Are you experiencing revenue plateaus in your independent consulting business? You might have been creating the same amount of revenue year over year, or experiencing some feast or famine cycle, like big dips in your revenue, and ultimately your income.
What ends up happening is that this type of revenue cycle compounds your underearning over time, and can take a huge emotional toll on you because of the worry, anxiety, and the second-guessing that comes along with it.
Most independent consultants think that this cycle of feast or famine is caused by something like the market, the corporate budgets, or that we’re bad a sales or maybe we’re time-deprived meaning that we don’t have enough time to work both in our business or on our business, etc.
What I’d love to share with you in this episode is that these things are not causing your independent consulting business ups and downs. These things are not causing your revenue stagnation. And quite frankly, these things are not preventing you from making more money with less worry in your IC business.
Listen in to learn what is standing the way of you making more money with less worry in your consulting business so that you’re consistently increasing your revenue and not needing to work more hours to do it.
- [00:29] A special episode intro from my 11-year old son and business assistant Ryder
- [02:08] Check out the IC Business Predictability Assessment: https://www.ic-scorecard.com
- [02:39] What you think is standing in the way of you making more money
- [04:15] What’s causing these Freelancer ups and downs
- [05:24] What is REALLY standing in the way of you making more money
- [06:49] An example of how this barrier is impacting how much you’re making or not making
- [09:13] The shift that you need to make
- [12:03] A special episode outro from my 11-year old son and business assistant Ryder
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE —
- Take the IC Business Plan Assessment: https://www.icbizeval.com
- Graph of A Common Freelance Business Life Cycle: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10xHthAUYa6m3t8EzihM8zhDmEXiIkYfo/view?usp=sharing
- Grab the Double Your Consulting Business Workbook and Slides: https://www.melisaliberman.com/double
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
**note: This is an automated transcript, so please ignore spelling errors and grammar mistakes*
00:02
Welcome to the Grow Your Independent Consulting Business podcast. I’m Melisa Liberman, a fellow IC and business coach. On this podcast, I teach you to become a consistently booked independent consultant without becoming a pushy salesperson or working 24/7. If I can do it, you can too! Listen on to find out how. Hi,
00:29
don’t be alarmed to hear a new voice on the podcast is too weak. I’m writing really removed, and I am 11 years old and in fifth grade. I’m one of my mother, Melisa’s business assistants. I’m usually in charge of editing her videos, I’ve been saving the money I make for a new computer, as I love coding and one day want to be a professional computer programmer or investor. This week, my mom gave me a new assignment for the business. She asked me to introduce this week’s podcast episode, my mom has learned during us since she’s been barely able to speak. We’re getting creative with this week’s podcast, we decided I would introduce the podcast, and then we’ll share a special treat a presentation my mom gave for the National freelance week. The presentation was about how to make more money while working less than your independent consulting business. You’ll hear the full national freelance business week presentation in two episodes. Today, in Episode 61, you’ll hear my mom describe what’s standing in the way of you making more money. And then next week in Episode 62, you’ll hear her describe the six components for you to implement into your business. So it’s more predictable, impactful, and flexible for you. My mom is excited to share this with you because she knows it will help you earn more money and be able to work less in your business. Oh, and two more things, you can go to the website, Melisaliberman.com/double for workbook, and the slides that go with this episode. And don’t forget to take the business predictability assessment, I see scorecard.com. This assessment will help you identify the four areas of your business plan to focus on so you have more predictability and personalized action plan. With that, let’s listen to this week’s episode.
02:39
Let’s start with what is standing in the way of you making more money. Again, a lot of times what I see is this sort of choppiness from a revenue perspective, a lot of increased amount of time is spent either on client delivery or trying to hustle and build your business. So that timeline keeps going up, while the revenue seems really choppy. And the anxiety just increases even more than that. That’s a very common business lifecycle. So be really interested to hear if you can relate to that or not. But as we go through that kind of ups and downs, the impact of that type of roller coaster is really those revenue plateaus. So you might have hit and been creating the same amount of revenue year over year, but you might also be experiencing some feast or famine, like big dips in your revenue, and ultimately your income. And what ends up happening is this compounds under-earning year over year, and of course, takes such an emotional toll on us just the worry and the anxiety. And the second-guessing is what I’m doing the right thing. Should I just go back to corporate where it feels more stable? Or is there something I’m missing? Why am I experiencing this? It seems like it’s no one else is. And I can assure you that so many other freelancers and consultants experienced this type of dynamic. And what I want to share with you today is how to get out of this so that you’re consistently doubling your revenue, consistently increasing your revenue, and not having to increase that timeline as well. So with that, let’s talk about what’s causing these Freelancers’ ups and downs. Most of us think it’s something like the market, right? What’s happening with companies and are they spending or not, or some form of time constraints, either that you don’t have enough time to work both in your business or on your business, or that you just haven’t spent enough kind of elongated time to make this work or to reach the revenue level that you’re wanting to reach. Some people think it’s caused by their network or maybe their websites or some fancy marketing method that you haven’t yet figured out or cracked or maybe even aware of. And a lot of times I hear I’m just not good at sales. I’ve experienced these ups and downs because I’m just not good at sales, I’m so good at working with my clients, but I’m just not a salesperson. And so a lot of times we think that these are the causes of those bumps and ups and downs, or even if you’re not experiencing the ups and downs, but you just have continuously made the same amount of money year over year, and you’re just not sure why that is. What I would love to share with you is