I feel like I’m all caught up on life. I have so much great news and great things going on lately I feel like I could write an entire post on “kickass things happening in my life”. Here they are, in summary, in no particular order:
1) I’m going traveling in 2 weeks to the states for Coachella festival with three friends from New Zealand (how fun) and then off to Europe for a conference with some more friends from New Zealand and then going to Copenhagen, Barcelona, and … GREECE!
2) I’m going traveling this week with my boyfriend to Tikal which is a special place here in Guatemala.
3) I’ve had my best month of business, ever, this month
4) My Spanish is improving and I’m having fun with it
5) I’ll be going home at the end of June to see friends and family
6) I finally have everything I need to start my residency application
7) One of my best friends arrives in a week and a half and will be living in my town
I don’t know if life could get much better than it is right now. I feel so blessed to say that after an extremely painful and difficult 2014. But sometimes, I think we need a little darkness so that the light is much sweeter.
Business has been great and after a bit of an absence from monthly income reports I’m looking forward to posting mine this week. I started looking at the weaknesses of my business and have tried to refine things. Here are the changes I’ve made:
1) I changed my currency
Not for billing clients, but the currency that I recorded my earnings as I went. I was using NZD, which has a lower face value than USD. Here in Guatemala I think in USD and it made no sense to be using NZD. I also think the lower number value of the USD made me feel a little more pressure to hustle because $8,000 (for example) is less impressive than $10,000 (which is what it would be roughly in NZD). This tiny little step put me on the edge a little more and I hustled my heart out. If you already work in USD, why not change it to record in pounds for a month and see if it makes a difference to your enthusiasm.
2) Recording all new contacts
In a spreadsheet I’ve started collecting all new contacts and noting which site they emailed me from. This is a great help because I can keep track of where my new clients are coming from and make sure I’ve worked with them on all my sites. I can’t believe I wasn’t doing this before hand. I was letting so many potential deals slip through my hands.
3) Recording In Progress Deals
I have a lot of clients write to me requesting posts and then they flake out. They don’t reply, or don’t send the promised content to me. Usually they would get lost in the dark depths of my email account, but because I’m recording all serious inquiries, I can follow up with them in a week or two if I haven’t heard from them. This has helped me, and my assistant, be way more on the mark.
4) Changing my VA’s salary to partially hourly and partially commission based
In the past few months I’ve given my VA more and more and more tasks. She’s handled them like a rock star and my business has grown from strength to strength because of her invaluable help. Originally I was paying her an hourly wage, when I handed more tasks to her I increased her hourly wage and I also added in commission. The better my business does, she better she is financially rewarded. I think this encourages her to hustle more, on my behalf, and we both celebrates the good weeks she has (pay-wise) because they’re an indication I’ve had a great week too.
These subtle changes have seen my business grow from strength to strength. This has been my best month of income, ever and I’ve earned my old post-tax salary in a single month.
Have you made any changes lately that have helped your business grow? I’d love to hear them.