Does your business financial life mirror your personal financial life?
Do your friends tell you that you charge “too little”?
Are you giving away so much of your time, energy, and resources for free, that you don’t have time to work on your business?
Are you afraid to raise your prices because “NO ONE” can afford you?
Do you feel that if you can’t be successful because if you truly were successful, your friends or family would think that you were “only focused on money”?
Do you constantly worry that someone will “find out” that you are a fraud?
If someone asks you how much something costs, do you tell them, “oh no, I will just do that for free”.
If you answered, YES, to any of the above statements, I want to first say… You are NOT alone! I think that most if not all entrepreneurs have felt the same or similar at some point on their journey to success!
So what can you do? How can you break the cycle?
First: Surround Yourself With Mentors
It has been said that your income is the average of your five closest friends. What this means is that if you are taking advice from people making 30K a year, you are getting 30K a year advice. If the people that you spend the most time with and influence you the most are making 100K a year, you are getting 100K a year advice.
It should not be a surprise that people who have money think differently than people who do not.
People who do not have money focus on how to budget and make every dollar stretch.
People with money focus on how to invest or leverage their money so that they can make more.
People who always live on “survival mode”, paycheck to paycheck… have a hard time understanding and relating to those who are not on survival mode.
People who have experienced success know that it is not the best use of their time to be cleaning the house or mowing the lawn, so they delegate those activities so that they can focus on generating more income.
If you realize that one of the challenges that you have is that you are not thinking BIG enough… then maybe what you need is a mentor. Someone that can help you learn to think BIG.
Second: Get a Handle On Your Finances
If you are not yet where you want to be financially, you need to take back control of your finances. This is the one area you should not delegate. You need to have a good understanding as to how much is coming in, and how much is going out. Understand where every penny is going and why.
Learn to set a budget and live by it. In your personal life.. and your business life.
Understand that there is always going to be another opportunity. Just because something is being offered at a good price or in bulk does not justify throwing the expense on the credit card. Long after you have received all of the benefit you could have, you will still be paying off the balance.
If you have up till now delegating the finances of your business (especially if you are a woman entrepreneur), now is the time to stop! You don’t have to do it all yourself, but you do have to approve every single expense and know where every single dollar is going.
Third: Cut Costs and Setup Budgets For Future Investments
In order to truly grow your company, you will need some working capital to be able to invest in future growth. The only way to do this is to have some money laid aside. If you are running your business on survival mode… everything that comes in goes out the same month… then you will need to stop and take a look at all of your expenses and see what you can cut.
Some ideas:
Take a look at your merchant account statements. They like to change the fees or charge mystery fees with little to no explanation.
Take another look at your bank fees. If you use a merchant account from your bank you might be able to get all your bank fees waived.
Consider all recurring software charges. See if there are any recently released solutions that did not exist a few years ago that are less expensive and provide better options than your current software. An example could be webinar software, email software, shopping cart software, project management software and so on!
Fourth: Get Focused On Sales
If you ask a successful business owner what they do all day they will tell you that they spend most of their working hours focused on sales. It all comes down to sales. If you want to sell your company, you must have a steady stream of consistent sales coming in. If you want to get a loan from the bank… the will look at your sales growth. If you are looking for partners or investors… they want to know about your sales channels.
Stop all of the busy work!
Stop answering your phone.
Stop organizing your mail.
Stop checking Facebook every 10 seconds. (There is life outside of Facebook).
Stop updating your Twitter account every 5 seconds!
Get focused on sales. Figure out how you are going to be generating more sales and make sure that is ALL that you are working on. Everything else should be passed on to an assistant as soon as you can generate enough revenue to afford one!
Fifth: Raise Your Prices and Don’t Work For Free!
Stop working for free! If your market does not allow you to raise your prices, you need to think of a way to show that you have a competitive advantage. A competitive advantage allows you to charge more and give your customers a reason to choose you!
And stop working for free. Nothing in life is free. If someone cannot afford you, then create a system or ebook or method that teaches them everything that they need to do to get themselves up to the point of where they CAN afford you.
For example: If a bride says your wedding photography package is too expensive, develop some strategic partnerships with other companies so that you can offer a package deal!
If you are teaching people how to market their massage therapy business… then give them all of the resources they need to make that first sale! Show them how to take the baby steps so that they can get their business started. Celebrate their success with them and position yourself as their friend and mentor so that you can help them to grow to the next level when they are ready to invest in their success.
If you liked this, you will love my weekly webinars! Join me at webinars.nicolemunoz.com this week to learn more marketing tips and strategies to grow your business!