077: On considering revenue metrics when working less

What do you do when you want to show yourself that working less doesn’t have to mean a decrease in revenue, but your monthly numbers don’t always help you out with that – and you're tempted to work a bit more to hopefully avoid a dip in your numbers, instead of stepping away from your laptop? Let's talk about a few ways that you can look at your numbers differently.

I recorded this episode as a response to a question I got during the High Achiever Experience training.

In the episode, you'll hear

- Danbee ask what to do, when you want to trust that working less doesn't equal a dip in revenue, but your numbers don't always support that theory which can make it hard to work less

- 3 reasons why monthly sales numbers don't tell the full story

- 5 things that can help you look at your revenue metrics through a different lens

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Show notes

What do you do when you really want to show yourself that working less doesn’t have to mean a decrease in revenue, but your monthly numbers don’t always help you out with that – and you're tempted to work a bit more to hopefully avoid a dip in your numbers, instead of stepping away from your laptop when you planned to? Let's talk about a few ways that you can look at your numbers differently.

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As I’m recording this, it’s been two weeks since I recorded the High Achiever Experience with a few really cool business owners in my audience. If you don’t know what this training is, it’s me sharing 6 traps that we can fall into because we’ve been raised in an environment that values high achievers. I also share how those traps affect us in business, and what we can do about them so that we can keep making progress in a healthier, more sustainable way. You can go sign up for it at jennahellberg.com/training – it’s free, and when you sign up, you get access both to the Zoom recording and to links to listen through Spotify or Apple podcasts – plus you’ll get the slides too.

In the Q&A section of the training, Danbee asked a question that I answered with some of the things that I’ve also included in this episode, but since then, I’ve had a few more thoughts pop up so I thought I’d continue the discussion here.

First, I’m going to play the clip where Danbee asks her question, and I’ll hop back on the mic to share my updated thoughts on it after.

Danbee: “For me, the hardest thing still is not equating the hours I work with how successful my business is going to be. Because even though I can point to the numbers and say, Okay, some of the months where I put in the most hours, they were not my biggest months. But also the opposite doesn't always correlate, right? So sometimes I go on holiday, don't put in as many hours – and my numbers show that, oh, I didn't make a lot of money this month. And that's always really hard.

Because even though I know in my head that [working] more hours doesn't mean more money. Like, it's really hard to internalize that and be like, okay, even though, even though I've put in what I think is a reasonable amount of work, because I haven't made the money that I want to make this month so far, I'm just gonna keep going. And that's really hard to just like, switch off and be like, No, actually, probably what I need is a bit of a break, and to come back to this later on. Right. So I guess the question here is, what do I do? "What do I tell myself?

I don't need to be convinced that I need to do less work. Or rather, I don't need to work as much, but it's hard to somehow like it doesn't translate always to feeling good, while I'm trying to work the way I think I want to work.”

Like I said during the training, it’s hard when there is no guaranteed set of actions that you can take to make a certain income because it’s all dependent on so many factors. 

Here are a few things that I tell myself when I’m about to get really analytical and judgmental about my revenue numbers:

Firstly, things can change month to month or season to season just because of the nature of what’s typically happening for your client base at that time of year. I thought being a documentary family photographer photographing lots of newborns shouldn’t see too much change season to season – babies are born all year! – still somehow, in spring, summer and fall people were more likely to book a newborn session than in winter.

Secondly, sales can change because of external circumstances. Everything from glitches in a platform to full-on war causing electricity prices to soar. (My parents back in Finland just got their electricity bill for last month, it was 6x what it was the same month last year *and* they’re predicting the price will still go up a lot by December). Many things can happen that have nothing to do with how much work you put in.

Thirdly, Ssometimes the things we did don't show results until later, so we can’t point to a month and say “I did lots more marketing in that month and I got more sales” – because… maybe we got some of those sales based on the long-term strategies we’ve got in place. Maybe we got an influx of new email subscribers a couple of months ago thanks to a summit or podcast that we were a guest on, and these people just needed time to warm up to you – which happened to happen in a month where you also did lots of work otherwise.

