Work Less, Earn More

I’m not the only one who runs a successful business in less than full time. Every month, I’ll share a conversation with another business owner who is prioritizing working less and earning more. We’ll get into the choices they’ve made, the tools they use, and how they organize their businesses to maximize profit and minimize effort. Today, I'm bringing on my friend Lilah Higgins to share with us a little bit about how she runs her business in about 20 hours per week. Lilah is the co-founder of TheForge, a leadership training community for faith-driven business owners, along with her husband, Zac. Lilah is also a leader in the online business space where she uses her fine art training and strategic mind to work with her clients and students to create cohesive and effective brands, helping them find the confidence they need to become industry leaders. And she does all that while being a great mom to her two little kids. Lilah definitely needs to save time wherever she can, especially now that she’s shifting her business to prioritize more fun in her life. Lilah is a perfect case study for how you can strategically run your business in fewer hours, achieve real “success”, and meet your goals without compromising your values. Listen to the full episode to hear:How Lilah knew she was working too much and what she did to cut back on working time so she could prioritize her lifetimeHow and why Lilah’s making a conscious effort to spend more time on purely fun activitiesHow Lilah transitioned from working with 1-on-1 clients to selling digital products… and the impact that had on the number of hours she works per weekWhy Lilah works “on the margins” and how the time she spends working breaks down between clients and productsHer favorite tool for helping her company earn more with less effort Links:Lilah Higgins Brand Design & ArtTheForgeLilah on InstagramLilah on FacebookStartup SocietyGillianPerkins.com 

Selling digital products is a fantastic way to be able to work less and earn more.   If you run an online business or you're planning on starting one, chances are you are very familiar with digital products and all of the benefits digital products can bring to your business.   You already know that once you create the product, you can sell them for months, even years, without having to regularly invest more time and more money into improving them or additional inventory. Digital products are something that you can create in your business to generate profits for a long time to come.   Take courses and membership sites as an example.   Courses and membership sites are two types of premium digital products you can sell, and they both offer amazing opportunities. They both offer opportunities to increase your profits without having to continually increase your work hours.   So how, when both are potentially really smart things to invest some initial time and money into, do you decide which one is right for YOU?   In today's episode, I am going to explain to you the difference between these two digital products and help you figure out which of them is the best fit for you and your business.   I'm going to help you make that decision by sharing with you some of the pros and the cons of each, my experience with them, and which one is best for you, depending on your situation and your goals.   Listen to the full episode to hear: Courses and membership sites have a lot in common -- both good and bad Which digital product is simpler to build into your business Which option can be more profitable And which option is right for YOU   Links: Join Startup Society (promo code: earnmore) Profit Planning Challenge Get in touch!

Every month, I’m peeling back the curtain and sharing the ins & outs of my monthly revenue.   These income reports are an in-depth and honest look at how much my business earned, what it cost, and how many hours it took me to do it.   I’ll also share which tasks and projects really ended up paying me best so that you can see how I’m optimizing my business so that I can work less and earn more over time. Plus, you’ll get a time report, breaking down the time I spend on each activity and how that created a financial result (or not).   I hope that you’ll be able to learn from my trial and error, as I work to grow my business, my impact, and my income––all while keeping clear boundaries on my time and personal life.   Today, we’re looking back on April 2020.   Listen to the full episode to hear: What has contributed to us having our biggest profit month to date The changes to the income numbers that we have seen over the last 30 days What we have seen from the affiliate program that we launched with Teachable for course creators How our Facebook advertising access was unintentionally restricted and the frustrations of trying to get them to fix it How despite working more than I normally would in preparation for maternity leave I have been blessed with being able to spend more time with my family   Links: Join Startup Society (promo code: earnmore) Profit Planning Challenge Get in touch!

There is a dangerous pitfall that we can fall into when we work to optimize our business so that we can earn more and work less. This mistake can steal our joy and force us to waste countless hours each week.   Growing up, my mom was really into healthy eating. She always wanted us to eat our vegetables and take our vitamins, and she tried to feed us as much organic food as possible. Before dinner, she would always put out a giant salad and we couldn't eat our dinner until we had finished it. And we certainly weren’t going to get dessert until we had eaten our dinner.   I don't think that this was a bad thing because, to this day, I am a fantastic vegetable eater, but something that I've noticed is that this eat-your-vegetables-first mentality has carried over into other aspects of my life.   Whenever it’s work or play, I always tend to focus on getting the work out of the way before I spend time playing.   In general, as you would expect, this is a really good thing.   It’s good to focus on strategies that help to achieve as much as possible with little time and effort.   It means that I get a lot done, both because I focus on getting the work done first, and because I'm working towards some sort of a reward – dessert, fun, or relaxation.   This is so important to me because I don't want work to take over my life. I want to make sure that I've plenty of time left over to really enjoy life – to spend time with my family and to do the things that I truly love.   In today's episode, I'm going to explain what this pitfall is, why you might be making these mistakes, and how you can work to reframe your mindset and restructure your schedule to make sure that you're getting the most out of every hour you work all while enjoying the process to boot.   Listen to the full episode to hear: How focusing on the goal of working less can kill your passion for the work that you are doing What mindset shifts you can make to enjoy your work WITHOUT letting it take over your life How to shift your schedule and find the right balance between fun and work Why work is a good thing and why we should embrace it in our lives   Links: Join Startup Society (promo code: earnmore) Profit Planning Challenge Get in touch!  

