This is not an overnight success story.
This is not an “I made six figures in my first six months!” story.
It’s not an “I reached 100k followers in 1 year” story either.
Real talk?
In my first few years, I barely made £10k.
(I could have made more in those first few years and I’ll discuss the mistakes I made so you don’t have to make them in an upcoming episode! Subscribe so you don’t miss it.)
Here’s what my business income progression has looked like over the last decade:
I hope this graph normalizes two things for you:
It is common to have a slow start in your online business. (Especially when, like me, you haven't invested in online education so you can avoid reinventing the wheel and making a lot of mistakes.)
It's normal for your income to ebb and flow, up and down. Growth is never linear. You'll often reach a point where your income will plateau or hover around a similar amount, maybe even *gasp* a tiny bit less, depending on how much you did or didn't work in certain years. It it not normal to 5x your revenue every year or have "quantum leaps" year after year.
In the years I started making the most income, I was working 3 days a week and traveling the world.
I lived in South Korea for six months.
I lived in NYC for 3 months, and took solo trips to LA, Bali and Arizona.
I visited Japan, Italy and Ireland with friends.
I was spending more time than ever on my mental health, rest and personal growth.
I was dating.
In this podcast episode, I take an honest look at 8 things I did that helped me make six figures while working LESS and traveling.
This isn’t an overnight success story. But I’m guessing yours isn’t either. So if your business growth has felt slow and you’re ready to work less and earn more, tune in (or keep reading) to uncover what I did in my own business to make that happen.
Click “play” on the podcast player below to tune in! Or subscribe + listen on iTunes, Google, or Spotify.
Transcript
Welcome back to the podcast.
I should probably start by discussing the obvious - the podcast name change. I might go into it deeper in another episode but for now, here's what you need to know...
I renamed my podcast some time ago from The Simple Business Show to Rewild with Nesha Woolery. (If you don't want to read about this name change, skip a few paragraphs!)
At the time, the name change felt like the right move to make. I felt like I had outgrown my original name - The Simple Business Show - and wasn't even sure I wanted the podcast to be solely about business anymore.
So, the name changed.
But hindsight is a wonderful thing. Over time, I realised that actually, my original business name said EXACTLY what my podcast and business is about: building simple businesses. And not only is that great for my brand, but also pretty great for SEO too.
So, I've made the decision to change the name back to The Simple Business Show.
I've been in business for ten years now and one thing I've learned over the years is that in business, you need to make decisions relatively fast. You shouldn't overthink them.
The only time I DON'T make a decision in my business and I deliberately put it off is when I feel there's a big sense of urgency. It sounds counterintuitive but when a decision is coming from your intuition, it often comes to you quietly and calmly, sometimes repeatedly. But when you're making a decision from fear or scarcity, it feels urgent and desperate. That is how I've come to differentiate intuitive decisions from fearful ones. If a decision is feeling urgent, I tell myself I'll make it another day when I'm feeling calmer and my head is clearer.
If I know I'm making an intuitive decision in my business, I prefer to bang the decision out, take action, and accept that hey, I may regret this decision. Hey, I may change my mind in the future. And that's okay, because as long as I'm taking a step forward, I'll eventually start stepping in the right direction. We stop making progress when we allow ourselves to stop making decisions because they're scary. That's when our business growth- and personal growth - is in trouble.
So, that's why I've changed the podcast name BACK to The Simple Business Show.
And to kick off this new season, I want to talk to you about how I built a six figure business working 3 days a week and traveling the world.
I've shared my business journey with you before in episode 46 - "How I built a six fig business and saved £110k by age 26"
I'm 28 now.
But in this episode, I wanted to focus on how I built my business specifically while working 3 days a week and traveling.
Although I want to emphasize that the six figure part isn't that important.
What's more important and is that you learn how to make a consistent full-time income online WITHOUT working full-time hours. And you get to decide what a full-time income is to you, it doesn't have to be six figures for you to gain something from this episode.
