Work Less, Earn More

This podcast is called Work Less, Earn More and pretty much the whole premise is figuring out which activities, tasks, or projects actually make your business the most money, focusing on those, and letting go of the rest.

That way you can earn the most, with the least amount of time and effort.

And you would think that since I’m doing YouTube and this podcast, I would have figured out by now which one actually makes me more money and which one I can let go of, because they’re both pretty time-consuming.

So why do I keep doing both? And which one actually does bring in more money?

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• A breakdown of how I make money from YouTube and the podcast
• Why the podcast is a key piece of the customer journey, even though it has less overall traffic than YouTube

Learn more about Gillian:

• Small Business 101
• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

One of the most common questions I get here and in real life is “how do you do it all?”

How do you balance your schedule as a mom who also runs a business? How do you run a business and homeschool your kids and cook meals, exercise, and, and, and?

Well, the short answer is that phrase “you can have anything but you can’t have everything.” Or to paraphrase, you can do anything, but you can’t do everything.

It really comes down to making decisions about what your real priorities are, then making judgment calls about how to actually prioritize the things that are important to you and saying no to basically everything else.

But I know a lot of you would like some more practical details of what that looks like in real life. 

So that’s what I’m sharing in this episode. I want to paint a picture of what my real days and weeks look like to help you understand how I do all this.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why I’ve chosen to budget more money for things that buy me more time
• How I prioritize self care, and what that really means for me
• Why keeping it simple is key
• What a typical day in my life looks like

Learn more about Gillian:

• Small Business 101
• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

In the last few episodes, we’ve been talking about how to find and land your first clients in your online business. So today, we’re replaying an interview with Jay Clouse about how to start a freelancing career.

More people than ever before are taking the leap to work for themselves.

There are a lot of potential upsides. A flexible schedule. Freedom of choice in who you work with and what you work on. Security. And of course, no limit on your potential earnings.

But most people are also painfully aware of the challenges of getting started.

Is your personality a good fit for freelance work? What business should you start? Will anyone even want to hire you? And how can you find your first client? 

To help you answer those questions and more, today on the podcast I’m bringing you Jay Clouse. 

Jay is the founder of Freelancing School and the Unreal Collective, and his speciality is helping people make that transition from creative-stuck-in-a-day-job to freelancer, then from freelancer to CEO.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Jay’s career evolved from startup cofounder to product management to freelance service provider and beyond
• A mindset shift around work, employment and compensation that will expand how you think about contract work
• The relationship of leadership, expectation setting, expertise and pricing
• Steps for building your freelance portfolio

Learn more about Jay Clouse:

• JayClouse.com
• Freelancing School 20% Off!
• Instagram: @JayClouse
• Twitter: @JayClouse
• Creative Elements

Learn more about Gillian:

• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

Resources:

• Gillian Perkins on YouTube
• Business Plan Template

In the last episode, you heard the story of how I got my first clients and customers and finally started attracting the right customers.

Now I want to share the stories of several other business owners and how they got their first customers and how those clients led them to where they are today.

Emily Banks works with online business owners to help elevate their brands, products and marketing materials through strategy based design.

Tiffany Pichardo of Virtually Simple is a Virtual Assistant who specializes in customer service and YouTube growth. 

Samantha Harris is a Lead Generation and Sales Strategist for online business owners. She focuses on developing organic strategies to help her clients reach more of their target audience so they can sell more of their offers.

Tony Rulli is the Co-founder and Head of Advertising at Intentional Spark, a digital advertising agency dedicated to helping online business owners grow their businesses through digital marketing. Tony and his teams focus on Facebook and Instagram ads, but also manage all ad platforms for their clients. 

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Samantha used Instagram and Facebook to network her way into her first clients
• How being engaged in private groups and chats for small business owners landed Emily her first clients, without having to pitch her services
• How Tiffany built her skill set in another position that led to her first clients
• How providing value, support, and free consultations through networking groups helped Tony fill his client roster

Learn more about Emily Banks:

• Emily Banks Creative
• Instagram: @EmilyBanksCreative

Learn more about Tiffany Pichardo:

• YouTube: The Happy Homeschooler

Learn more about Samantha Harris:

• TheSamanthaHarris.com
• Instagram: @TheSamantHarris
• TikTok: @TheSamantHarris

Learn more about Tony Rulli:

• Intentional Spark
• Instagram: @IntentionalSpark

Learn more about Gillian:

• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

Resources:

• Work Less, Earn More Ep 118: How I Finally Found My First Customers

Getting momentum from zero is almost always the hardest part.

That first hundred dollars, first thousand dollars that you earn is some of the hardest money you’ll ever make.

And the same thing goes for finding your first clients.

How do you go from zero to finding your first client or your first handful of clients?

I know that when I first started it felt like a mystery. I had no idea where to start.

