Below are the show notes/summary for this episode. Please listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify for the full show! Xo, Alex

 

I know many of you listening probably want to make more money in your business, and you want to scale it. Even if you haven’t started your business, it’s great to think about these things now, because I mean, why the hell not? Today, I’m going to share some ideas with you to scale your business in record time. Something that I’m very good at. Our first year, we were under 100K, and now we’re getting close to that million mark. I have a background in everything that I’m talking about today. All of these things worked for me.

I do want to preface this by saying, you got to do what works for you. You got to do what works for your business. You can’t just do what everybody else is doing. The things that I’m talking about work for me. I’ve seen them work for other businesses, but that doesn’t mean that you have to utilize them in your business. As the founder, as the CEO, you have to make decisions as to how I can utilize my personality and the things that I know I’m good at to keep scaling the business and making more money.

#1: Focus on the work

If you are looking to start scaling your business rapidly, you should be overwhelmed with the number of people who want to work with you. And if you’re not, you need to focus on doing better work. This can pertain to anybody, whether you’re a social media manager or a VA or a brand-new website designer like me, or in a completely different industry, the work is queen or king. And it’s just really important to do great work. And people will always come to you if you’re doing great work. If you’re not overwhelmed with the number of people coming to you, to the point where you have to turn people down, you probably need to focus more on the work before you even get started in anything that I’m going to talk about today.

We’re going to pretend that you’re at that phase, you’re at the phase where you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m doing all of this work myself. I’m so overwhelmed. I can barely fit anything else into my schedule. I’m working overtime. There was a point at the beginning of 2020 where I was working every day, which I don’t get into because I still basically work every day, but it was heavy work every day. I did nothing else at all. I was putting my head down. I was living in my parents’ basement in Wisconsin. There was nothing better to do anyway, but it was a point where I was like, I can’t sustain this. I was taking three clients a week by myself. It was insane. It was not sustainable. And I knew that. I knew that I needed to make a decision.

I knew that I either needed to raise my prices, hire people or do both. And I decided to do both. You should always raise your prices. If you’re getting people constantly booking, you have your booking far in advance. So that’s part of it. Raising your prices will not be a part of this podcast, but just note that you should always be raising your prices if you’re getting overbooked. When you’re hiring people, you want to hire people who allow you to take on more projects and whatever way it means to you. Everyone’s different. You have to figure out what you love doing in the business, how you, as the founder, as the CEO, are making money for the business, and how you can do more of that. For me, people hire us because they like my design style.

I can’t run a typical agency model at High-moon Studio. I need to be the one doing the work because people come to me for my style. If I was hiring other people, no matter what, they’re not going to have my style. I have to be spearheading the design. That doesn’t mean I have to do all of it by myself, but I have to be spearheading the actual, like vision and main design of the brand and website. I know that number one, number two, I need to do marketing on social media. I need to be able to do this podcast. I need to be able to be on Instagram stories.

I need to do stuff like that because that allows people to get a part of my personality, and all of these things to overtime will shift. And even now, I’m looking to move. I turned High-moon Studio into an agency from just being a solopreneur, which I was before, just doing everything myself. And it’s a new model. In this new model, by the way, I’m not going to go through the whole thing in this podcast, but I’m going to teach it in designer training 2.0; I’m testing it out. Now. It’s going super, super well. It allows me to run the projects and be like, I’m saying, the visionary behind everything we do here so that everybody who hires us is always getting my touch. They’re always getting the Alex touch, the Alex style that they came to us for.

And then I just have other designers underneath me to help support that and build up from the base that I create for each client. It’s super wonderful. My first hire, I’ve had a VA with, before I hired a full-time executive assistant. As the founder of an agency, I don’t need to be sending invoices to my clients like that does not require me to do that. I can have somebody else do that. I can have somebody else write blog posts. I can have somebody you have to think about the things that are great for business for many reasons. And they help grow a brilliant brand. And they’re really important when it comes to the client experience.

And getting paid is important. Making sure people are paying their invoices on time, but that’s not something I need to do. You have to just make a list of all the things that you don’t need to do and find somebody to fill those roles because you have the money right now that you’re getting all this influx. You’re overwhelmed with the number of people coming to you, wanting to hire you. You have the money now; it’s just about how you use that money to buy you time to make more money. So obviously, the more people you have helping you, the more projects you can take on, and you’re raising your rates with those projects. Then you’re making more income. Okay. So that’s the number one way to scale your business in record time.

#2: Practice mindfulness and manifestation

I’m spiritual, and I’ve become more spiritual over the past six months. And I’ve noticed I have been doing less, or I’ve felt like I’ve been doing less in my business and spending more time manifesting and being mindful in the morning and not rushing into work every second. And I am just taking time to breathe and go for walks and doing all those things. It’s crazy because the more you tap into your higher self, the more the universe rewards you for it. It’s all about aligning with who you are and just finding a balance in life because we’re not here to be workhorses. I mean, we love what we do. It’s, it’s fun, but we’re here to have a balance between life and work.

