Just a week ago, I was flying high: had just gone to an incredible offline event with Jay Clouse’s The Lab, saw some business besties in Boston, and had so many ideas for my summer series on the Expertise Paths…
… then immediately got hit with The Crud(TM), an upper respiratory virus that knocked me on my butt. On Tuesday night, I had to sleep upright to avoid the searing throat pain from post-nasal drip. By Friday, I felt like I had my head jammed full of cotton balls as I napped in and out of a Netflix binge.
(Running Point Season 2? A fun diversion. Voicemails to Isabelle? A charming movie to nap to. Re-bingeing Younger? Yes please.)
So I was largely away from my business for a week, and somewhat sidelined for my business for another week, but business keeps happening. Just a year ago, I would have struggled to step away for a week, and certainly not two. What changed, and why can my business keep running?
Have I achieved the holy grail of “passive income”? Not at all.
I’ve simply spent the last five and a half years ferociously building layers of resilience into my business model.
Resilience vs. The “Passive Income Promise”
As an expert-led business, your business does come with “key person” risk. At some point, you will need to take time away from your business or have schedule flexibility, for illness or caregiving, family needs or personal investments, for planned yearly vacations to rest and recover. You need to be able to do these things without risking what you’ve built while being able to keep funding your life.
The allure of the “passive income” promise is that by changing your business (largely to a scaled education or agency model), you can step away from day to day operations or delivery. However, adapting your business this way requires you to often shift your client base, change your delivery style or offers, and switch your marketing to a significantly more traffic- and volume-based approach than serves your intimate services business. You end up dumping time, money, and attention into audience building, complicated technology, and course creation that often detracts from the time you would spend building profit into your delivery-based business.
Instead of playing the passive income game, build real resilience to your business. Look at ways to build in buffers of time, energy, and attention, so you can incorporate flexibility and “give” into your business for when it matters.
Real resilience has four levers:
- Reducing the “key person” risk by codifying key portions of your business
- Evaluating alternative delivery structures that accommodate flexibility without building a different business entirely
- Incorporating resilient marketing strategies that leverage your existing efforts and assets
- Building the ultimate resilience: cash
How I’ve built resilience into my business with these levers
Resilient Delivery
I spent the last year overhauling my cohort materials and membership. This means that for all of my clients, even my 1:1 clients, they have proven resources, tools and templates that they can work on in their own time without relying on my energy.
And the Membership’s beloved weekly Sacred Sales Hour and Weekly Planning/Tending co-working calls? They are largely led by members (who are paid for leading those calls). Even when I’m not working, participants in my world can keep getting results.
Resilient Revenue Streams
The bulk of my revenue is still 1:1 consulting. But I shifted away from high-intensity Fractional COO work (which kind of was a full-time job that was hard to take time away from) to delivery styles that have more buffer room. I can stagger out when clients onboard (I’m not taking new 1:1 clients in July because of travel), and can still support my clients with asynchronous support while I’m out at a conference or when I’ve lost my voice!
Resilient Marketing
No longer do I have to rely on the content hamster wheel to speak to new people who find me. They can dive into the rabbit hole of my work with over 70 podcast episodes, a robust blog, a YouTube channel, and a book! New newsletter subscribers get at least a week of hearing from me and getting my best resources through a welcome sequence. I might take time off, but referral partners keep referring me, thank you and birthday and “Welcome to the Membership” cards keep arriving, and the flywheel continues to move.
Resilient Cash
I knew I would be taking some time off this summer, so I planned for it. I frontloaded all of my course launches and curriculum overhauls to be done by May. I also planned for substantially fewer expenses, since I’m not rebranding or publishing my book. YTD I’ve made about the same amount of revenue but my expenses are down 30%. This gives me a much more robust cash buffer for a slightly slower summer, while still knowing how I’ll pay myself.
None of this happened by accident. It happened because I spent years making intentional decisions about how to structure my work and building the layers of assets, systems, and processes that you see today.
I cover this in much more depth in my book Leaving the Casino. Get the full chapter and more details on these four levers of resilience (plus the other frameworks for building a business that works) and grab your copy today! Available direct from me, on Amazon, or many major retailers.