51 ⎸ How to make more and work less with James Wedmore

This is a very special episode — a takeover! from my business mentor, James Wedmore. We interviewed him a few episodes back but today he’s recorded a solo episode just for you about How to Work Less but Make More. Which is something we can all agree that would be nice, right?

So tune in today to hear:

• the time & money connection
• the way of being you have to disconnect from
• how to leverage offers and scale

If you’re ready to learn more from James and implement some of the strategies that I operate with in my business, so you can make more and work less, click these links below:

Rise of the Digital CEO Free Trainings>>

Business By Design  >>

Connect with James on Instagram>>

Thanks for listening. If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram Stories and tag me, @ambitiousbookkeeper and James @jameswedmore

For more information about the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast or interest in our programs or mentoring visit our resources below:

Visit our website: ambitiousbookkeeper.com

Follow the Blog: ambitiousbookkeeper.com/blog

Connect on Instagram: instagram.com/ambitiousbookkeeper

Connect on LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/SerenaShoup

Connect of Facebook: Facebook.com/serenashoupcpa

Thank you for your support of our show. If you haven’t left a review yet it’s super simple. Please go to: https://www.ambitiousbookkeeper.com/podcast and leave your review.

• Podcast Editing: Ian Gilliam: iangilliam.com
• Descript (affiliate link)
• Buzzsprout (affiliate link)

Click here to get the free First 100 Leads Training with James Wedmore >>

Join the next free training at ambitiousbookkeeper.com/training

Transcript

[00:00:00] 

[00:00:30] A few episodes back on episode 48. In fact, I interviewed James Wedmore, an online business mentor of mine, and today I'm having him back on the podcast. This is more of a podcast takeover where you're going to hear just from him about how to make more while working less something. I think we can all agree would be quite nice. But before we get into it, I just want to remind you that on June 2nd, his free training series, The Rise of the Digital CEO starts. This only happens once a year. It's going to be different this year than any year before, because he's actually teaching it live with a real life audience where he'll be taking them through his content and implementing with them in front of you. So it's going to be incredible. Everything James does is above and beyond what you'd expect. I have linked the website to register for this free training series in today's episode show notes. So make sure you check those out and register.

[00:01:33] At the end of the three free trainings, James actually opens up his signature program business by design, which I have gone through multiple times. And I continue to go back to it time and time again, as I'm continuing to grow and build my business. So I am an affiliate of Business by Design this year for the launch. And I will be offering some special bonuses if you join through my link. So make sure you go and just register for those free trainings with the link in the show notes and I will be in your ears again talking about the bonuses I'll be offering when business by design opens so without further ado let's get into today's episode 

[00:02:17] Hi there. My name is James Wedmore, founder of business by design the rapid growth system for online experts that want to rapidly scale and grow their digital product based business and host of the mind your business podcast. And I was asked to do an episode for you specifically on the topic and the big, big question of how do you make more and work less.

[00:02:45] So that's exactly what we're going to talk about in today's episode. And we're going to approach this from several different angles, because that's what I've been able to do today. I have an eight figure a year company for several years now I've been running an eight figure a year company and have really whittled it down to just a couple of hours per day, that changes here and there.

[00:03:05] You know, there's busier seasons in these. I don't have to be working 14 hour days or sleepless nights or anything of that nature. In fact, as I reflect back on my earlier days, I was working far, far, far. Pushing myself, way harder to generate a fraction of a fraction of what our business does today. And this is a process.

[00:03:27] This didn't happen overnight. I've been running an online business, selling digital products for the past 15 years. I've made just about every mistake in the book, and it's a pretty big book and I've learned a lot along the way. I've also been able to coach thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs at every single level.

[00:03:46] And we do everything in the realm of. You know, strategic business growth to increasing performance, building a team, advanced marketing sales, as well as personal and spiritual growth as well. So as a long laundry list, because there's a lot that I've learned and a lot of it the hard way, but it keeps coming back to this same question, which is how do I work less and make.

[00:04:11] So let's start at the beginning here with what I think will be the most important thing that I share. And if it's the only thing that you hear may just be the most powerful thing. I believe that 90% of, if not all hundred percent of the people that ask this question, There's something behind this that is actually causing the asking of the question, which is that they're connected.

