Are you ready for all the details on when and how to charge for your time, and if you…should you do freelance work for free?
If you’ve ever struggled with the question of working for free when you’re building your business, you’re not alone. It’s a big question — and everyone has an opinion.
On this week’s episode of FreeMamaTV, we’re breaking down the debate, and you’ll get my definitive answer to this question.
Sort of.
Seriously, Mama, you don’t want to miss out on this one, because it’ll help you figure out how to run your business the right way and gain the expertise you need to raise your rates and be successful. And you’ll finally know the answer on whether or not you should you do freelance work for free
Ready to learn how to scale WITHOUT working harder?
Do you ever just scroll through Instagram and think Who are these people?
I’m not talking about the perfectly curated feeds (although, believe me, I have PLENTY of issues with those…). I’m talking about the way we glorify the hustle. The way working all the time seems to be a badge of honor. “I’m on vacation on a deserted island and I managed to find some wifi so I could work on my business. #dedicated #lovemylife”
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When I’m on vacation, the last thing I’m thinking about is finding wifi and working. I love my business. I love the women I work with. But I HATE the hustle.
More importantly, I believe that you don’t have to hustle constantly to be successful. The point of building a successful business isn’t to work constantly. It’s to have the freedom to work on your own terms.
It’s true that in the beginning, you have to put in a lot of effort. Finding that first client takes time and plain old hard work. If you’re not willing to put in any work, you’ll never get the business off the ground in the first place. But once you’ve landed those first few projects, once you’ve started working, what happens next?
At some point, you’ll discover that you can’t keep shoehorning more clients into your calendar. There comes a day when you think about growing your income without growing your workload.
And meagan wasn’t the only Free Mama who found herself in that situation. There were plenty of others who went through my 12-week program, got started, and then looked around 6 or 8 months later and said, “Wow.”
Because being fully booked is AWESOME — but it also means that you’ve hit an income ceiling. When you can’t take on more work, what’s the next step?
It turns out that there are actually five steps to moving forward from that spot.
First, you have to niche down in your service and/or in the industry you serve. The more specific you can be with your business, the better.
Bookkeeping for women-owned business owners making over $300,000 a year.
Funnel design for course creators with a free + shipping offer.
Instagram management for physical product creators.
Get past the fear of niching down, and embrace your position as THE person who DOMINATES your space.
Second, shift your business from custom services to a standard offering. When you’re starting out, it makes sense to offer a custom solution to every client who comes your way. You get more experience, and try different things. But when you’re ready to scale your business, you can’t put in the time to craft a different experience for each customer. Standard offerings mean you can focus on delivering a consistently awesome experience and streamline your work.
Third, figure out how you can productize your service. In other words, create something once and then sell that thing over and over again, so that you know exactly what you’re delivering to everyone you work with. The best part about productizing? You can make money while you’re sleeping. Your income becomes detached from time completely.
Fourth, start outsourcing. Put together a team that can help and support you as you grow.
Fifth, automate your delivery process.
That’s exactly how I built my own business — and it’s exactly what I’ve helped plenty of other women do, as well, though the Movement Maker Accelerator.
And the Movement Maker Accelerator is now open for enrollment for what may be the ONLY time in 2020.
Last year, 10 women joined the Accelerator. After just 3 months, 5 of them had successful gotten PAID to productize their skills into a profitable courses. 3 of them hit 6 figures in their businesses last year — and that’s just the beginning.
If you’re currently fully booked in your business and you also hate the hustle, then maybe it’s time to think about scaling differently. Book a call with me so that we can figure out if the Movement Maker Accelerator is the right fit for you and your business.
The inside scoop on paying taxes as a business owner is right here with these awesome virtual assistant tax tips!
Working for yourself is awesome, mama, right?
You finally have the freedom to do what you want, because you’re the boss! But, as the boss, you’re also the person who has to deal with all the details… including paying your taxes.
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Taxes are scary — but I have a secret weapon, and I’m going to share her with you today on FreeMamaTV. On today’s episode, my accountant, the amazing Meagan Hernandez, will show you how to save on your taxes and plan for financial growth.
