Whether you're striving for $5K or $50K a month, being successful in business is simple math.
However, we become so obsessed with building six-figure businesses, that we get overwhelmed with self-doubt. We keep failing because we're running before we know how to crawl. We want to say that we have a six-figure business, but we've been avoiding the hard tedious work to create a six-figure business. The point is, if we're striving for five-figure launches in months, and haven't figured out how to make $500 a week – there's a disconnect.
So many entrepreneurs don't know their profit margins, cost of goods sold, or their best-performing channels (Instagram, Youtube, Website etc.), which are crucial to making good marketing decisions. Once I mastered the numbers game of sales and revenue, I was able to master the marketing side of it. You see, we spend so much time worrying about social media posts, blog posts, email funnels, and sales pages, that we forget to get down to the basics: having a plan. The goal alone isn't enough. Instead of worrying about building a six-figure business, let's figure out how to make $100 or $200 dollars a day
$100,000 seems like an overwhelming number but setting bite-sized goals helps. If you want to cross into the illustrious six-figure club, you need to make $275 dollars a day. Not too bad, right? When you break down that large revenue goal into a more digestible one, you can breathe a sigh of relief, because now it feels doable. Once you have your daily revenue goal, it's time to map out what that looks like in real life.
This is how you hit that revenue goal.
There are three things that you need to constantly do in order to gain momentum in making sales.
Have product goals in mind, not money goals.
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The first thing you need to do is break down that daily revenue goal into actual product goals. I know that if I want to make $175 per day, I need to sell two marketing plans, or two group-coaching memberships and two bundles, to make that happen. I also know that I can sell one marketing automation package and make that happen. By knowing the different combinations of products that I need to sell every single day, it allows me to prioritize what I need to promote and showcase on social media, conversations that need to be had and general offline work.
Diversify your products, so you can diversify your income.
The other thing you need to do is diversify your income. You need to offer a variety of products and services that solve a variety of problems for your audience. This diversification should also result in different price points to capture your audience at different levels. If you've been selling the same thing over and over and over again, eventually your sales will plateau. In order to keep your audience buying, and more importantly interested, you need to constantly provide new solutions to their problems. I don't mean reinventing the same sh*t in a different format. I mean engaging with your community and figuring out what else are they struggling with.
Ask yourself this: What is another problem that my community has, and what can I build or how can I help them get to the next level? When thinking about this, you also need to create streams of passive income, because if you're exchanging time for money, it's gonna get hard to scale and keep up with.
Keep your business in front of people daily.
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Remember when I talked about the plateau? Here is when what to does if it happens comes into play. You need to get your business products and services in front of new people every single day. Why? Because if you keep marketing to the same 500 people on Instagram and the same 300 people on your email list, you're quickly going to max out on sales. You need to constantly be adding new people to your audience so that you can continue to market and continue to build your business. Whether that's hustling online or marketing offline, your job is to find new people who are interested in what you are selling each and every day.
All in all, I stopped doing the most for the least. All the bullsh*t is a distraction. Just find a process and a system that works for you and forget the rest.
Why are we always chasing something new? We want to know the next best thing when we haven't even mastered the current thing we are doing. I truly believe if it isn't broken, don't try to fix it. In a space where everyone is doing the same things like joint venture webinars, "free" webinars with pitches at the end, social ads, $497 offerings, daily Instagram lives, what are you going to do that's different – what are you going to do that sets you apart?
Once I mastered this process, I tripled my monthly income. I got so consumed with what everybody else was doing online, that I lost track of my own ideas and fell to a $2,500 month. After that unfollowing spree and getting focused, I'm up to a $9,000 month. Why do you care? Because this could be you! It's okay, you can say it aloud… "I want freedom and options!"
If only you found a way to execute more of your ideas and grow your brand, you could own your time. But you can't do that if you continue to be overwhelmed and beaten down by the success of others.
Six figures is an amazing goal, but let's start with something a little less overwhelming. Then, watch how much your brand and income flourishes.
Featured image by Getty Images.
