Making small shifts in our habits will create big results. For example, making just a few adjustments in the way you handle your money will create a BIG difference in your bank account.
Money is the perfect mirror for showing how well we’re doing at stepping into and handling our personal power. It also shows us when we’re holding back and playing too small, when we’re being childish and ignoring our finances, and when we’re worrying about being too successful and outshining someone important in our lives.
When you decide to get your inner game and money handling habits in line, you’ll quickly feel the momentum of living your goals. After all, money is the measure of how many people you’ve met and impacted with your gift of creating beauty and comfort in the lives of others.
Your gift to others deserves to be beautifully rewarded and well paid too. So here are three little habits for creating big results in your life and that you can easily implement right now.
#1 – Start Appreciating Money
The first step is to change your relationship with money. Holding on to any negative emotions related to money will eventually leak into other parts of your life and business.
When you shift your emotions with money you’ll stop ignoring your bank accounts, as well as late paying clients and unbilled design time, and start focusing on the positive actions that will put your inner game on track with money.
#2 – Keep Your Bookkeeping In Order
Create a simple system for tracking invoices and receipts on a weekly basis to help make bookkeeping easy and manageable.
Many designers don’t keep track of their income and expenses. Usually their invoices and receipts stay in a big pile until tax time and that’s when sorting it all out becomes overwhelming to deal with.
Knowing how much money you’ve created is truly empowering! Your income is usually way more than you give yourself credit for and knowing how money flows in and out of your business will often help you avert a problem long before it happens.
#3 – Raise Your Fees
Notice I said raise your fees and not your hourly rate. Raising your hourly charge and then not billing all your time is the same as giving yourself a demotion.
The inner game of presenting higher fees may stir up a variety of emotions, so be sure to focus on how raising that fee will help you.
Start by raising your fee to only as far as you are comfortable with right now. You‘ll have chances to increase it in the future and this first step will help you comfortably expand into this new sense of self-worth instead of shrinking inward and backward.
If the total hours you’ve been charging to design a living room is around $4,500 then it’s time to charge $5,800 as a fee. And if you’ve been doing $30,000 in product for those living rooms then it’s also time to push that number up to $40,000.
Raising your fees tells the world that you are confident in the results and transformation that you create, helping others to see your value.
Embrace these steps and start becoming the person and professional you (and I) know you are!