[00:04:31] It's almost presupposing that they're connected. What do you mean by that, James? Well, how do I make more and work less means that we are still operating from some time money connects. Most of us have been adopted and an indoctrinated into a paradigm that I call the employee mindset where making more means I have to work more.

[00:04:56] If you don't believe me, you can pause this episode right now and see what answers your unconscious mind give you when you say in order to make more, I must blank, or I believe that in order to make more, I must blank. And for most of us it's work harder, work longer work. For most of us it's struggle, sacrifice, push hustle.

[00:05:19] Right. And if I do more, I'll make more. So the first answer to how do I work less and make more, you cannot pass go. You can not collect $200 and you definitely can't make more and work less. If you don't do this first piece, we must once. And for all break the time money connection, we must once. And for all, if you are an entrepreneur, We must once and for all shed the identity of the employee paradigm and step into the world of entrepreneurship.

[00:05:50] The moment you do that and truly are in that world, you recognize that money and the ability to make money and attract money is not contingent upon work. That doesn't mean when I, by the way, when I say this, that it means you just sit on the couch all day and collect checks, no work is still required. I'm saying it's not directly correlated. Which means if you're an employee and I hire you and you work one hour, I give you a certain amount of money. Let's say I give you 30 bucks. You work for an hour. Here's 30 bucks. So you want to make 60 bucks. You want to double your money, double your time. You want to spend more hours. Yeah. You're gonna make.

[00:06:29] Some of us, most of us are still doing that in our business. And when you do this in your business, two things are real big problem. Number one, it's total fact that you are running your business, just like you fuel your. You're fueling your business from a finite resource, which means you've already decided there's a cap, there's a limit.

[00:06:51] And there's a constraint to my business growth. There's a ceiling. And for some of us, it's a pretty low ceiling. Why? Because there's only so many hours in a day. There's only so much energy. You have hours and output of work. And so now you're limited to that if working 10 hours a day, which is a lot, is all.

[00:07:11] And that makes you a thousand bucks a day. Then you're limited to a thousand times 365. If you could maintain that for the whole year, which most people can't right now. But there's another problem is that when we run from this paradigm, we've completely utterly convinced ourselves that money is more valuable than time because we're willing to give away a finite precious resource for money and every single successful entrepreneur I know today has.

[00:07:42] It may not happen overnight for you. I understand, but they know that time is more valuable than money. Why? Because money is an infinite resource. You spend time, you can't get it back, you spend money, you can get it back. And then some and sky is the limit. So what I want us to understand here that we cannot go any further in this conversation.

[00:08:03] If we're still operating our business, that making more money means I have to work more. You will never be able to work less and still make more. We must break the chains of that connection. And I'll give you an example of this just to drive it home. Because number one, look around, do you know, at least one person that is working really hard and working like 12 hour days, but they have very little to show for it.

[00:08:25] Some of you might be like, yeah, that's me. Okay. So you're working really hard. You're working the. And someone that you know is doing that. And they have little to, nothing to show for it, proof in the pudding right there. Right. You know, here's an example that does nothing to do with business. You and I are neighbors and we both decided the same time.

[00:08:42] Hey, we should put pools in our backyard. And you're like, that's a great idea. And I start grabbing my shovels and I get to work and I'm digging, digging, digging. And then you look at me like, look at this knucklehead shovels, when you go rent some big earth mover. And in two days you've dug a hole and I've got like, Like a little ditch in two days and you're done.

[00:09:03] Okay. So the reality is the fact is I worked harder than you. I worked way harder than you. You just had to control some levers, but you got the result. So the outcome and results that we want, we believe are only contingent upon how long and how hard we effort. Then we're always going to fall short and we really run the risk of burnout because how many pools can you dig with a shovel, right.

[00:09:29] And how long is that going to take you before your blisters on your fingers? You're sore. You're, you know, sunburned in the sun, all that stuff. Right? So that's what I'm talking about. Now. Here's another example of this. My little sister just launched her product and. She did the same launch twice. She quadrupled the price.

[00:09:49] She took it from 100 to 400 and doubled her sales boom, overnight as amazing. Right. So yeah, conversion rate went down, but she did no additional work except change the price. She doubled sales. So these are examples like that. Wasn't cause she worked more, she didn't work twice as much. She worked at. So we need to break free from that time money connection.

