How to make more money when you are fully booked

Want to know how to make more money when you are fully booked? For many service-based business owners, the dream is to be fully booked. However, it is common to become fully booked and then realise you can’t achieve your financial goals, or for you to want to increase your financial goal. In either case, it can be hard to see how you could possibly make more money than you currently are, but it is possible! Keep on reading to find out how to make more money when you are fully booked.

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How to make more money when you are fully booked

1. Raise your prices

 

Firstly, congratulations on being fully booked! You’ve managed to generate enough demand to fill your books and that is no small feat. However, given that the demand is there at your current prices the likelihood is that you could raise your prices, still be fully booked and make more money in the process.

 

Raising your prices is often the easiest way to make money in your business. You get paid more to do exactly the same work. Depending on your business model it could be that by raising your prices you’ll start to make money in your business quickly. However, if you have clients who have booked to work with you on a retainer or a number of months in advance then it may time some time for the increase in your prices to actually impact the revenue coming into your business.

 

Raising your prices is technically a very quick and easy way to increase the revenue in your business, but emotionally it can be harder. For more information about raising your prices read How to raise your prices as a coach or consultant.

 

2. Free up more of your time by outsourcing

 

If you are like most service-based business owners, then you are fully booked because you are working the maximum amount of hours you want to work. However, in many cases, the number of hours you are working in your business isn’t the number of hours you are working with a client.

 

When you are fully booked it is time to look closely at how you are using your time within the business and see if there are tasks you can outsource to free up more of your time.

 

For example, Heather is a financial coach and currently, this is how she spends her time in her business:

 

Client Calls: 8 hours

Client Notes: 4 hours

Social Media Content Creation: 4 hours

Social Media Engagement: 2 hours

Email Marketing: 1.5 hour

Podcast Recording: 1 hour

Podcast Editing and Uploading: 2.5 hours

Emails: 2 hours

Finances: 2 hours

General Admin: 1 hour

 

Total hours per week: 28 hours

 

 

Whilst Heather can be responsible for all of these activities she doesn’t have to be. She could outsource social media content creation, email marketing, podcast editing and uploading, and finances. This would free up 10 hours a week and enable her to take on an extra 6 clients! All of a sudden Heather has the ability to increase her income from 1-to-1 clients by 75% by outsourcing.

 

If she outsourced those tasks and took on more clients then her new week could look like this:

 

Client Calls: 14 hours

Client Notes: 7 hours

Social Media Content Creation: 0 (outsourced)

Social Media Engagement: 2 hours

Email Marketing: 0 (outsourced)

Podcast Recording: 1 hour

Podcast Editing and Uploading: 0 (outsourced)

Emails: 2 hours

Finances: 0 (outsourced)

General Admin: 1 hour

 

Total hours per week: 27 hours

 

In her new week, she could actually work less and can still increase her revenue by 75%.

 

Obviously, when you outsource you don’t keep all of the increase in revenue. However, what you need to focus on is whether you can outsource an activity for less than you can earn if you had that extra time to work.

 

So in Heather’s case, she would need to outsource 10 hours per week. If she was able to outsource this work at £30 per hour that would cost her = £300 per week. Heather charges £100 per hour and by outsourcing has the opportunity to work with 6 more clients. This means she could earn an extra £600 per week. Even taking into consideration the outsourcing fees she’d still be making an extra £300 per week in her business.

 

You can absolutely outsource for less than £30 per hour (especially if you hire someone from a developing country) and you can absolutely be charging more than £100 per hour. This is just an example to help you to see that whilst outsourcing does involve spending money it can be a great option to help you make more money when you are fully booked.

 

 

Is your head spinning after reading all those numbers? Are you unsure about your prices and whether you could successfully outsource based on your current rates? If you want to review your prices and work out the best way to make more money in your business, then a Pricing Power Hour is perfect for you. I love numbers and will do all the calculations for you. By the end of the session, you’ll be confident with your prices and understand your overall financial potential so you can make decisions like whether to outsource or not. You can find out more and book a pricing power hour here.

 

 

2. Move from 1-to-1 to 1-to-many

 

When you raise your prices, you are trying to increase the amount you can earn within a certain period of time and one individual is paying for that increase. Another way to increase the amount you earn over a certain period of time, without raising the price for one individual, is to move from a 1-to-1 model to a 1-to-many model.

 

With a 1-to-many model, you have the opportunity to drastically make more money in your business without much more work. For example, maybe Heather considers outsourcing and upping the number of 1-to-1 clients she works with. However, the thought of working with 14 clients every week feels too much. She’s happy to increase from 8 to 10, but wants to never work with more than 10 1-1 clients at the same time. Instead, she wants to use the extra time gained back from outsourcing to start a 1-to-many services. She decides to run a 6-week group programme that helps women to get clear on their current financial situation and create a 3-year financial plan to build wealth.

 

The group programme is priced at £300 and will take up 6 hours per week of Heathers time. If Heather used those 6 hours to work 1-to-1 she’d generate an extra £600 a week in revenue. Therefore, as long as Heather sell 13 or more places on the group programme then she’s making more revenue than she would be from 1-to-1 clients. With the group programme, there is no limit Heather could get 20, 50 or 100 people signed up.

 

When you move from a 1-to-1 model to a 1-to-many model your ability to make more money in your business drastically improves, especially if you haven’t capped the number of people who can join. This makes it an excellent way to make more money when you are fully booked.

 

4. Add a passive income stream into your business

Another way to make more money in your business is to add a passive income stream. You might decide you absolutely love how your business is working at the moment and you don’t want to change your model, raise your prices or outsource anything. In that case, you need to find a way of making money without involving your time, which means having to find a passive income stream. A passive income stream is also a valid option to try even if you have outsourced, raised your prices and / or changed your model.

 

To be clear creating a passive income stream does require some time. However, you could decide to set an amount of time to creating the income stream and then it can require fairly minimal input after that.

 

The good news is that as a fully booked business owner you are clearly already doing something right. You have clients to sell additional things to and I’m assuming an audience of some sort. Therefore, you just have to think about what makes sense to add in to your business. Some common options are:

 

• Affiliate marketing – This is where you receive a commission for products/services that you recommend. This is a great option if you are already recommending things to your clients and/or audience.

 

• Digital products – Another common way to add an income stream into your business is by selling digital products. This could be something like a course or an e-book. The focus is on having something that can be sold and delivered online without you having to be involved.

 

There you have it! You now know how to make more money when you are fully booked.  

 

Fully booked may feel like the ultimate business goal, but the reality is that usually once you’ve reached that level, at some point, you’ll start to look at ways to make more money and to keep growing the business.

 

Hopefully, this blog post has helped you to see what options you have to make more money when you are fully booked.

 

In the comments, I would love to know what change you are going to make in your business to make more money.   

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WANT HELP INCREASING YOUR REVENUE AND GROWING YOUR BUSINESS?

Whether you decide to increase your prices, change your business model or add a passive income stream you’ll need a marketing strategy to maximise those changes going smoothly and you reaching your new financial goals.

 

If you are reading this blog post and are already fully booked, then I know your time is limited (and precious) that is why I run Strategy Days. In just one day I’ll work with you to define your growth strategy and then create a personalised marketing strategy to help you achieve your business goals. To find out more or to book a strategy day click here.

You can find out more or book your Strategy Day here.

Feel like you need more than just a day to really grow your business? You can find out all the other ways I work 1-to-1 with solopreneurs and small business owners here.