For newly minted entrepreneurs, the biggest priority is to generate revenue, any revenue in an effort to transition from struggling to profitable enterprise. To those of us who have made the crossing, we have more often than not sacrificed our own financial needs in order to create a proper fiscal foundation for our business. Because so few of us ever get investor capital, we are left to our own devices to fund our enterprises. That’s okay. As that old saying goes “What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger!”

Unfortunately, we have trouble letting go of this attitude once the business moves off life support and begins breathing on its’ own. Of course this is understandable. Having lived through the tough times, it’s not something we’re eager to revisit. So under the guise of “reinvesting in the company”, we continue to pour our profits back into the organization and rarely do we consider taking it out of the company. Not to spend on toys, but to take some risk off the table.

Money Jar

80% of owners wealth is in their company

Considering most business owners hold upwards of 80% of their wealth in their business, this “all your eggs in one basket” scenario is a high risk situation. Ask these same owners if they would invest 80% of their net worth in shares of just one company on the stock exchange and they would certainly question your sanity. Yet these same individuals don’t think twice about their current wealth strategy.

In my case, I had set a target of getting 66% of my wealth outside of my operating company and to provide some form of creditor protection. I did this not because I was anticipating any sort of business crisis, but because I realized I didn’t want all that I had worked for to be totally dependent on the future performance of me and my company.

5 simple steps to get you started

Okay, so where and when do you begin? The following steps may help you frame your own initiative. Your corporate structure will dictate what vehicles are available to you and by all means consult your accountant, lawyer, financial planner and any other professional you need to maximize the effectiveness of this strategy

  1. Make sure you’re taking a regular dependable salary. Not your dream salary, but one that allows you to work without the stress of your personal financial situation overwhelming your decision making. In other words comfortably covering your basic needs.
  2. Begin formally moving a set amount from your current account to your chosen vehicle i.e. holding company, corporate savings account, etc. The formula you choose can range from 5% of all your billings that automatically gets transferred monthly to upwards of 50% of annual profit being transitioned out.
  3. This money should not be put at risk in another venture.
  4. Although minimizing taxation is always important, it can’t be the deciding factor.
  5. Eventually you will have transferred at least a portion of your wealth and created another pillar in your financial portfolio.

Freedom and security

If you were expecting some magic formula, I’m sorry to disappoint. This is basic wealth management, a rainy day fund, often ignored by business owners. Too many owners are hoping to cash-in when they sell their companies and are devastated when they can’t sell or get significantly less than they anticipated and have no additional source of wealth.

Being an eternal optimist is a necessary ingredient to having any chance of success as an entrepreneur, but it needs to be tempered with a bit of realism. It’s truly amazing the sense of freedom and security you feel when you’ve consciously created an additional source of wealth outside your operating company.

How you do it is up to you, but starting today in small increments is a must, because like a journey of a thousand miles, financial freedom begins with a single small step.

You may also enjoy The 1st Million is the Hardest

Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.

Money, it’s one of those personal topics that many people are uncomfortable discussing. Why that is, varies from person to person.

Even inside a business that uncomfortableness exist, but that needs to change. Generally speaking, the only time the subject of money seems to ever comes up is in the heat of the moment in comments such as “Do you know how much that costs?”. Even then the word money is not used.

When I ask owners what business they are in, I usually get the expected answer such as “I’m in retail or I own a restaurant or I’m in a service business of some sorts.” These are all technically correct answers and serve to explain your enterprise to your external customers and strangers alike.

However, I would like you to consider an alternative definition that should be used internally within the organization and be at the forefront of your decision making process. What is that internal definition? Simply, “We are in the money business!”

dollars, pounds, yen

And it matters not one bit what industry you are in. At the end of the day, you are in the money getting business. Pure and simple. You exchange your services in return for money.

The service you offer is nothing more than the vehicle you use to get that money.

This may sound a little crass to some because they don’t want to think of their business in such impersonal terms. Others are so emotionally committed to their desire to be an entrepreneur that they have fallen in love with their idea and not the business of the business itself.

Let’s be honest, the reason 99% of us went into business in the first place, is the allure of potentially making more money. To be sure, we had other reasons such as being our own boss, validating our idea or just finding a better way to do something. But at the end of the day, the majority of us were seeking higher incomes.

