Hi, I'm Samantha Hartley of the Profitable Joyful Consulting podcast. This season has been all about business growth strategies and so I'm closing out the season with stopping the revenue rollercoaster. You'll never be able to grow your business as much as you want to if you're constantly fighting the peaks and valleys, the feast and famine. And so why does this actually happen in our businesses and what can we do about it? That is what I'm going to be sharing with you today. My client, Liz, has many, many, many small clients, but then one major client. And every time she closes the major client, then she kind of feels like this. She's going to this rest period where she doesn't feel any urgency around getting new clients, but she doesn't want her business to be so dependent on the single client anymore so some things are going to have to change in order for her to do that.

The analogy that we've talked about is kind of slaying the mammoth and then putting it in the cave and then knowing that it's going to be there all year long for you to gnaw on. You don't really feel compelled to go out and get any more mammoths right away. And that's how Liz feels about her marketing, she just doesn't really feel that compelled to go out and do much more.

Now, in another window, I have another client who had a really great spring and signed on tons of new business and then after that, they've really been in a lull and that lull is starting to stress them out. So what exactly happened there? Well, similarly, right after they got all that business, they had to deliver it. So the onboarding process, the delivery process, that can be really intensive and exhausting by the way, if you're just overwhelmed by the delivery of work and your business for your clients, then we don't need any more clients right now. And what you do is put out what I call a virtual closed sign on your business. It's kind of like you're telling the universe and everybody I do not have room or time for more clients, I can't handle any more clients so don't send any my way.

That's really confusing because part of you is stressing out, like, why don't I have any new clients coming in? And the other part of you is like because I am too overwhelmed to be able to handle anymore. So those are two parts of ourselves which are kind of out of alignment during this time.

The other thing that happens when you're feeling full and at capacity is some consultants get really happy because they don't have to do any sales and marketing right now. And that's great because they don't love sales and marketing. It's an activity that makes them feel vulnerable, it's not usually in their joy & genius zone. So they're like, great. If I could go a few months without having to do this, then that would be really awesome. However, then you hit that valley revenue month of whatever scares you and you suddenly feel like, oh, man, we got to turn the marketing back on again.

So this habit of turning on the marketing when you want clients and turning it off when you're feeling full at capacity, that's a really bad habit because it cultivates that feast or famine cycle. It actually nurtures it rather than helping you build a steady stream, a steady incoming flow of new clients all the time.

The interesting thing to me about entrepreneurs is that a lot of us have a really high tolerance for risk. And so those peaks and valleys, they're not always that terrifying. We usually trust that there'll be another peak in our future for a lot of us, there's a certain number that's a scary valley, but short of that, we're fine. So a lot of times just navigating that revenue rollercoaster isn't that scary for some people until they hit the low point. And I would like for you not to have to hit that low point before you do something about the revenue rollercoaster. So that's the reason I want to share with you a few things that you can be doing to make sure that you stop cultivating that cycle in your business and you start to nurture a cycle of having a steady flow of clients.

The first thing that you need to do in order to stop the revenue rollercoaster in your business is decide, decide that you are done with this. People come to me all the time wanting to make a change in their business like Samantha, how can I start selling high ticket? Hey, I have a lot of clients who drive me crazy. How can I get rid of them and work only with perfect clients? Well, the way that you do anything in your business is by making a decision. You decide from now on, I'm going to work only with perfect clients from now on I don't sell anything that costs less than X. So decide what you want to have in your business, you're in charge, you're in control. This is your business and you can decide what you want to do with it.

So making that decision about how things are going to be, here's what happens. You begin to do behaviors that align with the thing that you want to have and then you stop doing behaviors that align with the thing you don't want. So as I was saying, if nurturing this feast or famine cycle is what's been happening for you, then by deciding I'm not doing that anymore, I'm going to have steady revenues and maybe there'll be a few peaks but there are no longer going to be those kinds of valleys in my business. We'll have big launches, we'll have big fun events, we'll have a pay in full client. So you might have some months when the revenues really go up, but you should not have these terrifying vally months anymore. Decide you're done with them and it's over and you can do that right now in this minute with me. From now on, I no longer tolerate it, whatever you don't want. From now on, I cultivate a business in which I have a steady stream of incoming clients. So if you've made the decision that you want things to change, then what has to happen? What else has to change?

