STABILIZING YOUR INCOME AS AN ENTREPRENEUR
Raise your hand if you’re on the scariest roller coaster of your life, and it’s the fluctuating income roller coaster that is entrepreneurship. Every course creator, influencer, service provider, realtor and coach (just to name a few!) knows exactly what I’m talking about….
The truth is, most online business owners have resigned themselves to this idea that there will always be feast or famine in their income, and while success and revenue certainly aren’t linear, it CAN be a little more predictable than you’re experiencing.
So let’s dig into a few things you can do to stabilize your revenue as an entrepreneur, so that you can stop looking like Kevin Hart in the best gif I could have ever hoped to find for this article.
First things first, STOP GLORIFYING PAY IN FULL CLIENTS. In a world where everyone is bragging about clients “paying in full,” be the woman that glorifies 6 months of consistent revenue. Yes, cash infusions are fun, but you know what’s more fun? Being able to pay your quarterly taxes because you didn’t accidentally spend all your money as soon as you got it.
If you have clients that work with you for any duration of time, consider splitting their payments up into monthly recurring charges. My 1:1 clients work with me for a 6 month retainer, so they pay six installments instead of one large sum. This gives me fewer fluctuations in my income month to month. I know when a client signs on, that for the next six months, I can expect that retainer payment to come through.
As you look at your business model, we want to do 2 things:
- Figure out ways to increase the lifetime value of your customer, and
- Plan your launches with cash infusions strategically to help offset one quarter being astronomically different than another.
Ways to increase the LIFETIME VALUE (LTV) of your customer through MONTHLY RECURRING REVENUE (MRR):
- Add in a program for graduates as a membership arm at a low(er) monthly cost.
My alumni membership is available to any of my past clients - it offers them limited access to me at a discounted rate. Many of them choose to keep it just to have me spot check their efforts and give my last minute edit. If you’re good at what you do, and they want access to you, this is a really easy way to do it.
- Add in a membership for clients that AREN’T your ideal client.
Perhaps the beginner in your industry isn’t your ideal client, but that doesn’t mean they can’t learn from you! Create a beginners membership that helps lay the groundwork for them, so they can grow into the place where they ARE ready to work with you. Then, you’ve monetized an entirely new audience to you, AND you’ve helped them get to the place they want to be - ready to work with you.
In addition to exploring adding memberships to you product suite, perhaps we take a strategic look at when and how often you launch your offers, and plan them so they aren’t weighting one quarter to be a higher revenue quarter than the others. Shoot for one large launch a quarter.
Other ways to add MRR to your business model:
ANNUAL Programming
If you’re a coach, service provider or anyone that teaches something, you can create ANNUAL programming in the way of Masterminds (think Membership, but smaller, more intimate, and more expensive) in which clients commit to working with you in an elevated group capacity for the year in order to accomplish their goals.
FOREVER Programming
Are you a service provider? Stop doing project based requests and get those clients on a retainer. You KNOW they’re going to have ideas that pop up in the future, so have them secure you as part of their team so they have you in their pocket to help them pull it off. One off projects are 100% the reason you’re feeling the feast or famine response to your income, and the easy solution is retainer work.
Unsure of the right model to add to your product suite based on what you do? This is just the tip of the iceberg for what’s possible for you as an online business owner. If you’re looking for a coach to help you plan out your product suite or your next revenue stream, you can schedule a discovery call to see if it’s a fit for me to help you build and scale the sustainable income you’re striving to create. Snag a time on my calendar HERE.