Work Fewer Hours and Earn More Money

Do you feel like you’re always short on time? Are you tired of feeling like you’re missing out on something when you’re at work and missing something else when you’re at home? Are you sick and tired of being tired or frustrated by the lack of flexibility in your schedule? You’re not alone. Many of us feel that way or have felt that way before making the jump to owning our own businesses. You can make more money and work fewer hours when you have your own business. It is possible.

I know it sounds like a dream to many. I’m not saying you’re going to have a 4-hour workweek here because I don’t see how that’s possible, but I am saying I know you can work fewer hours and make more money. It’s possible and is one of the reasons so many people want to start their own business. It’s a big part of the dream for so many.

When you run your own business, you can earn more per hour than when you’re working in a job which allows you to work fewer hours and make more money. Rather than working for $20 or $40 or even $100 per hour, you can earn significantly more. If you’re a coach or consultant and teaching others how to do something, you can charge $250 or more per hour. If you add an online course to your business, you earn revenue from every student who takes your class. Each time you sell the course, you earn the same amount, whether it’s $49 or $999 or more. It takes a lot of time, effort, and money upfront to create the course and build the audience, but once it’s done, you can continually earn money with the same course. If you have a product-based business, you earn money each time someone buys your product. 

There are many ways to move away from trading hours for dollars all together or charge more for your services and finding clients directly. Both options allow you to work fewer hours and earn more money. If you’re still in a 9 to 5 and hoping to quit, but you’re not sure what you can do with your background, experience, or education, check out these six types of business you can build that will allow you more freedom and flexibility. I bet there’s something in there that will work great for you.

You can start with one and transition to another in time if you want. I took three different routes to build my business — each option built on the last and tied together. Ultimately, I decided to keep two revenue streams. Maybe I’ll add in another someday if my students need something else from me. I started by offering done for you services for small business owners; I did a lot of blog post writing and SEO work on websites and blogs because it was something I was good at that people needed help with. After that, I started offering marketing strategy training & coaching because I had clients who wanted to learn how to do the work they needed to be done on their websites. I love helping teach people what it takes to grow their businesses the right way. Seeing them achieve results makes me so happy. I love teaching them, so they know if they’re doing it right or more importantly, if the person they hired to do the work for them is doing it right. I had a situation with a client who had been paying someone for SEO services for two years and never received a report. They kept asking for a report, but there were excuses every month as to why it wasn’t ready. The challenge wasn’t getting the report data; the problem was the results were not good. When I started with them, I created the first report and went back and ran all the data for the previous two years, so we knew what was going on, and their SEO traffic was down every single month they’d worked with that SEO consultant. They’d paid money for two years and, sadly, gotten nothing in return. I see this so often, and it makes me so upset. I want people to know enough that this can’t happen to them.

Finally, I introduced an online training course side to my business because sometimes, when I speak with prospective clients, they can’t afford to work with me one-on-one, but they still need help. They asked if I offered any training classes, so it seemed like the next place to take the business.

As you build your business, listen to your customers, they will tell you what they want from you. Grow your business strategically and take care of your customers, and you will be able to work fewer hours and earn more money. I currently work about 30 hours a week and take 6+ weeks off every year due to our childcare schedule, but I still make what I did during my corporate career. I have the flexibility to work from home, be there at my son’s soccer practice, take him to swim lessons and volunteer in his classroom while maintaining my career and building my business. There are days the juggle is real. I won’t pretend that it’s always easy, and some weeks you’ll need to work more to meet deadlines or get a new product out the door, but you can schedule downtime after that and relax.

When you create a business that’s built strategically and serves your customers, you can take control over your schedule and work fewer hours while still earning money. You do not have to choose between your kids and your career, nor do you have to give up earning income or what little time you have available today. You can do both.