One of the greatest assets you have in both your business and personal is the ability to earn more money and give yourself a raise each year. There is no cap on your earning potential, and when you run your own business you don’t have to worry about red tape.
As a business owner, all you have to do is decide to give yourself a raise and then take the appropriate action steps to make it a reality. Here are some of the ways you can give yourself a raise in the coming year.
Raise your rates.
The easiest way to give yourself a raise as a business owner is to raise your rates. After all, another year means more experience. More experience means your time is valuable and you should get paid more money.
There are a couple of ways to do this. You can either raise your rates for all your clients across the board or you can raise it for only new clients. I actually did the former with a current client and am now going to be getting paid 55 percent more per article. I also did the latter recently and ended up earning an additional few thousand dollars as a result. Talk about a raise!
Create multiple sources of income.
Many freelancers argue that because they have multiple clients then they have multiple sources of income. I disagree. You have one source of income and happen to have multiple clients for that one source of income.
That’s why if you want to give yourself a raise in 2018, you may want to consider creating another source of income. For example, I spent 2017 packaging and testing specific coaching and consulting packages which I can now sell in 2018.
Focus on what works, drop the rest.
This past year I came to understand how eighty percent of results come from twenty percent of effort. In the past, I used to try to make stuff work. I’d spread myself out too thin with multiple offerings and keep clients I should have kicked to the curb. I mistakenly assumed the harder I worked the more money I would earn.
Now I understand how my logic was flawed. In 2017, I decided to focus only on what was working. Freelance writing was working. My group coaching program was working. So I went hard with those two. As a result, I easily earned more money because I focused on things that were easier to sell.
If I made money in other ways – like through influencer campaigns, digital course sales or private consulting clients – then it was icing on the cake. What’s great is by focusing on what I knew was working, it opened the doors for me to earn more money in those ways.
For example, when people would see how much success I was having writing and with my group program, they’d want to hire me for consulting work.
Final Thoughts
The ability to easily give yourself a raise is one of the major advantages business owners have over those with desk jobs. Of course, you need to put in the hustle in order for it to really happen. Use the few weeks we have left in 2017 to formulate a plan as to how you will earn more money next year.
