Art of Earning
I get asked to write about money a lot. I’ve written plenty of posts, guest posts, and a whole ebook. And when I sat down (multiple times) to write a new post about money for the Declaration of You blog tour, I was stumped.
I had one of those “What more can I say about this that I haven’t already said?” moments. Then I asked around, talked to Brigitte, and decided to write what’s been on my heart & mind for the last year.
When you’re known as the girl to go to for a money/earning/pricing smack-down, you have a reputation to take care of. And what is that reputation if it’s not about how much you earn? I learned that my money wake-up was just the beginning of an evolution of understanding around money and earning that has led me to build my business differently over the last 12 months.
After I got over my personal hang ups and misconceptions about my earning power, money for me was like a game. What product can I create, what conversion rate can I adjust, what marketing campaign can I invent that will make more, more, more? It wasn’t that I was greedy but that I was having fun.
I’m playing a different game now. I know how I could make a lot more money. I have the business model constructed. I largely have the platform and network in place.
But I choose to do something a little different.
The game I’ve been playing with money lately has only has two rules:
- Put as little time into the business as possible so that I can live a rich life outside the office.
- Do the work that will allow for the greatest returns in the future with as little hustle as possible.
I’ve concentrated the work that I do into short bursts of energy that have more impact on clients than I’ve ever had before. While I’m making about the same annually, I’m doing so with extraordinarily less effort.
But it’s not just about working less. It’s really about the set-up, the long game.
Just wait til you see what’s coming.
Because financial reward is one [of many] outward symbol of greater impact, choosing to dial back on earnings comes with mixed feelings and plenty of impostor complex questions. Can I be an effective business strategist if I’m not maxing out my earnings? Will I lose potential clients because I choose not to pursue the million-dollar launch strategy? What will happen to my reputation?
The truth is I am an effective strategist–many of my clients are generating much more revenue than I am. The truth is that any clients I lose weren’t the right clients for me. And the truth is that my reputation is stronger than ever–as far as I can tell!
Your net worth is not your self-worth. Your hourly rate isn’t your reputation. Your sales target isn’t your impact.
Right now, I choose to make decisions that bolster my self-worth, shore up my reputation, and maximize my impact–now and into the future. Those decisions result in leaving money on the table. But I believe that the decisions I’m making today will lead to greater return–both in profit & in impact–than trying to scrape up every last penny or find the gold at the end of the rainbow.
I also enjoy mixed metaphors.
There’s a time and a place to play the just-how-much-can-I-earn game. And I hope you play it, and play it hard. But I also hope that you take time to readjust every so often and look to the long game. What are you setting up today that will take care of you–and your customers–in the future?
Are you going after a bigger piece of the pie? Or are you baking a new pie that will make others lives meaningfully better?
Are you going after financial reward at the cost of relationships, peace of mind, or reputation? Or are you creating something that is in alignment with your values and preferred modus operandi?
Today, my declaration of money is that the choice to make less is often a choice about making more later, an investment in future impact.
What are you investing in? What game are you playing?
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The Declaration of You, authored by my brilliant friends Michelle Ward & Jessica Swift, gives readers all the permission they crave to step passionately into their lives, discover how they and their gifts are unique, and uncover what they are meant to do! This post is part of The Declaration of You’s BlogLovin’ Tour, which I’m thrilled to participate in alongside over 200 other creative bloggers. Learn more — and join us! — by clicking here.
Art of Earning, New Economy
Thank the heavens, Richard Florida has just released an update to his foundational book, The Rise of the Creative Class.
Not so thankfully, Florida’s research shows that women earn about 40% less than men do in creative class employment.
In my own research, 32.6% of men surveyed earned more than $75,000 per year in their small businesses compared to only 10.6% of women.
I’m sure that many of the cliche reasons for the gender wage gap apply to creative class employment – possibly better than they do for employment as a whole. Women choose creative class employment because it’s flexible, they can work from home, they can work for themselves. They can take a break for children and they can support their partners.
Yawn.
While these may be reasons that women have traditionally earned less than men over time, they are not the reason you are earning less.
You are earning less because your business model is not set up to earn more.
Here’s what men know that women don’t know:
It’s easier to earn the second $50,000 than it is to earn the first $50,000.
In other words, once you’ve earned $50,000, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be earning 6-figures. The difference is that earning 6-figures generally requires leveraging your earning. It means no longer trading time for money. It means understanding what parts of your business can be duplicated over & over again with almost zero effort. It means finding a tipping point again, and again, and again.