In my first business, I overcame that hurdle accidentally and gained clients through word of mouth. But when I started my online business it was a whole other story.

But I knew that if I was going to succeed with my online business, then I needed to find those first customers. So I started working on it.

Here’s what I did, what didn’t work, and how I finally got my first customers.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Four things that didn’t work and what I learned from them
• The mistakes I made with my earliest paying clients
• The strategy that finally built momentum in my business
• Seven principles for getting your first customers and building momentum that apply to any business

Learn more about Gillian:

• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Get on the waitlist for Creator Fast Track
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

When I was fresh out of high school, I was already pretty dissatisfied with the different career options that were out there.

And I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do or what I wanted to be when I grew up, but after getting some inspiration, I set out on my own to make an alternative option.

I wanted to work a four hour week. I wanted to leverage my investments and make passive income.

It all sounded great on paper. But in the real world, it wasn’t working at all.

Because I was trying to follow instructions from books when I didn’t even have a way to tell people what I was doing, what service I was trying to offer, what product I was trying to sell.

I had no audience.

But I overcame that roadblock and today I’m sharing four principles that enabled me to start making money online, even before I had an audience.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why you might not want to play the long game of organic growth
• The two major investments your business needs, and how to choose where to start
• How to leverage your connections without feeling sleazy

Learn more about Gillian:

• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Get on the waitlist for Creator Fast Track
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

What would I do if I lost my whole business?

If my email list got deleted and my YouTube channel was shut down? If my website was erased and maybe even my professional reputation was lost, how would I start over from zero? 

What would I do first? How would I make my first sale? How would I get the momentum I would need to grow a new business into a reliable source of income?

Here's what I do. If I had to start over.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• What type of work I’d look for and how I would pursue clients
• What my first goal would be
• Why I would still choose quality over quantity when creating content
• How I’d start planning to scale up

Learn more about Gillian:

• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Get on the waitlist for Creator Fast Track
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

Resources:

• Abby Ashley

Maybe you have a goal of starting a successful YouTube channel.

But you can only reach that goal if you’re clear on what that really means.

From the outside, it might look like YouTube is easy. All you have to do is record a video each week and post it, right?

But the reality is that there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes of building a successful YouTube channel.

Today, I’m going to share from my six years of experience on YouTube, the mistakes I’ve made, what I’ve learned, and what really matters when it comes to building a successful channel in 2022.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why you need to approach starting a channel like starting a business
• How choosing a broader topic can actually help you more than finding a narrow niche
• Why you need to be clear on what value your videos bring to your viewers
• Four action steps for starting your channel
• Why you should set smaller, short-term goals in the beginning 

Learn more about Gillian:

• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Get on the waitlist for Creator Fast Track
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

Resources:

• 3 Secrets to Reach 1,000 Subscribers on Youtube

I recently posted a video where I broke down four phases to take you from zero to $100,000 dollars over the next 12 months.

And in the comments, there were a lot of questions about phase three of that process.

So today we’re diving into more detail about how to use systems and automation to scale your business.

These are systems that will allow you or your team to guide people to find out about your products and to deliver those products without dropping what you’re doing for every single sale.

I’ll tell you what those systems are, how they should work, and give you some tips for building them for yourself.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How to automate your sales system
• Why you need to scale your traffic system to scale your business
• Why your production process matters, even if you’re selling services
• The most important system you need to have in place to scale your business

Learn more about Gillian:

• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!
• Instagram: @GillianZPerkins

Resources:

• How to go from $0 to $100,000 in 2022
• Creator Fast Track
• Video Creator Academy
• Download The Easiest Business Plan Ever

The security and protection of our businesses and our customers’ information is so important, but a lot of us don’t know that much about how to go about making those things as safe and secure as possible.

Especially with rapid changes in technology and new threats to cybersecurity that come up.

Which is why today I’ve brought in an expert.

Todd Mitchell has over 25 years of experience in using risk-based assessments to create and enforce cyber security policies that keep data safe while ensuring the information gets to the correct decision maker at the correct time, intact and unchanged.

Todd has a Master of Science in Cyber Security Policy, as well as a Master of Business Administration, and a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology with a concentration in Ethical Hacking.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The biggest mistakes people make with their payment processors
• Three key ways to keep your customers’ information more secure
• The kind of scam that makes up 94% of all attacks on small businesses
• The number one cause of data breaches
• Two things you can do right now to make your business more secure

Learn more about Todd Mitchell:

• Cybersecurity 4 Biz
• Facebook: @cs4biz
• Twitter: @cs4biz
• Instagram: @cybersecurity4biz

Learn more about Gillian:

• Startup Society
• Get on the waitlist for VALIDATE
• Profit Planning Challenge
• Get in touch!

Instagram: @GillianZPerkins