Are you finding it hard to bring in more income?

It’s not. Easy for me to say? No, it isn’t. For a long time I found it hard to bring in more income. I’d have clients, then they would complete (aka reach their goals) and move on and then I’d have no clients and so on. It was in that phase of not having clients that I found it hard. Though truth be told, I was doing three things that set myself up for finding it hard to bring in more income.

And I’m going to share with you what to do so that you don’t have to struggle like I did. If you are a small or solo business owner these three things will make a big difference for you. You can even do them on your own. Meaning, they are very do-able without spending a lot of time on them. Which means, you’ll have lots of time to get out and make more income!

3 Simple Steps to Double Your Income

Before I share them with you, I want to first address “simple”. Things that are simple actually get done. The more complicated you make them, the less you’ll want to do them and so they won’t be able to work for you. So let’s just agree that you’ll keep things simple. Ok? Great, here they are:

1. Take on a Powerful, Positive Mindset. Your mindset will make or break you. No matter what it is you are struggling with, getting new business in the door, networking, setting up appointments, etc, your mindset is to blame. When you have a struggle on the outside, you always have a struggle on the inside.
2. Set Attainable Goals. In working with business owners like you, I notice a lot have pie in the sky goals. Things like I want to earn six figures this year. Yes, this is a great goal, in fact it can be powerful, but when I ask them how they are going to do that they tell me “I don’t know.” If you only have two clients who are paying you $250 a month and you have no one on the horizon and aren’t doing any marketing to get more, is six figures even possible?
3. Measure Your Results. Another mistake I made and I see others making is that they don’t have any idea where they are in the cycle of their results. Take money for example. You say you want to make $10,000 a month. How will you know that you made that $10,000 if you aren’t measuring it. And do you want a net or a gross $10,000 (ah, did you forget to calculate your expenses)? Tracking your results is the only way to know if you have truly met your attainable goals and/or if you need to course correct.

How to put the 3 simple steps into practice

Having a powerful, positive mindset, setting attainable goals and measuring your results work simultaneously toward doubling your income. Next is your assignment to put the three into action:

• Set time aside to create your own powerful, positive mindset. Take a look at your business closely. Determine how you want to show up in each aspect of it. From the actual marketing, service and/or product delivery, customer service, to your role as leader, use of time management and productivity and other key areas. If you aren’t sure what key areas you need to pay attention to download my OPTIMAL Business Success Free Assessment to get started.
• Write out your goals to see if they are indeed attainable.  Do a little diligence. Write out a few ideas of how you will know when you have attained them. Make sure you are clear. Write about in detail the things you need in order to reach these goals. Such as hiring team, replacing equipment, getting help such as a trainer or coach to help you reach your goals.
• Create tracking systems. This will by far keep you honest about where exactly you are in your success cycle. And out of the failure cycle. When you know where you are and what you need to do to get to where you want to be, you will find it’s easy to get there.

These steps will not take you long to put into place. The important thing is that you do them. Everything else you have been doing will fall into place. You may even see that things you have been doing aren’t working for you or you can do differently to get the results you desire.

Here is to your OPTIMAL Business Success! 😊

If you’ve download the OPTIMAL Business Success Free Assessment and discovered that you don’t want to do this alone, I’ve worked with a lot of business women who struggled with trying to double their income (in fact, one of my clients increased her income by 80% with these simple steps!), set up a free private session with me and we’ll get you started!

How to tell if you are faking it or being authentic.

Faking it or being authentic? I had an interesting conversation with a client the other day. She had heard someone say that you can’t fake it until you make it because then that meant you were being inauthentic. This bothered her. There were things she was doing to grow her business. And there were some she was doing things that she didn’t really love but knew brought her the results she wanted.

She had been going along working to reach the goals she set and was reaching them when all of sudden she was stopped in her tracks. This concept of being fake threw her for a loop. “I want to be authentic” she told me. So I asked her what made her think she wasn’t being authentic.

Her response was, “well, I’m not doing what I love to grow my business, I’m only doing it because it’s something that works.” I asked her if she felt she was being genuine in her actions, to herself and to her clients. She responded  “Oh, yes!” with enthusiasm.

What does authentic mean? If you Google it you’ll get this: something that is real, genuine. And if you are being real and genuine you can’t be faking it.

There are times I’m not totally genuine…, then what?

True, there may be times when you are less then genuine. Such as “I’d love to work with you, but now is not the right time.” when you truly are just saying that to get off the phone with whomever is asking for your business. A heartfelt, “No, thank you, this is not for me.” would be truly authentic.

I’m not going to get into little white lies here, so let’s just say only you know when you are being authentic or fake. Now, if you truly want to be authentic, it’s time you look yourself in the mirror (no matter how hard that is) and tell yourself that no matter what, you will be authentic in your life.

Let go of the times you weren’t, learn from them and move on. The “then what” is you’ll no longer have to fake anything, you can really be yourself. Now, what a novel idea that is, eh?!

What if I still need to do things that I don’t want to do.

Welcome to life! Will my client stop doing what has been getting her results? No. Not entirely. What she will do though is look at it differently to be more authentic in her actions and that may cause her to do things differently. There are times that you do have to do things you don’t like, exercise anyone?! 😉 Going to the dentist, need I go on? I don’t think so, you get my point.

What I propose you do is to look at it differently, how can you be authentic even when doing things or being in situations that you do not like or do not want to do? How can you find one thing in a situation that you can use to show up as your true authentic self. And guess what, that may be to admit “I don’t want to be here.” Rather than smiling, sucking it up and saying “I’m so glad to be here.”

I can see the look of horror on your face. I can hear you saying “I can’t do that.” But, you can! I’m not saying it’s easy, I struggle with it myself and the alternative is to be fake and unauthentic. So what it is you want to be?

I thought so.

What did you think as you read this? I’d love to hear your thoughts. If I pushed any buttons, what were they and would you like to do anything about them? Either reply below or email me privately at kim@kimravida.com

I’ve worked with a lot of women who struggled with feeling that they weren’t being as authentic as they would like to be and who wanted to change that. If you feel that you are doing more faking it than you’d like, set up a free private session with me to help you find your authentic self!