What happened when I stopped focusing on turnover
The surprising outcome of trying to avoid burnout, how to design a business and Google's latest core update.
Hello!
It’s been a while so here’s a quick life update from me. I’m currently loving: the new season of Below Deck (don’t judge it’s my ultimate “switch off” TV), the sight of sunshine after what feels like an almost endless winter and the fact that my 21-month-old year old now says “bless me” every time she sneezes 🥲
After a weirdly quiet start to the year things have picked up with gusto the last month and I’m really enjoying being busy with chunky projects like SEO strategies and marketing management. I’ve also had a huge surge of inspiration on my creative projects which I remember getting last time I was in late-stage pregnancy. It’s a catch22 because you feel like you could do all the things but have to remind yourself that in a few months you’ll be in a sleep deprived newborn haze and the projects will have to wait.
With that being said, today I wanted to talk about something interesting I’ve realised about making money in my business.
For a long while I was focused on increasing my business turnover year-on-year. But all that really happened was that I ended up taking on more work.
You see, I think a lot of us fall into this trap where earning more just means working more. Taking on more clients or more projects. Which is fine and good in many stretches of life but the trouble is, it just doesn’t scale in a business where you’re selling your time for money.
You either run out of time to sell, or you sell so much of your time that you feel incredibly overworked.
When I came back to freelancing the second time around a high turnover was not on my list of priorities. Yes I needed to make enough to live on, but after being burned out by my last role my number one priority was to not feel like that again. It helped that I’d also made the connection that it wasn’t “work” or even working long hours that made me feel burned out. It was stuff like spending 8 hours a day on Zoom calls or having zero control over how many meetings were being added to my calendar.
This meant that when I started freelancing again I was focused on three things:
How I worked with clients and what would give them the most value out of all of the things I could do
How I spent my working days (i.e. how much time spent in meetings or on messengers vs how much deep work)
What my “ideal” week might look like and how that translated into the type of projects I could take on
These were the things I focused on endlessly throughout the next year. I thought consciously about my time, I did retrospectives on projects asking myself: was this a good project or a bad project? How long had it taken me to complete? Which projects had provided most value for my clients?
At the end of that year, I’d turned over my first £100k “six figure” year.
Which at the time seemed like a happy coincidence and wasn’t something I thought too much about. I was just so happy that I’d come back to freelancing without having to work evenings/weekends and that I enjoyed 95% of the stuff I was spending my time on.
Of course this makes it sound easy and the truth is, it took a huge mindset shift. More boundary setting and definitely saying no more which has always been something I’ve struggled against. I also had to resist the freelance famine panic which would usually see me taking all and any work on if there was even a hint that I might be quiet.
But in my heart I had the incentive of knowing what I was trying to avoid and this kept me dedicated to my mission: to design a business that didn’t burn me out and that was completely comfortable to run - for years to come.
I’ve stuck to this ever since and you want to know the best thing? When I went from working five days a week to 2.5 days per week after having my daughter, I used the same principles to redesign how I worked. Matching the type of projects I took on to my energy, and reducing even further the amount of calls/meetings and “live” work elements that were harder to facilitate around my new commitments.
And at the end of my first six months back working, I’d made a turnover of £56,000. Teaching me that I could retain the same yearly income despite only working half of the time.
Because that, I believe, is the real crux of what happens when you think about business design.
By not just focusing on increasing turnover you create a business that can scale. I’ll be forever grateful to what that year taught me - and to have a business that mostly feels comfortable to run, even in this season of life where motherhood is my priority.
Have you ever tried to redesign how you work? I’d love to hear your thoughts - hit reply and let me know.
Yours,
Beth
P.S. If you’d like to learn about this type of thing more deeply or even rewrite your own approach to business I’m running my Thriving Freelance Programme for probably the last time this year in April. It’s £350 to join and gives you four weeks packed full of tangible business advice, design blueprints, resources and accountability to change how you work and get the most from your freelance career. More details here and if you have any questions about whether or not it’s for you then please reply and I can share more about how it works.
Interesting links for this week 👀
I’m totally fascinated by how users are adopting TikTok (and other social channels) like search engines. And with TikTok launching a new search insights engine for creators it seems that they too, see the potential for creating content on social media that’s search engine optimised for what users are looking for.
This month Google released a new core update for search (“core” means it’s a big one), which looks to address low-quality content that may have been “created for search engines” rather than people. I don’t think Google is as good at this as they like to believe, but it is a good proof point to share with clients/writers on the importance of high-quality content over, say, using an AI tool to generate mass content.
Should B2B companies be aiming to become media companies? This summary from B2B marketing guru Dave Gerhardt is a great explanation of why creating relevant content for your audience is almost always a good idea.
Thanks for reading ❤️
Hi I’m Beth 👋 a freelance marketer who helps manage and execute marketing for startups and growing businesses 🚀.
I also mentor freelance and in-house marketers looking for fulfilling, financially rewarding careers. Join my Thriving Freelancer programme here.
You can find out more about what I do on My website or Built by Content.