of these things usually that has um that's gotten away from me. So I've started doing some of the things that usually my VA would do just because I've forgotten or I got lazy and I just didn't ask for help or whatever. Um, or it could be that I've gone, oh, there's a shiny object and I need to go and do this project, which means that the stuff that I actually really like doing hasn't been done and I'm feeling depleted and unabundant and um resentful and all of that sort of thing. So I hope that's helpful. Um I think there's a really, there's a, you know, it's a it's a massive, I could probably do a whole episode on each of those ones and go into a bit more depth. There is um that's the whole point of starting our business, right? Is that we want to have the lifestyle, we want our business to support our lifestyle that we desire. We want to be able to spend more time with the people we love doing things we love. We want to spend less time doing the shitty jobs that we weren't born to do that uh we're not really helping anyone do anyway. So keep that in your mind. I would love to hear, um, especially this the first one. I love hearing what people's top three things are and how you'd love to ideally be spending more of your time in your business. So do reach out, either pop into the comments or feel free as always to shoot me an email, hello at clairly.co. I love to hear your feedback. And um, yeah, I hope that's really helpful and look forward to seeing you working less hours and getting paid more money in your business.