10 Things I Quit to Double Revenue and Free Up My Time

Strap yourself in. I’m going to tell you the 10 things that I quit to double my revenue and free up my time.

I was constantly playing life on hard mode. I thought I had to do it all. I thought being successful was the goal. So I consistently worked enough hours for two jobs, for years. I put a big burden on my wife who was homeschooling our girls, and I had additional stress on myself that wasn’t even needed.

I was constantly distracted when I was with my family thinking about all the work I had to get done, and then when I was at work I was feeling guilty for not being with my family. So while I don’t have everything all figured out, I have been able to get fulfillment out of life, and it’s all because I was able to quit these 10 things.

1. Quit Undervaluing Your Time

I used to charge by the hour, and I didn’t charge enough per hour. Then I switched from charging hourly to actually charging based off the value I was providing.

What’s funny is my very first project as a consultant. I was actually creating a 3D train simulator for a company. I didn’t charge by the hour for that one. Just starting out, I really should have. Instead I said, “It’ll be $1,000. For $1,000 I’m going to create a 3D simulation for you.”

What they told me originally was going to be extremely simple, but then feature creep came in, scope creep came in. They kept talking about all these things they wanted to add. This is my very first venture into consulting in the late ’90s, and before it was all said and done I went to them and said, “There’s no way I can do this for less than $10,000.” They agreed, because I was too green to even understand that $1,000 was just nothing for this. Technically this should have easily been a $100,000 project, so they were still getting a good deal at $10,000.

I actually started out trying to do value-based pricing, but I kind of did the wrong thing because I didn’t have things in place to protect me from changes. Because of that experience, I ended up charging per hour later on, and then not charging high enough per hour, doing tons of work, and really just barely keeping my head above water.

2. Quit Saying Yes to Everything

What I realized is when I say yes to something, even by default, I’m actually having to say no to other things.

I had a hard time with this. It wasn’t until I read the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown (fantastic book) that I really understood. I never really was just honest with myself that it’s impossible to do everything. For whatever reason I just thought it should be possible. I should be able to do it. If somebody has a request of me, I should be able to get that done. I should be able to make it happen. I should be smart enough to figure it out. I should be efficient enough to make it work in the time frame that’s requested of me.

But that’s not how life works, obviously. A lot of that was in an employer-employee relationship. I was thinking, “I just need to make sure I’m providing as much value as I can and doing as good of a job as I can for my employer.” If I was asked to do something, I would say yes. “Can you do this?” “Yes I can, of course I can. I will make it happen.” And then I transitioned into the consulting world, taking on clients that I shouldn’t have taken on.

So I just stopped saying yes by default. Instead, my default answer is no. Over the years that’s actually bugged my wife some, especially with our girls. She’s like, “Your default answer for everything is no.” Well, I just kind of trained myself to do that because earlier on I was saying yes to everything.

3. Quit Trading Time for Money

I already talked about value-based pricing, and that’s part of this obviously. But another thing you can do is actually productize your service, or at least a portion of it.

Since I was doing custom software development, I was able to take common code that I’d been creating for multiple clients and create a core system that I could then build upon. Any kind of updates (security updates, things of that nature) I’d just make them in one place, and then all these clients that I had, all the individual codebases, just kind of sat on top of the central system.

While this itself was not a product that I sold (it wasn’t productized from that perspective), it was something I could reuse with the services that I did sell. Just about every service-based professional can actually productize part, or even a good portion, of their service.

4. Quit Working Without a Plan

What does that mean exactly? I made sure I knew what I was getting into before I got into it. I would do deep dive discoveries with my clients and actually get paid for that.

There were too many times I got burned by doing all this work, all this effort, pulling all this information out from the client, helping them get really clear on what they wanted, and working with them for weeks for free before giving the proposal of what I could do for them. And then not going anywhere.

So I created a plan. What I’m doing during these weeks of getting this information out is extremely valuable. It actually helps solidify in their mind what they’re trying to accomplish.

I introduced a core offer, a profit maximizer, and a continuity program, all three put together as a plan. My core offer was basically a project plan and wireframes of the app or website. I’d charge typically around $7,000 for that. It would take three or four weeks, meeting a couple days a week for a couple hours each.

My profit maximizer was the actual service where I’d create the custom software, anywhere between $50,000 to $150,000, even $200,000.

And then I had a continuity program: hosting, support, security, and maintenance as a monthly recurring fee. “Hey, we have this custom software for you, but now you’re going to need it to constantly be running, constantly be updated.”

5. Quit Thinking I Had to Do It All Alone

Truth be told, I could do better here. I could offload more than what I’m currently offloading, but I’m working through that and I’m going to continue to offload things.

But even just in systems (not even delegating to individuals), just the systems. In the past I had a really hard time letting go of money to save time, because I believed that time was money. I heard over and over again that time is money. But that’s so not true. That’s not how the wealthy live. They don’t trade their time for money. Poor and middle-class people trade their time for money. Rich people trade money for time.