Similarly, we can point to a month and say “I posted less on IG and made less money, so that’s a clear sign I have to post in IG more” – but maybe we also neglected long-term things we could’ve done for our marketing, things that are more evergreen and could more consistently bring us sales than IG posts that seem to have a life-span of a few hours now. And maybe some of those more long-term activities also would’ve taken less time than all the social media efforts of the month did.

For example, when I’m a guest on a podcast, there could be anything from 50-1000 people who haven’t heard of me before, who now spend all that time listening to me and the host have a discussion. I could’ve posted every day for a month and still not have reached lots of new people.

Things to consider when you evaluate your revenue numbers

Because things aren’t that clear-cut when it comes to hours worked vs sales made in a month, I think the important things to consider are

1 – Instead of looking at statistics each month in isolation, maybe you can look at a quarter or a 6-month period. Maybe you can compare each month to how it was last year. How about looking at the whole year and putting it into perspective that way?

For example, let’s say you had a goal of making 40k in sales next year. And then you already reach the 40k in June. Maybe now, especially if you’re a high achiever, you’re thinking you need to raise your sales goal for the year, and think that with this trajectory, you should be able to clear 80k easily.

And then when sales go down in summer and fall, maybe because people are just spending more money on personal holiday stuff vs business services, you can feel disappointed with “just” 60k, even though you’ve exceeded your original goal by 50%.

2 – Instead of just looking at the numbers, look at other results or changes you’ve experienced

I think especially because of the business world’s obsession with trendy revenue numbers it’s easy to measure our success only through our sales.

Yes, money is important. Money is how we get things, money is power in this world. But, what else do you care about? Did you maybe take a small hit in terms of revenue, but have lots of time to explore the new city you live in? Or did you have more time for your family and friends? Did you get to travel? Did business feel less overwhelming, did you feel like you were kinda in a flow, or actually had time to breathe?

So I try to remind myself that money isn’t the only thing to consider.

I want to acknowledge here that I know this is going to look different depending on how dependent you are on making the income that you’ve got as your goal. I totally understand that for some, making the money is #1 priority because of your situation. I’m speaking as someone who is financially ok, I will survive if something goes wrong and I don’t make as much as I’ve expected, because my partner makes enough for us to live off of. (At least for now – he could get fired or something else could happen, right?). If things get very dire, I could probably go get a job-job.

This is why I often ask my clients how dependent they are on the income staying the same or increasing, because the ideas I’ll explore with them will look different based on that.

3 – Pay attention to what has brought you sales so far – can you double down on those tasks and activities, and reduce the rest? And can you do the stuff that works in a way that’s more easeful, more fun, or faster?

We talked about this in the High Achiever Experience training; when you’re a high achiever, it feels like making things *easier* isn’t legit or feels like not doing enough. But I try to see it like this: even if I find podcasting and especially scripting and recording episodes pretty fun and exciting (I get into quite a flow with it), it doesn’t mean that I didn’t work hard when I put episodes together. There’s a difference between pushing ourselves too hard and just doing great work that doesn’t suck the life out of you, right?

4  – What do you enjoy doing, what interests you, aka how can you enjoy the journey towards your goals, towards the success you want, so that you don’t look back at this time with resentment?

100% I believe that if you do tasks and activities in your business that you feel good about, it affects the results you get. More importantly, it also makes you more likely to want to keep doing them more long-term. It’s really hard to be consistent with tasks and activities that feel like a drain, which means that it’s also harder to get those more consistent results. And it would totally suck doing work that feels draining, especially if you don’t see results on the back of it.

I could actually say a lot about consistency, because I don’t think consistency necessarily needs to look like what it’s often portrayed as – but I think that’s a topic for another day.

5 – Use the numbers as indicators of whether or not you need to change what you’re doing with your hours, and not as a sign that you just need to work more hours.

That’s all I had for you today – remember to sign up for the free high achiever training if you haven’t already, it’s at jennahellberg.com/training.

Thank you so much for spending your valuable time with me and I hope I gave you something to think about. Bye.