Copywriting has such an incredible power to allow you to work less and earn more.   If you have put the time and energy into your copy and your website is converting – convincing more people to join your email list and buy your product – that means you don't have to put in the leg work to make each individual sale yourself.   If you set up your website do the heavy lifting for you, you can take some time off and keep making money – even if you're not in the office.   In this episode, we’re talking with the brilliant copywriter and my good friend Ashlyn Carter.   Ashlyn is a conversion copywriter and marketing strategist specializing in wedding & creative industries. She trains Fortune 500 clients in corporate marketing to bring in more than seven-figures. She has worked with creatives like Jenna Kutcher, Beth Kirby of Local Milk, Julie Solomon, Katelyn James, Hilary Rushford, Lara Casey/Cultivate What Matters. Her launch funnels have generated results for clients including upwards of $1M in revenue in a single week. She's been a contributing educator with Creative Live, ConvertKit, and HoneyBook, and has been featured in Forbes, Southern Living, Style Me Pretty, and more.   I wanted to have Ashland on the show so you can learn some of the copywriting secrets that will help you improve the writing that you do to market your business.   Listen to the full episode to hear: How to make your website do the heavy lifting for you so you don't have to work as hard How improving the words on your website can help you convert more customers and allow you to work less The #1 thing everyone can improve on their website to get visitors to STICK and be more likely to convert How to use a "heatmap" to figure out exactly where you need to fix your website's copy   Ashlyn’s Links: Ashlyn Writes Instagram Facebook YouTube   Gillian’s Links: Join Startup Society (promo code: earnmore) The Feedback Form  

The reason I wasn't making any money was that people can't buy your products if they don't know they exist.   When I first started my online business, on top of being a mom and working a day job to pay my bills, I was pouring a ton of time into my business every single week without seeing much results.   I had a solid product and I had built some great automated sales funnels that should have been able to produce sales. I was wondering why they weren't working. Why wasn’t this creating the results I was looking for?   What I finally realized was that it didn't matter how amazing my product was or how good my sales funnels were. If there wasn't any traffic flowing through my funnel, then the funnel wasn't going to produce any sort of results.   And because nobody knew that me, my business, or my products existed, this wasn’t going to change.   I had to figure out how to get noticed   Now in retrospect, this seems incredibly obvious. But at the time, when I finally realized that that was true, it was quite the revelation and I realized that I needed to shift my focus in my business. I needed to get that visibility or else my business wasn't going to go anywhere.   I didn't just need to work harder–I needed to change my strategy to get the visibility that I really needed.   In today’s episode, I'm going to share with you what I did to get people to finally start paying attention and the huge difference this made in my business. I am going to share with you the strategies that really took me from earning no money with my business online to earning multiple six figures.   Listen to the full episode to hear: Why people aren't paying attention to you or your business... yet How to make something worth paying attention to The uncomfortable but POWERFUL strategy you can use to directly reach your target customers How to reach the *right* people in MASS   Links: Startup Society Profit Planning Challenge Link The Feedback Form  

Every month, I’m peeling back the curtain and sharing the ins & outs of my monthly revenue.   These income reports are an in-depth and honest look at how much my business earned, what it cost, and how many hours it took me to do it.   I’ll also share which tasks and projects really ended up paying me best so that you can see how I’m optimizing my business so that I can work less and earn more over time. Plus, you’ll get a time report, breaking down the time I spend on each activity and how that created a financial result (or not).   I hope that you’ll be able to learn from my trial and error, as I work to grow my business, my impact, and my income––all while keeping clear boundaries on my time and personal life.   Today, we’re looking back on March 2020.   Listen to the full episode to hear: How the recent quarantine threw off my structure and schedule and what we are doing to adapt What our progress is with working ahead and planning for maternity leave How my income has been kind of flat over the past few months–why that is and what I can do to fix it Why I am moving forward with Facebook ads even though they are giving us a negative return How we can give ourselves grace this month, but how, at the same time, it is still so important that we look for opportunities and make the best of our circumstances   Links: Video Creator Academy Podcast Feedback Form Startup Society

