1. PLAN and PRIORTISE
If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail (Benjamin Franklin) is a well-known quote.
Our recommendation is that you create a 90 day plan (3 months/per quarter or per term or divide your calendar year into 9 to 12 week chunks).
Set financial, marketing, measuring and product/service development targets for those 90 days- no more than 5 to 8 targets in total. You should have a minimum of 2 financial targets, for example $ amount of sales and number of services to meet the sales target? (Remember if you are in business you do need to make money!)
What amount of time will each target take? When planning think in terms of blocks of time and break your targets into billable/chargeable and non-billable hours. Prioritise the billable hours – you cannot do everything in a 3 month period. Are your non-billable hours too high? Can you outsource? Is there enough billable hours to outsource the non-billable hours (eg VA $30 a hour versus you coaching a client for a hour for $110)?
2. PROCESSES
For everything you do in your business work towards creating a process for it, so that what you do is systemised and automated and not ad-hoc, take the emotion out of it.
For example what is your process after you have attended a network event or what is your process when you are invoicing a client?
Use apps and tools to help in creating your processes – my favourite 3 are Pocket (for collating articles), Trello (for keeping my ideas and planning) and Dropvox (udio).
For social media use scheduling tools. For Twitter and LinkedIn I use Twittimer and for Instagram I use Grambl from my PC or latergram from my phone.
For your financial record keeping use a cloud-based system such as Xero (our very personal favourite here at Kountable!).
3. PRODUCTISE
There are only so many hours in a day and our business cannot consume us.
Types of income streams: active (1 to 1), leverage (1 to many), passive and recurring (for example a membership site).
With a new business there will be lots of active income, slowly move to more leveraged income and then move towards productising your services, so that you can create passive income – this is a more sustainable approach. Doing one to one constantly will lead to burnout (depending on the nature of your business and whether when doing one to one you have a team involved).
With passive income start small – for example, templates and checklists then you could move to an online course. Recommended Podcast: The Smart Passive Income Podcast Pat Flynn.
4. PROJECTS and PROJECT MANAGE
Create your ongoing business development in terms of Projects – this is a good way to keep your ideas flowing but captured – and then implemented. Ideally you should have no more than 2 or 3 projects per quarter – for example, developing a product, a collaboration with person X and a video workshop series. Divide your projects across your income streams (eg one active, one leveraged and one passive project).
Project manage the projects – what is required for each project, what tools are needed, who do you need to seek help from/or outsource on the project, how much time will you dedicate to it, what will be the ROI (return on investment – of time and money), how long will you wait for the ROI? Use project management tools eg Asana, our Wunderlist (for lists) or Trello or a piece of butcher paper and sticky notes. Projects can expand – but call this Phase 1, when phase 1 is executed then you can move on to Phase 2; you need to be disciplined in your approach.
The key to remember in business is that action builds momentum, and momentum fuels further action. The action you take on the 4 building blocks outlined above will help fuel financial momentum for your business. If you need assistance with the planning and processing of your business’s financial record keeping then give one of the team at Kountable a call today.
You can now also follow Kountable on Instagram @kountable.australia
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