As a service-based business owner, I’ve made a couple guesses about you, and you can tell me if I’m right (or if you’d like to challenge my assumptions).
- You want to make a difference for people in their lives. You want to teach, you want to inspire, and change lives with your content.
- You would like to understand how to make more money in your business, without selling your soul to work all the time.
- You’re likely already making a survivable amount of money in your business, but you’d like to bring that to a new level.
When you think about your designing your business, there are five factors that need to be in play in order to grow your business quickly, making you tons of money and without taking over your entire life.
You can design your business however you’d like. If you want to make a few thousand dollars a month, you create your business structure to do that. If you want to make 5 figures a month, you’ll need a different model. If you are looking to generate 6 figures a month, it’s totally possible, but you’ll need to carefully structure the design of your business to make it a reality.
If you’re a service-based business, you’re likely going to max out your monthly income making somewhere in the five figure range each month. Eventually you’re going reach a price ceiling, max out on your available working hours, or need to start outsourcing, relying on outside sources to continue your quality of work and meeting your deadlines.
However, there are strategies to push your income to the next level.
The five factors of a highly profitable solopreneur business ($20K per month and beyond) are the following:
- It has to solve a problem.
- It can’t be “too easy” to get started.
- You need to be in complete control.
- You have to be able to grow the business, without maxing yourself out.
- You have to value your time.
See? Easy. It’s all in the structure and design of the business.
Solve a problem:
Your business needs to solve a problem. It also needs to bring value to the market. If you’re going in to business to make money, that’s not enough motivation to keep you going when the road gets rough. You need a stronger purpose, with a need to make people’s lives easier.
It’s not enough to “do what makes you happy” if you want to be financially successful. You need to be able to give something to the selfish consumer.
“How can you help me?”
“How can you make my life easier?”
“How do you plan on solving my problems?”
That’s what your potential customers REALLY care about, not how they’re helping you by buying your product.
Serve the customer, not the dollar. Attract money, don’t chase it.
Anything that’s easy isn’t worth doing.
If someone is trying to sell you on a “get rich quick” scheme, or trying to get you on the phone or out to lunch to tell you about a top-secret, great opportunity to “make money in your spare time”… RUN.
Again, anything that’s easy isn’t worth doing.
Growing your own business is hard work. It takes overcoming failure and challenges. It takes emotional strength and ignoring the naysayers.
While you don’t want to go into a business with ZERO competition or demand, you also don’t want to become a sheep in a field of business owners all trying to sell the same product with the same marketing scheme.
You need to stand out and stand above.
Be in complete control of your business.
There are many business models out there that allow you to “own” your own business without having control. For example, selling products online through eBay or Amazon, or even handmade products for Amazon Handmade or Etsy. You’re at the mercy of a larger entity. Same with affiliate marketing – if your account is shut down, your income dies with it.
In order to reach great wealth in your business, you need to be in control of all the moving parts.
Your business needs to have growth potential.
One of the hardest parts of selling a service, whether it’s copywriting, graphic design, web design, online marketing services or virtual assisting, is selling your time hours for dollars. At some point, you’ll be hugely successful, in which you’re running out of time. You literally will not have enough hours in the week to get everything done. And that, (assuming you’re running an ethical business and not charging for hours not completed) is where you’ll max out on your income.
This is also where most entrepreneurs get stuck.
If you reach a point where you need to start outsourcing YOUR work, you start risking quality changes, staff turnover, excessive time spent on management and other issues that arise when you start growing your team.
Who and how do you want to serve?
If you’re selling virtual assisting services for $30/hr, you could increase your price in order to make more money, but eventually, you’re going to reach a price ceiling that’s beyond what clients are willing to pay.
However, if you really want to scale your business, step back and create a team of virtual assistants, making your business growth exponential, and you’re in complete control.
Value Your Time
One of the hardest parts of owning your own business, is that it can be a total and complete time suck. Sure, the harder you work, the more you’ll make, but I sure hope there’s more to your life than working.
If you start your business, (or evolve your business, like I did), to make a mind-blowing amount of money each month, you need to place a huge value on your time.
Own your business, don’t let your business own you.
Creating systems of automation in your business is a great place to start. Investing in tools that take hours out of your work day pays of immensely, even if it means an extra monthly payment. I personally invest in email marketing systems, course delivery programs, CRMs, data storage, invoice automation, proposal automation, anything to save my time.
Can you figure out ways to get your business to work for you, even when you’re not technically working?
When you add passive income to your business, it makes more money and frees up the amount of time you have available.
When you look at the list of five rules for major wealth in your business, which are you following in your business? I’d love for you to like my Facebook page and tell me what’s working for you or email me at allie@alliebjerk.com to tell me what’s working and what you’d like to improve.