Women don’t need to give up flexible hours or time with kids. They need to embrace better business models that are based on value & results, not time & energy.
Women seem to prefer relational transactions. Men seem to prefer transactional relationships.
Go figure.
Relational transactions happen most often in project-based or one-to-one client scenarios. The easy way to develop a relationship is with time, exchange, and getting-to-know-ya. You put your whole heart & soul into the process. Those relationships turn towards a transaction when you have something that fills a need for the other person.
It’s a feel good way to do business. But it’s a slow process. Each customer represents hours of time, loads of money (don’t think your social media use & Skype coffee dates aren’t costing you), and emotional stress waiting for those relationships to convert.
On the other hand, transactional relationships come fast & furious. They utilize scale to generate the revenue that’s needed in the business. Transactional relationships are built on acute needs & impulse purchases.
The difficulty with this model is that it’s difficult to achieve customer loyalty. Once a solution is purchased, there’s often no word from the customer to find out if it’s working or not. And this type of business might leave you scratching your head, wanting more.
You Economy businesses thrive when they find the sweet spot between transactional relationships & relational transactions.
In this sweet spot, customers are directed through an experience of a business that creates a personal investment. They understand that you are doing business with them in mind, that your business is geared to their success, and that you have a vision for how their lives can be better.
Customers are interested in the content you’ve created: articles, audios, videos, images. They devour it. They want more. They interact with you on social media, they hang out at your store, they talk about your products with their friends.
And you listen.
And listen.
And listen.
That’s the secret of a great relationship, right? It’s listening instead of talking. While you’re listening, it’s your job to discern what your new friends are saying. What is troubling them? What is confusing them? How are they feeling? What are they thinking?
Look for the patterns.
The money is in the patterns.
When more than a few people say the same thing over & over again, you’ve got a pattern and an opportunity.
A smart You Economy business will take that pattern and create a solution for it.
When that solution turns out to be the killer app for the pattern your friends are experiencing, they feel like you created it just for them. They feel heard, witnessed, nurtured.
But instead of selling it once, you’ve sold it 100 times.
Leveraged income isn’t outside the customer relationship cycle. It’s an integral part of it. You don’t develop leveraged income opportunities to generate money where before there was none. You develop leveraged income opportunities to solve problems for people you care about, over & over & over again.
If you’re making $10k, $20k, even $50k per year, you’re already solving problems for people one at a time. To make the jump to your dream income, your goal is to solve problems for people 10, 100, even 1000 people at a time.
As an example, I’ve created systems for listening to my new friends all over my business. One pattern that emerged was people asking for new ways to “get the word out” to potential customers. I could wait for these people to come to me as individual business strategy clients. I could have tweaked my services copy entice people based on this need.
Instead, I created a solution, called Marketing ReWired, that solves the problem for my friends over & over again. As a result, it costs less too. And they get the benefit of working through the program with their friends & colleagues.
I could have a business based exclusively on one-on-one business strategy clients. But it would be an average income at best. Instead, I have a business that’s based on creating leveraged solutions to problems that has already generated $100k in sales this year.
Don’t fight your desire to forge & foster relationships with your potential customers. Just realize that you can serve more than one person at a time. In fact, you owe it to your customers to do just that.
That’s the first step to doubling your business earnings and closing the gender wage gap of the creative class.
Art of Earning, Business Brainstorm, Self-Care for Your Business
Sometimes, my business causes me anxiety.
It’s true! It’s easy to assume that the businesses you see humming along online or on main street are free & clear of worry and doubt. But anxiety, stress, and self-doubt creep in at the most unlikely of times.
True story.
And I’d say it’s true of any business mentor, coach, guru, authority figure you pay attention to. There are days when the ups & downs of normal business weigh on you. Even when you know better. Even when you’ve planned better.
Over the next few months, you’re going to hear quite a bit about what I’m calling “self-care for your business.”
At the heart of it, business self-care is setting up your business to take care of you.
Click to tweet that little nugget.
I have begrudgingly pulled all-nighters, I have worked for cheap, I have forced launches, and I have created content to serve something other than my higher purpose. It has never worked. It’s never “been worth it.”
Hard work is a necessity. But senseless work is not.
What is senseless work? It’s work for work’s sake. It’s working from your weaknesses instead of your strengths. It’s doing the same thing over & over again and expecting a different result.
One place senseless work has crept up on me – and always caused more problems than its worth – is when I’m worried about where the next dollar is coming from.
