Last year, people were posting on Facebook that their hairdressers were charging more due to COVID. Many hairdressers had missed months of work and had to reequip in order to start receiving customers. Naturally, some customers were complaining. One person even bragged that her hairdresser hadn’t raised her rates in 20 years, even after COVID! How did we end up in a world where some of our most important people like nurses, teachers, therapists and yes, even hairdressers are underpaid and people support that?
Well, you and I can speculate all we want, but I can’t stress enough that as business owners we can choose a different reality. We can decide to give ourselves raises! Now, of course many of us are afraid of losing clients or scaring them away. I get that! Your clients are the lifeblood of your business. But, I would also expect that your clients would want to make more money for themselves, right? With an average of 3% yearly inflation, to not give yourself a raise means you’re making less money year-over-year. So, even a small raise yearly is a necessity.
Yet, when I think about the biggest impact I can make as a business coach, I believe it comes down to much more than helping you make a little more each year. I believe it’s about helping you make much more and one of the ways of doing that is to help you value your time.
Many of people have a habit of undervaluing their time. If you’re like most people I’ve met, you probably give so much to others, but you don’t give enough to yourself. Or you sell yourself short by charging too little, working long hours, and then crashing on the couch exhausted. Only to wake up the next day and do it again.
I’ll let you in a little secret, wealthy business owners don’t do that (most of them anyway). I’ve been studying their habits for several years. I’ve hung out and had lunch with a half a dozen or so. I’ve paid to be mentored by them. I’ve read their books and studied their systems. What I have learned is that they leverage their time much more carefully. They look for opportunities to make more money in less time.
For example, take Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon. Jeff Bezos did something that very few people thought could be done. He took a small tech company that hardly anyone had heard of and grew it to the biggest online retailers in the world. In 21 years, Amazon surpassed Walmart as the most valuable retailer by market capitalization. His company bypassed a company that has been around since the 60’s. A retail giant!
How? By avoiding unnecessary heavy upfront start-up costs like buildings and employees but also by leveraging what already existed, other businesses who were looking for ways to market their products online. By creating an online digital platform and an admirable customer experience, Amazon quickly became a common household name. (Incidentally, if you would have invested $10,000 in Amazon when it started you would now have $12 million! Stock investing can be a way to make more money is less time!)
Now, what’s my point… leverage! Trading dollars for hours is good in the beginning but a killer in the end. Especially, if it’s your primary or only means of income. According to a Mental Health of America survey, 75% of workers claimed to have experienced burnout in 2020. This increased because people were working at home and working longer hours!
So breaking free from dollars per hour is essential to your overall wellbeing. But, even if you’re not aspiring to be the next Amazon (which I’m not either), learning how to better leverage your time is a powerful concept. Here are a few ways I recommend for any business owner…
Learn ways to charge for your services that do not include trading dollar for hours.
Whether you’re a start-up business or you’ve been an owner for years, considering different ways to charge for your services besides charging per hour is essential. Although, this may be a common practice in your industry, it may not be the best for you or your clients. My clients, who all are in very different industries, are able to successfully move to package based pricing by focusing on the outcomes they want their clients to achieve. Package based pricing has many advantages, including bundling many things together that would benefit your clients and help them achieve even better results than before. This means you make more money per client and they’re happier because they are receiving better results.
Learn to create courses or programs where many of your clients can go through at once.
If you provide a service, there may be ways for you to have several clients receive the benefits of your knowledge at once. A program or course is designed to take them through a series of steps sequentially that you know will help them achieve their desired results. This is especially good if you find yourself giving the same advice to clients over and over. This means that these series of steps can be taught to several people at once and if they would benefit, so will others. This an important step to better leveraging your time. Providing solutions to several people at once allows you to scale your business and help more people.
Invest the money you make into things that make you money.
Although I’m not a financial planner, I can tell you that I’m grateful that I learned to invest my money at an early age. Watching my money make money has taught me a valuable lesson; it’s much better to have your money work for you than for you to work for your money.
No matter what your age is, your money can still go to work for you. I’m still learning ways and enjoying the process of learning new things. The Amazon story is just one of many that showcase how stocks can grow your financial wealth quickly. I gravitate toward stocks, but I realize there are many other ways. Real estate is another way. I have several family and friends who have done well in real estate investing whether it’s in flipping, owning rentals or commercial development.
The bottom line is to start doing something today to grow your money. Talk to professionals who can help you. If you’re ready to up level your business, I can help you learn ways to make more money with the work you do. This is one of my favorite things to do because it means I help you get your time back! I can also point you in the right direction for people who can help you invest those dollars into something that will grow your money even more.
If you’re ready to get started, schedule a consultation today!