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Originally published January 22, 2019
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The pair often says they’re two sides of the same coin. Skylar is an Aquarius. She attended art school, paints, and loves poetry. She’s more than happy to let the couple’s management firm and agency, Kensington Grey, handle their admin work. And, she loves to sleep in. Temi, on the other hand, wakes up early. He’s a Virgo. He loves a to-do list and regularly checks in on the couple’s brand partnerships spreadsheet to make sure everything is on track.
Because his storytelling was steeped in his love of technology, he didn’t always think of himself as a creative person. “Where I [am] the dreamer who wants to pluck things out of the sky and spend all day with my head in the clouds, Temi [is] so good at grounding me and helping me figure out how to make things make sense on paper. We just work together in such a complimentary way,” Skylar says.
It’s been more than six years since Brooklyn-based couple Temi and Skylar started dating, and nearly four since they cemented their working relationship. On TikTok and Instagram, the couple’s travel, fashion, and home content regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. They’ve worked with brands such as Coach, Aesop, Away, and Liquid IV, bringing their vibrant perspectives to every campaign they execute. Still, nearly two years since both Temi and Skylar committed to full-time content creation and creative directing, the couple says their romantic connection remains their priority.
“We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting,” Skylar says.
Working from home can make it hard to separate work from personal life for any entrepreneur. It can be even more challenging when your business partner is also your lover. Temi and Skylar had already used couples therapy as a tool to help them effectively communicate with one another. When they ran into challenges while working together, their therapist helped them set physical boundaries to help combat the issues.
"We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting."
“It actually took us doing very specific physical things to create boundaries between work and play in our relationship,” Skylar says. “So, for instance, we will only have conversations about work when we're out of bed or we're at the table or in the office. Initially, when we started, we had to light a candle to say that, 'Okay, this is a space where we're connecting, we’re not talking about work.' We needed really hard boundaries at the top. And then it became a little bit more organic.”
The boundaries have been crucial to implement, especially because the couple began working together so naturally. When the pair first met, Skylar was NY-based a social strategist for BuzzFeed and was using content creation to drive business to her lingerie company. She was shooting her own content. Temi was working for Microsoft in D.C. He’d recently traded in his DJing equipment for a camera. “I've always loved taking pictures,” he says. “Even when I was a kid, my African mother would wake me up at 3:00 a.m. [during a] party, and be like, 'Come take the family picture.'”
Growing up, Temi says he watched his parents support each other and be the true definition of partners. He knew he wanted the same for his own relationship. But, the couple also wanted to make sure they were being financially responsible. The pair didn’t quit their traditional jobs until they’d saved up two years' worth of their cost of living. And, Temi received his Master of Business Administration from New York University with the knowledge that it could either help him advance in his corporate career or be applicable to his business with Skylar.
Temi and SkylarCj Hart @hartbreakToday, they say their working relationship is more of a “quiet dance.” They still implement some of the boundaries they learned in therapy, but they also lean into their natural strengths and deep love for one another. When we speak, Temi has planned a date for the couple to see Princess Mononoke in 4K IMAX and added it to their Notion so they can factor it into their busy schedules. “I fully plan to date for the rest of my life,” he says.
Skylar says the couple doesn’t just wait for date nights to check in with one another, though. This often happens in the mornings, after Temi has made her peppermint tea and poured himself a cup of coffee. When they ask each other how they slept, she says, it’s not just a “nicety.” It’s a genuine question meant to foster connection.
“A lot of it happens during the day in the midst of work. We'll stop and we'll hug. Or we’ll slow dance in the kitchen,” she says. “Sometimes it's hard to set a whole date night when you have 7,000 things going on. So, we must grasp these moments and check in when we can. And I think it's become so organic to us that I actually didn't even realize how often we do it. But all day long, we're like, 'Are you good? I felt like your energy shifted,' because we're best friends, we just know. We just feel it happen.”
What’s better than being in love? Building wealth while doing it. Watch Making Cents here for real stories of couples who make money moves together.
Featured image by Cj Hart @hartbreak