When I’ve been worried about discovering the next offer or attracting the next client, I take the focus off my real mission. I take the focus off of recreating our connection to the greater economy.
I take the focus off the organic process of discovery & attraction and I put the focus on acts of force.
Thanks to a framework from Alexis Neely and a language from Sinclair, I have crafted a system for always knowing where the next dollar is coming from. I know months & months in advance what my offer schedule is and, most importantly, why.
It’s not just about the money or sales but about what those sales mean for moving my mission forward – therefore serving myself while serving you and the world.
That said, there are still times I get a little antsy over money. After all, I’m fighting scarcity conditioning that has been in place for quite some time.
My revenue – while sustained – is not always constant. I’m getting used to a new pattern of money flow. Didn’t I just get used to the last pattern? About two weeks into every (planned) down period, I start to freak out.
I start to think about the quick buck. The easy out. The drastic measures I’ll need to take to keep myself afloat.
This isn’t survival mode – which has been known to motivate some pretty extraordinary behavior. This is self-defeating. It’s wasted energy. It’s just plain unnecessary. And it’s potentially very damaging.
Nope, I’m not immune to these bouts of panic.
But I do have a system, a practice to fall back on.
Just like others might fall back on yoga, a long walk, an exercise routine, a good cuddle, or knitting – perfect for taking care of yourself – I know that I have a point of focus and safe space to fall back on in my business.
I can whip out the calendar or jot out a fresh perspective on my planning in my notebook. And, while the panic may linger, the confidence comes right on back.
I can go right back to serving you, creating greatness, and discovering new ideas. I can do the work that matters and stop dwelling on the work that doesn’t.
I weather a storm that isn’t really there. And I still come out stronger & more focused on the other side.
Your next steps:
- Have a business self-care practice of your own? Share it by leaving a response below.
- If you want to learn more about self-care for the soul of your business, check out a little (big) something I’ve been working on for the last few months.
- If you want to discover more of my philosophies & practices for earning beautifully, pick up a name-your-own-price copy of The Art of Earning.
Art of Earning, Business Brainstorm
If it works for William Shatner, surely, it will for me.
Right?
About halfway through the development phase of my last digital guide, The Art of Earning, I was in an all-out mind battle about what to charge (or to charge at all) for it. This wasn’t a “pick a high number and stick a 7 on the end” kind of deal.
This was a deeply personal book but one I knew could help a lot of people.
And I wanted it to help a lot of people.
In the shower – where else? – it hit me. Name your own price.
Here’s why:
Free is great but investing in yourself is better.
I love free content. And I produce a hell of a lot of it. But at some point, free content becomes something you consume mindlessly. You might find an idea or two “nice” but act on the main principles? Honestly answer the questions contained therein? Nope. No way.
It’s too easy to think the answer is in the next piece of free content.
Investing in a product – even as little as $5 – helps you pay attention to the ideas at hand and take concrete action based on those ideas. Investing in a product is very much about investing in you & your business.
Ben Bernanke isn’t the only guy concerned about inflation.
You don’t have to be chief of the Fed to be concerned about price inflation. While there are many stellar digital programs that deserve to be priced in the top-tier of information, there are many which do not. There are some 50 page pdfs that deserve to be priced at $50, $100, or ever $200. That’s the kind of value they provide. That’s the exception, not the rule.
The Art of Earning is not those books. Yes, I believe that if you apply the principles to an active reevaluation of your relationship with money, you’ll have the capacity to make tens of thousands of more dollars per year quickly. But you’re going to have to do a heckuva lot more work to build your business than I did to write that book.
I could have made the price much higher. Maybe I still will. But I’m happy with the price as it is.
Everyone needs an exercise in gratitude.
Especially me. Had my money workout not been so total & complete, it would be easy for me to look at the smaller payments that come in as proof that people just want things cheap, that a steal is even better than a deal.
But honestly? That’s not my reaction. It’s been one of gratitude. Seeing $5, $7, or $8.44 payments roll in has left me feeling warm – not cold. I haven’t been focused on the difference between the “real price” and the price paid, I’ve accepted the enormous gift of trust & hard-earned coin those customers have been willing to part with.
I’m sure the next question is: will “name your own price” work for me?
Answer: It might.
For name-your-own-price to work for you, you need:
- A product you can afford to have lower profit margins on. A digital book is a great way to experiment with this model because it’s almost all profit. How could you incorporate a high profit margin product into your business?
