Case Study: from paying herself left overs to a 6-figure salary

*All names on the case studies have been altered for privacy of my clients. Results vary from people to people and are not guaranteed

During our discovery call, Frieda* said: "Gigi, I really love what I do. But I'm getting to the point that I don't see why I keep doing this to myself. I am paying myself virtually nothing. My business income is so unreliable. I feel that my business is giving me more stress than joy."

Frieda had a bookkeeper doing her numbers, but she had no idea of what all those numbers in the paper meant. Frieda is an artist, and spreadsheets we just not her language.

When I asked her about the vision for her business, it was simple: "I want to work with incredible people, I want to take 3 months off, and pay myself a salary. I don't want a team of people, or anything too complex. I want simple and profitable."

The work started with us being curious: why her business had too many peaks and valleys? What were her profitability in her current products and services? What was her launch strategy?

The peaks and valleys came because of her energy level: she would overbook herself, most or her clients paid in full, and then she would not book anything new for a few months. This flow gave her a lot of anxiety. We first worked on her mindset of not only receiving, but keeping money. Frieda always said that she is "not good with money" - this is why her first hire was a bookkeeper. The problem was: the bookkeeper was doing her job, but Frieda still didn't understand why her income statement showed something that did not match with her bank account.

We work on mindset, in changing the belief of "I'm not good with money" to "I am good with money". At this level, we did bring the 7 levels of transformation at the forefront:

1. Mindset

2. Values

3. Beliefs

4. Skill

5. Knowledge

6. Behavior

7. Environment

Once we had values congruency and a mindset and belief that Frieda could do and learn difficult things, and that she is good with money, we add in knowledge and skills with her money management. She now understands her money flows, and we created a money management system that would account for payment is full, pre-payments, and incentivize her clients to pay in payment plans.

By implementing a new mindset and a money management system, she was able to regulate her nervous system when she checked her bank account, and we were able to start paying herself a small salary - she went from paying herself anything from $0 to $800 per month, to paying herself $1,500 every single month.

We revisit her pricing - the prices she was currently offering were not profitable - we restructured her services prices in a way that she was not offering custom packages for everyone and that she could easily convey her value. With confidence in her pricing, she no longer attracted clients that were looking for the "best deal"; she attracted clients that saw the value she brought and would sign her contract right away.

Thinking about sabbatical, I offered her 3 different approaches, which she could choose one or a combination from:

1. Create a "Owner's Salary" account, and keep adding funds to it, so when she takes time off, there is more than enough for her monthly salary.

2. Create products that are launched when she is in her time off: this guarantees the income coming in, without her needing to "do the work".

3. Fill a waitlist for her next service spots with a pre-payment to secure the spot: this allows people to guarantee their spots to work with her at a future date.

She opt to a combination of all of them.

She opened a high yield savings account for her Owner's Compensation, where she transferred 40% of her revenue there. Her products were always limited copies: she had a 4 month runaway launch for her products which occurred once a year, for which she had a waitlist of people that wanted to purchase the copies. And for her services, she opened new spots every 3 months, with the first spots going to her waitlist, and to book the dates, they needed to do a deposit.

With this new strategy, her income increased in 100%, she was experiencing less peaks and valleys in her income, and she was able to hire a VA to support her with administrative tasks, during her launch period, and by the end of 3 years working together she was paying herself $150,000 a year in salary, taking 3 months completely offline every year [this started on our first year together], and her profit margin increased from 1% to 25%.

If you're interested in learning how I can support you grow your business, you can apply to work with me.