238: Why Revenue Goals Don’t Work (For Me)

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This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Welcome back Free Timers. I'm bringing you another crossover from Rolling In Dough today because I have a feeling you're going to resonate with the topic. If you haven't already seen it and if you've already read the essay in the written form, maybe you'll enjoy hearing it again. Maybe you'll pick up another related snippet. I'll put the link to the post itself in case you want to join in the comments or join Rolling in Dough more broadly. This one was posted on October 7, 2023 called why Revenue Goals Don't Work for Me, Falling short of the elusive and ever escalating seven figures. I am so grateful to have you here on the Free Time podcast and if you want to subscribe and get every single Doe post in full, visit rollingindo doh.substack.com that's rolling in doh doh.substack.com youm can also see everything I'm creating across Freetime, Pivot and Rolling In Dough if you visit my substack profile@substack.com any Blake that's substack.com@ennyblake. I'll put all these great links and related reads in the show notes and I would love to hear from you. As always, leave me a voice memo@itsfreetime.com Ask or jump over to Doe and reply in the comments. We're having a very lively discussion over there about this topic and so many others.

Abundance was my word of 2019. I'd love to tell you I meant abundance in the broadest possible sense, appreciating the bounty already in my life, financial and otherwise. Maybe I'd sound more enlightened if the intention was to appreciate on a daily basis that I had a healthy body, lungs, a beating heart, friends and family, a roof over my head, plenty of food to eat, and a new marriage to celebrate after decades of dating disappointments. But mostly my theme was about money.

Specifically to surpass $1 million in revenue by the end of the year, I was going to build the sexiest small business rocket ship to achieve time and money escape velocity with my delightfully tiny team to the moon. When I first launched into self employment in 2011, the Sexy Target was a six figure location independent business. In addition to greater creative freedom, I also harbored secret dreams of proving wrong everyone who doubted my decision to leave Google. I would do this by hockey, sticking my revenue far past what I ever earned or could from a capped salary, ideally in half the time each week. Maybe not the first year or the second, but someday. Salaries are steady pro, but they have a ceiling con One of the lures of self employment was that my earning potential could be stratospheric. After all, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take that Gretzkyism, as in weight and Gretzky, was a family mantra growing up, thanks to my dad's ongoing encouragement to me and my brother to aim high and take risks. Whether that meant writing a letter to a Fortune 100 CEO or even running for president, his enthusiasm and genuine belief that we could do anything we set our minds to was unwavering, no matter how lofty the goal. By 2019, dream and ego inflation hit the small business arena. Six figure revenue was now merely table stakes. Experts, particularly of the online variety, were now selling the seven figure dream. Today it's 8, 9 and 10, and all before you're 30. I'll link to a great post or two from Tara McMullen, who's also been addressing this escalating revenue dream and teachings online. According to the Census Bureau's latest data, non employer businesses, those with no paid employees, constitute nearly three quarters of all businesses, but they contribute less than 4% of overall sales. Of those, 1.3% bring in more than $500,000 and 0.2% bring in more than $1 million per year. 0.2%. So you're saying there's a chance? That's a dumb and dumber quote for any of you who couldn't tell from my terrible vo. No matter that small and medium sized businesses owned by women earned on average 30% less revenue in 2021 compared to male owned businesses $263,000 versus $469,000. I figured, why not me? Why not go for it. I was thrilled by the idea of proving that statistic wrong and paving a new way for others in the process. Maybe this will be my year. I wanted to show that it could be done with integrity, with ease and joy, without any full time employees, and without running oneself into the ground. And yes, while being a woman, a breadwinning woman. Even though I hate when people try to put me in the box of only being for women. Surprise. A woman can teach men and women handy things. Isn't that wonderful? Whether a majority of entrepreneurial men want to learn from men and women is another story. I linked some of the podcast charts in a Footnote that currently 11 out of the top 50 entrepreneurial podcasts are hosted by women. That's actually better than it used to be. For bigger teams and companies, I completely understand the need to set clear goals and revenue targets to keep everyone rolling in the same direction, to meet quarterly projections if you're publicly traded, and to fund all those salaries in the first place. But on an individual level, the irony is that calling in abundance, at least financial abundance, means there's a gap between what you have and what you want, which itself can be a form of scarcity. Abundance in the, well, more abundant sense is really about gratitude, recognizing all the gifts, monetary and otherwise, already present. But when merging personal aims with the business world of goals and dreams and rocks and okrs, it's so easy to get carried away. Even with this paradox in mind, in 2019, I read dozens of books, listened to hundreds of podcast episodes, and tried all manner of tactics to surpass seven figures. I have watched nearly every episode of Shark tank from all 15 seasons and cringe. I even loved watching the Apprentice with my mom. Growing up, I didn't care so much for the now infamous host, but I loved watching bright people solve thorny business problems on tv. I also surrendered. I tried to let go of my attachment to this financial dream, and I continued shifting any thoughts that I noticed of lack and scarcity toward curiosity and appreciation. Money is energy, after all, so let's have fun playing the game. But I wasn't willing to do things like spend advertising money on a certain megalith platform whose values didn't align with mine. I wasn't willing to work around the clock or build out a big team. I was determined to get there the free time, way or no way. See also Stubborn as hell.

We'll be right back just after this.

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This message may be shocking to many millennials. If you are one, you might want to sit down right now, loads of people are searching the following on Depop Low rise Jeans, halter top, velour tracksuit, puka shell necklace, disc belt. You likely place these in the dark of your closet in 2004, never to be seen again. But if you can find it in yourself to dust them off, there are a lot of people who will give you money for them. Sell on Depop where taste recognizes tast.

