Work Less, Earn More

Getting results with content marketing takes time.

To put it in perspective, one of my 15-minute YouTube videos can take anywhere between 2-8 hours to finish and have it ready to publish. And one of my blog posts takes anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple hours to write, edit, and publish.

Not only does high-quality content take a lot of time to create but in order to get real results with it, you have to give it as much time and attention it needs so that you can actually get people to read it. It’s no small feat!

If you don’t do all of these things, then you’re wasting the time that you do invest because the content won’t be doing anything for your business. That’s why it’s even more important to choose the right channel for you to see real results.

But how do you choose which of the three types of content is right for you right now? And which will create the biggest results for your business?

In today’s episode, I’m going to share with you what I’ve learned from creating each of these types of content, some of the challenges that go along with each of them, and how they have impacted my business.

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Every month, I’m peeling back the curtain and sharing the ins & outs of my monthly revenue.

These income reports are an in-depth and honest look at how much my business earned, what it cost, and how many hours it took me to do it.

I’ll also share which tasks and projects really ended up paying me best so that you can see how I’m optimizing my business so that I can work less and earn more over time. Plus, you’ll get a time report, breaking down the time I spend on each activity and how that created a financial result (or not).

I hope that you’ll be able to learn from my trial and error, as I work to grow my business, my impact, and my income––all while keeping clear boundaries on my time and personal life.

Today, we’re looking back on July 2020.

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A CFO does more than look at numbers—they also look at the big picture to find patterns in the data. Finding those patterns is what leads you, as an entrepreneur, to making better, more informed decisions for your business.

You might dig into the numbers and find that one of your products takes up 80% of your time but only 20% of your revenue—while, on the flip side, you might have a product that takes up much less time and much more revenue.

So how can stepping into the CFO role of your business help you work less, make more money, and make better business decisions? Where should you start? And what steps can you take to create a meaningful strategy?

Enter Susan Boles. Susan is a Virtual CFO and Operations Advisor for agencies, consultants, and coaches at ScaleSpark. She focuses on helping businesses get clear on their numbers and truly understand their inner workings at a deeper level so they can make decisions from a place of intention and purpose—instead of panic. Susan has over a decade of experience as a CFO and software consultant and she's on a mission to help founders build sustainable, resilient businesses.

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Being an entrepreneur and supporting yourself with your own business can mean that your income can fluctuate a LOT from one month to the next—and that can be scary and stressful, making it NO FUN to “be your own boss.”

BUT! There are things that you can do to create a stable cash flow month over month so you can work less and earn more.

You can diversify your income and develop multiple streams of revenue to really stabilize things. This also ensures that you’re earning a consistent amount of money every month and ultimately getting rid of the stress and enjoying the process of actually running your business a whole lot more.

However, there are some traps you can fall into as you try to create multiple streams of income. These mistakes can prevent you from successfully developing your multiple streams, keeping your business small, and ultimately wasting a lot of your time—and, in some cases, you might end up working MORE and earning LESS which is not what we want!

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When you think about public relations, what comes to mind is probably media mentions and magazine placements. But modern PR is about so much more than that. Today, appearing on podcasts is an essential way for small business owners to grow their brand.

Seriously: entrepreneurs who show up on key podcasts typically get more exposure, build their audience faster, and even get more sales immediately following a podcast appearance, according to today’s guest.

There are so many benefits to incorporating a public relations strategy into your small business—and, of course, I was determined to find out how to take advantage of the most powerful and most leveraged PR strategies that are out there today so that we can get the biggest results with the least amount of effort.

That’s why I’m excited to introduce you to my guest today, Brigitte Lyons.

Brigitte is the founder of Podcast Ally, a podcast booking agency that takes the hassle of researching and pitching podcasts off the to-do lists of their clients.

She originally came to this specialization by accident when her team booked a top podcast for a client and saw that it outperformed the magazines and online news sites her team was working with.

