Oooo…now this is where it really gets interesting. ; )
You’ve gotten clear on what kind of lifestyle you want to create and you’ve gotten clear on your vision for your business. Now it’s time for a reality check…and more than likely, a few course-corrections.
We have a tendency to get caught up in the day to day grind, in the never-ending list of things to do, and we lose sight of why we’re doing it all and what the point of it all is.
Are you on the right track? Is your current biz model going to get you where you’ve said you want to go? Are the tasks, projects, products and services you’re currently working on/offering moving you closer to your vision or are they keeping you stuck?
How to Know If You’re on Track
We’re constantly in the act of creating our lives. Your thoughts, actions, and choices today, create your future. That being the case…you can create your future on auto-pilot without much, if any, thought or you can create it consciously.
Creating your future on auto-pilot is a game of chance…creating it consciously will significantly increase the odds that you’ll get where you’ve said you want to go.
Run whatever you’re up to through the filter of the life/biz you want to create.
Ask yourself:
Will it move me closer to that vision?
How might I reach the result I’m striving for faster, better or more easily?
Is what I’m up to the end result or a stepping stone to the end result?
Am I making false assumptions about how it “has” to or “should” be done?
Is there a way to leap frog to the next level?
Let’s look at a couple of examples that will better demonstrate this process:
Example 1:
Your Vision: You’re a coach and you want to create a six-figure income for yourself that allows you the ability to work from anywhere, to set your own hours, to travel the world, all while working part-time.
The Current Reality: You’re working with clients one-on-one, charging $150 an hour for your sessions. You have a website, but your list is tiny and you’re relying primarily on word of mouth.
Are you on track?
Let’s take a look:
To hit that six-figure target you’d need to be working with 14 clients each week for 50 weeks….for a total of 105,000.
You’d be working part-time, but you’d be tied to the phone each and every week, and you’d be working your butt off for that 105,000 in revenue. Not to mention, you’d never keep that many clients on the calendar consistently without doing some serious marketing….which would add quite a few more hours to your schedule. Hmm…now you’re working more than part-time and you’ve only got two weeks out of the year for that travel you want to do. And let’s not forget the important distinction between revenue and income. If you want to create a six-figure income you need to create MORE than six-figure revenue to allow for taxes, operating expenses, etc.
That scenario isn’t looking so hot, is it? But now that you have a vision, you can look at how to shift what you’re doing so that you are on track.
To continue with the same example…
You begin marketing yourself in earnest to build a large, highly targeted and responsive list. You raise your one-on-one rates to $400 an hour and you develop a three-month group coaching program for 50+ people at a rate of $1000 per person. You offer the live course three times a year and you leverage the content by offering it as a home-study too.
Now you’re working LESS hours and earning MUCH more. You’re earning $150,000 in revenue just on the live program. A few one-on-one clients and a steady trickle of home-study sales and you’re bringing in a revenue double what it was before, while working half as many hours AND you’ve got three months a year between programs to travel. Now you’re on track!
Example 2:
Your Vision: You’re a jewelry designer and you want to create a six-figure income for yourself for the next decade, and then you want to be able to sell the biz for 7 figures that will allow you to retire in comfort.
The Current Reality: You’re working solo creating beautiful, inexpensive pieces, that are quick to create, with an average price of $10, and an average profit of $7.
To earn a six-figure revenue (income would be significantly less) you’d need to make AND sell 14,286 pieces per year. That’s a whopping 358 per week. If you’re working 40 hrs. a week for 50 weeks a year you’d have to make AND sell 9 pieces per hour or one every six minutes. Yikes! That is NOT sounding so hot, is it? In fact, it sounds exhausting, if not impossible, and as long as you’re working solo the biz is inextricably tied to YOU with no possibility of being able to sell it and retire.
So what to do?
You begin creating unique, higher-end pieces. While they take longer to create, the price and profit point is significantly higher – An average price of $500, and an average profit of $450. Now you need make and sell only 222 per year to earn the same 100,000 revenue. You can create twice that many so you’ve now doubled your revenue and can afford to hire a talented young designer with whom to share the workload, while continuing to increase the revenue you’re earning, and while training the young designer to take over the biz when you’re ready to retire.
Now that’s what we’re talking about! Now you’re on track and moving steadily closer to your vision.