Call me a dummy, but here's the part I could never grok when setting revenue goals as a solopreneur. What if they are not in the highest good for all involved? As Tosha Silver writes in it's not your money, there is a bigger picture to manifestation that includes our Prabhupta Karma, our soul's course of study. She writes.

Everybody has a different set of abundance lessons they're learning in any given lifetime. It may not be your own destiny to have $10 million. That might actually be the last thing your soul needs. You might be learning this life to trust you'll always have enough, and the more you open to Divine Source, the more you will. A teacher of mine used to say, be grateful for the karma you don't have. Your own is plenty. I'm constantly struck by how resting in Divine Source is independent of wealth. Some insane the insanely prosperous clients I've had were in constant mental torture, while some who lived month to month had such faith they rarely worried at all. They lived in a state of grace where everything needed arrived like clockwork.

I've told this story on the podcast before, but it really fits in this case. And it really is one that shifted my perspective on all of this completely. Ten years ago, during my previous Apocalypse year and financial trough of 2013, I was walking through the West Village on my way home from yoga, rocking out to Fun's we are Young.

Some of you might remember that it was a bright summer day, had my apple headphones in thin white cable still swaying with me as I strutted through the city streets. I was head over heels in unrequited love, also known as limerence, furiously thumb typing a reply on my phone to someone who repeatedly told me. They were emotionally unavailable. Yet I remained hopefully and hopelessly giddy about our potential. All of a sudden I saw a white wishy float erratically across my path. I chased it down, by the way. After this went live, people said, what's a wishy? You know what I'm talking about. Those little dandelions or I don't know the official name. These little white floaties. And they're kind of erratic with the wind. My inner seventh grader jumped in first with I hope this guy is the one. Then I quickly corrected myself toward a revised mantra, thanks to my favorite spiritual teachers, Tosha Silver included, whose excerpt I just read that forever changed my life and approach to business. May this relationship unfold for the highest good of all involved. A wave of calm washed over my body as I said the words. I blew the wishy off the palm of my hand, once again setting it and my no longer anguished inner self free. That wish became the only thing I cared about moving forward in dating and business. It taught me to drop my specific expectations, resentments in waiting, and surrender to whatever would be in the highest good for all involved. I learned to have faith in the process and to trust that whatever did show up must have been exactly what I needed. No more, no less. Maybe seven figure earnings were in my highest good in 2019. Maybe not. I would find out. Prosperity Gospel says we're entitled to wealth. That wealth equals goodness equals godliness. Well, it turns out even Napoleon, not his real name, Hill, author of the bestselling Think and Grow Rich, was a lifelong fraudster. Matt Novak's brilliant investigative piece for Gizmodo anoints him as the greatest self help scammer of all time. I'll link to that article in the show Notes and he was also on a podcast called the Dream in an episode called Think and Grow. Duped. As I say, in free time, money is one of the four horses of the business ambition apocalypse, along with fame, power and control. Aiming directly at it for me is like staring too long at the sun. Sometimes unanswered prayers are protecting us from wayward consequences. As my friend Melanie wrote, even an enormous stockpile of FU money won't necessarily further creative goals. As she shared in the comments of an earlier DOE post.

Bad luck may be saving you from worse luck. What if the big clients that just bailed are saving you from something far worse? Like a year of bureaucracy, bottlenecks, less creativity, new rules of engagement that no longer fit you. And the way bigger thing that comes from this time may very well be the light that fuels your next decade of work.

I'll link to her post. It might feel safe, but it won't feel good. And one of my favorite songs of all time, Garth Brooks Unanswered Prayers Sometimes.

I thank God.

For unanswered prayers. Remember when you're talking to the man who stares at just because you he doesn't answer doesn't mean he don't care.

Some of God's greatest gifts.

Are unanswered prayer.

Who am I to say what's best? I have been wrong so many times I always return to my favorite Zen parable. See, I mention it all the time here on this podcast because we're often wrong about what we label good and bad, and even what will make us happy in the future. If given the choice between the highest good for all involved and a randomly generated status induced financial figure, I will choose the former every time. Is this a limiting belief? Is this an inner scarcity monster justifying my failure to reach this target? Did some part of me stay small on purpose or self sabotage as the Personal Development Police would have me believe? Maybe, maybe not. Some people's sole goal in this lifetime is to be rich, even wealthy. That still doesn't mean happy. No revenue target can eclipse the lessons we are meant to learn in this round of Earth School.

2019 turned out to be a financial peak after eight years of self employment, topping out just shy of $700,000 in gross revenue. I remained a non employer business and worked an average of 10 to 20 hours on the computer each week to achieve it. Still, I had missed my stated goal. I almost didn't give myself permission to write a business book because of it. Shoot for the moon and you'll land in the stars, as the PAT saying goes. But those glittering stars won't enchant you. They won't feel like enough if you're still pining for the moon. If only I knew that the bank accounts were only going to roll downhill from there, at least for the next few years, maybe I could have appreciated the milestone I did reach a little bit more. I could have celebrated how far I had come rather than shrugging my shoulders at falling short. I am rich in time, health and love. That's more than enough for me, even when I'm stressed about paying the bills. Whatever financial boons follow, I will gladly steward, but I'm no longer going blind by staring straight at them.

If you've listened this far, you get a gold star.

Thank you.

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Is up for grabs.

Let it be easy, let it be fun, and build with love.

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