Have you been in business for a while and you’re working your backside off, but you’re not making the money you deserve? 

Are you feeling like a slave to your business?

Are you still not able to take a good holiday away because your business can’t run without you?

If so, you’re not alone.

This is Part 2 of a two-part blog series that teaches you how to finally achieve greater revenue and freedom in your business through optimising your Business Model (Part 1) and your Operating Model (this article).

If you haven’t read part one yet, I highly recommend you do (click here). And then come back to read this article as both pieces need to go hand in hand to grow your business. 

So let’s look at how you can break through to achieve greater levels of revenue and freedom in your business through changing your operating model.

5 Ways You Need to Optimise Your Operating Model: 

How To Run Your Business to Give You the Lifestyle You Desire.

So you started your business as a solopreneur and most likely you had to learn how to do everything yourself because of budget constraints. But now you’re still doing everything yourself while also trying to juggle your client load, win new clients, and keep up with the accounts and admin.

And it’s not sustainable anymore, right?

If you’re serious about breaking into a new phase of healthy profit and growth, you need to make some big changes.

Here are the five big ways you can untangle yourself from the business to finally create the freedom and revenue you desire.

1. Start outsourcing.

To reach profit and scale, you need to start working ‘on’ your business, not ‘in’ your business. You’ll need to surround yourself with a team of people who are reliable and competent and can take the administrative burden off you.

If you haven’t dipped your toe in the world of outsourcing yet, it can be scary, especially if you struggle with perfectionism and letting go.

But you need to find a way to work through this, otherwise, you’ll be forever stuck in the breakthrough phase and you’ll never get to profit and scale.

This doesn’t mean you have to start bringing on employees. Simply start by hiring a virtual assistant for just a few hours per month to do some simple tasks like social media scheduling and posting or payment tracking and client onboarding. If you’ve never worked with a VA before, check out my article: What is a Virtual Assistant and Why Do You Need One?

 My advice when it comes to hiring virtual assistants is to go by word of mouth. Work with those who have proven themselves to competent and great value, because otherwise, you can burn lots of money and not get very far.

But when you find a great virtual assistant, you’ll start experiencing the true freedom of outsourcing. It will help you see how you can untangle yourself from the ‘doing’ so you can focus on growing your business.Tweet it

And when it comes to outsourcing, always follow this rule:
Any activity that you can pay someone else to do for a lower hourly rate than your rate, outsource it now!

2. Stop flying by the seat of your pants and start planning.

If you want to grow and scale, you must make annual planning an integral part of your business operating model!

What are your growth targets?

How much revenue do you want to make?

Set some solid revenue goals to work towards. And chunk them down into 90-day goals that you can work towards every three months to maximise your productivity.

Determine the marketing strategy that will enable you to achieve your revenue targets. How many times a year are you going to conduct your main lead generation strategy, whether it be a webinar, or an event, or a challenge? Plan them into your diary so that you can start developing your marketing calendar, which will include the delivery of your follow on signature program.

Or if you have a product line, plan in your seasonal promotions and offers so you can get your marketing schedule aligned. 

Planning so critical to business success.

As the saying goes: “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

Take the time to get all your events and marketing milestones onto a single page marketing calendar and get busy working towards it. The gold is in the planning!

3. Start measuring your performance against your growth targets.

Once you’ve set your revenue and marketing goals, you’ll need to measure your progress against them on a regular basis. I recommend doing this every three months (90 days). That way you can revise your targets as you go and (hopefully) increase your targets upwards.

There’s no point in setting goals if you don’t check in regularly and monitor your progress against them.Tweet it

4. Automate your systems and processes wherever possible. 

Now that you’re ready to grow and scale, it’s time to invest in systems and processes that take the administrative burden off you. As a minimum, here are some of the processes that should be automated: 

• Your client onboarding processes including proposal signing, sending of T&C documentation, payment, client set up.
• Your email welcome sequences when clients subscribe to a lead magnet or discovery call.
• Your calendar booking system and appointment reminders (I recommend Calendly).
• Client payments (use an auto-debit system so you’re never chasing payments).

5. Leverage your time. Move away from time = money.

If your revenue relies on your time, then you’ll need to think strategically about how you can uncouple yourself and leverage your time more effectively. Here are some ways you can do this:

• Package your knowledge into digital products like online courses, programs or membership sites.
• Move from one-on-one service provision into group work. Make your private service a premium price so that you only take on a small number of high paying, private clients, and the rest you serve in a group format.
• Develop other streams of passive income through affiliations or joint ventures.

What are some ways that you could start uncoupling your business from your own personal time input so that you can finally start growing your revenue, independently of your time input?

If you found this valuable, be sure to head on over to Part 1: How to Become a Profit Queen (Part 1): 5 Ways You Need to Optimise your Business Model to Achieve Growth.

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Are you starting or growing your own business? Get your FREE Fempreneur Success Handbook and discover everything I wish someone had told me back when I was starting my business in 2014!

In service to your success,

Kate De Jong, Ph.D
Fempire Coach
https://katedejong.com
[email protected]