And we need to find that balance and find our purpose, and you know, a way that we can sustain doing what we do daily. The main part of this tip is to think about it before you do it. When you’re starting a business, you’re like, I’m going to try this, and I’m going to try that, and I’m going to try this, and I’m going to try that. And it’s great because you’re moving forward fast. You’re like trying to figure out exactly what you want to do, but once you get your feet on the ground and you’re like, okay, now I know this is what I’m good at. And this is what’s making us money. And this is what people are responding to. You have to be strategic and start thinking before you do, instead of just trying stuff all the time.

Now you have data right now. You have a following that you can tap into. Now you have experiences, and you have failures; you have successes. You have to look at those and get strategic and practice mindfulness when doing things in your business. And don’t just do things to do things. You have to think them through; you can’t be rash. You can’t make crazy decisions just because you want to. When you take the time to think and look at the numbers and be strategic with data, you’re going to grow your business faster because you will make better decisions faster that will make you more money. And then the second part of this is manifestation. You want to manifest what you want in life. And it’s big because it’s not just goal setting.

It’s sitting down and being like, what do I want out of my life and feeling it? I will sit with my notebook in the morning, and I’ll do meditation. If you’re not a meditator, I highly suggest it. It helped me with my anxiety over the past few months. I’ve become so clear with what I want to do in my business and the moves that I want to make. It’s great. I’ll meditate. And then, after I meditate, I’ll grab my journal. And some days, I just write whatever comes to mind. But when I do manifest, basically what I do is I’ll write down every single little thing that I want to happen. I’ll get really specific about whatever it is. This isn’t regarding business, but I’m looking to purchase a house this year.

I wrote down every single little detail that I would want in a house. And when I want it to come to me, how much I want it to be, how much I want to be able to afford all of that, any little detail that you can get down to the nitty-gritty. And then I sit, and I read it, and I feel it. I picture myself sitting in this new house, walking through the house, cooking in the house, and working. Going outside and picking a lemon off of my lemon tree, going for a swim in the pool, lying next to the pool with some margaritas and some chips and guac with my friends. Going and walking into the office out back, I want to watch my dog run around in the yard.

I just picture it in my brain and make it come to life and feel all the feelings I would feel if I were already living there. What you’re saying to the universe is I have this already. I am open to receiving it. So that helps it give it to you, being the universe gives you what you’re asking for and what you need. And what you’re open to tip.

#3: Create multiple revenue streams

When you’re creating multiple revenue streams, what you want to do is you want to create things that are specific to specific people. You’re making something for a specific person so that you can sell it to that specific person using data. I have designer training. I know exactly who that person is, who should be buying designer training, and who would benefit from designer training.

Number one, I have tons of data from people who’ve already taken in love the course that I can use to retarget and just like do ads and stuff like that. Number two, because it’s so specific to designers, let’s just hop into the next thing here. That’s another revenue stream. It could be a training. It could be a workbook. It could be whatever you want it to be a product. It can be whatever you want it to be. Then you have this sales page. You want to create a sales page for any type of revenue stream you’re trying to sell. That sales page, especially if it’s optimized correctly and beautiful and branded right, branded strongly with your brand, then you can set up Facebook and Instagram ads, Pinterest ads, all the things that lead specifically back to that page.

And you can target the exact person who needs whatever that thing is. The more specific and niche you can get in these streams of income, the better because you can target exactly who needs to buy it and speak directly to them as a consumer and get them to buy the conversion rates will be higher. You’ll be able to scale your business.

#4: Start a podcast

This is a great way for you guys to get to know me and get to know what I know. Because hopefully, after you listened to everything that I say on this podcast, you were like, wow, that girl’s smart. I would trust her with my business, or wow—that girl’s smart. I would trust her to teach me how to start my business and designer training.

I show you how to start a podcast from start to finish exactly how I do this podcast. I’m sitting on my floor right now with a glass of wine and just cranking this thing out. I’m going to show you exactly how to start one yourself in designer training 2.0. if you’re interested, join that, but it’s a great way to start a funnel as well. I’m talking about designer training right now; this is a funnel. You hear about it; hopefully, you’ll go check it out. Maybe buy it. Maybe not, but at least you know about it, and you didn’t before if you’d never heard about it. It’s just, it’s all a funnel, and starting a podcast is a great way to get people to know you get people to know what you have to offer and start building a strong brand on a new platform.

#5: Use influencer marketing

Even if you don’t have a product-based business, you can still use influencer marketing. As a brand, a website designer, a social media designer, or a VA, that doesn’t mean that you can’t use these amazing marketing tools like influencer marketing in your business just because it’s digital, not physical. Some ways that you can do influencer marketing, some ways that we’ve done it in the past is we have done some gifting campaigns where we’ve given out some of our female founder, hoodies, and some other little gifts, along with that to some influencers who shared about us, then, in turn, we get followers. They learn what we do and what we stand for. And then now they’re followers. And they’re into our funnel.

