Thursday, April 7, 2011

Let me start with a premise: You love your work. You are a healer, a consultant, a conflict facilitator, a psychotherapist. You are doing what you dreamed. Independent, serving others, and you should be on top of the world. Except that you aren't. Money is tight. Too tight. You give a lot of energy to your work, and often feel exhausted. Yet you feel privileged to get to do this work in the world. What an honor!

Let's take a sober look. Your money life is going backwards, and you are constricted in your choices as a result. You are looking for alternative income streams to finance this thing you love, but you don't have the time or the money to do them properly. At the end of the day, you feel you are being of service, contributing something, and it seems like the world won't honor you and your effort. Everything feels so unfair.

If you are struggling financially in a business you love, I have good news for you: We can fix this. It will challenge you, and you will need to think differently, but we can fix it. Here are two good places to start: time and price.

Time

Step one is to prioritize your business focus, and put the time where it needs to be in your current business. Here is what I recommend:

Conduct a detailed analysis of where you spend your time in a week. To make this easy, do it for the most recent work week in your life. That will usually suffice. You can use the forms in my workbook, or your own sheet of paper. What did you do and how long did you do it for? Write it down.

Identify which activities make money, those that might lead to making money, and those that do not.

This alone is usually a huge eye opener. If you are working in your own independent business, chances are that you spend far more time in unproductive pursuits than you need to. Typical culprits are email, networking meetings, volunteer work, and writing articles no one will read, but there are many other possibilities. People can be incredibly inventive at this, it seems, in order to avoid the work they need to be doing. Once you see it laid out before your own eyes, start prioritizing the work that makes money—whether you love it or not.

Drive Price

Step two is to start driving price, and this means a fundamental shift in your attitude. People who do what they love are often so enamored by the perceived privilege of being in this kind of business or work that they forget to charge for their work appropriately. They discount too much for friends, or go along with the hard luck of clients and customers, or wait for payment on services or products that need immediate payment, etc. ALL OF THESE ARE WAYS OF DISCOUNTING PRICE!!

Price discounting is based on two things: First, the sense of privilege for the opportunity to do the work you love, and second, a profound belief in scarcity. Usually, the two conspire together to dramatically reduce your income.

In my worldview, self-discounting your price is one of the seven mortal sins in the world. Why? Because price erosion is the number one reason that worthy, productive people delivering top notch service or products to others in the world stop doing so. They get burned out, and they get burned out not because they are tired of the work, but because they are tired of work that doesn't pay them enough. Small farmers, healers, artists, design consultants, graphic designers, and on and on. Few things have led to more dashed hopes than the practice of self-discounting.

If you find yourself making exceptions, reducing your price, and wondering if you can continue your chosen work, consider this key secret of people who make a lot of money:

They ask for it.

And they completely believe that they deserve it.

Although you may think these folks are greedy, they are not (although I don't deny there are greedy people in the world—but that is a different matter). Rather, they are working from an attitude of abundance rather than one of scarcity. In a world of scarcity, everything is a zero sum game. The pie is so big, there is one pie, and it has eight pieces. If I eat mine and the seven others, you get nothing. That's scarcity.

Abundance acknowledges that the world has plenty, that people make their own decisions and have a right to do so, and that exchanges are a two way street. It also acknowledges that I am valuable, and therefore can and should ask a price that reflects that value. You need to change your attitude from one of scarcity to one of abundance.

I invite you to chime in and share with others here on the blog:

How have you self-discounted your price?

How have you distracted yourself away from money-earning activities?

C'mon. Fess up! We've all done it, and it will help others to share.

Click here for the blog page.

Announcing a New Rules Workshop!

May 3rd, 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM, Woodbury, MN

Here's the description, and don't forget the early bird discount!

Begin the transformation of your business! In this intensive workshop, you will create a detailed plan for productivity improvements in your small business, and develop and practice key skills to implementing it. You will complete your plan with Tony's guidance, and also hone the skills of ruthless elimination and effective delegation, two challenging skills of the Game Changer program. Tony will provide feedback on your skills, and guide you toward a successful implementation of Game Changer.

The half day workshop is $249.

Get the Early bird discount at $199 before April 20, 2011

Click here for the Early Bird Discount (before April 20)

Click here for the regular pricing (after April 20)

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Workshop content questions:

tony@newrulesofselfemployment.com

Or call Tony at 888-828-3666 ext 1

Workshop registration questions or details:

info@newrulesofselfemployment.com

Or call Lisa at 888-828-3666 ext 3