When I first started my business, I used to teach people WordPress via Skype. It was a one on one offering and, while it was a lot of fun, it wasn’t scalable. I couldn’t raise my prices much more or I’d risk losing customers and I couldn’t do more than 3 per day or my head would explode which also meant that my income was really limited! I felt stuck.

Eventually, I figured out the solution was to drop that service and focus my attention on other pieces of my business that were both scalable AND enjoyable. Of course my business grew as a result of my focus placed elsewhere. We were making more money and I felt more satisfied as a result.

In the moment though, it doesn’t always feel that simple, does it? We get caught in the time for dollars trap and are often so busy being miserable that we don’t take the time to make changes. Much needed changes!

If your goal is to make money doing something you enjoy (I hope that it is), I want to share a very simple way to determine what you should be focused on, in order to grow your business (the same process we used to change the direction of this business to a multi-six figure company).

So if you feel you are pulled in too many directions or aren’t really loving everything that you do, this is for you.

  1. Start by making a list of all potential revenue streams you have: services, products, affiliates, etc. Categorize them in one of the 4 categories (illustrated below)
  2. Where you are making money? What works? What doesn’t? What do you like to do and what do you want to do more of?

This might sound too simple but trust me, one of the most common mistakes in business is getting caught up having too many offerings or services that we don’t really love to do. We often forget to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

revenus-streams2

Now let’s go through each category and see what your options are.

Category #1 : FUN but Not making you money : THE HOBBY CATEGORY

This is typically something that you are passionate about but that either takes too much of your time for the money it generates, or it is something you are not monetizing properly. Either way, it needs your attention. You should ask yourself:
“Why am I not making money with this”? Could be that you have no product or service, that you are not marketing it, or that there is no market for it- in which case you need to decide if it’s worth holding on to.

ACTION: You can allocate time in your calendar to brainstorm ways to monetize it. The goal is to get these items into category #2.
If you are okay not making money with this but it really fuels you and you want to keep doing it, by all means do, but really treat it as a hobby, not part of your business.

Category #2 : FUN and making you money : THE FOCUS CATEGORY

This is the perfect category and where you should aim at spending most of your time.

ACTION: Keep on keepin’ on! You’re doing great.

Category #3 : NOT FUN and NOT making you Money : THE DROP CATEGORY

Why are you even doing it?

ACTION: That one is easy, just drop it. Simple as that.

Category #4 : NOT FUN but making You Money : THE BRAINSTORM CATEGORY

That is a tough one and often these are the very tasks that keep us from moving forward. They are the typical rat wheel revenues that take up a lot of your time but that bring money so you don’t want to completely discard them. The problem is that you aren’t enjoying yourself and it’s taking time away from doing things that you would enjoy.

ACTION: One option is to hire someone to do it for you if that is possible, you’ll make less money sure, but it could still be a revenue stream if you can have someone take care of it for you.

The other option is to find a way to transition your revenue from here to another revenue stream that you enjoy. So getting the focus on that revenue stream you want to grow so that you can drop this one altogether. This is exactly what I did with my “done together” service above.

Take some time this week to put your services or offerings through this process.

What can you drop? Where will you put your focus instead? What are the things that you love?

I can’t wait to hear more about your changes and how they affect your bottom line.