Boring Brian

I recently did a survey to better understand the challenges people are facing in building a profitable creative businesses. Got a min to share your thoughts? I’d love to hear them.

One question that came back was:
“How can I consistently earn about the same amount each month?”

I struggled with this for 7 years and know the road well. The answer is way less complicated than I expected:

If you want consistent monthly revenue, build your business around solving a problem that doesn’t go away.

Bonus points: Find the overlap of something that’s valuable to your client’s business, easy for you, and extra annoying for them to do themselves.

Think about recurring service products like bookkeeping, planning and paying your taxes, cleaning your house, mowing the yard, managing social media, writing blogs, sending weekly emails.

Getting consistent revenue in your business isn’t that complicated. Keeping the revenue is hard for creatives. Because as creatives…

• We love to explore.

• We like learning and trying new things

• We get tired of working with the same clients over and over again.

• We need variety to stay inspired.

If we are honest, boredom is the reason creatives don’t have recurring revenue.

Plus, “finding inspiration” is an acceptable excuse to spread our wings and fly away when we get bored and itchy. (Been there, done that.)

So every few months we shift our focus and step on the garden hose of “consistent revenue”.

Sales crawl to a trickle. We wonder why people don’t “see our value”. We take another course.

We stand on our own dry, crunchy brown patch of business and wonder why the grass looks greener over at Boring Brian’s house down the street. Pssst: it’s because Brian keeps doing the same (boring) things that his customer’s need again and again.

For creatives, the key to consistent revenue that doesn’t drain you is building your business around your superpower. More on that tomorrow.