[00:10:19] We don't want to keep running around saying I want a certain amount of money, but I don't believe I deserve it. So I must sacrifice and work harder and longer to prove to myself that I deserve it. Cause that'll never happen. It's like chasing Mirage, right? It's just not going to happen. So don't focus on making money, smart entrepreneurs, focus on making a machine that makes.

[00:10:40] And that's what you want to do. You want to build a machine? You want to do what it takes, effort, time, energy, and money to build the machine, and then we need to get that machine to work for you. So when you're doing that, you're thinking more strategically. So to make more, we want to be more strategic in all of our thinking.

[00:10:59] In other words, we want to be leveraged. You want to understand the model that you're working from. There's a lot of bad business models for people that want to make more work less. Here's a great. We're running a restaurant. If you're like James, I really want to make more money and work less. I think I'm going to start a restaurant.

[00:11:16] Do you know how much time, money and stress being in the restaurant industry would be for you O mg? Right? So that's not a good model. And you say, James, I want to offer social media. One-on-one consulting for $50 an hour, probably going to have to work long hours to make the money that you want. So there's no leverage.

[00:11:38] Okay. So when we do leveraged, we mean, we're going to do the work once, but it's going to have multiple outputs. I'm going to give you an example of this years ago, I promoted someone else's program when people bought it through my affiliate link, I included a live event in person. So I got paid a commission to host this live event two days in Southern California.

[00:12:01] So then I host the. So I got paid by the commissions to host the event. I recorded the whole thing. Boom. All of a sudden, now I've got a new training program. I got a new course cause I recorded the whole thing. Then I sold that in the future. I sold those recordings. Number two, I got testimonials from people that were there that I could use those testimonials in my marketing.

[00:12:22] And number three, I made an offer there. So I had four benefits from one three-day event. I got commissions from a program, I got to record it, I got testimonials and I made an additional offer. And I think I generated like an additional like 20, 30,000 there. Okay. That's leverage thinking. And when we're being smart and strategic in our business, obviously we want leveraged offers every single online business and online expert needs to have a leveraged offer.

[00:12:50] Now a leveraged, scalable offer means whether one person buys or 1 million people buy. It does not matter. It's no different. You could have a thousand people go in it tomorrow. I know it's kind of hard for some people to fathom like, oh my gosh, is the dads people going through my course, like I'm freaking out. Right. But it's two people. It's no big deal, but it's the same thing. It's all 1000 unique individuals. So we all need to have that. If we want to be making more, is going to be really hard to work less, but continue to make more. If there isn't a leveraged offer. And so any type of leveraged offer online course, a membership, any digital product of sorts. Is where it doesn't matter how many people buy it, your time doesn't go up and your cost doesn't go up. So if you went from one member in your course to a thousand, you wouldn't spend any more time, you know, generally speaking. Right. But if you had one client coaching, client one-on-one and all of a sudden got a thousand one-on-one coaching clients. That's an example of not a scaled or leveraged offer. So we need to have that in place. 

[00:13:59] Okay. So that needs to be there before you go any further, then we need to have a strategic way of getting that to as many people as possible and understanding that once you've built that machine to sell that leveraged offer the machine should be built in such a way so that the more people that see the offer, the more.

[00:14:20] So if you don't have a way where thousands of people can see the offer at once, you're not really doing something to make more work less. Does this make sense? In other words, if the only way you sell your courses, you get on a phone call with someone or they have to fill out a form or send you an email.

[00:14:37] You don't really have a scaled sale system, but if you go live on Facebook at a certain time, and there's 2000 people watching you live. All right now we're onto something. Does that make sense? So the offer and the sales process has to be leveraged and scalable as well. And it doesn't mean all of your offers have to be this way. I have offers that are not as leveraged or scalable, but I do have offers that are, so I have both. 

[00:15:06] Next. We want to look at your pricing. Always have what we're going to call premium pricing. If you don't have premium. Then I have to ask why. And I'm assuming that the reason is you think that if you have it priced lower, people will choose you over your competition. That means you're playing the price game as your unique positioning in the marketplace, and that's a price war. And if you play a price war, you know, if your USP, your unique selling proposition is based on, well, I'm cheaper than you. You'll lose. Okay. And because now you're associated as being just a cheap product. So what you do, you attract cheapy people. They're just the freebie seekers. That's crazy because you're saying that's the only benefit that you offer in the marketplace is that you can do it a little cheaper. Why not offer a premium service, a premium product, and charge what it's worth, which means it's a premium price.

