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This article was originally featured in the Gloss May Newsletter of littleblackdressgroup.com.au

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Like many women who start their own business the concept of FREEDOM was very important to me. This word FREEDOM has so many elements to it but when it boils down to the nitty gritty of my definition, it means freedom to choose. That includes financial freedom, freedom to be myself, lifestyle flexibility, and the experience that I am FREE.

I fell into being self-employed. In the beginning it wasn’t the thing I was going to do. You see, I returned to Consulting to generate cash while I worked out what I really wanted to. It was never going to be the thing I always did. However I have now grown a successful practice, and by successful I mean – a minimum revenue increase of 30% each year for the past 4 years; grown from being a single practioner to having 10 dedicated Consultants; being a highly sought after team of Consultants who are flown all over the country to do what we do, because we are darned good at what we do; and impact the lives of people experiencing injury, illness, and trauma in a very significant and real way.

The truth of this journey however was I wasn’t free. I was trapped in my business, trapped in the cycle of selling my time for money and the busyness that selling time for money create. I was trapped with a sense that I was working so damned hard for very little return. For me the sense of “burnout” was very close all the time.

If felt trapped as an employee, then in the beginning I felt enslaved by being self-employed. The freedom and joy I had so strongly desired continued to allude me. For so long I blamed this all on being a Rehabilitation Counsellor. I (wrongly) believed that I was not a good enough Rehabilitation Counsellor because I couldn’t do the “work” without feeling so enslaved. So like so many health professionals (and other types of professionals) I thought the answer was to choose a different set of skills and practice those. That was wrong! It was the business model that was wrong, the selling time for money time trap that was so wrong.

Now please hear me, this was my experience and I know many people who sell their time for money and do this incredibly well. They do this and they love what they do and how they do it. For me I needed to be FREE from feeling like I MUST sell my time with clients to be able to get to the FREEDOM I wanted. In truth I wanted to be FREE from the necessity of seeing clients 1:1 and to have the choice of who I saw, who I spent my time and without feeling like I have to accept every client that came in the door because more clients means more hours to sell which means more money – RIGHT!?!WRONG!

In reality, we all have 24 hours in a day. We can’t sell any more than 24 hours when we are selling our time for money (Although I do know of some other professions where I am sure they have worked out how you can sell more, but that’s an article for another day).

We have 24 hours a day, 7 days per week, for 365 days per year. That’s a total of 8760 hours available to sell in one year. Now if you are selling yourself at $200 per hour that becomes $1 752 000. Yes you did read this right that 1.7 Million dollars. Stop being excited by this. Because no one is going to sell 24 hours 365 days a year day in and day out. So let’s be more realistic.

Let’s say on average we can sell 6 hours in a day, and we work 48 weeks a year and we are now going to give ourselves two days off a week. That’s now 1440 hours we can sell, bringing us to the more realistic target of $288,000. Now this is not money to be sneezed at, but it’s still a BIG limitation. And it’s a far cry from $1.7M isn’t it. This also means you can have only 4 weeks away from work each year, so if you want to have 4 weeks of “holiday” then you are unable to get sick and your children, partners, parents, dogs are also not allowed to get sick and take you away from your selling time. They can be ill when you have “ billed” what you needed to “bill” to keep you on track to meet the financial commitments you have made for yourself because if you take even 1 hour away from the time to be sold then you are going to have to make that up somewhere and will all of the administration, bookkeeping, marketing, networking, and filing that you have to do goodness only knows when you are going to find that extra time to actually make it up – so guess what you will settle for a pay cut.

Now I am acutely aware that for many of us money is not the strongest motivator to be in business, and if that’s the only motivator we have we probably won’t last very long, because it’s an empty result. However if you want to build a business that provides for you and your family then the model of entrapment I have described above probably isn’t the best model for you.

The day I reviewed the numbers in my business and saw in black and white that I no longer HAD to ever see another client again, and my business would still pay my wage and my lifestyle was the day I experienced FREEDOM! Two weeks later I was in Bali for another week.

I love my clients, customers and Consultants. I serve them will all of my heart. Because I have made the informed choice to build a business that supports my desire to experience freedom. And guess what – my clients experience faster, better results; my customers are happier because I am achieving results quickly and my Consultants know that I will have the time and energy they need from me to empower them to be the best they can be.

I am no longer trapped, or enslaved. I. AM FREE!

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This article was originally featured in the Gloss May Newsletter of littleblackdressgroup.com.au

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