What do you want to earn?

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