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Writer's pictureKelly Thorne

Working smarter with your CIC


The dream is to work less and earn more. 


Simply because the current mainstream model of working more hours and still struggling to afford to live is financially hard, energy draining and unhealthy. 


We all want more time off with family. To self care, exercise and enjoy hobbies. 


Being wealthy is about so much more than having money. It's about being time rich as well. 


So how does a CIC help with the goal of getting you more time? 


You have to work smarter. When I started out ten years ago. I worked long hours doing it all. Learning marketing, design, managing the business and finances, running the projects, developing my artistic skills. 


I said yes to everything. 


Roll on ten years and I have learnt to work much smarter. For a £10k grant pot I only aim to do one event and 5 workshops. Adding on some admin and social media work to manage the project when it suits me. 


I have realised funders don't actually expect very much work for a small grant pot. 


I once saw a bid for Half a million for an organisation that aimed to do job hunting with 5 unemployed people per year. That was it! 


The other thing I do now is I design projects around my hobbies and interests. My heritage projects for the heritage lottery involve a lot of reading and writing but it's on subjects I'm passionate about. When your work is your hobby you're not working. 


There are many ways you can work smarter when doing your projects admin and marketing as well.

  • Outsourcing tasks to accountants or admin workers. 

  • Scheduling social media posts. Batch making social content. 

  • Using Canva for quick easy social media template designs. 

  • Even AI is offering ways you can cut work time down. I recently used AI art to illustrate a book. Took me one evening to do what could have taken months. 


You will often hear me talk about the benefits of having online automated recurring income like selling an online course, product or membership. This massively reduces your workload while giving you more financial security. 


Think about what your CIC would offer? 


Could you design and sell a journal, book, course, training? 


Or do you have a community that would join a paid membership offering them access to stuff they want? 


Working out what works and delivers the most money and results and focusing on that. Cut out anything that is time consuming that it not bringing in money. 


Don't spend your time chasing pennies. Free up your time to develop your plan towards gaining bigger chunks of cash. 


You have got to play the game to think like you're successful even before you actually ARE successful. So be bold and confident and go for those grants with a clear plan of what you will deliver. 


If you over complicate it, over work and over deliver you make yourself look more desperate, less deserving and grant funders will have less confidence in you. You also have no time to do one of the most important things any business owner should do… think and develop new ideas. 


Aim to just work a couple days a week on the main CIC work and for the rest of your time just chill, develop, read, take time to think. Outsource, delegate, schedule and automate the work. 


Work smart and see how it grows you business while giving you the work life balance you have always wanted. 


Kexx 🫶🏼




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