by Hope
After several years of blogging here, I finally do not believe there is anywhere else I can (or am willing to) cut expenses. While we certainly do not live bare bones, we are generally very frugal in our day to day living.
With that being said, my way forward is to increase my income. I have written about side hustles, passive income and every other way I can think of to make more money. But the bottom line is I have to keep growing my business. Somehow.
The problem is that there are a limited number of hours in the day. And I’m about at capacity. Even with my 11 hour work days. So help me…give me some suggestions for increasing my income in my current business.
I know increasing my pricing is one option and I’m certainly open to that…maybe early next year. But do you have any other ideas for me?
Debt update coming soon. We’ve been staying busy with volleyball season and work. Princess has a part time job lined up to start in October. And History Buff is making some decisions for what he will be doing in January this month.
Hope is a creative, solutions-focused business manager helping clients grow their business and work more efficiently by leveraging expertise in project management, digital marketing, & tech solutions. She’s recently become an empty nester as her 5 foster/adoptive kids have spread their wings. She lives with her 5 dogs in a small town in NE Georgia and prefers the mountains to the beaches any day. She struggles with the travel bug and is doing her best to help each of her kids as their finish schooling and become independent (but it’s hard!) She has run her own consulting company for almost twenty years! Hope began sharing her journey with the BAD community in the Spring of 2015 and feels like she has finally in a place to really focus on making wise financial decisions.
How long have your rates been at their current amount? And be honest: do you think you deserve an increase? What are pay rates doing in general where you live? Is the quality of your work staying the same or improving? I mean, you can charge what you want, but if you’re increasing rates for current customers, I’d be prepared to explain why.
And, because that reads harsher than I intend: you should get paid what you’re worth. But you should be prepared to justify that. Wanting more money because you have debt isn’t enough of a justification.
Are there any tasks that you could use a virtual assistant to handle at a lower cost while you work on tasks that are billed out at higher rate? That would be a way to potentially gain time to work on higher return projects without giving up sleep. I agree that there are always limits to what costs you can trim and what time you have available to make money.
Have you analyzed your tasks to see which are the most profitable? Perhaps increase prices on the least profitable tasks or stop offering them.
I think a $700 car payment would be a great expense to cut.
I was waiting for someone to drop this line. She isn’t getting rid of it, so gotta go to a diff option!
How much of a income surplus do you have with your current 11 hour days? What are you looking to do with more income if you could get it?
I think you should do an update on what your actual budget is doing. Your last projected budget had a surplus of $1000 dollars. Granted it did not include your daughter’s next year of school but even with that you should have over $500 in surplus if you are following the budget you outlined and making the money you projected. That should mean you should not need to make more cuts. You should be progressing slowly and steadily.
Have you thought about hiring a subcontractor so you can take on more work? An intern could help you with this too! Or what about teaching a class locally or in a nearby city about social media or using tech in your business- in our area I see classes offered like that anywhere from $29-$99 a person. You could also put together an ebook or webinar to sell on line.