It's harder to build a $60k business than a $300k one

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Hello and good evening. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, coming to you live on the Facebooks, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and over here on Instagram. Hi, David Fryman. Welcome. Tonight, I want to talk. Well, first of all. First of all, here is the format that I'm trying out tonight, and this may be my Wednesdays going forward. So just so you are aware, I'm going to be going live onto LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram for probably 20 to 30 minutes on Wednesday evening, starting around 6pm and then around 6, 36, 40, I will be jumping over to TikTok and hanging out over there. And if you have any questions, I will be there to answer them. Hi, David. I will not only answer them in the chat, but if you want me to do an audit on the topic that we're doing, so, like, on your pricing, on your LinkedIn, on your website, whatever the topic is, that evening, you can absolutely sign up to have me do that audit. And I will spend 10 minutes on whatever it is in your business that you need help with. We're still figuring out technology around it, so this should be a whole lot of fun with mistakes, and I will be sharing the whole journey along the way. But I'm super exciting. I will also be knitting because my social media strategist, Jess Bruno, has told me that movement is really good for TikTok. So we're gonna. We're gonna try that, you know, and then you guys get to watch me knit, which, I mean, that just sounds like super relaxing, doesn't it? Anyway, tonight. Tonight, the topic is all about pricing and your financial goals for your business. So whenever I say this, people look at me like I have three heads. And, you know, I get it, I get it. It sounds nuts, but it is harder to build a business to $60,000 a year if that's your goal, than it is to build it to $300,000 a year. Okay, Let that sink in. If you want to build a business and you're saying, okay, well, I'm just going to give myself this little goal right now, and then I'll up it later. It's almost impossible to take that $60,000 business that you built and then ramp it up to 300,000. You just can't. The math will never work. All right, I'm going to be talking about why this is so true. And like I said, if you want to come jump over and join me on TikTok. Why don't we switch over there then? And we want to. And if you have any questions about how your pricing might be scaring away awake clients, then come and join me there. Okay? Now, first and foremost, when we're talking about your financial goals for your business. So here. Here's how it goes with my clients, right? Whenever I start with a new client, I always ask them this question. How much money do you want to make? Okay, simple question, right? But no, I always, without fail, get two answers. Two answers. The first answer is the weenie answer. Stop being weenie. And it's usually like, well, I would be fine If I made $60,000 a year. It would cover all my base expenses, and I'd be able to survive. And, yeah, like, that would be fine. All right? And they say it with, like, such oomph and nobility that, like, oh, yeah, like, this is fine. Like, don't worry about me. I can handle this. No, no. First of all, if. If you're wanting a business coach who's just gonna, like, help you survive, I'm not the lady for you. I'm sorry. Not. Not the person for you. You want to find someone else. I don't accept that answer ever. I will often always push back and say, great. I didn't ask you how much money you need to make. I'm asking how much money you want to make. They're different, right? And I give them full permission. Imagine five years from now, you are working full time in this business. You have all the clients you could possibly want. You're doing all the things in the business that you enjoy doing. You're able to hire people. How much money does the business need to be making for you to pay yourself well and to have all that be true? And usually the number is, like, double or triple what that original answer was. Right? Because we don't want just our base expenses covered. Okay? They've actually. I don't know if you've followed any of those, the studies or the research about, like, money buying happiness. And like, they used to say in the research that money could only buy happiness up to a certain point, and then it all levels off. Yeah, they've discovered that that's wrong. Okay? They've discovered that there's really no cap at which money and the increase of your income, like, impacts happiness. It continues to make you happier as you make more of it. Okay, It's. It's not true. Money does buy happiness. Okay? When you think about it, when you're, when you don't have a lot of money, you often have to make really difficult decisions, right? You have stress, stressful situations. I know David Fryman and I were talking about parking tickets, right? When you have, like, when you can like, remember how many dollars you have in the bank account and you come out to your car after being at work or running errands and you see that little envelope on the windshield, what does that do to your nervous system? I know for me, when I was like poor in my 20s and living in San Francisco, when I came out and I saw that little envelope, like, it crushed me, I would just like, I would start, like, my heart would start palpitating, I start sweating and I'd start just doing math immediately. Like, okay, cool. Like, how am I going to be able to afford this? How many days do I have to pay this parking ticket until it gets way more expensive? Am I okay with the penalty? Like, when does my next paycheck hit my bank account? All this stuff, okay? That doesn't happen when you make more money. That doesn't happen when you know you have solid savings and your checking account is fine and you know that you have investments, you. And you know that you have plenty of money coming in, right? When that's your reality. When you come out and you see the little envelope on your windshield. My friend. No, no, no, no, no. You're not panicking. You're annoyed. You're like, oh, I'm such a dumbass, I can't believe I did this. And then you take it off, you put it in the car and you deal with it, right? Like a normal human, right? So it is easier. It is easier to build a $300,000 a year business than it is to build a $60,000 a year business. And there is nothing wrong with wanting to make more money. Doesn't make you an evil person. Doesn't make you greedy or selfish or any of those awful things that we associate with money. You know, you also, when you make more money, you won't like, magically become evil, right? Dr. Evil was always evil, okay? Like Scrooge McDuck was always a selfish bastard, all right? Like, that is just the truth. And it will always be the truth. Money just makes you more of who you are, all right? And I'm very proud to say that if you're in my world and you watch my stuff, you're probably like a really decent human being, okay? Because I'm really lucky that I attract really decent human beings into my world with you, with money. Like, I want you to imagine, like, what would you do if you had more money? And I will bet you would go out to dinner more in your town, right? You'd support local restaurants. You know, instead of cooking, you would probably, like, invest in cool things for your family and for your kids. Like, give them experiences. And you'd get to spend more time with them. Like, that's amazing. You might give back more. There may be some causes that you really, really care about and you'd be able to do that. You'd be able to have an impact. Right? What else? Like, you might be really into art. You might actually be able to afford to buy some art pieces from artists that you really appreciate. Oh, my God. And like, how cool for them that they're selling their art to someone who really appreciates it. It's endless. It's endless. Like, you making more money is one of the best things in the world that could happen. Right? Stop acting like it's a bad thing. All right, now, okay, I'm going to talk through why it's easier to make $300,000 than it is to make $60,000. There are three that I'm going to be going through tonight. But really, like, there are so many reasons why this is true. I could go on this on this tangent for forever anyway. And if you have any questions, just pop them in the comments. And like I said, if you're just joining, hello. I will be jumping to TikTok around 6:30 6:40, so you want to come with me there and I'll be answering tons of questions and help determine if your pricing is actually scaring away clients and not attracting them. Okay. Speaking of clients, so when you're building a business to $300,000 a year, you attract better clients. You attract clients and they're not just like, inherently better because they can afford more money. No, they are more committed to working with you. Right. Because they have to spend more money to work with you. Okay. The barrier to entry is way higher. Right. They're going to be really committed to making the most of their work with you. Okay. It doesn't matter if you're a lawyer or a copywriter or a coach or consultant. Okay, I'll go through them. So if you're a copywriter and you're not charging that much, your clients are going to have no problem going in and editing all your work. And I know if you're a copywriter and you just heard that, you're like, don't touch Please. Because you work so hard at it, right? And you're the expert here. You know what you're doing versus you know, this person who hired you because they don't know what they're doing, then they're going to go and edit your stuff, like, get it. No. Versus, if you're charging enough. If you're charging a butt ton of money, maybe not a butt ton. That's a lot. That's. That's actually like 2600 gallons, I think. I think I actually looked this up. It's a, it's a metric for wine. You can actually say things are a butt ton and it's actually measure a unit of measurement. Anyway, side note, where was I? That's right. Versus. If you're a copywriter and you're working with clients who are paying a buttload to work with you or a butt ton, you are going to get clients who value your expertise, right? They are spending a lot of money on your work. They're gonna get it and they're gonna be like, okay, this is really good, cool. And they're gonna go with it and they're gonna trust you a lot more. Right? Also, the clients who are willing to spend more money are usually not the ones that are struggling financially. Okay? And this is not to shit on anyone who's struggling financially. I've been there. It sucks. But when you're struggling financially and when you're investing in stuff either for your business or for your life and times get tough, you don't have as much of a buffer. So when times get tough and you have to cut stuff, like this is the stuff they're going to cut, right? So your clients, they may want to continue to work with you, but if times are really tough and we're having a lot of financial difficulty as a country, as a world, right now, you're going to be the first one that they cut because you were the extravagance, Right? Versus the client who can pay more. Now, for those of you who are like, well, I want my work to be accessible to people. Yes, I want your work to be accessible to people also. But I want to remind you, you have to be able to pay the bills, okay? You have to be able to pay yourself. You have to be able to have a life and pay for health insurance and invest in your retirement and all that stuff, right? You, my friend, cannot pour out of an empty cup. All right? So if you're designing a business around wanting to give back, get the high paying clients first and then create either some Scholarship positions. Like, you could do a sliding scale for a few clients. You could also do a more affordable group program. You could do some free mentorship. There are so many ways for you to make your work accessible to people and actually help people who desperately need you but can't afford you. But you can't start there. Okay? Like, I think, I think we have this model of like religion in our heads. Like, you know, nuns and priests and, and monks and, and all this stuff. And we forget that they can take a vow of poverty because they're entering an institution that's worth millions if not billions of dollars. Right? The Catholic Church is worth billions of dollars. Okay? Their worth is so much like no nuns are going hungry. No nuns are wondering where they're going to sleep at night, okay? There's so much real estate the Catholic Church owns. Like, you're fine, you can take a vow of poverty and you're going to be fine if you're in the Catholic Church. That's not the case if you're self employed, okay? Unless if you have a secret, I don't know, like, and if you, if you do, tell me, please. But you have to be able to pay your own bills, okay? You cannot build this if you can't pay your own bills. All right, deal. So you need to be able to pay yourself enough. You need to be able to attract clients who can invest in you and stick with you. Next number two is the ramp up time. Okay, so the math just doesn't work when you're building a business to $60,000. Because I want you to remember. So let's imagine it's a very clean arc of the business you start in January, all right? You're doing market research, you're designing your offer, you're building out your website, you're, you know, posting to social media. You're probably like my average. My clients, on average, if they're doing the work, will get their first high paying client in month, like 2.5 of working together. Okay, but that's one client. Okay? So you're two and a half months in. You got your first high paying client. Let's say they're paying you $10,000 to work with you for six months. Great. That's $10,000 you did not have before. Congratulations. You're probably next month going to get one more and then maybe one more the next month and one more the next month and it's going to continue. Right? So by the end of the year, hopefully you're close to having a full client list. Depending on what your work is. But you have to look at it like, if you based your math of what you should charge to like match up to a $60,000 year. So you're not going to make $60,000. And if $60,000 was the base amount that you needed to survive, you're going to be fucked. There's no way to dance around that. You're going to be absolutely screwed. Okay? I don't want that for you, okay? I want you to be able to pay the bills. I don't want you stressing about stuff. If you were to base your pricing off the $300,000 goal, however, typically. So this is what I see with my clients is typically in year one, if you're doing all the work, you'll reach about a third of your big goal, right? You'll get a third of the way there, all right? And then of course, it's fine tuning, it's increasing your rates, it's adding some other programs, whatever, whatever. The strategy is for you to reach that in year two or year three, right? But in year one, I still want you paying the bills and you, you need to factor in the length of that ramp up time and how the math will actually wash out over the year. All right? So the ramp up time and the math just don't work for you to aim at $60,000 and not $300,000. The third one I want to cover tonight is your commitment level will be massively different when you're building towards $300,000 versus $60,000. Okay? This is one of the most critical things about you being successful in your business is how committed you are, how you are showing up every damn day. You show up for work, right? And let's just use example, like if you're working, I don't know, a job that pays you $15 an hour and you have another job that pays you $50 an hour, which one are you going to be more on it for? Which one are you going to call in sick for? And which one are you going to do overtime for? I know the answer. It's the $50 an hour job. That's the one that you're going to pour your heart and soul into because the payoff is better now. Not to say that that first year you're going to be guaranteed to make $60,000 or $300,000. It's just that does not how starting a business works. Okay? It's not predictable in the beginning, but if the payoff, if the ultimate payoff that you're aiming at is higher, and you can see a clear path to you getting there. You, my friend, are far more likely to be committed to the $300,000 a year pricing and that and that model. And really, like, if you're not 100% committed here, like, this isn't going to work. Okay? I can't tell you how many people I've spoken with who have set up their businesses, and they're, like, aiming to hit. Hi, Marilyn. Welcome. They're aiming to hit that, like, 60 to $70,000 a year, and that's, like, the base level they need to make, and they don't get there, and they start losing their steam halfway through because they're not making enough to live. And because they're losing their steam, they're losing hope. And they're getting really frustrated. You know, they start looking at job boards. They start, you know, hunting around. They start sending their resume out. They start seeing if there's any, like, job postings that they'd be, you know, interested in. They might start asking friends if anyone's hiring. You know, that happens when your financial goal is too low, when you're only aiming at just making the bare amount to live. All right? When you're aiming at what you actually want, when you can actually picture this is what my life is going to look like if I keep the course, if I keep working at this. Hi, Kelly. Welcome. You're far more likely to stick with it. You're far more likely to double down. Okay? You are pretty much guaranteed to be fully invested in this, all right? Your commitment to this business is really the only thing that matters, right? That's it. Like, if you're fully committed to this, that means that you're going to seek the right help. It means that you are going to do what needs to be done, even when you don't feel like it. Okay? If you're not fully committed, if it's not paying you enough, then why. Why should you be fully committed? That's just not how this works. All right? So charge more. That is. That is the moral of the story. Aim higher. I'm going to completely screw up this quote because I'm terrible at quoting things. And it's from Think and Grow Rich, but it's also from. It's a poem. It's like, whatever I would have asked of life, life would have, you know, happily paid. You know, we asked for pennies when we want quarters. We ask for $60,000 a year when we really want half a million. Why? Why? Because here's the thing I want you to. I want you to remember this. When you think about buying a new car and you say you want like a yellow Jeep, right? That's like what you've decided on in your mind. You haven't actively started shopping for it, but, like, that's what you're determined to get as your next car, and you're trying to do it in the next few months, you're gonna just magically start noticing yellow Jeeps everywhere, right? And it's not like there is an uptick in how many yellow Jeeps there were. Hi, Laura. Welcome. Hello. There are always the same amount of yellow jeeps around. Okay. It's just that you flipped a switch in your brain to start noticing all the yellow Jeeps because that's what you want. When you set the goal, your money goal for something that's way higher, you probably have no idea how you're gonna get there. And that's totally normal, and that's okay. But just by saying, this is my goal, this is what I want to reach, you flip that switch in your brain, right? And your brain is going to start noticing different opportunities that are already out there in the world that have been there all along where you can make that amount of money. Okay? That's just what happens. So aim higher. Aim higher. That's the moral of the story. It's around 6:34 right now precisely. I am going to be switching over to TikTok if you want to come join me there. I'm going to be knitting. I'm going to be answering questions. I'm going to be helping you figure out if you're actually scaring clients away with your pricing. And this could be because your pricing is too high or it's too low. Okay, So I have a few minutes where I'm going to switch over, but if you haven't followed me over there yet, it's Katie. K, I, T A. I can spell my own name. K, A, T, I, E, dot and then K, D, H, D, like adhd. But Katie, get it Anyway, go and follow me there. I'm gonna be going live for a while. I'll be knitting. I'll be answering questions. It'll be a great time. Anyway, I will see you over there. Laura, thank you so much for joining. And David and Marilyn and Kelly, I hope you enjoyed and I hope this was super helpful to you and I look forward to going live with you tomorrow. All right, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. Thank you for joining and I will talk to you soon. Bye. Bye.