Work less. Earn more.

There is a trend in the online marketing world right now where a lot of business owners are talking about ease and flow and working shorter days and even only a few days a week. And if you are noticing this, you might wonder why the bloody hell am I working so hard for my money then why am I putting in all these hours and not seeing the six and seven figure results everyone else is talking about? In today’s episode, I’ll be diving into why you feel like you are working so hard for your money, and importantly what you can do about it.

Hello and welcome to the Clare Wood Podcast. This is your weekly dose of all things money to help you intentionally create a profitable business and a life you love. I have the difficult conversations about money so you can make more money within each week. I share how you can use mindset and the practical foundations of finance to elevate your earnings without sacrificing the things that are important to you because you can and should be making more money.

The first thing to really dive into when you are noticing that other people are talking about working less hours and earning more money is to check in on why you are feeling that way.

Have a look at your mindset.

Why are you feeling triggered by it? Now, I’ve said this before on the podcast and I’ll say it again, but you can’t be triggered by something you don’t want. So if you are noticing that when people talk about the working less hours and earning more money, the reason why it gets under your skin is because you want it. And that is a great thing because when you unlock what it is that you desire, you can start to put steps in place to move towards it. So if you know that that’s something that you want and you’re noticing that you get triggered by it, you now get to start to create your plan.

Now, as always, your mindset is the foundation of the change that you want to create. So let me start by asking you this question. If you want to be working less and earning more, why don’t you have it already? When I ask that question, you’ll notice that some stories pop up and these stories are the breadcrumbs as to why you don’t have the thing that you want already. Some examples of the stories that might pop up. People don’t make that kind of money in my industry is a big that I hear people say It’s all right for people in the coaching world, but people in my kind of industry don’t make that kind of money. Another story that might pop up is my clients expect so much from me and you know they don’t expect it of other people, but there’s so many expectations from me.

Now, some of these stories might be very real. For example, if you were new in business, it is likely that you don’t have the same following experience, frameworks, et cetera, that people who have been in business for longer do. I know that a lot of people who are making you know, big amounts of money while working less hours, have spent a lot of time building a following and a name for themself and a reputation for their business. So for a start, it’s actually not fair to compare yourself to them. Other people also have different circumstances which may enable ’em to spend a lot more time into growing their community. Following all of those things that might not be a possibility for you, you might not have the capacity to invest in a long-term profit that other people do. You might have very real circumstances that mean that you need to be earning money, doing the one-on-one work, now doing the grunt work due to your circumstances.

And let me share what I mean by that. For instance, on my business journey, I’ve met some business owners who can go three months without earning any money due to their circumstances. They might have a big savings account, they might live with their parents, maybe they don’t have children. There’s a ton of reasons why some people are able to go a period of time without bringing in any short-term income. However, if like me <laugh>, you have children, a mortgage or other circumstances, then being able to make long-term decisions for your business, i e take some time out to set up your structures to systemize things, to really focus on purely growing an audience with no expectations of selling anything in the short term. Well, that might not be an option for you because of your circumstances. So there are some very, very real situations that I do wanna highlight before we dive into the flip side of it a bit later.

I really wanna highlight that for some people, yes, there are absolutely circumstances, um, other reasons why this might not be possible for you. So first of all, I just wanna highlight that and we’re just gonna put that aside for a moment, parking that something that I have noticed from my seven plus years as a mentor is that most of the things we tell ourselves, it’s just a story. It’s not actually a truth. Now the reason for this is that our brain filters information based on our experiences in life and also what we see. Let’s just say that you have grown up and and spent a lot of your time in a, a lower socioeconomic community like I did in my my early life. If we’ve ever only known people who earn let’s say $30 an hour, it would be completely outside our zone of reference to think that anyone could earn more than that.

So coming back to one of those stories that I highlighted earlier, people say, people in my industry don’t make that kind of money. And I remember one day I was working with a hairdresser and she said, no one in my industry makes good money. And I was like, oh, that ain’t true. And I actually Googled it and I found allegedly the sultan of Brunei pays $23,000 per haircut to have his hair done. So this is an example about how you may create a story about what people in your industry earn or your limitations that are on you, on your capacity to earn more money while working less hours. Another story that I hear a lot that I mentioned earlier is that people say, my clients expect so much from me. And what is happening when we have a story like this is we are really slipping into victim hood.

You are giving away your power to your clients when you say they expect so much from me. Now I’m gonna hit you with a bit of a truth bomb, but stick with me here. The reason why your clients expect so much from you is because of you. Now, some ways that this can can come up, firstly, it’s by you not having clear boundaries, having clear parameters in place around what is included in your contractual relationship. So that starts from the outset, both with having a really solid robust contract in place that really clearly sets expectations, availability and what you will deliver as part of that business relationship. And the other side of it is also that internally you may have sloppy processes and systems, which means that you have to work really hard to deliver the things that you have promised to your customers.

