Too Much Work & Still Broke? Get A Business Smackdown

Speaker 1: Let’s get ready for Q&A Tuesday.

Marie Forleo: Jill writes, “I’m a personal stylist, and I’ve been building my business for two and a half years now. Doing pretty well on the local fame front. I appear regularly as a style expert on Fox Providence, and was just invited to appear on Fox 25 in Boston. The TV exposure results in more clients, which is great, but I really want to get away from the hourly stuff and onto bigger things, like speaking engagements, running classes, workshops, paid television stuff. I’m drowning in work and can’t really afford to hire someone to help me. I have an intern, but the learning curve of trying to teach her everything feels overwhelming. Help.” Jill, I want to thank you for this question because it brings up a whole bunch of interesting issues. And because you are inspiring the first ever Marie TV… Business Smackdown. Business Smackdown.

Speaker 1: Business Smackdown.

Marie Forleo: Now, don’t worry because I only smack with love. First stuff, I’ve got to call you out on this statement. You say, “I’m drowning in work and can’t really afford to hire someone to help me.” Now, I did some research on you, Ms. Jill. And I discovered that you’re currently charging $120 per hour for your services, not outrageous, but not cheap either so good for you. When I hear that you’re drowning in work, I’m thinking you’re working like 12 to 14-hour days, seven days a week. And to be honest, I don’t think you’re working quite that much.

Marie Forleo: But let’s play this out and be conservative. Let’s say you’re styling four hours a day, five days a week, that would produce 480 a day, 2400 a week and 9600 per month. That means you’re making around six figures a year in revenue, which means you should definitely be able to hire someone to help you grow your business. But something’s out of whack here because you say you already have an intern, but you’re really not using her. Look, you are either drowning in shitty time management habits, you are spending well beyond your means or you’re undercharging. Let’s get to the bottom of this right now with your three-step smackdown challenge.

Speaker 1: Round 1.

Marie Forleo: Stop wasting time.

Speaker 1: Stop wasting time.

Marie Forleo: Bieber, your time management sucks.

Speaker 1: Who’s got Bieber fever now?

Marie Forleo: If you’re drowning in work yet, you’re not making any money, what you’re really drowning in is on profitable activities. If you were drowning in paid appointments and handling them back to back, you would be raking in the dough. So Jill, how are you filling your time? What is really going on here? Sure, there’s side work that goes into any business like emailing, scheduling, marketing, yada, yada, yada. If you’re handling that in an efficient way, and you’re still working your tail off, you should be bringing in the big box. The fact that you’re not, tells me you really need to take a look at how you’re managing your time. And now for this step’s smackdown challenge.

Speaker 1: Smackdown challenge.

Marie Forleo: I want you to take a week and record exactly what you do from the moment you wake up to the moment you hit the sack. The goal here is to get an accurate picture of how you spend your time, so don’t change anything you’re doing, just record it. Right next to each chunk of time that you’ve labeled, write down how much revenue that activity brings in. I guarantee you are wasting a (beep) bunch of time on a ton of activities that bring in zero money for your business, which brings me to my next point.

Speaker 1: Round two.

Marie Forleo: Get profit clarity.

Speaker 1: Get profit clarity.

Marie Forleo: Right now, you have no idea what it really costs you in terms of prep time or hard expenses to bring in the revenue that you do for your business. Profit clarity is something we go really deep into in this school but for right now, I’m going to give you the broad strokes. If you’re saying something like, “Each client takes me three hours of prep work before I even worked with them, or each client takes me about an hour and a half to get to and from their house,” well then, you need to start charging for those hours. You need to factor those hidden costs into the packages that you offer, or just charge more per hour. And now this step’s smackdown challenge.

Speaker 1: Smackdown Challenge.

Marie Forleo: Figure out the hidden costs in your business and adjust your prices and your packages accordingly.

Speaker 1: Round three.

Marie Forleo: Walk your talk.

Speaker 1: Walk your talk.

Marie Forleo: Now, Ms. Jill, you say that you want to move on to bigger things like speaking engagements and workshops, but when I went to your website, there is nothing mentioned about speaking or nothing on your website about workshops. So if you really want to speak, girl, make it happen. And now your final smackdown challenge.

Speaker 1: Smackdown challenge.

Marie Forleo: Put a simple tab up on your website that says, “Hire me to speak.” You already have all those awesome news clips as social proof so get to it girl. Jill, you have clearly got the goods so what you need to do now is tighten things up and get real with yourself about what you want and what you’re really doing to get it. That’s the end of your Business Smackdown.

Marie Forleo: Yeah, yeah.

Marie Forleo: Was it as good for you as it was for me? Now, how about you? Do you ever feel like you’re drowning in work and yet it’s not paying off? Do you think it could be a time management issue? Maybe it’s something about profit clarity. Let me know in the comments below this video. If you like this video, subscribe and of course, share with your friends. If you want even more great resources from me and potentially your own Business Smackdown, then you need to get over to MarieForleo.com and sign up for email updates. Thanks for watching. See you next time.

Speaker 3: B-School’s coming up, want in? For more info and free training, go to joinbschool.com.

Marie Forleo: Roar. [inaudible 00:06:09]

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