Are you setting sustainable revenue goals in your small business?
The messaging out in the online business world is really focused on trendy (and GROWING) revenue numbers.
10k, 20k, 50k months.
6-, 7-, 8-figure businesses.
But there’s a lot that goes into deciding how much revenue makes sense for your business; that number shouldn’t be an arbitrary one, and your number doesn’t need to make sense for any other business.
To help your revenue goals be more sustainable, I’d like to encourage you to consider these three aspects of your business:
Time constraints
How much time do you want to be able to have for your life outside of your business?
How much time does it take to deliver your services or offers?
How much time do you need for admin, CEO time, marketing, selling, and launching?
All of this impacts how much work you realistically have time to deliver on, and can help inform your pricing.
This brings us to…
Monetary needs
How do you want your business to support your life, aka what’s the income you need? I really recommend calculating this, if you don’t have a good idea of what you need.
What are your business expenses? Someone with a million-dollar business might have 900,000 in expenses – while someone with a 60k business might have just 10k in expenses. I’d rather take option B, to be honest.
Do you want there to be money left after the usual expenses and your take-home pay, that you can invest back into the business? Do you want to be able to attend conferences, get a coach, or update your website with copy written by an actual copywriter?
Do you need to put in more effort to increase your revenue, or can you affect your income/revenue in some other way – like increasing your pricing?
Pricing. Everyone has an opinion on what you should charge, regardless of your industry. But this is something you need to decide for yourself based on your needs and time constraints.
When I was still starting out and looked to others for *all the photography business advice*, something that kept popping up was the advice that you should have 3 different tiers of packages, and the middle one should be priced at the average you need to make per session to have enough revenue. I thought that was silly, since regardless of which package someone bought, I’d do the same amount of work! So I made my cheapest package the average I needed to make per session.
The *other stuff* you started the business for
Because of how the business space puts so much emphasis on money, it’s really easy to get sucked into making business all about the numbers – and forget what you originally started the business for.
It’s important to every once in a while check in with what’s actually enough for you, and what were all the other reasons or experiences you started the business for.
You may have started your business because you wanted…
… to have more time with your loved ones
… extra cash flow
… an outlet for your creativity
… to help your parents out more (with your time or with your money)
… opportunities to travel
… to make an impact in other people’s lives
… [insert your reasons here]
I’ve coached a good chunk of business owners who actually don’t need to be making more than they already do.
→ Some started their businesses because they wanted to do something fun and fulfilling that made a difference in the world. (The financial situation in their households were stable enough for them not to have to bring in a full-time income.)
→ Others wanted to do more of what they love, and wanted their business to replace their regular job’s income.
Somewhere along the way, when they started seeing growth in the business, or after they surpassed the income they had been making at their regular job, they got swept up by the “I gotta get to multiple-6-figures” or the “I gotta keep leveling up” messaging. As a result, they sacrificed some of the things they originally started the business for.
So once you reflect on the things you wanted your business to provide for you, you can ask yourself:
Do I actually need to make more money to make [the things I want] happen?
What changes can I already make now in how I operate in my business, so that I could have/do/be more of those things I started the business for?
This can help you be more intentional about the revenue goals you set, and open your eyes up to what you could already experience and make happen for yourself at your current revenue level.
How these three things may change your revenue goals
Once you’ve reflected on your available time, monetary needs, as well as the *other stuff* you started the business for, you’re better equipped to define what your revenue number needs to be – and it may be very different from the numbers you see on the Internets.
You might realize your revenue doesn’t need to be as high as you think
You might realize that your revenue needs to be higher than you think
You might discover that you can cut some expenses
You might realize that you need to charge more for your work, and can evaluate whether or not that price is something that the market will pay for. Do you have to streamline or pare down your services to be quicker to deliver, so that you can work with more clients at that price?
The key takeaway
I’ve seen many examples of how trying to increase your revenue (when you don’t actually have the time to deliver more services) leads to burnout, unintended sabbaticals, having to hire (expensive) help, or quitting. All of which affect your ability to bring in more money.
This is why it’s important to pick a revenue goal that’s actually plausible *and* to set your business practices up in a way that supports you in working toward that number in a sustainable way.
It doesn’t matter what the online biz world has set as a golden standard for revenue; you get to establish what works best for you.