Most professionals start their own business for a number of reasons, more freedom, to be their own boss, to help more people, to earn more money, but how they all start is the same.
They have a skill set that people want so they start a business selling their technical skills as a service, normally on an hourly or daily rate. Their customers pay them for their time. Or in other words, the professional sells time for money.
Even if they have a team it’s still time for money. It’s just the time of the team instead of the owner.
Blessing and Curse
The ease of getting started is the blessing. You don’t need big high priced machinery, you don’t need a fancy office and you don’t even need a website. You just need your mind and a laptop (pen and paper if you’re old school).
But part of the simplicity is also a curse because there are only 24 hours in a day and more to your life than just work. Things like sleep, family, hobbies, travel, exercise and food. These all take time.
There are only so many hours in the day that someone can sell and still actually live.
To get paid you need to choose a price that you and your client are happy with. But because you are new to business or work from home or smaller than the competition you think you need to sell at a much lower price than anyone else.
As a result, you need to work nearly all of the 24 hours in a day, 7 days a week to be able to pay the bills and have some cash left over for travel and hobbies, that’s when you actual take the time out to enjoy them.
To work less hours and actually have a life outside of work but still be able to afford the same lifestyle means increasing your prices.
But increasing your prices on a time for money basis (hourly or daily rate) has a ceiling because when clients think in a time for money or task way they are only willing to go to a certain ceiling and there is always someone else they can hire instead who will sell their time for less.
Increasing your prices will only get you so far. So what else can you do to work less and increase your income instead of selling time for money?
STOP
There are two main ways to stop selling time for money, get more income and have more time:
1) Offer a service that isn’t based on your time, which comes in two flavours:
a) Create a package of your services focused on providing the result your clients want and delivering real value to them.
b) Create products (books, ebooks, audio books, courses, DVDs, CDs, videos, webinars) that work either completely or partially without you that deliver the same great value to your clients every single time. See my “How to Sell and Make More Profit with Products” that goes deeper into this strategy.
2) Price your services (and products) on a value and results basis instead of an hourly or daily rate.
These solve the time you need to work for your clients and the price they are willing to pay for your services and products.
Stay tuned for the next post where we’ll discuss each of the solutions in more detail.
Have a great day ahead! 🙂