They trade money for time.

So, you don’t have to do it all alone. You can trade some of your money for time by offloading some of the work to people or even to tools. I’d sit there and say, “I don’t want to pay $30 a month for this tool.” What? It’s crazy. So much time wasted, so much productivity lost over the years because I thought I had to do it all alone. Even from a systems perspective, not working smart from the standpoint of, “Here’s some tools I can easily use to make my life a whole lot better.”

6. Quit the Myth of Multitasking

I stopped multitasking. I stopped trying to watch YouTube videos while I was doing development work. I stopped trying to use my brain in two different ways at the same time. If something requires actual thought from me, you can only do that one thing at a time.

I lied to myself for years early on, thinking that I could multitask, thinking I could actually do more than one thing at one time. It’s actually impossible to do more than one thing at one time.

Yes, I can drive a car and listen to an audiobook, two things at one time. That is true. However, when I’m driving, it’s mostly on autopilot (not the car, but me) because I’m going the same place, I know the roads. My focus is actually on the audiobook. If somebody runs out in front of me, then my mind shifts to the immediate danger, I need to put on brakes, and I’m missing what’s being said on the audiobook. Once things calm down, I have to rewind the audiobook to hear what was being said.

So yes, technically I could drive and listen to an audiobook at the same time, but I cannot truly focus on more than one thing at one time.

7. Quit Underselling My Value

I raised my prices. In fact, I tripled my prices one time. Tripled them. And the world didn’t fall apart. Things still worked out just fine.

I stopped undervaluing my expertise and the value that I could bring my clients. I started communicating my value so they were actually willing to pay the premium prices because of the value they were getting by working with me.

What’s interesting is when I did raise my prices, clients started listening to me more, because they were paying me more. When I wasn’t charging as much, sometimes they’d take my advice and sometimes they wouldn’t.

8. Quit Ignoring Self-Care

Being a guy, I didn’t really care a whole lot about self-care. It’s like, “Look, just do what you got to do, it’ll be all right.” But really, I was sacrificing my health for success. Trying to be successful, make money, provide for my family, but I’ll deal with my stuff later. If I need to eat unhealthy during this time, I will. If I put on some extra weight, so be it. I’m working. If I stay up late and only get three hours of sleep for nights on end, so be it. I know it’s not great, but I got to do what I got to do.

By ignoring self-care, it actually cost me quite a lot over the years that I didn’t even understand. I didn’t realize I was not as productive as I could have been if I was more fit. Because once I got more fit (and I’m still working on it, I still got plenty of work to do there), once I got more fit, I actually had a lot more energy and I was able to think more clearly.

9. Quit Letting Clients Run My Schedule

It used to be that I’d try to be extremely easy to get along with. I’d leave it up to clients when we would meet, not schedule things, and just be like, “Okay, you just let me know. Let me know what works for you, because I don’t want to bug you.” It came from this mode of weakness. I didn’t want to push too hard because I might lose a sale or they might get mad at me. As a result, they could kind of call me whenever, and I would drop whatever and talk to them.

Instead, I switched that around. “Hey, this is the way I work. These are the times I’m available. You can pick one of these three times. When we meet, this is when we’re meeting. Here’s the agenda we’re going to have in these meetings.” Actually being the consultant, providing more value by saying, “Hey, this is what we’re going to do. You can rest easy, client, because as a consultant I have this process nailed down. I know what I’m doing. I’ve done this before. I can get you the results. Follow my process.”

By running the show myself, I was able to do things on my timetable. I could split my focus at different times. Sometimes I’d focus on my creator work and sometimes I’d focus on my conductor work. My creator work was all about getting the actual work done, being in that creative mode, whether it’s developing software or creating a proposal or project plan. My conductor mode was, “Okay, clients, we need to meet. I need to have conversations, keep this project moving forward.” Meetings, sales calls, conducting business.

I would split my time between those and batch them. When I let the clients run the show, my days were all messed up. I would have days where I wasn’t able to be productive at all on my creative work because it was just getting chopped up way too much. By putting those boundaries in place, I was able to be more productive and make my clients happier at the same time.

10. Quit Feeling Guilty

I quit feeling guilty when I was working and not with my family, and I stopped feeling distracted when I was with my family thinking about work. How did I do that? By being present in the moment.

If I decided to spend time with the family, then I was spending time with the family. I couldn’t care less what was going on, what work I had left to do, what things I didn’t get done, what fires there were. Didn’t even matter, because I was with my family. Took me a long time to do that. Took me a long time.

And likewise, since I spent that time with my family and was purposeful in that time, being fully present, enjoying that time, it actually allowed me to be fully present when I was working and no longer feeling guilty that I wasn’t with my family. Because I’d spent time with my family and we had a good time, but obviously now it’s time to work. I have to actually bring income into this household so we can all live.

By being fully present in the moment, I was able to quit feeling guilty when I was working, and I was able to quit feeling distracted when I was with my family.

What are some things you need to quit to make your life better?

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