Today what we’re going to be talking about is a little bit behind the scenes in my business.
I’m going to let you know what my income goal is for 2019, AND how I plan to achieve it.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THE FREE RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST MAY NO LONGER BE AVAILABLE.
Let’s dive in!
I’m one of those people who is very open about my income goals, results, and monthly incomes.
I share all the behind the scenes and financials of my business quite consistently because I think it’s good for us to have an open conversation about this, and it really does help everyone to feel more comfortable talking about money.
We’ve been programmed for a very long time to believe that talking about money is really unseemly. I don’t agree with that.
I think the more we talk about money, the more empowered we become.
The more we make great decisions with our money, the more inspired we are to keep moving forward and the better we can perform in our businesses.
Tracking money behind the scenes financial goals for a business
What gets measured gets improved and a goal shared is a goal magnified.
This is my second year in a row where I set an income target for the year of $1,000,000 AUD. In 2017, my goal was $500,000 and I did come quite close to that – we were over $400,000 for the year.
In 2018, my goal as mentioned was $1,000,000 (in top-line revenue) and I’m not going to get particularly close this year. We have gone over the half-million mark, but it looks like we won’t be getting close to a million this year, so I will be setting the same goal again for 2019.
I wanted to share with you why I feel confident that I am going to be able to do it in 2019, how I’m planning to make it happen, and some of my lessons from my 2018 goals and results.
One of the things I want to say before I jump into this is, when it comes to setting income goals, I have one of those personalities where I’m never disheartened by not achieving my goals.
I share this with the ladies in 100 Days of Colour which starts on the 1st of January and July each year. It’s a 100-day program where we track our income towards a stretch goal.
I tell the girls every year in every round: “Guess what? I’ve never actually achieved my income goal in 100 days, ever!”
But I’ve managed to increase my income every single round and I get excited about the possibility of achieving it. Even though I’ve never achieved my goal, my income has skyrocketed.
It doesn’t upset me – I have no problem with not hitting it.
But for some people, this kind of audacious setting of huge income goals can be very very uncomfortable for them.
If there’s any chance that they aren’t going to make it, they won’t share it, talk about it, or take action towards it which sends them into some mindset wobbles.
Know yourself when it comes to setting goals, and understand what’s going to work for you.
I am quite happy to go out there and share a huge income goal and get nowhere near it. I don’t find it embarrassing at all, I actually find it to feel totally fine cause we’re all friends in the ladyposse.
Some of my lessons have included when you feel like there’s nothing else that can be culled and refined in your business, go deeper.
I closed multiple programs in 2018 and really focused my business down on some key and very clear offerings. It has been a really beautiful thing. In 2018 I went on a speaking tour and felt that I needed to create a new thing for that, so I created the Q3 Mastermind.
I also closed Get With The Program, Lean Start-up School and Courses with Heart. I went through this process of closing some things down, starting something new up, closing a lot of new things down, and refined again and again.
Every time I think that I’m down to the key things and can’t refine any further, I find something else that isn’t quite aligned to the future direction in my business. The beautiful thing for me is that in the final quarter of 2018, I have seen another upsurge in my income thanks to me refining my offerings right down.
At the start of 2018, I still had 27 different things that people could buy from me. In mid-2017, I had 39.
I have been working my way down to as few things as possible so I can be very focused.
For me, it is a balancing act.
I do want to help people in start-up and the scale and systemise stage of their business. There are so many people who I have worked with in startup who want to keep working with me and are always asking me what the next thing is, but I have found even more opportunities to refine down my offerings at the end of this year.
In 2019 I’m going to be open to even further refinement if necessary.
When you think you are done culling and refining, do a little more.
I got rid of bundles, academy trials, a book I wasn’t happy with and so much more, and I’m grateful that I did.
One of the big rules that I set for myself in 2018 was that I was not allowed to overlap launches. One thing at a time, Tash.
As a result, I only got to launch Courses with Heart once at the start of the year, which meant that there was no space for me to relaunch it.
When I sat down and did my review of quarter 3 towards the end of September, I realised that I wasn’t going to be able to do it effectively and that it wasn’t a good fit for my business. There was also this weird confusion about whether people should do Courses with Heart or the Academy first.
It made me think about how well they work together, so I decided to merge the content from Courses with Heart into the Academy, and just sell the Academy. As a result of this, we’ve seen a huge rise in the number of people in the Academy.
2018 was the year of strength in simplicity, and I absolutely nailed it.
Next, when you think you have organised and outsourced, check and look again. Go deeper.
Particularly at the start of 2018, I thought I had found the right team, the right makeup of the team, and the level of outsourcing. I felt that we had systemised ourselves quite well and started to really get rocking and rolling.
In August 2018, I started to realise that things were still feeling a little out of control, and the more that my business expanded, the more freaked out I was getting and the more it was triggering mindset wobbles.
Clearly, I didn’t have the organisation and outsourcing set up as effectively as I need for this next level of business. I hired Jemma, my fabulous online business manager and we went way further.
Seriously, I’ve worked with organisation experts, systemising experts, and other stuff, but there is something so powerful about hiring an online business manager for your business who has their own team and knows how to systemise like the back of their hand.
She doesn’t take no for an answer and really stands up to me.
She’s a total powerhouse in my business, and I have Jemma to thank for a lot of the great results that have come in towards the end of 2018.
Plus I know now that we are set up for that growth in 2019 which makes me very excited.
The third piece of advice I have is when you think you’re completely focused on income-generating activities, look again. Seeing a trend here?