In addition to her agency, Brigitte also runs the Podcast Ally Pro Accelerator to teach other PR pros, talented virtual assistants, and internal teams how to book podcasts for their clients.

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Every month, I’m peeling back the curtain and sharing the ins & outs of my monthly revenue.

These income reports are an in-depth and honest look at how much my business earned, what it cost, and how many hours it took me to do it.

I’ll also share which tasks and projects really ended up paying me best so that you can see how I’m optimizing my business so that I can work less and earn more over time. Plus, you’ll get a time report, breaking down the time I spend on each activity and how that created a financial result (or not).

I hope that you’ll be able to learn from my trial and error, as I work to grow my business, my impact, and my income––all while keeping clear boundaries on my time and personal life.

Today, we’re looking back on June 2020.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

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I get it. I’ve been there.

I wanted to be successful and I didn’t know how because I wasn’t successful yet.

So I did what I thought was the right thing: I asked for advice.

I found people who I considered to be successful and I asked them what it took to get to where they were—and what I needed to do. In truth, I was looking for a formula—but what I found was not only generic but incredibly unhelpful.

I didn’t understand why these successful people wouldn’t just tell me what to do! Were they being stingy or is there simply not a formula for success? Do we all just need to “find our own way?”

What I want to know is: is that the truth? Is there really only one way to success?

Personally, I think there are two main reasons why people tell you that there isn’t a formula for success.

The first one is that they don’t know the formula for success so they just declare that there isn’t one. They think that since they haven’t found it, it isn’t out there.

The second reason—which is the real, deeper, bigger reason—is that if we are just looking for a formula for success and success isn’t defined, then the answer is that there isn’t a formula for success at all.

At the heart of it, success can mean so many different things to different people.

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My membership site is the lifeblood of my business. I started it two years ago and it’s done nothing but good things for my business—and life—ever since.

There are a number of benefits that membership sites offer for your business.

First, they produce recurring income. This really helps to stabilize your business revenue and profits.

Second, they provide ongoing support for your customers. This is incredibly powerful because you learn SO MUCH about your customers and thus are able to serve them better. Truly a win-win.

Third, your membership site is active, alive, and constantly growing. It’s not something you launch once. It’s something you can actually build momentum with over time.

If you aren’t sure if a membership site is a good fit for you, listen to episode 19 of the podcast where I talk about courses versus membership sites and how to decide between the two. And if you’re ready to dive in on membership sites, listen to today’s episode.

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If you’re an overachiever, doing less doesn’t feel like the answer to earning more OR achieving your goals.

Because doing less feels counterintuitive to both of those things.

And by doing less—working less?!—you might feel guilty. You might even feel bad.

But according to today’s guest, doing less and scaling back doesn’t mean your business and life is going to fall apart. Instead, it could actually be the turning point you need to become more profitable and creative!

Kate Northrup is the bestselling author of Do Less, founder of Origin Collective, a membership site for female entrepreneurs who want to grow their businesses while doing less, and mom of two little ones.

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As my business grows, it’s going to get harder, right, Gillian?

Nope. In my experience, it gets EASIER—even with three kids AND a newborn.

Now, that’s not to say I haven’t faced challenges. Of course I have! And in your journey to grow a successful business, so will you!

And some of those challenges will relate to HOW you work and WHEN you work as you seek to balance family and business responsibilities.

Beyond the logistics of running a business and parenting, one of the MOST important things that really matters is that you truly enjoy what you’re doing.

Oftentimes, we simply assume that things are going to get harder the bigger our business grows. That in itself can hold you back from growing your business into its full potential.

But if you truly enjoy what you’re doing, you show up every day, get better at what you do, and grow through the challenges that creating and growing a business naturally brings.

In today's episode, I'm going to walk you through a few of my go-to tips and tricks on how to run a business while parenting (and homeschooling!) at the same time. And for those of you who aren’t parents—maybe you have a day job, maybe you’re in school, or maybe you have a side hustle—these tips apply to you, too!

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