Now, I’ll stick my hand up and say that even now there are certain areas in my business that take me so much longer than they should. Now, an example of this is booking in clients. So at the moment I have some v i p spots available to do one-on-one coaching sessions with me. And because I haven’t put a really clear process in place at this point in time, it is literally me who is going back and forward with a client figuring out the time venue, um, identifying if they have any dietary requirements. And the last time that I hosted a VIP day, I spent nearly a full day of my time prepping for the VIP day. Now, the work that goes into this does not have to be me. Of course, the time that went into this was not the best use of my time. Now that wasn’t on my client expecting too much from me. Of course, they get to have a beautiful premium experience in a VIP day, but it was because I didn’t have a clear system or process in place that I could hand off to the team. 

So can you see here a couple of things that’s going on.

Firstly, you need to check in. Is this a real thing? Like are my clients expecting too much from me? Then check in. Do I have clear contract and boundaries in place? And not even what’s in the contract, it’s also your behavior, how you show up in the relationship. It doesn’t matter if your contract says you only get two hours of my time a week. If you are available for them 24/7, whenever they message you, of course they’re gonna have expectations that that is what you are going to continue to do unless you redefine that relationship and really do put the clear boundaries in place.

This is something I always check in myself when I find that my clients are perhaps crossing boundaries or expecting too much from me. I ask myself, how am I contributing to their expectation from me around this? Am I messaging them back on the weekends or late at night? Am I delivering way more than I should in in terms of what was agreed in our contract? I take accountability for it. And of course, sometimes there are times when we simply have clients who are not an energetic match for us, people who are expecting far too much for the amount that they are paying, and in which case that’s a whole other conversation <laugh>. So I guess the point that I’m trying to make here, regardless of what the story is about why you can’t earn more while working less, the very first step is identifying the story.

What is the belief that you have? Then you get to work out if it’s true. Then the next step is writing the new story that you want to create. Some examples of this, I don’t wanna work this many hours anymore. I want to earn more. I want to create a scalable income stream. So identify what that new story looks like and get really clear what do you actually want? And again, you get to check in on those stories or limiting beliefs that pop up. What comes up for you when you say you can’t have those things?

And you can see here already, so much of creating big changes in our life actually comes from changing our mindset, from uncovering our stories, from rewriting our stories. And then the last step, which I’m just about to get to, is of course taking action. So once you’ve got super clear about what you don’t want anymore and what you do want, how can you start to take the steps to actually transition your business from a practical sense to where you want to be? Some examples of this, if you’re wanting to earn more while working less, how can you uplevel your marketing to charge a more premium price? How can you streamline your systems or processes so that you don’t have to work so hard? I’m putting my hand up on this one. I’ve still got some work to do in this area. The next one, how can you adjust your pricing?

Are you feeling trapped with your current infrastructure, your current pricing structure? What are some opportunities for you to change the way you are pricing your offerings? Stop staying victim to your stories and take back the power. The person who can change your life is you. If listening to this episode, you’ve identified that you have some money stories, and if you are ready to take that step and start to transition towards earning more while working less, I’d love to share a little bit more about my VIP day. VIP days are a day where I sit down with you one-on-one and we look at your entire business structure. We get super clear on exactly where you wanna take the business, and we map out a step-by-step action plan of how to take you from where you are to where you want to be.

Once we have that plan, we also convert it into a financial plan. So we actually look at how much you wanna bring in each month in your business and the investments that you need to make to get there. After we map out your plan and document it all down, we then go out and have a delicious lunch together to really integrate and uplevel and step you into that next energetic level. This is an opportunity to have a tailored strategy created for you with your exact goals in mind, using my experience as a mentor, which I have helped many business owners to elevate to their first a hundred thousand dollars months. You can find out more about their VIP days in the show notes for today’s episode. If you aren’t quite ready to invest in a v I day just yet, I am launching my Money Mindset course accelerator very soon.

This is a brand new course and it will be run with live q and a calls with me. So please keep your ears peeled on the podcast because I’ll be sharing more about this course, which will be coming very, very soon.

You can jump on the wait list for accelerator again. There’ll be a link in the show notes for today’s episode to sum up today, if you want to earn more and work less, it’s available to you if you choose it.

I hope you are feeling inspired and excited about what is possible for you when it comes to money. It takes a lot of time and energy to create a podcast, so I’d be very grateful if you could take the time to hit subscribe, write me a review and share any of your favorite episodes with your audience on social media. The more people that we can reach, the more people we can empower to earn more in their business because you can and should be earning more money.