When I did an analysis in July for 2 weeks of what I spent my time doing, I had estimated I would spend about 50% of my time in my business on income-generating activities, and about 50% of my time divided between client delivery and other admin.
It was like 50%, 30%, 20% respectively is what I estimated my activities to be.
When I actually looked at the time I was spending in my business, I was spending about 30% on client delivery, 50% on other admin, and only 20% of my time on income-generating activities. It was a really big eye-opener for me, so have a look at the time you are investing in your business.
If you think you’re very income-focused and consistent, look again and double-check.
I actually overestimated the number of Facebook Lives I had done in the 6 months prior to that review, and I’ve really tried to address that in the last 6 months – I absolutely know that there’s more I could do.
I really thought that I had maximised my email sales processes, and making sure I got the right emails in front of the right people. But when I looked at it there were several times where up-sale emails just didn’t go out because I didn’t get to them in time. I was starting to let that stuff go and not do those income-generating activities.
There were things where I’d done all this work getting leads in, warmed them up really beautifully and then not asked for the sale afterwards because I was just so worn out and overworked from fighting fires in other areas. It was really powerful for me.
My big strategy for achieving my 2019 goals is to reduce my range and deepen my experience and connection.
I’m going to show you this little picture that I drew (11:53 in the video). I’m down to six things that I will be promoting in 2019, and I will be very focused on them.
There are three major things and three minor things, so it’s a really beautiful mix for me.
Also, my plan is to keep refining, batching, systemising, and outsourcing more, but do less. All of these things are more, but the actual doing is less.
‘Refine more’ is to spend less time doing stuff and more time making decisions and crossing things off the list.
Batching more is actually doing less for me, because I sit down and record ten videos at a time which gives me ten weeks of not having to freak out and remember which video I need to do, make it and get it to my team.
I’m booking my batching days for 2019, they are happening hell or high water, and I will make sure that I will batch really effectively in 2019. I have nailed it towards the end of 2018 and that has been a beautiful thing. It makes it so much easier for me and it makes my teams lives really easy as well.
I wanted to share with you what my big six focus areas are for 2019:
1. Take Off (my signature start-up program)
It’s one of the best income generators in my business and in 2019 I’m going to be doing two significant launches of the Take Off program.
I am still in decision mode about whether I’ll be increasing the price of the Take Off program in 2019 (it is something that I think has been underpriced for a while).
I made a commitment in 2018 to leave it at $995 because it really felt like a good fit for me at that point in time, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t put the prices up just because everyone told me to put the price up.
Now I’m feeling into the space of whether it’s due for a little price increase, just to accommodate the extra team expenses, the extra impact on my time, and the extra energy that goes into the Take Off program these days with the number of women who are in there.
I’ll be having a think about that, but Take Off is priority number one.
2. The Heart-Centred Business Academy
I’ll be having mostly evergreen launches of that, continuing to run Get Profesh Seshs with the upsell into the Academy with different offers here and there to incentivise people jumping in. There will also be one big launch of the Academy each year from now.
3. The Heart-Centred Business Conference
We’ve got the 2019 conference coming, we still have about 55 tickets for that to get sold so that will be a focus between now and March. (Go to heartcentredbusinessconference.com to get your tickets for the upcoming Conference – no matter when you’re reading this!)
My goal is to also sell out 2020 within 3 months of completing 2019.
We’re downgrading the size of the conference venue, and therefore the number of tickets that are available for 2020.
Initially, the tickets will only be available to people who are there in 2019 first, they will have a 2-week headstart to get their tickets before we open it up to the wider audience.
Fingers crossed that that plan all works out!
If not, I’m flexible, I’ve got plans.
4. Udemy
Udemy is also going to be a big part of my business in 2019.
As you may have seen, I’m running a retreat with Sal Jade the Udemy Queen, Miriam Castilla the Manifesting Queen, and Tash Corbin the Strategy Queen. I mean, three queens running a retreat, how exciting is that!?
Udemy has been a really big eye-opener for me in my business. The incorporation of Udemy into a heart-centred strategy has just worked really gorgeously and I’m going to continue to focus on that. More Udemy courses in 2019!
(By the way – as of 2020 I’ve released my Udemy course 30-Day Business Blast! Find out more here: CLICK ME)
5. 100 Days of Colour
My beautiful tracking program will continue to bring in a nice chunk of money for me each year.
6. VIP’s and mastermind clients
That is my $1,000,000 business model.
Across those six things, that’s all I need to hit my $1,000,000 income target for the year. It’s really beautiful and helps me feel calm, centred, and focused.
If you would like to set yourself a big goal for 2019, and you would like to increase your chances of achieving that goal, I wanted to share a little freebie with you.
You may have seen the colouring book that I did with the fabulous artist Hinarera.
50 Pages of Colour is a beautiful colouring book with a purpose.
What you do is set yourself a goal and divide it into the number of elements for that artwork.
This one (17:22 in the video) is 200 stairs up a spiral staircase.
For example, if you set yourself a goal of making $2,000 for the month, each step would be worth $10, so for every $10 you make in your business, you track that income.
It’s a beautiful way to stay focused on income-generating activities. Here are some that I’ve completed (17:46 in the video).
You can grab these and track your way to your own income target because I do believe it’s one of the big reasons I’ve been able to increase my income in my business so consistently.
If you have any other insights and “aha’s” from this episode, make sure that you use #podcastaha and the episode number (168) when talking about it in the Heart-Centred Soul Driven Entrepreneurs group, and I always love seeing any questions or aha’s that come up from each episode.
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
