I recently received this question in my Instagram DMs:
“How do you single-handedly run a business? There is no time to grab a sip of water, let alone get up and give each client the proper hello and see you later that I would desire. Or getting back to potential and current clients during the day. I feel like my entire focus goes into when I’m in the chair and there’s no time for anything else.”
Not such a bad problem to have, it sounds like she’s pretty busy, right? But she’s also exhausted.
Maybe you can relate…
There are some definite ways to pick apart what she’s asking here and find some solutions. And that’s what we’re going to go over today.
You Are Not A Victim To Your Time
It really has to do with your perspective on time, your management of time, and your beliefs around time and your goals. There actually is time, but her belief is that she is not in control of her own time.
You are the CEO, the business owner, the boss – and the ONLY person who is in control of your schedule. If you don’t give yourself the time to rest, stretch your hands, go to the bathroom, or have a sip of water – that’s on you boo, your name is on the door!
Ain’t nobody coming to save you.
Nobody’s going to come in and say you need to take a vacation, you need to take a day off, stop working at six hours max in a day because you’re risking injury.
Maybe you are prioritizing other people’s time over your own. “Well, the client can only come in at this time.” Well, if the client can only come in at a time that’s not convenient for you or that’s going to risk injury or it means you don’t get a sip of water – guess what? We don’t take that client.
For most business owners, money is the main priority. There is the belief that if I can get the most clients possible in a day, then I can maximize my income. In theory, because you’re a time based service, that may be correct. However, you’re actually kind of missing the whole fun of being a business owner and that you’re in control of your time.
And you’re also in control of the money you make.
Imagine, you could take one less appointment in a day. Let’s say you take eight clients in a day on average, and they’re just back to back to back. After a certain time, your quality is going to decline. I don’t care who you are, it happens right?
For me it was the fourth client, that was my max client where my quality was consistent throughout the day. Client five, I was getting a little crabby, I was tired.
If I ever took six clients in a day – I was ready to shank someone with some tweezers.
I knew if I went past four clients on any given day, my quality and the experience and the results was going to start to decline. So I made a very clear effort never to take more than four clients in a day. I also didn’t want to risk injury.
So I wouldn’t take more than four clients a day or work more than six hours in a day. That was my boundary. I had to figure out how to operate my business this way and still make the money I wanted to make.
Let’s Try It Out With Some Simple Math
So how do you give yourself extra time to rest while still bringing in the same income? Let’s say you take eight clients in a day and you’re doing one hour fills, so you’re working eight hours in a day. For simple math we’ll say you charge $50 for the average fill.
So at that price point, you take eight clients a day at $50, you’re doing about $400 in sales a day. But you actually want to work less so that we have a little bit more time in between clients to be able to do a proper greeting, consult with a new client, sell retail, stretch, go to the bathroom, etc.
So if the goal is to maintain roughly about the same amount in income that we’re doing, which is $400 a day, but I don’t want to take eight clients – then maybe I only take seven clients and I raise my prices. So take that same $400 and divide it by seven clients. It looks like I now need to charge on average about $57.14 per client, but we’ll just round up and say $60.
I could take ONE LESS client in a day and still make the SAME AMOUNT of money.
Prioritize the Actions That are Going to Get You Closer to Your Goals – and Not Just the Ones That Keep You Busy.
What are your goals? Getting clear on what your goals are and prioritizing the action steps that are going to help you get to your goals better, faster, and easier is the key. So many of you are unnecessarily busy. You take hours and hours to make like two Reels or two social media posts.
Again, if you’re looking at you being able to maximize the time that you have, and it takes more than let’s just say 30 minutes to make a Reel, is that a wise use of your time? Maybe, maybe not. Let’s see…
If your rate is $50 an hour that you could charge for a client to come in and get a service, and it takes you 30 minutes to do a Reel, that’s $25 for that 30 minutes that you could be doing in sales. If you do one Reel and you get one new client from it at $150 for a full set, and essentially it costs you half an hour which we equate to $25 in sales, that’s a good ROI (or return on investment). That’s one very simplified way that you could look at it.
Block out time to work ON your business and not just IN it.
Start with one hour a week if that’s all you can manage. If you do not prioritize working on your business, you will not have a business in about a year to a year and a half. If you are not working on the growth of your business, and understanding how to optimize your business, making sure that you’re developing the systems and processes that create stability in your business – your business won’t grow.
Then each year because of inflation, you’re actually making less and less even though the dollar amount is the same.
Remember, you are the one that is actually in control of where your time and energy is focused. You have to figure out what your goals are and prioritize the action steps that are going to get you closer to your goal and forget about the rest – or at least put it aside for now.
Prioritize making sure that you have a business that you’re excited about, that doesn’t burn you out, and that challenges you to want to get better.
If you have questions about running a business, send me a DM and let’s talk about it. And let me know if this episode helps. You can find me at www.instagram.com/thelashpreneur