- A reputation of high value. Generally, I would not recommend this pricing structure for those just beginning in business. I have a collection of ebooks and a reputation as a coach & blogger that allows me to trust my customers with pricing a valuable product. Are you building a product/services line that represents high value?
- A way to capture the leads. I won’t kid you, The Art of Earning has been a great lead generator. Traffic to the blog, sales of other products, speaking gigs, and coaching clients are all up up up since the release of this book. I had a wide & strong platform to support the buzz that I generated through this book and knew how I was going to channel that buzz. If 500 new sales came through your business in a month, how would you continue the customer relationship?
I’m planning interviews with some other entrepreneurs – both product makers & service providers – who have tried this model of pricing. What questions should I ask them? What questions do you still have for me about the name-your-own-price model?
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By the way, if you haven’t yet, you can pick up The Art of Earning – and name your own price – right here.
Art of Earning
What’s the value of a buck? Or, better yet, what’s the value of $100?
It wasn’t until I started charging $100 an hour for my time that I “got right” with myself in my business. Until then, I felt nervous & unsure. I often felt resentful of my clients to whom I gave my all. Most disappointingly, because the investment was so low, I found my clients often did nothing with what I suggested.
Bumping up my price to $100 solved a lot of problems and helped me to “get right” with money.
But my prices didn’t stay there long, by January of this year, I had decided to double those prices to $200 per hour with a minimum 2 hour commitment.
What would someone pay you $100 per hour to talk to you about?
— Danielle LaPorte, author of The Fire Starter Sessions
I’ve talked before about how my family had very little money growing up. I’ve also talked about how somehow my mom never managed to say “that’s too expensive” to me.
The value of a dollar has been very real to me throughout my life. The idea of one hundred of them lined up neatly representing an hour of my time seemed entirely unreasonable.
Besides, my previous employer made it quite clear that my time was worth much less than $13 per hour.
I suspect that this is true for many people. If having $100 left over at the end of the week or even the end of the month seems like freedom, I’m talking to you. This isn’t reflective so much of how much you, your partner, or your parents make – it’s reflective of how you use money.
How you understand the value of $100 is reflective of the relationship you have with money.
And you can’t truly know what people would pay you $100 per hour to talk to them about until you come to terms with your relationship to that $100.
When $100 represents feeding your family or not, or having cable or not, or making the full mortgage payment or not, it is near impossible to assign that value to your time. However, when you cross the line into service provider, business owner, maker, or artist, you begin to realize that “or nots” are not the name of the game.
There simply is no “or not” associated with your time. Your time represents possibilities: more clarity, more time, more beauty, more travel, more pride, more space, more organization, more strategy. Instead of being a choice between having or not having, there is the possibility of so much more than what is paid for.
$100 becomes a gateway to greater things.
What “greater things” will someone gain from talking to you for an hour?
Do you see how [those things] are worth a Benjamin Franklin?
Want to get right by that $100? Here are two ideas:
1.) Invest in something for your business (coaching, an ebook, a course, a service, etc…) that is $100 or analyze a previous investment. Keep track of how that investment improves your work.
Does it help you get your work done faster?
Does it make you $500 in one month?
Does is improve your customer service?
Does it reduce your stress?
Analyze that true transactional value of that $100. Was it worth the money you gave up? Was it worth the investment?
2.) Buy a $100 dress or sweater or pair of shoes. Wear it constantly for 6 weeks. Consider the difference between that purchase and a $15 Target version.
What’s the wear & tear like?
How’s the comfort level?
What’s the style quotient?
Would you wear it 3 years from now?
Analyze the true transaction value here. Would you rather have this $100 piece or 7 Target pieces?
Neither of these experiences are fool proof. The value of your time isn’t either. But extending these examples over time, the value of $100 becomes more & more clear.
There is often a greater exponential benefit in spending $100 than in spending considerably less.
That’s why $100 has to be the minimum. On top of all the cost-of-living, cost-of-doing-business equations, I think you’ll find that charging $100 per hour for your service (or labor) is the bare minimum others expect for good results.
Charge less and you signal that you offer inferior results.
Now free is a different story.
Charging nothing is disengaging. People don’t know what to expect. They’re caught off guard.
Offering your service for free gives you a chance to find your $100 offer. You can practice with the idea of delivering superior results. You can see the value of your service (or labor) reflected back to you.
So how comfortable are you with 100 big ones? Please share your experience with money & time by leaving a response below.
