As much as we all want to make a fabulous living while drinking fancy co*cktails poolside, as entrepreneurs we don’t always have that luxury! The weeks seem to fly by, and late nights and work overload become common.
What if, instead of spending every waking hour of every day with your nose to the grindstone, you could instead trick yourself into making more money? Spoiler: you can!
Make Realistic Goals
If you make SMART goals – that is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely goals, the income that you’re after all of a sudden becomes more attainable. By keeping your goals scary but attainable, your drive to follow through and achieve them will be higher. And when you surpass them, you start to earn extra income that you hadn’t anticipated.
Here is an exercise to help you set up these types of goals that will bring you the success you want!
Save & Reinvest
The single and simple act of saving income can be one of the greatest things you could do for yourself and your business. We personally set aside 50% of every dollar we make. We save 60% of what’s left just for taxes (or 30% of total income). The remaining 40% (or 20% of total) we reinvest in our business. That could be through marketing, software upgrades, or even just a way to reinvest in our education. Reinvesting in our business is super important to the growth of TCC because it continues to push us to learn more, do better and create the most relevant products and services for our students.
Keep Your Overhead Down
Where is all your money going? Are you spending too much on your internet service? Or your cell phone? Are you paying for an outside office you aren’t really using? Take a few minutes to look at your overheads. What are you paying for that isn’t even adding any value to your business? You may even have a recurring payment for a service you aren’t even utilizing anymore coming off your bank account every month. It pays to look at your bills.
Follow Your Passion, Not the Money
Hate what you’re doing? Or maybe you don’t hate your whole job, but you hate a particular product or service that you offer? Only work on things you love to do, rather than things that “make you money”. We have found that the saying, “Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life” couldn’t be truer!
Set Up a Passive Income Stream
What if you could do the work once, and then sell that thing 10, 100 or even 100,000 times with minimal extra effort? Passive income can fast-track your business and save you many (wo)man-hours. Investigate what type of passive income would be the best fit for your company and invest some time in developing a product that will earn you money while you sleep.
Test. Tweak. Repeat.
Sometimes products don’t work. Or they don’t sell. And generally, there is a reason for that. So instead of letting them collect dust, tweak them. See if mixing things up a bit increases sales, or if tweaking your sales process accelerates the earning potential of the product. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve seen a product (or even a service) and thought that if just one little thing was altered, we would buy it immediately. Ask your current customers what they would like to see from you. Perhaps a survey or a focus group could be exactly what you need to transform products or increase sales.
Quality Over Quantity
Would you rather sell 100 things at $1 a piece, or 10 things at $10 each? Sure, you end up with the same amount in cash, but selling to more people (rather than selling more to fewer people) can be tough. Take a good look at your products or services. How could you put more emphasis on making them premium to sell to more high-quality customers, rather than to a hoard of low-ball customers?
Surround Yourself with Great Mentors
Just like negative people can make a sunny day feel cloudy, so can amazing, bubbly mentors make you feel like you’re holding the world in the palm of your hands. Surround yourself with a tribe of support. Align with a mentor or two who will guide you, praise you, and push you to do and be your best.
Outsource Your Weaknesses
Do have that one task that you dread so much you constantly avoid it? Or one that takes you FOREVER and you never feel like you will finish it? You are the most valuable asset in your business. If you are wasting time on tasks that you either aren’t good at, are a major time suck, or maybe you just don’t want to do, outsource them. Find people who are experts at everything that you’re not, and delegate. Your time is best spent doing the things at which you shine.
Keep Educating Yourself
Feeling a bit dry and uninspired? Unmotivated people generally aren’t very productive. Find a way to fuel your creativity. Push yourself to try new things. Join a new organization. Attend a conference you have been dying to go to. A fueled soul can only lead to bigger and better things!
Instead, go download it and PRINT it off immediately. Even if you can’t fill it out right this second at least have it sitting on your desk. Or taped to your fridge. Or the wine rack. Wherever you’ll see it the most and be reminded to do it.
Then just spend a half hour (seriously, don’t over think this) and fill it out.
And then we want you to call us when sh*t starts to go down in your business, because we told you so. Really. If you don’t call us at least email us. Heck, email us to call you and we will.
So stop reading this and get to printing. Right now. Tag us on Instagram (@ThinkCreativeCollective) in a shot of your blank piece of paper so we at least know you’ve printed it. Then we can hold you accountable.