The Problem
A lot of online business owners start their business because they want freedom. But then they end up chained to their business and just as overwhelmed and unhappy as they were in their 9-5. Except now, they have a million more hats to wear and can't count on a regular pay cheque coming in on the same day every month.
And the freedom they wanted - the reason they started their business in the first place - isn't really freedom anymore.
Maybe you can relate?
The time freedom you wanted is gone because you work all the time. Maybe even on evenings and some weekends.
The location freedom you wanted is pointless because even when you're traveling, you're not present enough to enjoy it. You're working, or stressing about your income.
And the financial freedom you wanted is actually financial stress because it's unreliable.
On top of everything, some of you may find your mental freedom challenged while running a business too. You're juggling a lot of balls, taking on a lot of challenges, and it can be tough sometimes.
If you can relate to any of that, you're not alone. And I want to tell you that I'm so proud of you for being out here, running a business. It takes a courageous person to start a business because you're leaping into uncertainty and discomfort. And it takes a resilient, creative, smart person to keep it going.
But the rewards do outweigh the challenges.
And you can learn how structure your business in a way that is simpler. That doesn't require you to:
Hustling and grind all the time.
Work 5+ days a week.
Feel stressed every day.
How?
I can't speak for everyone but can speak from my own experience. And here's how I built a six fig business while I worked 3 days a week and traveled…
1. I sacrificed fast growth for slow and steady growth.
I didn't magically make six figures in my first year or two.
Fast growth is glamourized on social media. You see a lot of posts like, "How I made six figures in 6 months." And that IS impressive. I am in no way saying it isn't to be shared and celebrated, and I'm not saying it isn't possible.
Content like that does really well because people want results fast. We've lost the ability to delay gratification and be patient while waiting for a result, partially thanks to posts like that making it seem like that's the norm.
The problem starts when those entrepreneurs rarely tell you how stressful it was to do that. Or hold back information that shows you that actually, achieving that in that timeframe is quite rare.
One of the top reasons why businesses fail is surprisingly because they grew too fast.
Think about it: if you grow too fast, you outgrow your business systems and processes and need new ones. You outgrow your capacity and suddenly need to take on more help asap, which requires training that help. You outgrow your mindsets and quickly need to uplevel the way you think which is overwhelming. You experience a lot of growing pains all at once. That's not unbearable. But statistically it is a reason many businesses fail.
If I had worked more - if I had put in full time hours and evenings and weekends and really been on the grind- I know I could have made six figs much sooner. And maybe I could even have overcome all those growing pains. I believe I could have. But I'm happy with the slow and steady pace I grew at because it allowed me to work less and live more.
While financial security is very important to me, making sure I live life to the fullest is important too. And I can't do that if i'm spending most of my life behind a laptop. If I have to sacrifice my mental health and the best years of my life for more money, faster, then thanks but no thanks. I'd rather grow my business and finances slower and steadier if it means I also get to maintain my mental health, make memories, and live an adventurous life. (Although, my income growth in the first few years was definitely lower than it could have been, mainly because of mistakes I made. More on that in another episode!)
2. I focused on my top 3 marketing strategies.
I gave myself permission to not put as much effort into others or be on All The Platforms.
There's a LOT of pressure, especially right now, to be on all the platforms and do All The Marketing. But it's just not sustainable. It's a surefire way to burn out.
So you need to know what your top 3 sources of clients and sales are. And if one of those is a social media platform, you also need to know what forms of content perform best for you on that platform. And then lean in to what works.
3. I decided 3, sometimes 4, days a week was ENOUGH time for me to do what I needed to do.
I made the *choice* to work part-time hours. And I believed it was enough time to do what I need to do & earn ENOUGH. If you tell yourself you can complete your work in 3 days a week, you can. If you tell yourself you can do it in 5 days, you can. Whatever you believe is possible, is possible.
4. I do what I can to make my working days as productive as possible.
This means scheduling my tasks around my period cycle. There's really only 1.5 weeks in a month that you're at your most energetic; it's the follicular phase and ovulation phase. In those phases, especially when I'm ovulating, I have a lot of energy. So I try to make those phases the times when I'm creating content, recording videos, or selling. The luteal phase is more suited to reflection, analyzing and going inward. And when on my period I try to take it slow with tasks that require minimal energy.
