Hello beautiful people!
Let’s get real about our finances.
I promise, this will be — when you’re ready for it — one of the most empowering things you do for your financial fitness.
It’s called “Profit Clarity.” Quite literally, getting clear on where your money’s coming from.
Please. Don’t leave the page. Breathe. Do some tapping. Grab a cocktail. Whatever it takes. Just stick with me for a bit.
In today’s audio I share how something that could’ve been a catastrophic financial situation in my own life turned into major growth in my business — simply because of the work I’d been doing for a few years in analyzing my profit exactly as I’m now asking you to do. Future you is SO going to kiss you for doing this work!
Listen up!
Remember: The anxiety you’re feeling about this work is most likely attached to not knowing what’s up with your money. The truth of this work is actually empowering. Hiding your head in the sand about any of this gives the anxiety more power! You can now take some of that power back.
So here’s how you start this process — when you’re ready — and I mean “when you’re ready” so much that I’m not even going to label it today’s work so you won’t feel the stress of it having to be today: Grab a fresh legal pad, a favorite pen, and your bank statements, check stubs, any records you have about a year’s worth of money coming IN.
Take a break right there. A breath, a bubble bath, a walk, a scream into a pillow. Just gathering those bits of paper can bring up all sorts of triggering thoughts and emotions, so please go easy on yourself with this.
Next up — when you’re ready — create one page for each revenue stream. For me the first time out, that was a page for casting, a page for producing, a page for speaking engagements, a page for coaching, a page for book sales, a page for weekly columns, a page for a subscription product we had at the time (then, pure passive income) called “SMFA Essentials,” a page for “roadshow” (anytime I was paid to speak or teach out of town), and so on.
Yours may be a page for each of your jobby-jobs — include all of them, meaning even that one babysitting gig that earned you a hundred bucks that one time — and then a page for each of your acting TYPES (on-camera theatrical, on-camera commercial, on-camera industrial/non-broadcast, stage, voiceover, live tradeshows, extra work, parts modeling, hosting, you name it).
For my non-showbiz creatives, you can do a single page for each product or service you offer. Individual pages for SKUs. Add another page for your main job. If you’re partnered, you can choose to add in revenue streams of your +1 as well. Whatever feels like will give you a very clear — unflinchingly clear — view of your money coming in. A page for working 1:1 with people. Another page for downloadables people grab from your website. All of it.
When you’re ready, write it alllllllllllll down. Once you’ve totaled up each page (so each income stream has its total for the year), create a list in which you rank which revenue stream “performed best” down to which one brought in the least money for the year.
Important: Do not judge this work! You are doing this in service of getting clear on where your energy could be spent more efficiently. That’s it! This is absolutely not the time to spin out about how little you made, how much debt you’re in, how everyone is right that you should give up your dream. No, sir. Don’t you dare do any of that stinkin’ thinkin’ right now. Your job is to dispassionately make some lists. That’s all.
Next up: Estimate how many hours it took you to get to each total then figure out your hourly rate. Meaning, if your total income for bartending was $30,000 for the year and you worked an average of five six-hour shifts per week with no vacation weeks, your hourly rate was $19.23. If you got paid a total of $1000 to help friends with their websites, get out your calendar to determine how much time you spent doing those little favors. Eighteen hours total? Okay, great, that’s a $55.56/hr. rate.
Ooh. Do you see what I see? You could give yourself an immediate raise just by letting more friends know that you can help them with their websites. Heck, should you decide to standardize your rates — like put up a little page on your own website that says you’ll do someone’s site for $75/hr. or X number of WordPress pages for Y number of dollars (after doing the math to figure out how long that would actually take you, so it’s also something higher than your already-awesome $55.56/hr. “bump into the money by doing favors for friends” rate) — and ask those folks who are happy with having had your help last year to provide testimonials for your site and then to tell a friend, you can actually cut BACK one shift a week from your less-profitable bartending gig and have more time to invest in growing your creative business!
What?!? Holy crap. This just got interesting, didn’t it?
Now the pages of this legal pad are becoming maps to better use of your time, energy, and passion (Day 17)! When you learn your that your voiceover bookings brought you $2500 last year but you only put a handful of hours into pursuing voiceover work, maybe you decide to reallocate some of those delivery-driving shifts toward more actively pursuing voiceover work so you can feel like a fucking rockstar for depositing MORE storytelling-based money into your account.
So what if it’s not on-camera acting work? You just got a raise — for creative storytelling — and all you did was shift your focus to something that was already profitable for you. Now you have more free time to produce your pet project, put your on-brand scene on your reel, invest in film festival submission fees so you can take your footage to the next tier… whatever!
The really fun part is that going forward, every buck that comes into your life — for any reason — you’re gonna start seeing as data (delicious data) that helps you spend every moment more efficiently focused on getting to your next tier faster.
Whoa.
Are you as excited as I am?
If not yet, you will be. I can promise you that. And when this work saves your bacon like it saved mine? Oh man, you’ll be shouting from the rooftops that more creatives need to be in love with tracking their money.
You’ll begin to see commission payouts as a joy-filled celebration of your work at the next tier. You’ll celebrate paying higher taxes because it represents that you’ve upped your income! When you see things shifting because of your simple adjustment in focus, you’ll realize how powerful you are and never again be afraid of negotiating for the rate you know you’re capable of, category by category in your list of income streams.
Sexy stuff, y’all.
Come back to this. Every day if you have to. I know this was a terrifying start about how — in one day — I lost a quarter of our household revenue, but the end result is so damn good, I just couldn’t keep it to myself.
You’re welcome.
’til tomorrow… stay ninja!
