Over the past few months, I’ve pretty much been hanging out in a lot of different Facebook Groups. And the one thing that I have seen in these groups is that a lot of women are struggling to make money in their business.
And when I say struggle, I mean that surprisingly, so many women have been in business for a year or more, and have barely made enough money to pay one months rent.
If you’re in the, “I haven’t launched my business yet” club, this post is obviously not for you. But if you have had a blog or business for awhile, and have been struggling to make any money with it, I want to share with you some major shifts I made in myself to be able to start making consistent income in my business from day one.
1. You need to have unwavering faith that what you want is truly possible.
Before you can create consistent income in your business, you have to actually BELIEVE that consistent income is possible. Consistent income has to be non-negotiable.
I want to be totally honest with you, it took me one whole entire year to launch my business to the public. I spent so much time trying to perfect every single thing about my website, the lead magnet, and the blog posts. I thought that by being actively present on Instagram, I could build up my business that way, but for an entire year I didn’t really sell anything through my blog or coaching biz.
Luckily for me, at that time, I was a freelance marketing consultant. Through being a consultant, I had my first six figure year so if I’m completely honest, I was pretty comfortable.
Although I wanted my own business, I honestly didn’t need the money, so any little fear that possibly came up, pretty much kept me stuck.
But then one day, I found myself broke as hell. In just six months, I went from making an easy 10 grand a month to ZERO dollars. I was so used to working with these corporate clients for many years, I did not expect to have to be out there “hustling” again for new clients.
So in July 2017, I went full-time in my coaching business.
I went full-time and signed 5 coaching clients that July with just a small email list, a small Instagram following and at that time, I didn’t have a Personal Brand. I also didn’t pay for ads.
Want to know what I did?
[sc name=”Lead Magnet”]
I shifted from Self-Employee Natasha that was stuck in the perfection trap to CEO Natasha that did whatever it takes to live another day.
Feeding myself, paying my utility bills and July’s rent became my non-negotiable. I had to have unwavering faith that I could do it, or else I would have to accept homelessness.
This is the kind of faith and total certainty that you need in yourself and your business. But you want to have this faith even when shit isn’t hitting the fan.
If the only time you’re capable of taking action is when you’re at risk of losing everything, you’ll never have a thriving business because you’ll always feel like you’re starting back at zero.
2. I stopped listening to experts and got in touch with my own intuition.
I’ve worked with a lot of coaches, and I’ve paid for a lot of different programs. The real financial breakthrough happens when you learn to listen to your own gut and trust your authority.
While a coach is great for holding you accountable for your big dreams and helping you figure out the gaps in your life and biz, ultimately it’s up to you to create the breakthrough. This is why as a Coach, my main area of focus is helping women SHIFT into the version of themselves that is capable of achieving the success that they desire.
The truth is, without this shift, it’s nearly impossible to become successful.
Here is how making this shift changed my own life.
Once I told myself that I had to make this money, the next thing I asked myself is, “What do I need to do to make this happen?”
For the first time ever, I didn’t seek an expert for this answer. I just sat in a quiet room and thought about it.
And within an hour, my intuition revealed my next steps.
And when I took those next steps, and signed my first 4-figure coaching client, I couldn’t believe how easy making money truly is, even when you’re selling your program to a complete stranger.
3. I prioritized sales over content creation.
I’m not sure why it ends up this way, but for some reason, a lot of people can only see a means of making money through content creation.
And while I think creating content is a great strategy for creating a community and building up leads, I feel like the biggest issue, is that content creation is typically a long-term strategy.
So if you’re okay with giving yourself a good year to build up your email list and launch your signature program, well then cool, content creation is a great way to build up a following that you can sell a digital product too.
But if you need money now, you need to focus on sales.
So how does focusing on sales differ from blogging and building up an email list?
First, let me just say this: Blogging can be great for sales, because the goal is obviously to build a contact list of potential leads that you can nurture and sell to at a later time.
The problem is, when you’re building an email list, even the most qualified leads aren’t always ready to buy or even close to buying.
The kind of sales process I am talking about is actually direct sales.
When you first launch your business, you need to focus on putting your product or program directly in front of your actual customer as much as possible. You want to put it in front of someone that is ready and capable of saying YES or NO.
When you do this, it’s pretty much just a numbers game. Someone will buy.
So for example, if you are a videographer, you need to make sure that each day you are speaking to people that are looking for video editing services.
Not just sending emails to people that downloaded your, “How to Create Compelling Videos” freebie.
If you’re a videographer. you need to speak to people that are ready to hire or almost ready to hire a videographer.
- Some people do this by getting on websites like elance or upwork.
- Some people cold-call or cold-email their prospects.
- Others pay for FB ads that send their prospects to a webinar and they ask for the sale on the webinar.
Once you’ve gotten your first couple of clients and your bank account starts to get a bit more cushiony, you want to keep reaching out to prospects whether that be via elance / upwork or cold-calling / cold-emailing or paying for FB ads or some type of premium marketing. You want to still build relationships and tell people that are almost ready to buy or ready to buy about your services.
This will help you keep refilling your funnel so that you always have a consistent flow of new clients coming in when the old clients leave (something I didn’t do much during my freelance career which is why I went broke).
What I’ve learned in the past year, that if you are struggling to bring income into your biz, chances are it’s because you’re speaking to people that just aren’t ready to buy yet.
That’s fine when you’re nurturing and want to alert people about your product. The problem is, if you’re only speaking to people that aren’t ready to buy, no one will ever buy.
That’s when making money gets hard.
