Trading Time for Money Is Not the Enemy. Trading Time for Not Enough Money Is.

The online business space has demonised trading time for money unnecessarily. There are plenty of business experts telling people to stop trading time for money and that they need to have a passive income. I absolutely disagree with this narrative. There are plenty of examples of businesses that are thriving and highly profitable that are based around trading time for money. This shows that trading time for money isn’t the problem. Trading time for not enough money is. And too many service providers are trading time for not enough money and that’s where the problem lies. Keep on reading to find out more about why trading time for money is not the enemy, but trading time for not enough money is.

 

 

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TRADING TIME FOR MONEY IS NOT THE ENEMY. TRADING TIME FOR NOT ENOUGH MONEY IS.

 

Why so many people say trading time for money is the enemy

 

The narrative that trading time for money is bad has been preached by people who are pushing the passive income and / or online course life to other business owners. Now the narrative isn’t completely wrong. The reality is service providers only make money when they are actively working, they are trading time for money, and as a result are vulnerable. If they can’t work, or decide not to work, they don’t make money. So whilst I totally agree it is a smart move for everyone who is trading time for money to have a passive income source there is a big difference between adding a passive income source to your business (to strengthen your one-to-one service business) and saying that your focus should solely be on passive income and all your one-to-one services, where you are trading time for money, should no longer be offered.

 

The message that trading time for money is bad is wrong because many people have become very rich from trading time for money. There are plenty of successful, thriving, profitable businesses where people are trading time for money. The key is ensuring that when someone is trading time for money they are trading it for enough money.

 

How much do you need to earn per unit of time for it to be enough money?

 

If trading time for money is not the enemy, but trading time for not enough money is, you need to work out what your version of ‘enough’ is. If I asked you right now how much you’d like to make per day to feel great about trading time for money, what would that figure be?

 

Many service providers when setting their rates are not properly doing the maths, which is why they end up in situations where they are trading time for not enough money. For example, a coach might say they want to make £200,000 per year. They think I’ll work 4 days per week for 50 weeks of the year

 

£200,000 divided by 200 (4×50) workings days = £1,000 per day.

 

So they set their day rate as £1,000 and feel happy with that. But the reality is all 200 working days of the year won’t be billable. They are going to need time for marketing and sales (to get the clients in the first place), time for CEO days and some buffer for sickness, grieving, caring etc. In reality, they only have 160 days per year and so needed to charge £1,250 per day (£200,000 divided by 160 days).

 

So think back to the question I asked you earlier “How much you need to  make per day to feel great about trading time for money?” and don’t just pick a number out of thin air. Think about if you made that per day based on how many days you have as working ‘billable/chargeable/income-generating’ days you have in a year would you be happy with your annual total. If not, you need to revisit and recalculate.

 

 

HAVE COMPLETE CONFIDENCE IN YOUR PRICING AND ENSURE YOU ARE TRADING TIME FOR ENOUGH MONEY – BOOK A PRICING POWER HOUR I’ve helped hundreds of coaches, consultant and services providers to review, review and set their prices and I can do the same for you. I’ll ensure you have properly thought through all of the pricing, across your whole offer suite, so you can achieve your financial and lifestyle for goals. Whether you are setting your prices for the first time or want your current prices reviewed I can help you – and fast! To book, or find out more about, the Pricing Power Hour click here.

 

 

WHY SO MANY SERVICE PROVIDERS ARE TRADING TIME FOR NOT ENOUGH MONEY 

 

1. They don’t understand finances properly

The first reason why so many service providers are trading time for not enough money is that they don’t understand finances (business and personal) properly. To set the right prices, you have to take into consideration a number of things – how much time in a year you actually have that is billable, what it costs to run the business, how much you need to be personally taking time, and taxes. Most service providers don’t set their prices taking all those things into consideration, which makes it very easy to set a price that means ultimately they aren’t making enough money.

 

2. Their branding, marketing and positioning isn’t aligned so they fail to get enough clients at the ‘enough’ price

 

The majority of service providers are trading time for not enough money because they didn’t set their prices at the right rate. However, some service providers do the work (or they work with someone like to me to set their prices – you can check out my pricing power hour here) so their services are priced high enough, but they fail to get enough clients at that rate due to poor branding and marketing.

 

Just because you set a price doesn’t mean people are going to be happy to pay it. A business needs to ensure that it’s branding, online presence and marketing positions the business in such a way that rate feels right and people will pay it. Everytime you put your prices up you need to think about if everything else signals you are worth the rate you are charging. If not it’s easy to find as your prices go up, supply goes down.

 

Why understand that trading time for money is not the enemy totally changes your options when scaling

 

As long as you believe that trading time for money is the enemy you are limiting your options with scaling. Most services providers buy into the narrative that trading time for money is the enemy and so they believe the only way to scale their business is through creating a digital product where they create it once and after that they don’t have to trade time for money (they don’t for delivery but most will do for marketing). Creating and selling a course is a major shift from delivering a one-to-one service and for many service providers they spend ages creating and launching a course, but end up with very low sales. And because often the course is priced much lower than their one-to-one services it really doesn’t become financially worth the work.

 

Whereas if you stop believing that trading time for money is the enemy you can consider the whole range of active scalable offers, where you are trading time for money, such as a membership, group programme, mastermind, events or workshop. (You can find out more about how to choose the right scalable offer for your business here). These scalable offers on the whole take less upfront creation work and can be priced higher than a course. So whilst you might still have to be actively working it can be that it’s very easy for you to be trading time for enough money.

 

For example, if you’ve decided £1,000 per day is your goal you could offer a day online workshop at £200 per attendee. You need 5 people to hit your goal, but you can easily accommodate 10, 20 or more.

 

 

If trading time for money is not the enemy what’s the best way to increase revenue

Hopefully by now you can see that trading time for money is not the enemy, but that can mean you have even more options that before when thinking about how to increase revenue in your business.

 

You can…

• Raise the rates of your one-to-one services (and ensure you raise your branding, marketing and positioning too)
• Create a passive income product
• Create a scalable offer

 

Without knowing more about your business, I can’t make a recommendation on what would be best (but if you’d like to work with me and get personalised advice click here).

 

CREATE A STRATEGIC PLAN TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS OVER THE NEXT YEAR – IN JUST ONE DAY! I’m the Annual Planning Queen and I specialise in helping solo and micro service-based business owners plan for the year ahead. Success in business is a result of having clear goals and a plan to achieve them and my annual planning day will help you to have both. By booking a Strategy Day with me I’ll ensure you have a powerful and productive annual planning day where we consider all the major elements to ensure you can achieve your goals for the year ahead. All you have to do is secure your date, block it out in your diary and get ready to be guided through my signature annual planning framework that guarantees by the end of the end of our time together you’ll have a clear roadmap to achieve your goals and be excited for the year ahead. For all the information and to book a Strategy Day click here.

 

That’s it. You now know that trading time for money is not the enemy. Trading time for not enough money is.

 

You don’t have to stop trading time for money if you don’t want to. You can have a successful, thriving, profitable business whilst still actively working. You just need to ensure that you are making enough per unit of time and hopefully you now feel in a better position to ensure you do that.

 

If you’ve found this blog post useful please do let me know over on Instagram or LinkedIn.

 

Helping service providers to scale their business strategically and on their terms is what I love to do.

 

If you’d like my help to identify the best business growth strategy and ensure you have the right offer suite, pricing, marketing and sales to hit your financial and lifestyle goals then I’d love to help you.

You can find out more about my one-to-one mentoring here.