that those things are not what are causing your ups and downs, those things are not causing your plateau, if that’s what you’ve hit, what is causing these ups and downs. And quite frankly, preventing you from making more money with less worry, is your thinking. When I first heard that house, I was like this person who told me about this concept is like crazy, it’s absolutely crazy. I’m sure my thinking can improve. But at the end of the day, I don’t have control over what companies decide to do or not in hiring me, I don’t have control over the market conditions, and I can’t make more hours in the day. And so when I first started exploring this, as I was getting further and further into my coaching business, at first, I just thought that this was sort of fluffy, you know, oh, my thinking can fix something. But at the end of the day, I’m gonna walk you through some examples and really make this actionable for you. Because I can assure you after battling this concept, that there’s no way that is my thinking that’s creating these plateaus and these ups and downs that it has to be something else that I haven’t figured out yet, I want to share with you the tangible wait so that you can see what I’m talking about and how it really is true. So you’re not fighting it may be so long as I did. So with that, I’m gonna give you an example, a very clear example of how your thinking could impact how much you’re making or not making, how you’re thinking creates that either feast or famine or plateau or both. So I’m gonna walk you through kind of a before and after, here’s to illustrate what it is that I’m talking about. In this example, it was a client of mine. So he owns a consulting business. And he’s on a current client at the moment. And that client wanted to extend their engagements. And so his initial thinking, as we started talking about this was Well, what I know what I charge is the industry standard, I know that my client is not going to pay me more when we’re going through this extension, I know that if I asked for more money as part of this extension, I could lose what I already have. And I just think now isn’t the right time to talk with them about raising my rates as part of this contract extension. And so he was feeling very justified in this logic, it feels a lot of this, you might agree feels very logical, all the reasons why this doesn’t make sense better not rock the boat. So with just this unmanaged mind this model, the default model here, when I started digging in and asking him more questions he shared with me he hadn’t really thought about even what might a business case look like for raising rates, he had spent so much more time justifying the status quo and tried to make himself feel better about his current rates. And he was just gathering a lot of biased evidence to support the approach that he was planning to take, which was to not raise any rates with this additional extension. So with this kind of thinking, what ends up happening quarter over quarter is you perpetuating and he was perpetuating the same money results, quarter over quarter over quarter because he was constantly looking for reasons to essentially protect the status quo. And quite honestly avoid some discomfort of discussing money and negotiating. So his thinking was what was keeping him stuck in this earning the same amount, quarter over quarter, and ultimately, Porter has become yours, right. And so the shift that we made in working together is him looking at this differently, some of the thoughts that he was able to shift into where it’s possible, my client would pay more, the impact of this work creates, you know, as he was calculating it out, it’s like 5x, the value. So let’s just go down to the doomsday scenario, if that client chose to cancel the contract because he was negotiating, he knew he would be fine. He had a pipeline and has a pipeline of other alternatives that he’s just kind of keeping simmering. He knows that. Ultimately, it’s not the end of the world. And even if you didn’t have that pipeline, he knows that it’s not the end of the world. Now the likelihood of the client blowing up and saying I can’t believe you ask for more money. This is a no go And beyond that, we’re not working with you anymore. The likelihood of that is incredibly low, although our brain kind of goes to the place of making that much more of a likely scenario because it’s trained to go find all the places where we could be in dire danger, right? So from this place with his shift in thinking he was able to get into space from justification, feeling justified in all of those past thoughts and assumptions he had made into more of curiosity and clarity, and ultimately then started loosening things up being able to question assumptions, he was able to start building out a business case for raising his rates. He was able to move from literally Melisa, this is the industry standard. This is just what everyone charges. So definitively, I almost believed him. But then luckily, I didn’t, because we started figuring out all the exceptions. And then he was able to access so much work he had actually done before, when he was incorporated how does he build up value? How does he create a business case?
11:04
How does he really help articulate this to his clients, when it wasn’t him he was selling, you know, incorporate, he was the one estimating all the projects? So his shift in thinking made his access. So many concepts he had leveraged before, get so much more creative and was able to solve problems. And as a result, he was able to increase his rates by 30%. So this gives you such a good example, I think of how the shift in thinking really is, number one, how the thinking is creating the results of either plateauing or creating this feast or famine cycle. And then ultimately, how a shift in thinking given the same exact circumstances allows you to access so much more creativity and problem-solving, and ultimately to start thinking about how you move the levers in your business to make more money.
12:03
Hi, is writer again. Now you have Part One of the presentation my mom did for the National freelance business week. From this, you understand how your thinking is standing in the way of you making more money with less worry in your consulting business. Be sure to tune in next week when my mom will share the six types of thoughts to implement in your consulting business so you can make more money with less time stress and anxiety.
12:35
Thanks for joining me this week on the Grow Your Independent Consulting Business podcast. If you liked today’s episode, I have three quick next steps for you. First, click Subscribe on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to make sure you don’t miss future episodes. Next, leave me a review in your podcast app so other independent consultants can find that benefit too. And finally, to put the ideas from today’s episode into action, head over to Melisaliberman.com for the show notes and more resources to help you grow your consulting practice from your first few projects into a full-fledged business. See you next week.