“Doesn’t working less mean less time for serving clients? Less time for making money?”   It doesn’t have to. You have already spent so much time hustling that you don't see how you could possibly work less without sacrificing revenue.   The key to working less without sacrificing cash flow is to find the systems that allow you to accomplish more with less effort – and help you prioritize fitting work into your life instead of squeezing your life into your work.   Today, Ashley Gartland shares different ways you can create simple systems to help you run your business more effectively and more efficiently.   Ashley is a business coach who specializes in helping small business owners systematize and streamline their businesses so that they can work less and grow more.   She has developed a simplified marketing system that puts all of her digital businesses and marketing efforts onto one Trello board – simplifying her marketing and maximizing her productivity   And she shares how she does this in just 20 to 30 hours per week or less.   Listen to the full episode to hear: How Ashley earns six-figures running her 1-on-1 coaching business in 20 hours/week How giving your schedule more structure can greatly simplify your work, maximize your time, and make you more productive How to improve your client management process to save yourself time AND elevate your services And a detailed look at Ashley's "simplified marketing system" that gives her a bird's eye view and allows her to see all her marketing efforts on ONE screen   Ashley Links: Ashley Gartland’s Website Simplify Your Schedule: 4 Steps to Living More and Workless (workbook with templates) Simplified Marketing Plan Training Facebook Business Page Facebook Group, The Simplified Entrepreneur Instagram     Gillian Links: Profit Planning Challenge Startup Society The Feedback Form  

There's a pretty good chance that you know that The Work Less, Earn More Podcast isn't exactly my main gig.   If you've seen me around the internet at all, then you probably are aware that I have a substantial following on YouTube – just under350,000 subscribers.   And if you're aware of this, then you might be wondering why I would possibly want to essentially start from scratch with a podcast when I already have so much reach on YouTube.   Maybe you’re wondering if my YouTube audience isn't that engaged, or if I am concerned about the health of my channel. Maybe you are wondering if YouTube is made up mostly of viewers and is lacking in actual buyers.   Today, I am going to address some of these questions and share with you some of the reasons I started a podcast.   The truth is that businesses that are in different stages of growth need to focus on different strategies. Just because my business is in a place where starting a podcast is a good choice, that doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing for your business.   Because of this, I’m going to walk you through why I believe this was a good strategic decision for my business, how to better understand what stage of growth your business is in, and how you can make similar strategic decisions in YOUR business for the biggest and best results.   Listen to the full episode to hear: How YouTube is great for some aspects of growing your business but still has it’s shortcomings Why it's important to devote a percentage of your time to experimental projects Why different strategies are right for different businesses and why what works for one business might NOT work for yours How to know which stage YOUR business is in and what to focus on right now for different businesses   Links: Profit Planning Challenge Startup Society Link The Feedback Form Atomic Habits by James Clear  

Boundaries are essential for increasing our productivity.   They give us the time, space, and energy we need to be able to create the work/life balance that ensures that work doesn’t take over their lives.   Boundaries are there to protect our personal lives and our sanity. They make sure that we’re not working too much, get a little bit of downtime, and that we have breathing room to work on our business not just in our business.   It’s the strength of these boundaries and the limiting of our working hours that mean we can work less while still keeping our profits high. Setting firm boundaries means that emails don’t take up all of our time, that we don’t take meetings on Fridays, and we definitely don’t work weekends.   It’s within these boundaries that our businesses are permitted to grow.   Today on the show, I'm interviewing Dannie Lynn Fountain, the founder and facilitator at Focused On People, a consultancy that seeks to help companies grow people-first through communication strategies.   Dannie is an absolute productivity magician who manages a seemingly impossible workload.   She brings in six figures annually from a business that she spends only a handful of hours on each week. In order to do this, Danny needs a lot more than just time.   In order to do this, she needs to have a great strategy because, if she works on the wrong things for those few hours each week, then she would definitely be seeing different results.   This is exactly what Dannie and I talk about today on the podcast, uncovering a few of her secrets along the way.   Listen to the full episode to hear: How Dannie balances running her six-figure business with a full-time job at Google, a thriving career as a public speaker, a 2-hour commute (both ways!), and pursuing her doctorate How we can become more productive by creating boundaries for ourselves Three boundaries Dannie set to allow her to be insanely productive Why most entrepreneurs find themselves addicted to the hustle at some point–and what to do about it   Links: Focused On People Dannie’s Instagram Profit Planning Challenge Startup Society