What to Do If You’re Not on Track
As I’ve said before…it’s all too easy to create a wildly successful biz that you HATE if you aren’t keeping your vision in mind and tweaking your strategy as you go so that you’re moving steadily closer to it, the chances that you’ll happen to wind up where you wanted to are pretty freakin’ slim.
Having a vision with which to create a filter allows you to consciously make the choices you need to make to move you closer to your vision rather than waiting until you’re burned out and frustrated, or ready to retire only to realize it’s an impossibility.
If you’ve just discovered you’re on track…fantastic!
If you’ve just discovered you’re not on track…don’t despair! It’s a GOOD thing that you’ve discovered that now so that you can get on track. What course-corrections do you need to make?
Don’t stress it…simply create a filter question for yourself that will help you to get on track.
Having a filter question will make it the essence of simplicity to choose which tasks, projects, and opportunities to pursue. It’ll keep you focused, help you to fully leverage your time and energy, and it’ll ensure you don’t lose sight of why you went into biz for yourself in the first place.
I’d love to hear what you think and what your experience is working through this process. If you’ve done this before…how has having a filter question impacted the way you’re building your biz? Come chat with me in the comments…
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
What this post clearly highlights is the difference between working smart vs working hard, often its the difference between making money and just getting by.
keep them coming Lisa, You rock.
xx
Sophie
YES! You’ve nailed it Sophie…it’s the difference between making money and just getting by and it’s the difference between loving what you do and having your work feel like play, and struggle and frustration trying to conform to what you think you “should” be doing.
Thanks so much for stopping by and for taking the time to comment.
xo
L
Of course! I am going to have fun playing with this in CM. And those filter questions we talked about…definitely are helpful. It helped me say No to something today that I would normally have said yes to.
xo
K
Kimberly´s last [type] ..Confession Time…I Hate Lingerie!
Having a filter question, definitely helps one from wandering aimlessly day after day hoping things will get better. If I don’t utilize one, it is not long before weeks and months go buy and nothing has changed or changed in the direction I want to go anyway.
Yup, that’s exactly what happens, Laree. lol… So glad you’re finding the filter question so helpful.
I guess I am a bit stuck on it, I see that you need a vision and that you need to ask filter questions to clarify your vision?
I might have a vision to make a 6 figure income in 2 years but I dont have the tools to get there, or Im not sure where Id start, what questions I need to ask!?
Sorry to be the dumbass here!!
Hey Hannah!
You are not a dumbass! None of that here…no beating yourself up allowed, k? ; ) Some of this can be a bit hard to wrap your head around initially.
Did you do the previous lifestyle and biz vision exercises?
Once you’ve got a vision for your life/biz and you’ve taken a look at where you are now, you can create one or more filter questions to help ensure you’re continuing to move in the right direction. A very generic filter question would be, “Is this moving me closer to my vision for my life and biz?”
If part of your vision is to reach a six-figure income then your filter question or one piece of it might be: “Will this help me reach my six-figure revenue goal?”
The filter questions are designed to help you stay on track. So let’s suppose someone reaches out to you with a JV offer. It sounds like a great opportunity, but you’re not sure if you should accept or not. Run it by your filter questions…will it help you reach your six-figure revenue goal? Will it move you closer to your overall vision for your life/biz? If the answer to both is yes…then you know it’s a good move. If the answer to both is no…you know to pass. If the answer to one is no and to the other, yes, then you can take a closer look.
So for example…let’s suppose it won’t directly earn you revenue but it would move you closer to your overall vision in some way. Then take a closer look at the other bennies. Would it indirectly help you to reach your revenue goal? By, say, building your list significantly? Then it might be a viable project.
When you begin to get clear on your vision for your life and biz, Hannah, you don’t need to know exactly where to start or how to make it happen. The filter questions are meant to help resolve that for you, by providing you with an easy, clear way to assess whether a potential next step is going to be beneficial.
You can also use your filter questions to assess whether or not you’re spending your time productively. Is what you’re working on today moving you toward your vision or distracting you from it? ; )
Does this help, Hannah? If you have more questions…dive back in here with me. ; )
YEAH! that helps i get it now, and i can see also that i could use my filter questions to help me be the most productive with my time which forever seems to run out, and my prioritising.
Legend – so helpful! I will work on this & keep in touch on it!!
THANK YOU!!
My pleasure, Hannah! So glad you found that helpful. Yes, the filter questions will serve you well in being productive and prioritizing where, and on what, you spend your time.