I also try to put my phone in another room while I work because if I'm on and off social media all day, it really stunts my focus and productivity.
5. I plan.
I don't plan rigorously and inflexibly. I don't colour code or time block, though that is helpful for some.
But I do plan my 90 days at the start of each quater so I know what I need to focus on to make a living.
I then plan what I need to do during the month.
And then I make a plan at the start of each week for what needs to be done that week.
Another common reason businesses fail is because of lack of strategy and planning. If I didn't plan and know exactly how I'm aiming to make my income each month and what I need to do to make it happen, I'd spend most of my 3 work days faffing around, probably doing tasks that don't ultimately help me reach my income goals. A plan keeps me focused, which is needed when you have limited time to spend on your business.
6. I focused on people and community, not algorithms or vanity metrics.
Social media apps want you to focus on the vanity metrics. It keeps you hooked, obsessed, and constantly opening to app to see what your like count is.
But the metrics that matter most are not your likes. It's the messages and comments you're getting. That's where you build community and relationships and gain the trust of ideal clients.
You don't even need 10k followers to make a great living online. Not even to make six figures. If you sell a service and, say, you have 300 followers, but only 20 of them are your true fans, then selling a £2k service to 20 true fans is £40k a year. Selling them a £3500 service is £70k a year. Selling a £5k service is £100k a year.
So yes, build your audience if your future goal is to launch digital products and make an income. But if not, you don't need to spend so much of your time and energy on this.
7. I built a brand, not just a business.
I started out as a freelance designer but always created long form content like blog posts & videos, and had a social media presence. This helped me build a brand and an audience so I could eventually sell products as well as services, and make some passive income.
If one of your future goals is to make passive income, you need to start building an audience now. Because a service based business doesn't need a big audience to make money but with products, it DOES rely on your audience size.
It does take more effort and time to grow an audience so you may be thinking "if I want to work less, I don't want to ADD to my todo list." But this particular point is to benefit future you, not necessarily present you. Build an audience now so future you can cut down on client work, if that's what your long term goal is.
And if you're wondering where you should grow an audience, the answer is most definitely an email list. But to grow that, you need to get traffic to it. So try growing your audience on a social media platform, and regularly offering that audience a freebie if they join your newsletter. If one of your top 3 marketing methods for a social media platform, that's the one you should focus on growing.
8. I did my best to keep my life SIMPLE & live below my means.
Because I didn't need a TON of money to live a good life and do the things I wanted to do - like travel and save- it meant that I didn't often stress about my income. I didn't have to. Living below my means kept my nervous system calm, and that kept me from burning out often, which helped me sustain my business for so long.
If my nervous system had always been on edge, I would have started making fearful decisions, making content that seemed desperate, and I wouldn't have been able to sustain my business feeling that way all the time. Let alone grow it.
So to recap, those 8 points were...
That's it for this episode. If you found it helpful, please do leave a five star rating and review.
About Nesha
Hey there! I’m Nesha, host of The Simple Business Show. I teach freedom seekers how to make a full-time income online without working full-time hours, so they can have the time, location & financial freedom to live the slow + free lifestyle they dream of.
Looking for more ways I can help you? Here they are:
Organize & Automate - Join 1200+ students and learn how to organize your entire online service-based business in just two weeks (on the side of your regular routine!) so you can stop stressing and fall back in love with your business.
Simple Sales School - Learn how to get a consistent flow of clients so you can build the income & financial freedom you desire.
Subscribe & Leave A Review!
If you enjoyed this episode, you can show your support by leaving a review, subscribing, or sharing your biggest takeaways on your Instagram story! Just remember to tag me @neshawoolery so I can see it.
Here’s how to subscribe and review the show:
Subscribe on your favourite podcast platform: iTunes, Google, or Spotify. Click here to open this show in iTunes and leave a five star rating and review.
