The #1 Key to Reigniting Your Service-Based Business
Have you ever felt like this? It’s a weekday morning, you know you need to get out of bed and work on your business but you just do NOT have the energy or the brain power. You’ve lost the gumption you had when you first started your business and now you’re just feeling burnt out, and in a Cycle of Doom™.
We talk to clients all the time who are feeling this exact way (trust us, you’re not alone). They start resenting their offers and their clients AND dread opening their inbox. None of that leads to a healthy place when it comes to loving and respecting your business. We want to make sure you’re letting your business be there to serve YOU and not the other way around.
If you’re relating to everything said above then the #1 key to reigniting your service-based business is to start making decisions based on facts and NOT just feelings.
Why Your Feelings Are Not Serving You or Your Service-Based Business
We know it can be an easy default to lead with feelings (and just feelings). And we get it! Feelings have served us in a lot of ways. It’s kind of like our super power as women and femme service providers and it’s gotten us really far. AND, it can also make things overwhelming and not provide any direction for when it’s decision making time.
When you start to filter some of those feelings through facts, it actually provides clarity, it gives us a new perspective and it provides direction.
How Feelings Are Driving Your Pricing
Maybe raising your prices has been at the back of your mind for sometime now, but you’re struggling with how this might affect your business. You might be telling yourself stories about how your current clients won’t stay with you if you increase your prices or that landing a new client at that rate is going to be impossible. If that sounds like you then you’re basing your pricing decisions on the feelings we give prices instead of facts.
We encourage you to take a step back and look at the facts. How much money do you actually need to be making? (But really, do you know?) How much time do you actually have to give to client work (this is known as your utilization)? What does the balance of those two things look like for you to be able to live your life?
Once you take a step back and use those facts (hence, pull out your calculator) then you can make actual decisions that are best for your business and your goals. When you’re armed with factual pricing it makes creating the offer and approaching clients much easier because you now have your non-negotiables.
How Feelings Are Driving Your Systems
Maybe you’re feeling stressed about your business’ systems and operations. Including clients crossing a lot of boundaries. They are texting you all hours of the day, demanding a sense of urgency that you don’t align with and/or they aren’t finishing projects in the timeline you initially set out for them.
Whatever boundaries they are crossing, it might be because you are basing your client experience and client relationships in feelings not facts.
You’re making assumptions about your client’s behaviors and letting them get away with things that are making you miserable. You might be nervous that they won’t accept the boundaries you want to put in place but humans (aka, your clients) actually love boundaries. They love having clear expectations and structure. And it’s your job as the service provider to provide clear communication during your onboarding process. So leaving feelings of “I hope I’m not sounding rude” or “I’m worried I might hurt their feelings” out of the process is going to benefit both of you!
It’s even better when you can use automations and create workflows to get some of this onboarding and client experience stuff off your plate. You can use a system like Dubsado to get your systems automated. We totally understand if the automation part is overwhelming to you. That’s one of the many reasons we created the Incubator. We’ll show you how to systematize these processes to not only give you more time but it’s just easier when implementing your client boundaries.
How Feelings Are Impacting Your Time
How many times have you said “I’m working into the evening or on weekends, because I have to”? Or “I’m creating all this content for social media, because I have to”? Yeah, we tell ourselves stories all the time about where our time “has” to go.
If this is you, you’re living in feelings instead of facts. We encourage you to find the source of what it is that you actually need to do. Is it more leads, more clients, converting those leads into clients or maybe it’s scaling current clients to a higher price point? What is the actual problem so you can use facts to help you decide where to best use your time.
If you haven’t gotten any clients from social media then why are you spending so much time on social media? If you haven’t gotten any clients from creating content and growing your email list then why are you spending most of your day writing emails?
This is the easiest trap for service providers to get into because marketing feels fun and sexy but if it’s not actually leading to any results, more leads or more clients then it doesn’t need to take over your to do list.
Facts Are Fun!
Facts really need to be at the forefront of your business mindset. It puts a different lens on things. Before you know it you’ll be making fact-filled decisions that lead you to paying yourself a salary that matters, better boundaries for you and your clients, and a look at how you’re spending your time so you can work on the things that matter.
If any of these resonate with you, we really want to know more about you and where you’re at in these feelings. Send us a DM on Instagram, but really send us a DM! 😜 We are real people and we check our DM’s on the daily and will make sure you are seen and heard!
