Know Your Numbers! Entrepreneurs and Business Owners, it is vital to properly measure and track every dollar in your business to make proper, informed decisions. If you don’t have at-a-glance financials that are up to date, your business is suffering! In this Money Management Online Course, learn how to structure your business to track, manage, budget, and spend your money. Also! I designed this course to find what areas of your business are most profitable, add additional products or services that your competition already knows about.
Is your idea of accounting a big pile of old receipts? Are you using an outdated excel sheet? Don’t have the money for a full-time accountant, or the know-how to manage one? If you don’t know and understand the numbers in every area of your business, you are missing out! Even if you are afraid of accounting, I will show you the quick and easy way to get organized now. You will learn how to think strategically about your earnings, implement a personal and business budget, and find more ways to get profitable – FAST!
Haven’t set up the software yet? No problem! I have tutorials in this Money Management Online Course to get you Back In Business!
Manage Your Money
Personal and Business Break Even
Most people go through life without being specific. In our heads, we have a vague idea of how much our cost-of-living is, and an even vaguer idea of where our money goes. Part of getting what we want out of life is to become very specific.
We need to know what our break-even amount is (how much it costs us to pay for our lifestyle) and sort out how much our business (or future business) costs us. Take the time in this section to get organized about your money and where it is going.
This will help you with your future financial goals, and to start acting more financially responsible in your day-to-day life. Visualize your spending by using our Personal Budget worksheet (see below), or sign up at Mint.com to easily make budgeting part of your routine.
Personal and Business Break Even https://youtu.be/fIH751CiZ9E
Homework:
Download the Module 2 “Manage Your Money” Workbook below and fill out the Budget worksheet.
Money Wasters and Wishlist
In this exercise, we will determine where we are wasting money. We need to have clear financial goals, that we can outline on our Wish List, so that we can begin to change our spending habits, and start investing in items that will really move us ahead. By getting clear on our goals and changing our old behaviors, we begin to realize our true goals much faster, and start to see more immediate results.
Money Wasters and Wishlist https://youtu.be/8LGdirA0L3U
Homework:
After completing the first exercise, you should know where your spending shortcomings are. Let’s now create a new and inspiring Wish List where you can outline where you really want your money to go—and start to make that happen, now!
Pricing Packages
The only real way to do this is to deliver your products or services with preset prices. All too many times, people are working for free.
“Free”-lancers get screwed over, because they’ve already done the work, and then the customer may or may not decide to pay. Talk to anyone that has been in business for any length of time and they will have stories about clients that took the work and ran, or only made a partial payment, or, even worse, no payment was made at all.
The best way to avoid this is to use the kind of model that ensures that your payments have cleared before any work has transpired. During your competitive analysis, you should have come across some pricing packages.
Take the time to outline yours.
Keep in mind how YOU want to work, and remember that if you offer enough free information up front, you will eventually build trust and authority to get paid first. This is the best way to do business, and an even better way to STAY in business!
Pricing Packages https://youtu.be/VEynFK4w1Zg
Homework:
Figure out some of the pricing strategies you’d like to go with, and determine how you will get paid Up Front!
Money Milestones
So, now that you have a clear idea about your business, let’s put some figures together on your Money Milestones. Here’s an outline of our financial goals, in the order that you should follow them in order to stay successful:
1. Personal Break Even: You should have this number from your Personal Budget, or from building your budget in Mint.com. Always remember to Pay Yourself First so you don’t get backlogged and end up borrowing money to pay your expenses.
2. Business Break Even: Next, we cover the cost of our business. Since we have a clear idea of our pricing packages, you should know approximately how many sales you’ll need to hit this.
3. Once your bases are covered, celebrate by doing something on your Wish List. This will keep you inspired and moving in the right direction.
4. Our next goal is Profit. We’ve been very careful with our money and how we’re charging our clients (or customers), so now we can start setting aside some savings for our financial freedom. This can also act as a great cushion for those unforeseen expenses that tend to pop up from time to time.
5. After you have a nice safety net of cash, you can begin to Invest in yourself and your business by purchasing more of the items on your Wish List. Because you’ve taken the time to decide these items up front with the goal of moving ahead, these purchases are actually investments in your future. Good job!!
6. When you get to the point where you have more than enough cash flow and excessive money to spend on your personal and professional growth, you can begin to become more selective about who you take on as clients. Creating a Waiting List is a great way to filter out your ideal clients and identify exactly who you want to work with upfront. This is a luxury!! It is so much more rewarding to have awesome clients, and now you have the opportunity to be picky, and pick who YOU want to work with!
7. At this point, you may consider Growing your Team, or Growing Your Business. You’ll have a clear idea of your pluses and minuses. Where you like to spend your time, and what projects only seem to make it to ninety percent. Assess where you could implement help, and make a plan to do so. Also, it might be a good time to merge with others for a group project, or take some additional time to build an additional income stream in your business. Diversity is the key to success, so now you have the time and money to dedicate to more projects, dip in to your creativity and get ready for growth!
Money Milestones https://youtu.be/lRt3SsEMKfg
Homework:
After figuring out your numbers, put them in to your Money Milestones worksheet. Congratulations, you know your numbers, now let’s move on to the next section!