[00:16:06] Now I understand I could be talking to people in many different niches. So this is all relative. So what premium price means is you're in the top 10% of your market, your price right up there at the top. I don't want you to see, okay, everyone, let's see I'm in the fitness space. And most fitness memberships are like $30 a month. Screw it. I'm going for 300 a month. Probably not the best, unless you're like, you're very skilled in what you do. As a sales and marketer to do that, to make that jump. I'm not saying you can't do that. I would say probably not the best place to start, but you should be premium priced premium price means you're in the top 10% of your market for comparable type products and services. Okay. And sometimes it's even going higher than that. That's fantastic. You know, I offer premium services. I always over-deliver and my stuff ain't cheap. You know, and because of that, I attract really committed, serious, awesome people that I love working with. I think you should be doing the same. 

[00:17:00] So when your prices are higher for a leveraged, scalable product, you're going to make more by working less period. Right? And I won't get into the whole world of numbers and fun stuff, but some people go, but James will, my conversion rates go down. If I raise my prices, of course they could totally go down. But the higher price still tends to offset the dip, the minor dip that happens in conversion. And it's usually it's pretty minor. So food for thought. 

[00:17:26] Final thing in my make more column that needs to be in place here. And that is an Ascension model. I talk about this heavily in my training for business by design, in my free workshop, the rise of the digital CEO, the Ascension model is understanding that this whole concept of lifetime customer value (LTV). The higher your LTV is in your company. The more successful your company is going to be. So what's an LTV? LTV is the total dollar amount of a customer over their lifetime. With you. In other words, you've heard the stories or the little facts floating around that. Getting a yes from an existing customer is up to 10 times easier and cheaper than getting a yes from a complete stranger. And I don't know if it's 10 times it could be 11 times it could be 25 times. I don't know what the exact number is, but it definitely has truth to it. It is absolutely very accurate to get someone to say yes again, to continue working with you then to go chase new people. Think about that. 

[00:18:27] So now we have a leveraged offer, which means we can bring in more people. We have it at a premium price and we've brought them in through a leveraged sales system at a high price. And now we stack that with a second or third offer, so that it's easier to sell to existing people and keep them in. And I have many, many, many examples of this, but I have an Ascension model where people can join my program and then they can upgrade to coaching, to work with me and my coaches at a more intimate level. But then we have opportunities for people to renew and we asked people to stay in our programs. Hey, it's a 12 month program. They get to the end of the 12 months. You want to come back for another 12 months and we see anywhere from 40% to 80%, not just going from one product to the next. But staying another year or a third year, and this is one of the most effective ways when you put them all together, that's the most powerful, but this is one of the most effective ways that you can be making more free from your efforting is when you have a backend offer or what we call putting the essential model in place where one product leads to the next one. Now that you've learned this, how would you like to learn now? You've completed this, we've learned this, gone through this. Here's the next thing to graduate. Or here's how to renew or stay another year, come to the next one, you know, many, many different ways for this to manifest, but I wanted to lay these out in a big picture process.

[00:19:59] So these are all ways that we can start to leverage break free from the efforting in order to attract more revenue. But there's also ways to work less. In fact, we have to focus on these because this is so important. So many ways that we could be working less. So I'm going to go over a lot of them 

[00:20:13] First of all, this is the one that people are going to hate the most, but this is the one that you're going to need the most. And that's hiring, hiring any kind of team to delegate, to outsource, to get it off your plate. And if it means just starting with your first virtual assistant, you know, because just getting a couple of hours a day back is going to be such a difference for you. But if you're sitting here and that's fine, if you are, but I'm just going to call you out and you say, James, I want to make more and I want to work last, but I'm unwilling to hire anybody, then good luck to you. I don't know what to tell. Because that's the easiest, most powerful way to work less. Let's do attract a team and to start with one person, even a part-time virtual assistant should just take a few things off of your plate.