Another great way to do this is by doing giveaways. You have to look at, do I have time, or do I have the money? Which one of the two do I have? And if you have time, you’re going to want to give away your time. So that would mean giving away a branding package, giving away a website design package, doing a giveaway, or finding an influencer that you look up to and would love to work with and know could shout your names to the heavens in their platforms. You’re doing a giveaway with them saying, Hey, I’m going to give you a branding project. I’m going to brand you for free. If you shout me out after the fact, that way, you’re getting tons of people who come to your channel, then they enter into that funnel.

Another way to do that is by using money, giving away something that costs money that doesn’t have to do with your time. Let’s say you’ve created a course already. You could give away the course to an influencer and have them market it. Or you could set up some sort of an affiliate program and be like, Hey, if you share this, I’ll give you 20%. That might be too much putting on how much the course is. But anybody who buys, I’ll give you 20% of that. It entices them to sell more of your service, especially if it’s a high ticket, something, or other, it’s worth it for them to make a few hundred dollars for every sale. Try that out. Use influencer marketing in your business, and you will scale faster.

#6: Don’t be afraid to hop into something new

There are always new things that we should be doing clubhouse, TikTok, reels, Instagram lives. It’s good to just test the waters with those things. You don’t have to stay on those things, but maybe you’re like, okay, clubhouse is new. I’m just going to go on and try it. For me, I haven’t dived into clubhouse yet. And I think it’s going to be interesting. I was like, I can do one a month. And if I end up hating it after three months, I don’t need to do it again. Or if it’s not working for the business, I don’t need to continue doing it. But it doesn’t hurt to try because sometimes you hit gold where you were like, Oh, I made a Tech-Talk video. It was a spiritual tick-tock video.

It didn’t revolve around business, but I made it, and I got thousands of followers, likes 70,000 followers basically within a week; it was crazy. It doesn’t hurt to try these things; test it out. Don’t give up right away. Just try and find your style in the new platform. If it continues to just not do well, then set it down and say this isn’t for me, but you could strike gold. And if you do strike gold and a new platform and you become one of the people who are one of the leaders in a new platform, it’s going to help you grow so much faster. I saw my old VA; she got on Tik TOK and started doing Tik TOK videos. And then, all of a sudden, now she’s way bigger than High-Moon Studio.

She went from like no followers to thousands of followers. It’s just crazy to me to see how much she’s succeeding off of her TikTok. It’s great to try out things. Don’t be afraid. I know it’s annoying, but it doesn’t hurt to give it a shot.

#7: You have to think 10 steps ahead

So never, ever, ever be afraid to implement free content that leads to paid funnels. This podcast right now, I know I already talked about podcasts, but this is completely free. I created a full five-day masterclass called level up to luxury. That’s completely free. We get tons of people who sign up, and it at least gives them some sort of indication of myself as a teacher.

How I teach the information that I know, and hopefully, it will entice them to purchase something else. Give away free things, implement free funnels strategically in your business. They will lead to people entering your funnels so that you can start nurturing them in an email sequence or whatever it may be. There are tons of different things that you can do when it comes to marketing to get somebody to buy. And especially if it’s a great product, it needs to be a great product. You need to be able to be like this is the best product on the market. I know my designer training is the best on the market, and I know if somebody takes it and they take it seriously and do the work, they’re going to make a lot of money. I’ve seen it happen with the students.

The ones that put in the work and are like, okay, I’m going to do this. They have done so much with their business from scratch. They had nothing before, and now they’re taking on all these clients and making all this money every month. It’s something that you should be implementing in your business is that free content to paid funnels to get to know people, get them introduced to who you are and what you have to offer. And then it leads to all of this paid that hopefully, they will buy. So that is it. Thank you so much for listening. I hope this gave you tons of ideas on how to scale your business in record time. All of the things I talked about today, we’re going to cover in-depth in designer training 2.0 enrollment for that is closing on March 1st, 2021.

And it’s going to open back up. We’re doing the live training in March and April, and then it will open back up so that you can purchase the full training with all of the videos in May. This is all to say if you’re listening and if it’s past March 1st, know that it will become available again, you can still hop on our website, and you can sign up for the presale of the new release. Still, all of these things, we’re going to go way, way, way more in-depth designer training 2.0 is all about going deep in your business. It’s like, Hey, you have your foundation. You’re making decent money. You’re ready to kick this up a notch. We have tons of expert guest speakers coming in to talk about this stuff like Facebook and Instagram ads and how to implement them correctly.

We have a human design expert speaking video marketing expert, so many amazing, amazing people who are coming in to speak. And then I’m going to be teaching a lot of the lessons as well. If you’re interested, go check it out. I highly suggest doing it. It’s going to help you scale to, I mean, hopefully, go for those millions. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at the hymen studio Instagram. And we will send you a few little goodies in the mail. Thank you, guys, so much. I can’t wait to see how you soar and your business and grow it to incredible Heights. So proud of you. You’re going to continue killing it. I just know.

Click here to listen to the full show on Apple Podcasts