Budgets

What do you want to earn?

Posted by Roberta Budvietas on Sep 10, 2012 in Behavior, Budgets, Business, Buyer Experience, Cashflow, Planning, Vision | 4 comments

What you want to earn and what you earn are often very different for many people.

To earn anything means that you need to do something, say something, produce something or talk to someone. There is always a correlation:-

effort  = income

There will be times when the income may seem disproportional to the effort you put in though.

There will be many times when you work very hard and seem to achieve nothing. Oh and before you tell me that winning a lottery or another game of chance, think – you have to buy the ticket or enter the contest.

So let’s look at what you want to earn in your business.

You need to do some research and you also need to do some personal mindset work.

1. Look at what other similar businesses earn. Keep in mind that the revenue in must also cover the cost of the goods you sold, some of your expenses and the related taxes.
2. Look at how comfortable you are at charging that rate. If you feel that the norm in industry is comfortable for you to charge than see what happens if you increase that by 10%. Unless you believe that the rates are too high for your target niche, try never to charge less.
3. Look at what you were earning as an employee and how that income supported your lifestyle. In your own business will this be adequate for you or do you need to earn more? If you need to earn more, what more will you deliver to your clients?
4. And finally, look at what your clients can afford to pay. If the people you want to deal with can afford what you want to earn, then charge them that price but unless you can find clients who are able to pay you what you want to earn then you will never earn it.
5. And finally, figure out if there are enough hours in the day to deliver what you want to earn. If you are the sole deliverer of your service and your service delivery model requires you to produce the goods, then you are limited by the time you have available to deliver. For example – If you get paid $20.00 per hour and can only work 5 hours per day 4 days per week, you can only earn 20*5*4= 400 per week out of which you will have to pay costs and tax.

Take some time to figure out what you want to earn and then create a sales forecast and a cashflow forecast to see if you are VIABLE.  It always surprises people when they do the numbers how hard it is to earn what they want.

In the comments let me know if you are earning what you want and what you are doing about changing the situation.

To your well-being

Roberta Budvietas

Reading, Listening and Being in Control

Posted by Roberta Budvietas on Aug 27, 2012 in Behavior, Budgets, Business, Change, Communication, Information, Networlding, Passionate Purposeful Performer, Research, Resources | 0 comments

One of the greatest challenges for today’s business person is keeping up with the information you need to know. There

Cover via Amazon

are thousands of new articles to read and listen to published every hour of the day.

And as a business owner, you need to decide what to do with this information.

Understand the Danger of the Closed Mind

Think of the big book stores. They believed that people would always buy books and despite seeing the rise of Amazon and Ebooks, they believed that people would always like to browse book shelves and leaf through books. And some people still do but….the majority of people now access their reading materials on-line. 

The big book chains have closed

Or think of Kodak. A company with a history of supporting the film industry and photos. Their business was built for the non-digital picture world and even with several incredible digital cameras, they still struggled to survive.

Kodak is gone after 125 years

Do you remember sitting down to your morning newspaper and drinking your coffee while you leafed through the pages to find out what was happening in the world or to your favourite sports team. Are you still doing so? Or do you now read the news online while you sip your coffee. Is your favourite newspaper still in print?

Many newspapers and magazines have closed their doors or sold out to others

As a business person, you need to keep informed.

• You need to find the trends.
• You need to see where the new niches are. 

You need information to make decisions but the key is to make decisions.

Refusing to make a decision and act on information can be costly. Making the wrong decision can be costly.

Oh dear, what are you to do? 

As with anything in life, only hindsight gives you close to perfect vision but there are no crystal balls. When you make a decision, you change your future.

When you refuse to make a decision you change your future.

You can only do your best. You can only keep your word. And whatever happens, you can only deal with what happens.

Today, make a decision. Check your information first but reduce your overwhelm by limiting you research time. And what you commit to, commit with your whole heart. Commit and never regret but measure and tweak and stay informed.

You need to stay in control. And control requires information. Make a choice – read, listen and keep control on your time, money and course of action.

What are you reading and listening to today?

What are you controlling today?  

Let me know in the comments box below.

To your success

Roberta Budvietas

3 tools for Keeping Track of Business

Posted by Roberta Budvietas on Jul 30, 2012 in Behavior, Budgets, Business, Buyer Experience, Cashflow, Contacts, Contract, Finance, Focus, People, Planning, Priorities, Skills, Strategy | 3 comments

When you are in business, it is important that you keep track of many things. 

Keeping track helps you balance your business

What things are important to your success?

1. People – who buys from you, who are you talking to who might buy from you, who bought from you and who could you possibly talk to next.
2. Time – how did you spend your time, what did you accomplish in that time and what did you learn. And then figure out what is important to do next.
3. Money – what did you spend and earn and what will you need to spend and earn next.

Keep your tracking simple – diaries, files and folders. Make notes and backup EVERYTHING.

The evidence you can produce tomorrow can make all the difference to your ability to gain the day, win the deal, make a difference or save you money.

Time is the one commodity we are totally unable to recover. So often in business and life, we feel overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the time we need to spend doing tasks. Overwhelmed by the people who want us to spend time with them. Overwhelmed by what we need to learn yet. Overwhelmed because many of the tasks we undertake, take three times as long as we allowed for.

And money needs to be tracked. You need to know what you have invested in your business, spent on items and assets and owe in loans and bills as well as what is owed to you.

Here are three tools I believe are essential for business 

1. A database to manage your contacts, their details and all the other aspects around doing business with them including purchases, when contacted, met and what comes next. There are many tools to help with this some as simple as Outlook and others like GEM,  and many other CRM systems go beyond the simple email programs that handle your promotional messages.
2. A good diary or manual system where you PLAN your days and then track the time taken. Even Outlook has both a diary and task system to help you track jobs but online there are hundreds of programs that manage group projects.
3. A good money management program. Programs like Xero  allow integration with your bank and credit card which means that you can have daily financial updates of money in and money out. You still need  to monitor your cashflow. Your cashflow is CRITICAL to your business. Cashflow monitoring is more important than statements of financial performance and position because without cashflow you have NO business

Roberta Budvietas