Build a Business, Not Another Job

Build a Business, Not Another Job
During this crisis, many people dream of working for themselves, being their own boss, and having the freedom to only take on clients and projects they love.

What they don’t realize, though, is that there is a huge difference between building a business and being self-employed. Because business is an art-form.

This is something I learned the hard way throughout my last 20 years of being “self-employed.” A term I no longer use, and you shouldn’t either.

Business owners scale their income. Self-employed people trade dollars for hours.

Business owners leverage the skills and talents of others. Self-employed people rely only on their own skills.

Discouraged yet? Don’t be. Every business owner started out self-employed. Just don’t stay there. These tips will help you build a sustainable business instead of just another job.

Don’t Try to Do It All Yourself

Building a sustainable business requires that you leverage the talents and time of others. While it might seem cost-effective to simply do everything yourself—especially in the start-up phase when you likely have more time than money—it’s a path to burnout and stress.

Instead, separate your tasks into those that you love and are especially suited for (such as marketing) and those you dislike and aren’t good at. Then make a solid plan to get those that you aren’t good at off your list of things to do. If you feel like you can’t afford to outsource it all right now, start with what you tend to procrastinate the most on, even if it’s just a few hours each month.

Don’t Allow Yourself to Work All the Time

The trouble with working at home is that you live at work. And that means that there’s no clear line in the sand between your workday and your home life. No transition from one to the other.

Since there’s always work to do, it’s easy to find yourself working every available moment—often to the detriment of your family relationships.

You can help avoid this by:

Setting—and maintaining—clear work hours
Having an office with a door you can close when you’re done
Scheduling time for family and other activities
Taking time for yourself

Vacations and Downtime Are Important

Don’t create a business that requires you to be “in the office” every day. At the start, you may need to be available more, but you should definitely be planning for the day when you can be “off the grid” for extended periods of time.

Have trusted virtual assistants who can handle things when you’re not available
Leverage automation tools such as autoresponders and auto-webinar systems
Create repeatable systems so you’re not always re-inventing the wheel

While you might not be able to hit the road with no internet access for weeks at a time, at the very least you should be able to reduce your workload to a daily check-in.

Sound impossible? It’s not. With some forethought and planning, you can create a team—and the systems they need—to successfully run your business without becoming overwhelmed and overworked.

Business is an art-form, it takes practice and consistency to ensure it’s a success. Go inside the studio and look into my Art of Business Startup Program. It is a crash course on starting your own company off on the right foot. This 5 module program walks you through big-picture dreaming and planning by helping you create a business plan, define your purpose, set goals and build a strategy.

Be sure to follow the Studio’s Facebook Page! We’d love to hear from you. The page is a free space where you will find business-focused training and support for female entrepreneurs, as well as inspiration and Studio updates!

Build a Business, not another job

3 Places You’re Leaving Money on the Table

Do you know the 3 Places you’re Leaving Money on the Table?
For any business owner with an online presence (and EVERY business should be online!), there are many passive ways to build income streams into your website and products that will bring in extra money while you focus on serving your current customers. Passive income is good and will help your bottom line while you actively market your business. You’ve invested good money into your business and your website; why not make it work harder for you?

Affiliate Marketing

This is a simple way to make a commission by recommending products or services to your audience. This process is similar to telling your friend or neighbour about the great pizza place where you just ate dinner. Simply sign up for the product’s affiliate program and place a unique link within a product review on your blog or on a web page listing all the business tools you recommend. Every time someone clicks on your link, they are brought to the product’s site and if they make a purchase, you get a commission. Affiliate links can also be added to eBooks or other digital products you sell. However, review the Terms of Service for all the social media platforms before posting an affiliate link.

