7 Steps to Double Your Income
I doubled my income in 2016 and am claiming it right now that I’m going to double my income again in 2017. What are your income goals? Do you want to double your income? Do you feel panicked when thinking about how stagnant your business has been lately? Don’t worry about any failures you might’ve had in the past. We’re moving forward right now and you’re going to make some money. It’s time!
Step 1: Stop Wishing
The first step – you knew it was coming – is to stop wishing! I wish I made that much money, I wish I could afford a new car. I wish… whatever. Stop.
Wishes don’t make money, y’all.
Step 2: Set Scary Goals
If you’re in the blogging or online business space, you’ve probably heard “If your goals don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough”. This is 100% true. I could have made more money this year, but I didn’t set huge goals, so I had already crushed them by August and was like okay… now what?
Obviously I didn’t just stop working and making money, but I realized at that point that my goal for 2016 was not scary enough. I doubled my income from 2015, which was GREAT! But I need to double it again in 2017. Now that shit is scary, yo.
Set a goal that is scary but attainable. If you made $25,000 this year, set up a steady foundation to make $40,000 next year. Go big or go home, and set it for $50,000! If you want to double your income, you’re going to need to write it down. You never know what you can accomplish if you don’t push yourself. Step out of your comfort zone and go for it!
Step 3: Get Laser Focused
If you’ve read my blog before (or if you’ve been a loyal follower for years – thank you!), you know I’m all over the place most of the time. My ADD is in hyperdrive every single time I log on to write a blog post. I wanna post about Arizona’s awesome weather, and our travels, and our homeschooling, and, and, and…
But my passion is helping other women learn how to support their families while working from home. It’s been my passion all along, so you’ve seen it play in the background, but now it’s front and center. When I sit down to write something, I think about my top 5 categories and ask myself if it fits. If it doesn’t fit, maybe it’d be better as a fun Facebook post or tweet.
Getting laser focused doesn’t mean boxing yourself in. I’m not telling you to “find your neeeeeesh”. I’m saying, pick the topic(s) you’re passionate about and make sure everything you do fits into those categories. When someone lands on your website, they should know what it’s about and what you do within like 2 seconds.
Step 4: Learn to Love Productivity Tools
When it comes to adding new tools to my business, I tend to get overwhelmed. I read articles about them, written by bloggers who have their shit together way more than I do, and I’m like “there’s no way that’d work for me”. Or, I install the tools and never use them (hello Chrome extensions), so it’s a waste.
I have ONE productivity tool I’m going to share with you, because it’s literally that freakin’ amazing. It’s the only one I use religiously (other than my Gmail hacks – can’t live without those). And it’s freeeee!
Toby is a tab manager. I know you need Toby, because I can see your tabs up there and they’re out of control. ;)
I’m the type that has 20 tabs at once and like I said I’m all over the place so that doesn’t really lend to a productive day. However, since I started using Toby, I can batch my tasks and focus on one area at a time. So whether it’s client work or VA training or blogging, I’m in that mindset for that chunk of time and nothing else matters. This is a HUGE HELP.
This is what my Toby extension looks like. Once I’ve finished listening to/reading something (like a podcast or blog post), I click the X in Toby and it’s gone. Until then, it’s safe.
Step 5: Trim the Fat
Get rid of everything irrelevant. Stop spending your time on things that don’t make you money (there are exceptions to this). I have a habit of thinking everyone is my friend. If they PM me and ask for blog or business advice, I’ll stop everything I’m doing and spend an hour answering their questions. Sometimes they say thank you, sometimes I don’t hear from them again until a few weeks later when they need more advice.
Stop letting people “pick your brain”. If they aren’t involved in your life on a regular basis, when they ask for advice, they need to either pay for it or go somewhere else! I recently had an experience where I realized a ‘friend’ was using me. Had been using me for years and I didn’t even realize it! I gave her hours of my time, and answered every blog and business question you could imagine.
When my course launched, I told my friend she should sign up because most of the questions she was asking were answered in the course. I was basically saying, “Hey, friend. I’m really busy and am happy to help you but it would save me a ton of time and energy if you’d invest in yourself, in your business, and in me by purchasing my course”.
She kept saying she would purchase it, so I held on by a thread, answering her questions almost daily. She made money because of my advice, yet still didn’t invest in my course! It was so frustrating, and just disheartening all around.
The point of me sharing my story is to say this: if your relationship is one-sided, stop giving away the farm. Stop responding to PMs immediately when you know the person won’t do a damn thing for you in return, ever. It doesn’t have to be tit-for-tat by any means, but a friendship should be a healthy balance of give and take.
Step 6: Let Go of the Guilt
A lot of bloggers talk about money, but what they don’t talk about is how it makes them feel. It might just me but having money makes me feel guilty. I feel like I should be donating it or giving it all away. I don’t care how hard I worked for it, I always end up wanting to help someone else with it (even when my bills aren’t paid yet!).
I hate selling because I know what it’s like to be broke, and who likes to be “sold” to anyway? I will work for hours and hours on something and then when it comes time to price it, I always go really low and undervalue myself. If you’re anything like this, you’ve gotta stop! You put the hard work in and you deserve to be rewarded.
One of my main goals for 2017 is just to remember that I am enough and I do deserve the wealth that comes my way!
7. Invest In Yourself
This is probably the easiest and most difficult step of all. Investing in yourself when you’re barely scraping by is even scarier than setting those huge scary goals like we did above. I get it. I didn’t invest in myself for years. Taking a leap of faith when I was the only one involved was tough. I didn’t have anyone to fall back on, and there’s nobody around for me to blame my failure on.
Instead of continuing to let fear cripple me, I took that leap of faith and invested in myself and in my business.
Ways to invest in yourself might include:
Other ways I’ve invested in myself that have paid off BIG TIME:
I purchased Yoast Premium and hired my friend Katie to do some SEO work for me. The investment I made came back to me tenfold when I saw my site climbing the charts for search engine terms she helped me out with. I incorporated ads into my blog, so the SEO research Katie did for me will easily pay for itself in a matter of a month or two.
Another way to invest in yourself is to create a website. Chances are, if you’ve read this far, you already have a blog. If it’s not self-hosted, you’re jeopardizing your business. I’m not very great at tech stuff, so I hired someone to move my blog when it was time (hire my friend Jennifer!), but there are many tutorials online as well.
Proof Positive
These are proven strategies that have worked in my own business and can easily work in yours as well, if you put the work in. Big scary goals aren’t easy to crush, so you’re going to have to lay off the excuses and get to it!
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