Check out today’s episode if you want to master your money the smart way by learning these virtual assistant tax tips.
Want the inside scoop on how to make six figures online?
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful mama who learned about working as a VA and because she was totally special and had everything going for her, she made six figures in a single year. The end.
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That, mama, is fiction. It’s a complete fairy tale. But it’s a story that a lot of people really believe. If you want to keep telling yourself that the only people who make 6 figures are special or that they have something you don’t, go right ahead.
But if you want the real story, keep reading.
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful mama named Meagan who decided she was meant for more than the 9-5. She worked in finance — an industry dominated by men who beat her out for promotions, shot her down in meetings, and made her think she’d never be able to get very far.
For a long time, Meagan believed what everyone around her told her. As an introvert, she was shy and uncomfortable in many situations, and it was easy to sit quietly behind her desk. It was easy to listen when the men in her life told her to sit back down.
Until one day it wasn’t easy anymore. One day, Meagan decided that she couldn’t just sit around quietly watching life pass her by. She needed to push herself and make a chance for her family — and for herself. She had to stop waiting for someone to come and rescue her, and make it happen on her own. She was ready to learn how to make six figures online.
Fortunately, Meagan understood that she didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. There were other successful people out there who had done what she wanted to do, and she could learn from them. The biggest thing she learned in the beginning was that building a successful business meant building successful relationships.
Meagan enrolled in the Free Mama Movement and joined Group Coaching for the extra accountability. She started having conversations with people and really listening to what they said.
Because she listened, she was able to hear their pain points when it came to bookkeeping and accounting. They’d say, “I wish I had someone who could just take care of my accounting.”
They said, “I wish someone would take bookkeeping off my plate.”
They said, “I wish I understood what I can claim as a legitimate business expense without reading pages and pages on the IRS website.”
So Meagan created services that spoke exactly to those needs.
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She made a simple, straightforward list of legitimate business expenses. She offered to take bookkeeping off their plate and handle their accounting exactly the way they had asked.
And the strangest thing happened. Even the people who didn’t hire Meagan right away knew she was THE person for her skill. So when other business owners asked abut accounting and bookkeeping, people mentioned Meagan. Niching down and being known for bookkeeping and accounting made it easy for others to refer her, and the clients started coming in.
As her confidence grew, Meagan raised her rates. And then she went back to her very first client and told him about her new pricing. He looked her dead in the eye and said…
Nope. I don’t think you’re worth that much.
It was like a dagger through her heart.
Actual, physical pain — plus the immediate resurfacing of every fear Meagan had ever felt. She wasn’t good enough. She’d been crazy to think this would work. She should have just stayed sitting quietly at her desk, like all those men told her.
But then Meagan remembered that she was done waiting for someone to rescue her. She remembered that she is the person in charge of writing her story, and if she wanted that happy ending, she was going to have to get there.
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So she walked away from the old client, signed up new ones in his place, and soldiered on, despite the fear and doubt. She reminded herself that other people were happy to pay her prices, that she was delivering stellar work, and that one tiny little man didn’t have any power over her — unless she gave it to him.
Next, Meagan enrolled in the Movement Maker Accelerator, launched a course, time passed….and suddenly she realized that she was about to break the 6-figure mark. On her own, she’d made more than she did in her old job — and her life was better.
And then, that old client came back, asking sheepishly for help. Meagan could have turned her back and let him crawl back under a rock, but she decided to be smart and gracious — and charge him full price. (The best revenge is living your best life.)
Meagan’s story is just getting started. It’s Book One in the Harry Potter series — with fierce battles and sweet victories still to come.
But the thing is, there are no fairy tales here. No one will wave a magic wand and give you what you want. Success isn’t a thing you win once and then live happily ever after. And these are the secrets on how to make six figures online.
You get to write your own story, but you have to keep showing up and living it.
You can tell yourself that you’re the victim — or the hero.
You can tell yourself that it won’t work for you — or you can make it work.
Are you ready to write that happy ending?
P.S. Want to know the specific techniques and strategies that successful entrepreneurs are using to make money? Join me (and twenty other amazing entrepreneurs!) at the Home Based Boss Masterclass — a totally free summit hosted by my friend Heather Artzer. Click here to register. It’s FREE, but you have to register if you want access to all the amazing content.
You have a thriving business that’s bringing in clients and money, and everything should be awesome — but the truth is you’re completely overwhelmed.
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Mama, if you’re spending too much time bogged down in the administrative details of running your business, it’s time to change things up. Head over to this week’s episode of FreeMamaTV to get the help you need and learn how to hire a virtual assistant.
The good news is that there are plenty of talented people out there, and you can bring one or more of them onto your team so that you can continue to serve your clients at the highest possible level without making yourself crazy.
You’ll find all the details on how to hire a virtual assistant waiting for you on FreeMamaTV.
Want clients? Don’t make this discovery call mistake! Did you ever have a conversation with someone and then spend the next day saying, “Did that really happen?”
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That was me, after my crazy strange discovery call with a potential hire we’ll call Jane.
I was super interested in hiring Jane for a pretty important role in my business. I needed someone I could trust to help get the Free Mama Movement in front of more mamas, because there are still women out there who don’t know about the options they have.
Jane had great connections, and on paper, everything looked good. When we set up the call, I made it clear that I was a hot lead, very interested in hiring her. Basically, the job was hers to lose — and boy, did she lose it.
Jane started the call by revealing some fairly personal information, which was entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I care deeply about the women on my team. They can come to me when they’re struggling, they can always feel free to share with me. But that’s after I hire them.
Don’t open a conversation with a potential client with your financial or romantic struggles — especially if you’re planning to say, “Hey, I really need you to pay me because I have these issues.”
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But Jane wasn’t done. She spent the next fifty minutes talking about herself (the call was booked as a 20-minute slot). She didn’t ask one question about my business.
In a discovery call, you should be listening. You should be asking questions. You should not be telling your potential client about the many ways you’ve been wronged by your partner or your plans for revenge.
But Jane still wasn’t done. She proceeded to tell me about a new course she wants to launch and how it would be just fantastic and really helpful to her if I could get it in front of my audience.
Got that? On our discovery call — where I was trying to hire Jane — she tried to get me to agree to sell her course to my audience.
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Yeah. It was weird for me, too.
And yet despite the extreme weirdness of the call, in an effort to convince myself I hadn’t just thrown away nearly an hour, I asked Jane to please follow up with me about the actual work I wanted to hire her to do. She promised that she would.
But she didn’t.
I never heard from her.
Seriously, Mama, do not do this. Don’t make this discovery call mistake. Follow up with people. Deliver the information you’ve promised. Do what you say you’ll do. It seems super basic… but you’d be surprised at how many people get this wrong.
A six-figure business starts with listening — and the fortune is definitely in the followup. Look for more on that next week.
Last year, the most watched video on FreeMamaTV was our video on identifying your skills so that you could start working as a virtual assistant. So, we’re kicking off 2020 with a brand-new, all-updated version on “what can virtual assistants do” so that you can work from home and provide for your family without having to put your kids in daycare — or spend hours commuting.
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If you’re curious about what exactly virtual assistants do, and what the heck will you, personally, offer to people that they’ll want to pay you for, then you don’t want to miss this video.
The best news? I’m pretty sure that you already have the skills to do a heck of a lot of things for busy, overworked clients, and they will happily pay you to take some of that load off their plates.
See, back in my senior year of college, I was accepted into the Teach for America program, which meant that I’d be, well, teaching. And two weeks into the training, I knew that the program wasn’t for me. So after a lot of soul searching, sobbing, and stomachaches, I quit.
I walked away from something that I knew wasn’t a good fit for me, something that would make me unhappy and keep me from what I was really meant to be doing.
It wasn’t easy at all, but it was the right thing to do.
So I want to know what you’re holding onto right now that you need to let go of. What do you need to quit? What do you need to walk away from?
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I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that it’s going to be one of the hardest things you’ve ever done. But it’s also going to be one of the best, most significant things you’ve ever done.
When you quit the things you’re not meant to be doing, it’s terrifying. Because you could be really good at those things. They come easy. You’re successful. But you’re not living your real purpose. You’re not doing what you were meant to do.
You have to quit the things that aren’t serving you, to do less of the things that don’t really matter, so that you can step into where you’re meant to be.
You have to un-become someone if you want to become the woman you want to be.
You have to quit apologizing for being awesome.
My coaching students — like many women — do this. In the same breath, they’ll tell me about a client they landed or a major win, but apologize for doing it or belittle it. “This isn’t a big deal, but —“ “I know it’s less than [someone else], but —“ “Sorry to hog the feed but —“
Quit it, Mama. Leave that behind.
Quit the small stuff. Step into the big dream — and then shout it from the highest rooftop you can find.
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Sometimes, when we get caught up in setting goals, we fall into the trap of looking for more. “I want to make more money.” “I want more clients.” “I need more skills.”
But what if you quit? What if you focused on doing less?
“I want to work half as many hours and maintain my income.” “I want to work with only five clients who adore me instead of 25 who take me for granted.” “I want to be known for ONE skill, where I am the best, most awesome, most obvious choice.”
How would that feel, Mama?
My mentor Myron Golden talks about how we sometimes create crappy stories for ourselves, and we believe them. The thing is, you’re the person who’s making up the story, so it’s just as easy to make it a good one.
You are the person who gets to create your story for 2020 — and beyond. What are you going to tell yourself?
I just released an episode of FreeMamaTV that will tell you how to create goals and actually stick with them this year – so you can accomplish more by doing less! Check it out here!
Ah, a fresh new start. The perfect time to set some BIG goals for yourself. And this week’s episode of FreeMamaTV has the info you need to make sure you’re setting the RIGHT goals — and setting yourself up for real success. Here’s how to make sure you actually achieve your goals this year – 2020 Goal Setting Part Two!
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Check out today’s episode to learn everything you need to know about setting SMART goals plus how to know that you’re working on the right things every day.
If you want this year to be about you crossing things off your list and turning your dreams into reality, then you definitely want to watch FreeMamaTV and 2020 Goal Setting Part Two.
Here’s how I make BIG changes in my life and business – and how to make things happen in business for YOU!
Back when Justin and I were first married, we had an idea. We figured that when we retired, we’d get an RV and drive all over the country.
About a year ago, we thought to ourselves, Why wait? What if we got an RV next summer and did this trip we’ve been thinking about for years?
And then we started to talk about it more and more. And the strangest thing happened: we talked about that trip so much that we’ve actually made it a reality. This summer, the Free Mama Family is hitting the road — and the biggest problem we have is what to do with our cat.
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The thing is, when you have a goal, or when you’re committed to making something happen, it’s a good idea to talk about it. Because you’ll start to figure out all the little things, and you’ll start to take the necessary actions to take that goal from conversation to reality.
No, we haven’t figured out everything. But we know this trip is happening. Whether we’ll leave on a Monday or a Thursday and exactly how many weeks we’ll be gone — those are details that we’ll work out. (And you know we’ll work them out well in advance of actually leaving, because TYPE A, people, TYPE A.) But we don’t have to know everything right now in order for this goal to be real.
This strategy has worked pretty well for me over the past few years in all aspects of my life — personal and business.
And 2020 is also going to be the year we finally launch FreeMamaRadio. I don’t have all the details, but I’m telling you now — this is happening. It’s going to be incredible.
We’re getting you the BEST resources. We’re bringing in POWERHOUSE women. We’re putting together a true DREAM TEAM of people to teach you so that you can hit all of your 2020 goals.
When you want things to happen in your life, start talking about them. You don’t have to know all the answers or have all the details figured out on day one. But start talking, and you’ll see how quickly your actions align with what’s needed to bring that goal into the real world and crush it.