Creating upsells in your sales funnel

Upsells are another overlooked place where you can bring in extra money. Do you have a basic sales funnel in place, where you make an offer to your broad audience and then have more focused, more expensive offers for them to choose from overtime? These additional offers bring your customers down the funnel toward your most expensive offer. Now, for each main offer in your sales funnel, think of an upsell your customer would find valuable. This may be free admittance into your private Facebook group or maybe it’s a report, checklist, form, or eBook for a nominal fee that is a no-brainer add-on to their order. For your more expensive offers, add a more expensive upsell, like a trial period in your membership site. The key is to choose relevant upsells that will benefit your customer and that makes sense to couple with the initial product purchase. In other words, don’t create an upsell that doesn’t make sense.

Back-end efficiency

Back-end efficiency is important to any business, whether it’s strictly online or whether you also have a physical location. A business coach can objectively assess whether you’re working most efficiently and can offer solutions to make customer service, billing, and customer fulfillment (just to name a few areas) quicker and more accurately. Very often business owners are too close to the situation to see how everything flows (or doesn’t flow) together, similar to why having someone else proofread your sales copy is ideal because they are more likely to pick up typos, strictly because they didn’t write the copy.

A good business coach will be able to look at your company objectively, ask pertinent questions, and guide you through the process of creating a plan for future growth. Consider me your objective third party, the one who can sort through the processes that work and those that don’t work and help mould your side hustle into a profitable business.

Book a discovery call with me and let’s go over where you might be leaving money on the table and start creating your passive income together.

As always, I think you should also join me and many others inside the Studio’s Study Hall Community! We’d love to hear from you on some other ways to generate more passive income!

P.S. Be sure to also check out my 30-Day Passive Income Challenge, it will also help you boost your income!

3 Places you’re Leaving Money on the table

3 Places you’re Leaving Money on the Table

Want to Do Your Own Business Branding?

Do Your Own Business Branding!

When you do your own business branding, you need to remember it is so much more than your colours and your logo but choosing colours to represent you and your company’s image is usually where more people start in the branding process. There’s no shame in choosing your own brand colours instead of hiring a designer but it’s not exactly simple. Let’s dive into an explanation of the colour wheel and how it can help narrow down your colour choices.

A colour wheel consists of colours with the following distinctions: primary, secondary, tertiary, complementary, and analogous.

Primary colours are those which cannot be achieved by mixing other colours together. Red, blue, and yellow are primary colours.
Secondary colours are those which can be made by mixing two primary colours. Orange, green, and purple are secondary colours.
Tertiary colours are created by mixing primary and secondary hues together
Complementary colours are located at direct opposite ends of the colour wheel and
Analogous colours appear close together on a colour wheel

How does this help you and your small business? Go to the Canva colour wheel and take a look. You probably have an idea already of at least one colour you want to use in your branding, so find that colour/hue on the wheel. Now, look at the four colours next to it. Those are analogous colours that will look appealing when used together. Or find your first colour and look at the colour directly opposite. Those are complementary colours which will also be appealing together. If you use the accompanying drop-down menu, Canva will have selected the secondary colours in the above distinctions for you.

Once you make a decision on colours, Canva will show you the HEX codes for each colour. Write those down in a safe place so you use those colours consistently with your website, social media pages, and products without having to look them up numerous times. (I have them in my daytimer, sticky notes on my desktop and my business binder.)

As the famous artist, Marc Chagall once said, “All colours are the friends of their neighbours and the lovers of their opposites,” and this is certainly obvious when looking at the colour wheel itself. Choosing complimentary or analogous colours in a family that represents you and the image you want to portray is the first step toward branding your company.

Want to Learn More About the Psychology of Color? Join My Webinar…

Did you know that different colours evoke different emotions? Did you know there are warm and cool colours? Inside the TVS Workshop Facebook Group, you will find the “5 Free Tools to Build a Beautiful Brand,” training. Where I delve a little deeper into the psychology of colour and what exactly the terms “warm” and “cool” mean when speaking about colours. I’ll also show some examples of well-branded websites and share my favourite free colour wheel tools! Register here TVS Workshop.

P.S. Don’t forget to take a peek at this great article on defining your brand identity!

Defining Your Brand Identity

Do Your Own Business Branding