Today’s post is a behind the scenes chat about my business, basically my reflections on 2021 and my intentions for 2022. 

This is kind of like public journaling in a way, but I know some people that are interested in

how other business women run their business, what goes through their heads, how much money they make, what changes they think about, and things like that.

Anyone who was looking at what I was doing, from the outside, could see that I was really creating a lot of new courses, promoting a lot of new courses, promoting the group program, there was always something.

I was running on a two week cycle, which was really exciting, but I don’t think that’s sustainable for me. So that was a good experiment and now, I don’t want to do that again. The reason is, when I was away, and I was thinking about coming back, I was actually feeling really anxious about coming back. And I realized that I am the orchestrator of this mad life, this brilliant life, this business, and that I get to choose. I don’t have to do it that way and I could just try something different. So that’s what I’m gonna do.

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I also did a pricing workshop with Bear Hebert called Freely.

Bear is a radical, anti capitalist business person and I really love their perspective. 

She has what she calls “solidarity pricing” options for people, which I love, I just really recommend checking her out, even if you only just look at how she words her pricing. She has personal experience with doing, pay what you can and the efficacy of that. And the reasons why that doesn’t work in the capitalist construct and all that kind of thing. 

I did that course & what was great was that I worked out how much I want to work a week and I also calculated how much I need to earn.  The new things that I packed into that were an increased rate for myself for health care, some superannuation, which I haven’t been paying to myself all these five and a half years, and some money for a holiday with my family. 

I’ve popped those things in on top of what I already know how much of my business needs to put into the household account in a fortnightly way or in a weekly way. So I crunched all my numbers and I came up with a new hourly rate. 

And turns out, nothing really that I’ve been doing is at that hourly rate.

Only my one to one rate, which was $166 an hour to see me one to one face to face that was accurate. But everything else was inaccurate. The closest thing would be the pricing that I had planned for the next round of the group program. My next round of group programs will be $133 per four week block. 

And that is fairly accurate for groups of five women per group. So now I know I need to charge $170 an hour, which I feel really good about and even up from that to allow contingency. Because like I mentioned in a previous blog, I have 20 hours a week to be in business so that I can do it while the kids are at school. It also allows me time to have time off and just be a pleasure seeker. That’s another thing that I’ll talk about shortly because that just makes me calm and my health really needs me to not be stressed out. 

20 hours is what I have a week, half of that is for business building and half of that is for income generating.

I’ve crunched all my numbers. I’ve got a new number and I’m really happy to have a number that doesn’t feel greedy, it feels really self respecting and is what I actually need to make in my business to stay human.

My other reflections

Really I was just doing way too much. In light of that I had planned to do a summit this year, which I’m really excited about. I was going to do it from March 31, to 35 and I’ve realized that I don’t have space in my calendar to do that, if I’m going to serve clients. So I just decided to go with clients, because at this point, I need some money.

I’ve had a very long holiday, and another reflection is that I don’t really want to take that long off again, it doesn’t really work for me to be out of office for that long. So, that was a fun experiment.

I’ve got a lot of people with big to-do lists for me so I am going to do that and postpone the summit. Everyone who I’ve mentioned it to so far had a big sigh of relief from them about it, which is great.

That’s the end of the reflections.

Really, all of those reflections really just helped me to cultivate my intentions for this year. 

2022 Intentions

So this year, I had intended to move from one business level to another in the context of my mentor, George Cow, who has a business planning course. He talks about these five different levels of business. My goal for last year was to round out my presence as a level three business, I was sort of somewhere between level one, two, and three.

So I just filled the gaps I back-filled, so that I was sitting nicely as a level three business.

I was thinking this year, I’m going to set up affiliates, I’m going to write a book, I’m going to do this and that but what I’ve decided instead is to just stay at level three, which feels good. It feels really good, because a few of my systems and processes aren’t as tight as I would like them to be, especially if I’m going to start bringing in partners and affiliates, I want everything that’s automated to be working. 

That just gives me a whole lot more space to really refine my processes,

reteach a couple of my courses, set everything up really nicely Evergreen, and just take a breath. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with staying at level three. I think it’s interesting for me to just be in a place of satisfaction and contentment and notice how easy it is to think, right!  I’ve done level three, the next is level four, like, what will I do next?

It’s actually okay to just stay at the same level.

It reminds me of a post I saw the other day from Emma Vega Malta, about a small business is not necessarily like a baby business waiting to grow into an adult big business, a small business can be a conscious choice. That resonated a lot in terms of how I’m feeling about that. 

The other thing I decided was, like I said, I’m going to postpone the summit. Some people didn’t even know I was going to do a summit because it was a big fat secret and I still would like it to be a surprise. So hopefully, it’s still a surprise for some people. 

The 10 hours a week of income generating and also 10 hours a week of admin, I would really like for each day that if we’re doing a five day week, that basically I’ve just got four hours, for one hour things that I’m going to do each day to really feel calm, feel clear and not feel overwhelmed.

To have time to make nice food for myself, to have time to sit on the couch and just relax, maybe knit and just be human.

Alternatively, I can have a week where I take a day off and then my other days, my four days a week would be five hours each day. So I would have kind of a busy week with a day off, or a more steady week with lots of space. So I’m just doing a new calendar experiment. 

I was also getting up in the morning and checking my inbox while the kids were getting ready for school and I just realized in the last few days how much of a reactive state that puts me in and how that really doesn’t work for me in the morning. So just as of today, I’m starting a new experiment of having a slow breakfast doing some journaling and knitting on the couch and not looking at my inbox until much later.

I thought that I might share my number crunching, if you’re interested in that I could make another post but I feel like this is long enough for today. It’s really not rocket science, crunching my numbers was really just calculating how much money I actually need and acknowledging our holidays needs, health care is a need, savings is a need, and putting those things in instead of ignoring them any longer. 

I think part of that is my overall self care at the moment, and not self care like painting toenails, and having bubble baths but actual deep and loving care for myself that I need to give myself first and not be waiting for someone else to just deliver that to me, which all feels great. I feel great about it. 

I’d love to hear if this is actually interesting or helpful for you, or if I should just shut up about it.

Let me know if you have any questions and I really look forward to seeing you another time soon.

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