Work Less, Earn More

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 March 2020.

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“Doesn’t working less mean less time for serving clients? Less time for making money?”

It doesn’t have to. You have already spent so much time hustling that you don't see how you could possibly work less without sacrificing revenue.

The key to working less without sacrificing cash flow is to find the systems that allow you to accomplish more with less effort – and help you prioritize fitting work into your life instead of squeezing your life into your work.

Today, Ashley Gartland shares different ways you can create simple systems to help you run your business more effectively and more efficiently.

Ashley is a business coach who specializes in helping small business owners systematize and streamline their businesses so that they can work less and grow more.

She has developed a simplified marketing system that puts all of her digital businesses and marketing efforts onto one Trello board – simplifying her marketing and maximizing her productivity

And she shares how she does this in just 20 to 30 hours per week or less.

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There's a pretty good chance that you know that The Work Less, Earn More Podcast isn't exactly my main gig.

If you've seen me around the internet at all, then you probably are aware that I have a substantial following on YouTube – just under350,000 subscribers.

And if you're aware of this, then you might be wondering why I would possibly want to essentially start from scratch with a podcast when I already have so much reach on YouTube.

Maybe you’re wondering if my YouTube audience isn't that engaged, or if I am concerned about the health of my channel. Maybe you are wondering if YouTube is made up mostly of viewers and is lacking in actual buyers.

Today, I am going to address some of these questions and share with you some of the reasons I started a podcast.

The truth is that businesses that are in different stages of growth need to focus on different strategies. Just because my business is in a place where starting a podcast is a good choice, that doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing for your business.

Because of this, I’m going to walk you through why I believe this was a good strategic decision for my business, how to better understand what stage of growth your business is in, and how you can make similar strategic decisions in YOUR business for the biggest and best results.

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Boundaries are essential for increasing our productivity.

They give us the time, space, and energy we need to be able to create the work/life balance that ensures that work doesn’t take over their lives.

Boundaries are there to protect our personal lives and our sanity. They make sure that we’re not working too much, get a little bit of downtime, and that we have breathing room to work on our business not just in our business.

It’s the strength of these boundaries and the limiting of our working hours that mean we can work less while still keeping our profits high. Setting firm boundaries means that emails don’t take up all of our time, that we don’t take meetings on Fridays, and we definitely don’t work weekends.

It’s within these boundaries that our businesses are permitted to grow.

Today on the show, I'm interviewing Dannie Lynn Fountain, the founder and facilitator at Focused On People, a consultancy that seeks to help companies grow people-first through communication strategies.

Dannie is an absolute productivity magician who manages a seemingly impossible workload.

She brings in six figures annually from a business that she spends only a handful of hours on each week. In order to do this, Danny needs a lot more than just time.

In order to do this, she needs to have a great strategy because, if she works on the wrong things for those few hours each week, then she would definitely be seeing different results.

This is exactly what Dannie and I talk about today on the podcast, uncovering a few of her secrets along the way.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

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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 February 2020.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

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My online business efforts haven’t always been a success.

But some key choices helped me go from earning squat-diddly to six figures in gross revenue in just 12 months.

First, some back story.

Three years ago, I was supporting my family by working 30-50 hours a week running a local music school and I knew that I needed to do something different.

I wanted to start an online business where I could work when I wanted to work, travel when I wanted to travel, spend time with my kids, and actually make some real money.

I dabbled in different niches and experimented with business ideas for a few years. I was looking for a business idea that would give me the flexibility and freedom that I was looking for.

But nothing was really sticking and nothing was really earning any money.

And, on top of all the hours that I was already working at my “day job,” I was spending another 15-30 hours working on my online business and researching what the missing ingredient was.

After a lot of trial and error, things finally started to click into place. I settled on the business that fascinated me the most––digital marketing courses and services––and set out to become an expert.

Today, I am going to break down the six things I changed to take my business past the six-figure mark.

As you’ll see, it wasn’t just six new things I started doing. Some of these things were simple decisions I made and others were things I stopped doing.

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As a planner and very detail-oriented person, I tend to create extensive strategic plans for all sorts of things, vacations, daily routines, product launches, and hiring processes to name a few.

But sometimes I find that I run into a bit of a problem: my plans don't always work out.

Sometimes it’s because I chose the wrong tactics, but other times the plans themselves are fine except that they don’t get carried out because of how overwhelmingly detailed I have made them.

Because of this, I have learned to sometimes go with the flow, trust my intuition, and let go of expectations and just see how things work out.

Of course, this approach can be taken too far as well.Take hiring a new team member. On the one hand, if the process is overly structured, then it can wind up being overly bureaucratic–wasting a lot of time and energy and financial resources trying to discern who would be right for the job.

But this can swing too far the other way, as well. Going into the hiring process with absolutely no structure can have the consequence of hiring the wrong person and wasting tons of time and money.

We need to find a balance between structured strategic plans and simply flying by the seat of our pants. Especially if we want to intentionally build online businesses that meet our goals.

My guest today is Megan Minns, an expert at navigating this challenging situation and finding the balance between going with the flow and having the strategic structure needed to lead us directly to the results that we want.

Megan Minns is a productivity coach for ambitious women. She's the creator of Intuitive Execution, as well as the host of the Productive Life Podcast where she shares actionable advice on productivity, business, goal setting, and mindset. Megan has been featured in Inc, Business Insider, and One Woman Shop, and I'm excited to have her on the show.

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You know that hiring a little help you earn more without having to work quite so much.

You have tasks that you could easily delegate and you’re ready to bring some people to help you with this.

But... you just don't have the budget.

Maybe it’s because your business is still in the startup phase and money is tight.

Or maybe it’s because your profits just aren't yet where you want them to be.

In today's episode, the second part of our series on hiring help, we're diving into the logistics of how to make your first hire when the money just isn’t there.

Last week, we talked about determining whether or not you are ready to hire in the first place, regardless of budget. We also talked about how to strategically hire so that it’s a profitable move for your business.

So if you haven't yet listened to that episode and you're not yet 100% sure about exactly who you should hire in order to really have a positive impact on your business's profits, then go back and listen to that episode first.

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Too much work––and too little time: that’s the perennial problem every business owner faces.

If you’re feeling the crunch, chances are you’re already dreaming about delegating some of that work to a new team member.

But you might think that you can’t start hiring because you don’t have the budget.

You're not alone if you're scraping by each month even though you’re working all the hours, making only enough to support yourself. That's the fate of most entrepreneurs. The thought of bringing someone else on board––another mouth to feed––might sound scary and maybe even impossible.

It's kind of a chicken and egg problem. You know you need help if you want to grow your company and your revenue but you can't afford to hire someone with your current revenue.

So in today's episode, I'm going to help you overcome this problem by showing you how to make a strategic decision about exactly who to hire to give your income the biggest boost. And we're also going to discuss the logistics of how to bring this first person on board when the money just isn't there.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

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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 January 2020.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

Links: