You’re making business TOO HARD… Simplify Your Business Doing THIS

You are overthinking and overdoing in your business and that's why you're not making the money you want to be making. Say what? I know we hear all the marketing gurus out there, business gurus tell us how they work less and they make more money doing it. But the problem is they don't really tell us how they do that. They don't really tell us that. They're probably hiring employees, they probably have virtual assistants, they probably have team leaders that are doing all this. And if you're not flush on cash and you're not making consistent income, you can't do that. So don't worry, I got your back in this video because I'm going to show you exactly how you can start simplifying your business so you aren't working around the clock and still booking clients and or making sales. My name is Trina Little. If you are brand new to my channel and I specialize on helping solo entrepreneurs figure out a plan and a system to put into place so that they can have a business that's making consistent 10k months or more without burning out and stressing out. And we're gonna be kicking off an entire series here for the next couple of videos all about how you can simplify your business to get to that 10k month goal. So I like to take a minimalist approach to business and I'm going to tell you, this was not five year ago, Trina. This is a more recent change within the past three years where I've taken this minimalist approach to business. And the minimalist approach business boils down to two things that you need to know to achieve it. First, you need to know how much time you want to be working in your business. And second, you need to know how much money you need to make. I really feel like these two important questions have really been brought to light over the last month. When a well known influencer, entrepreneur Vanessa Lau, backed away from her business when she left, she said this. I find myself squeezing my life and my relationships around the demands of my business instead of building a business around the life that I ultimately want to live. Those some pretty strong words. And she's not the first person that we've seen to close up shop basically in the entrepreneur space over the last few years. But one of the main reasons that I'm still here is because I had this wake up call really in 2020 when March of 2020 hits. Everything that I was doing in my business basically implo because now I didn't have Time to work. My kids weren't going to school to preschool, we didn't have childcare, and I literally had to figure out how I was going to run my business with about the quarter of the time that I had the week before, really. So I had to really cut back on the things I wanted to do, the things that I had planned. And while I became a full time mom during that time and had to really keep my business floating with minimalist approach, I saw other peers of mine in 2020 and 2021 have explosive growth. I'm not going to lie. I was jealous of those peers that had all of this time now to focus on their business and they were able to spend the time to grow it and really see success. When I had a difficult time just getting an hour or two a day to my business, but this time really forced me to evaluate what's wor the time in my business and how much do I really need to be in my business to make the money that I need. I came to realize there were a lot of shiny objects that I was tending to follow because I had time. Because you know it will take you as long to get something done as the time you give it. Right. That theory. And because I kept switching to shiny objects, I was never actually completing the things that I needed to do and focus on getting one solid game plan in place. Instead, I thought I needed to do all these 20 different things, specifically like social media in 2020, right? The rise of TikTok happened then right behind that was Reels. And I started to panic that I needed to do all of these things, I needed to create all of this video content. But I came to realize all of that was just a shiny object. And when I dove into the numbers of TikTok doing a case study, it really wasn't worth my time. So I stress over and put time into something that wasn't driving me leads or more importantly sales. This time also really allowed me think about how much did I really need to make in my business and why was my goal the number? It was. Was it just to impress people? Was it just because other people say that's the number that makes you successful? So instead of focusing on a number that other people thought was cool, I sat down and I thought about how much money do I literally need to bring in every single month and basically for the year for not only my business to run smoothly, but also my family? Because why chase after some astronomical number if it's just going to get you on this hamster wheel of Burnt out, anxiety and ultimately stress. If you can make that amount of money that you really need to make working half the amount of time, why not? And while I didn't see massive growth in 2020 and 2021, like quite a few of my peers did, I had sustainable growth. I still grew. I was working a quarter of the time, right. And last year alone in 2020, we continue to grow and I had just under $700,000 in revenue. And that includes me taking over 12 weeks vacation out of my business and hiring three full time employees. Now what can you do to get to this point in your business? Because you're like Trina, the title of this video was simplify your business by doing this. This is the this, this. Listen up, first up, you've got to know your number. How much money do you really need to make a month, a year, like to literally live? Not necessarily like buy a fancy, flashy, expensive car. I mean I do like to be bougie and I do like my bougie things. But when you know what you realistically need to make each year, then you can really start to sort out how much you need to make in your business and how stressful that is going to be. Now like I said, I do like my bougie things. I know when I'm coming up with my number that I need to make each year, I'm thinking about the two weeks on the beach that we go for every single year. That is a non negotiable but we drive there. We also it's a house so I'm doing my own laundry. I don't have like a private chef, although I would like to. And so I balance out my bougie things with more realistic things. I also know know that we usually book another type of trip in the year that is usually involving flying. And then my husband and I try to book a couple's trip every year as well. So I'm accounting for those trips that I consider bougie and the number that I need to live off of. You also want to be thinking about how much you're putting away for retirement. If you have kids, are you putting away money for a college fund? You need to think about your typical day to day living expenses right now. Maybe your partner or your significant other, husband, wife, they're contributing as well. So maybe that number is not as big. But you need to know what amount of money that you have got to make each year to live the life that you want to live. Next up is the business expenses. So hi, anytime that I get stressed or overwhelmed. I literally start writing out all my expenses in my business to figure out where I'm at, what can I cut, what can I reevaluate? And I highly encourage you to do this every single quarter in your business at the minimum. That's why inside a 10 count replay we have a quarterly planning session and evaluating our expenses is one of those. And so you want to look at how much are you spending for services, softwares, subscriptions, right? You also want to start to think about how much money you want to spend for an assistant. Do you want an assistant? Do you want a virtual assistant? Do you maybe want to hire an accountant for your business? You want to start thinking about those things, those wish list items as realistic wish list items in your business as well, to get a number that you are going to be spending each month, each year for your business. So you can start taking these expenses and tying them into how much you really need to make in your business. Because you'll be surprised once you can pull these numbers together. And if you do it by year, you break it down by month and you can start to see that number that you need to make every single month may not be that scary. It may not be like $50,000 a month or even $30,000 a month. It may just be eight, it may just be 12. But if you don't know exactly how much you need to make for these expenses, you're going to be chasing basically a ghost. And that's what's going to get you on the hamster wheel and get you basically being a prisoner to your business. All right, now that we have our numbers, the second thing that you need to figure out is how are you going to make that number? How are you going to make that money that you need to make each year? It can't be all tied to you, so it can't be all one on one services. Because if you want to take a vacation or two or four, you can't be doing the work right. And if you only want to work three day weeks and it's client work in, you need to be, you know, reporting to them every single day, that's not going to work either. I always personally recommend having three different offers in your business model. And I'm talking about these three different offers in my next video. So if you're curious and you want to know what they are, make sure you are subscribed so you're notified for the next video. But you basically want to have a low ticket offer, a mid Tier offer and a high ticket offer. Now, we're not going to dive into that right now, but inside of my program, 10k on replay, this is one of the first things I work with my clients on and we actually call it our toe Dipper offer, our waiter offer, and our Cannonball offer. I created this process over the summer at the pool with my kids. But you really need to diversify the ways that people are paying you, the way that you are making money so you aren't strapped to just one way you're diversifying your revenue and the way that you're making it. Now the third thing you need to do to save simplify your business is pick one marketing channel. Yeah, I said one. To make consistent sales and to book consistent clients, you need to make consistent content that is getting people aware of you and driving traffic to those offers. Now, I talked more in my last series about digital products. I will link to the series here about the numbers behind that and how many people you need to get to a sales page or a work with me page to convert to get the number that you actually need. But you need to choose just one marketing channel to focus your traffic efforts on. And I say one because it is hard as crap to tackle more than one channel at a time, especially if you are a solo entrepreneur. I, like I said, have three full time employees and they work in different branches of my business. But even with help, it is hard for me to stay consistent with YouTube and Instagram. So that's why you'll see me fluctuate on Instagram a little bit. Because my number one platform, platform that I'm dedicated to, that I'm committed to, is YouTube. And I decided on that really back in 2020 when again, my time was slashed and I had to pick one way to continue to grow my business. And I decided if I could just get one YouTube video out every single week, I was staying in front of my audience, I was getting in front of new audiences and I was able to promote my things through that one video every single week. And that's the one social platform that kept me growing. So don't even worry about needing to repurpose to all the platforms because like I said, we are now just on YouTube and a little bit on Instagram. And we continue to see growth. We continue to see, you know, more signups for our offers, more clients looking to work with us, all from just using one marketing channel and occasionally one other one. Now, you don't have to choose YouTube. I just encourage you if you are picking a marketing platform that you're creating really high valuable content and do a really good job on that one platform. Give it your undivided attention. Like I said, I like YouTube. It's evergreen content. I have videos from 2019 that still drive me leads and build my email list to this day. But I know friends of mine that are currently loving TikTok. My friend Steph Crowder is recently playing around on TikTok and seeing great results over there as well. So figure out which platform you like and which platform is driving you the best leads because you don't want to waste your time on a platform that's not getting engagement and not driving people to want to work with you or buy from you. Another thing that you need to do to simplify your business, which is critically important, is having a solid business model in place to know what you should be focusing on and what are shiny objects distracting you that aren't going to help you get to the prize that you have over here. Having that business plan is really going to help you make make the right decisions and keep you focused to move forward to get to that number that you need to make to have the business that you want and the life that you want. I actually just put the finishing touches on a quiz that you can take to help you figure out the right business model for you. It's literally a quick five minute quiz where you can learn more about where to spend your time and focus so you can create the right offers, boost your revenue and finally achieve that consistent 10k or more a month revenue. Go to trina little.com forward/quiz to take that now and I want to know in the comments what are you going to stop doing that's making business too hard for you? And if you aren't sure whether a low ticket offer or a digital product is the right next step for you, make sure you check out this entire series over here. I believe on digital products that I just wrapped up here on my channel because I dive into why a digital product is important for every single online business owner. Check it out.