Well, the first thing that has to change is the structure of your time in your business, the way you're structuring your work. So very often when we get this rush of clients or if you're really successful right now and you just have a ton of clients and you've had to turn off the lead flow because you're overwhelmed with delivery. So a disproportionate amount of your time is taken up by delivery and when you are consumed by delivery, you don't have time for the marketing and so usually the marketing completely ends like it goes to zero. I've seen this in tons of my clients' businesses where they just absolutely go to zero. So that's very dangerous. That's the thing, that's nurturing the feast, famine cycle.

What you have to do is structure your work so that no more than a third of your time is going to working with clients. And that means that a third of your time is there for marketing and working on growing your business and then guess what? There's a third of your time that's left. And what would you do with that? Well, you would create IP, you would generate ideas. You would think about how to get better results for your clients. You would think about what you want to change and do in the world. Structure your work into these third's and you'll always have a priority in each area. Now, sometimes you'll have, as I mentioned, an onboarding month or a launch month or sometimes when you've got a lot of client delivery, it gets disproportionately large, well, thatStop The Revenue Rollercoaster's fine. But it should never send the marketing to zero and it should on average stick to a third, so it should shrink back to its original proportion of your business.

In the Habits episode I mentioned this as an idea where you spend 50 minutes a day working on your business and if you've spent 50 minutes a day doing tha, doing marketing activities like thinking of how successful your marketing would be, like giving that kind of focus to it, so that's a minimum amount that I want you to spend on your marketing. And listen, you don't have to be doing all of it yourself, you can outsource the marketing, you can automate the marketing, create systems for marketing but it has to be happening and it has to be happening on an ongoing basis.

Marketing is not an event, now you may have some marketing events, but it's not a thing that you do in the spring to get your clients for the rest of the entire year. I know there's a lot of businesses that have a major enrollment time centered around a convention or a speaking event, but you can do the launch and enrollment during those specific marketing events but if there is still ongoing marketing so that sales are constantly coming into your business in order to have a steady stream of clients and customers constantly flowing into your business. You have to have a lead flow, leads coming into your business on an ongoing basis.

And where I look for this is what's your go to reliable client getting strategy? Like what's the way that clients come to you? If that's networking, make sure you maintain your visibility at networking events. Closed that down offline that's fine, find some online networking events that make sense for you. If you get clients from LinkedIn, continue your LinkedIn even while you are working with your other clients. If you onboard a bunch of people, you can still carve out time for your LinkedIn. So whatever is your go to place the clients come to you from, make sure you're maintaining that if nothing else, at least that at minimum that during the time that you're busy with client delivery.

And my last idea for you is Leverage, make sure you have something to sell clients that doesn't rely on your time. This is where your signature systems come in, maybe you have a certified coach that they can work with. You have to be able to serve clients and customers who come to you without giving them more of your time. You'll see as you become more and more successful that your time is the thing you have the least of. So it's really important that you allocate it to only those activities with the highest return or the greatest joy factor for you. So in this case, they could join a group coaching program. They could join e-learning or they could work with another coach on your team instead of you having a way to earn and to bring in new clients and customers that doesn’t rely on your capacity to serve them individually.

I have a wonderful client, Patty, who has done an amazing job of scaling her business without having all these peaks and valleys. And so one of the things that she and I worked on, we’re doing these transformational year long engagements so that she had steady streams of revenues, but she still wanted to grow the business and go up levels in revenue. So when she went up the first level of revenue. There's a lot of intensity in delivery that was so stressful and so she brought in people to help her with the systems. She created systems that meant it was less intensive for her to deliver, that enabled her to go up a level in her business. And then she hired a team, brought in additional people who could help her to deliver without having so much burden on her for delivery. And then she's able to grow her business to the next level, has recently sold a bunch of 60Ks. I can't keep up because I'm constantly getting texts from her about selling 50 and 60K.

So what you want to have in your business is ongoing marketing that brings in a steady stream of clients that's on the front end and on the back end, you want to have the capacity to receive as many clients as you can without that being dependent upon your time, without you having to serve them individually. And when you create that capacity, you'll find you'll be able to expand your business exponentially.

I hope what I've shared today has given you insights into why we end up on the revenue rollercoaster and some specific things that you can do and change in your business to help you to be able to consistently grow your business and consistently receive clients. With that, I'm going to see you next season in season three, and I'm wishing you a profitable and joyful consulting business.