[00:20:53] Next, once we start outsourcing and delegating, that goes into a whole world, it really, really does. We can start looking at automating things. How can you automate more in your business? There's so many tools out there like we use monday.com and Zapier that allow you to automate things that normally we don't, whether it's calendar invites or, you know, certain emails or weekly processes and check-ins and reminders, all these little things that five minutes here, 10 minutes there. And if you're not looking at it, they all add up and they eat, wait your day. And so when we begin to automate those things, we get our time back. 

[00:21:28] Next, I want you to look at ways in which you can rinse and repeat, how can we repurpose and reuse? You know, if you're doing a launch or promotion. Are you starting from scratch every time you writing all those emails, again, all that copy again, redo the sales page, redo the messaging, or are you saying let's keep it as it is. Let's use those same emails. Let's use that same ad. Let's just tweak it here, change it here. Let's use the same thing here. Let's repurpose. You know, we do a ton of repurposing and a ton of leveraging, which means I can record a podcast episode like this and I can take a clip and I can go, boom. Now it's on Instagram. Now it's on Tik TOK. So how can we repurpose and reuse our existing content? Because you are the bottleneck as an online expert, we have to create so much content as it is. So you might as well leverage it. You might as well reuse it. 

[00:22:25] And then the last thing here is really around deletion. If you want to work less. Yeah, we got to hire got to outsource, we got to automate, we've got to repurpose, but what about deleting some things we're doing? We just have to be honest with ourselves. It's time to stop doing it. And the things you want to delete, the things you need to stop doing are the things that are not scalable. So some people say, you know, James, I'm doing pretty good, but I still want to work less. And I am working with one-on-one clients. I have two one-on-one clients is kind of dragging me down. I'm kind of tired of them, but I make a couple thousand extra a month with it. So it's like hard to let go of that money. And I've been there, I totally get that. But if you're feeling that call, I can guarantee you when you let that go, that old unscalable money go. If you feel like it is time to go, it's a gas kind of draining me, feels heavy now. It will just open you up for more scalable, smart money-making opportunities, guaranteed. That's how it always happens. But sometimes we hold onto those things. They keep us busy and they drain us a bit. 

[00:23:37] If you're still doing some low value activities that in your heart, you know, that you shouldn't be doing it's time to get them off your plate. And sometimes we're just doing things in the business that we just have to be honest with ourselves and in the business, like we spent a lot of time on Pinterest and in one day I just say, okay guys, it's not really doing anything for us. Let's cut our losses we'll go to Tik Tok. You guys gotta be honest. You gotta be really honest with yourself. Is this serving the business? Is this growing the businesses, is this the moving the needle, or am I just staying busy? And a lot of people just stay really, really busy in their business. 

[00:24:13] So I love this conversation. I love this question. How do I work less and make more? Because what I've found is when you are very intentional and strategic, what you will find is that when you do less, you end up making more and that's what I want for all of you. I hope this episode was of value to you. I hope it opens. Your eyes to something that maybe needs to go or something that you have been putting off in your business that will help you in order to increase revenue without increasing your workload. Cause that's, what's possible for you. That's what I've been able to do. That's what my students and clients been able to do. And now it's your time. 

[00:24:55] And if you'd like to learn more from me and my system and approach for building a very scalable and very profitable online business, I invite you to come join me for my three-part live training workshop entitled The Rise of the Digital CEO happening this June 2nd. I call it the digital CEO because the moment we got into business, we created an organization. Even if it's just you, that organization consists of several roles. There's the role of customer support and tech and invoicing and your marketing and your sales department, your social media manager, your copywriter, and the CEO. And what I tell my students over and over again is it's the role that you fill in your business that determines the results that you receive. And it's time to fill the role that your business needs from you, the role of the digital CEO, so you can start getting the results that you definitely, definitely deserve.

[00:25:52] So I hope you'll come join us for this powerful three-part training that's designed to completely and radically transform your business from the inside out. We've had students say that this free training was more valuable, more eyeopening, and more mind blowing than most paid programs they've ever been a part of and that's because I've been doing this for over 15 years and I've been able to help thousands of online experts like yourself, grow and scale. And yeah, today people call me the Millionaire Maker. I love that title and that's what's possible for all of us to grow our business. Yeah, to make more. And most importantly, to help more people. So come join us so that you can do the same in your business. That is the Rise of the Digital CEO coming June 2nd.

[00:26:47]