Focusing on money is not to say that you have to become Scrooge like. Nor does it mean caring less about your customers or how you do things. To the contrary, having higher profitability and more money gives you the ability to actually increase your service levels. The alternative means that you’re on the proverbial treadmill generating additional low margin business just to keep the doors open, which results in customer service taking a back seat to everything else.

No, it means being selective in where you commit this precious resource. It also means getting your staff to understand that their actions can impact, good or bad, the profitability and financial health of the company. But you need to reinforce that position with them. You need to make them understand that their actions have a cost associated with it.

Loving what you do is one thing, but it’s got to be profitable and the more money or profit you make allows you to build a safety net under your company. Consider for a moment, how unprepared so many small businesses were in the face of the Covid-19 lockdowns. Sadly, many have locked their doors forever.

Changing the mindset

 

There’s really only two things you need to know about money, where you get it and where you spend it. So, the logical place to start is to understand where you get your money.

It’s been my experience that just about every business has revenue categories. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs don’t bother to segregate their services into any formal groupings. As a result, they have no idea what percentage each product or service groupings contribute to their revenue.

 

But revenue grouping is only half the equation. We often hear that we should be focusing most of our time on revenue generating activities. I absolutely agree that this should be every entrepreneurs priority, with one added caveat. These revenue generating activities need to be profitable and we should be focusing on the most profitable of these activities.

Therefore, in order to determine which revenue generating activities are the most profitable, we need to be able to attribute what it costs to generate those revenue. You do so by allocating all the expenses incurred to each of the revenue groups. In doing so, you can now determine the most profitable areas of your business. In other words, what’s making you money, where you’re losing money and everything in between.

By having the ability to analyse your revenue categories, you can begin to make educated decisions. When you consider how much labour, overheads, and other expenses go into generating revenue and then to find out you lost money or only break even, it’s heartbreaking. Granted getting a nice big cheque for a project you just completed is a wonderful feeling. However, if it has a low profit margin, you are effectively just trading dollars.

So first and foremost, you need to prioritize your activities on the most profitable products or services you offer. Then you need to determine how you can increase your activity on these most profitable items.

At the end of the day your objective is to narrow your focus to those items or activities that are the most profitable and quit wasting time on marginal ones. There are only so many hours in a day available to you and your staff. If you subscribe even just a little bit to the 80/20 rule you’ll quickly determine that a lot of your energy and your staffs is wasted on low value products and activities.

I know many will say that they have to keep their prices low in order to compete. This is where you need to get your head around the fact that you are in the money business. If that’s truly the case, get the heck out of that line of business or quit offering that product. If you need to stay in that line of business, then find a way to increase the value of your offer without increasing your costs. That way you’ll you can demand a higher price, thereby increasing your profits. These decisions are well within your control.

A True Story

Many years ago, I undertook this exercise to determine where we were making our money. Although it was a tedious process, it was an eye opener. The net result of that undertaking was that I cut over $300,000 of revenue from the company by identifying low margin activities and clients in industries where, due to competition, we were unable to manage any form of price increase to make them more profitable.

This was at a time when my company had just achieved breakeven and this decision was going to be a major setback. However, as expected or maybe I should say hoped, our profitability grew significantly, and we were profitable in less than a year.

In hindsight, it made perfect sense and the risk was more imagined than real. When you consider that we focused on fewer but more profitable services and clients or labour and other expense inputs dropped dramatically, which resulted in more profits for the company.

In addition, this exercise helped us to identify and target those clients and industries where there was very little competition. Doing so allowed us to regain the lost revenue within 18 months and our profitability continued to grow. 

Just to reinforce this point, Covid-19 forced many global foods companies to reduce their product offerings in order to focus on their core products. Lays, Procter & Gamble, Kraft and the Campbell Soup Company, stop producing, not just cut back many of their slower moving products because demand on their core products exceed their ability to supply. Some of these companies reduced their offering by upwards of 18%. Many of these cut products may never return to our grocery shelves because the companies realized that their profits came from their core products.

Spending money is easy, making money is hard

Another thing to keep in mind is, that spending money is easy, making money it is hard. Because of how hard it is to make money, every spending decision, whether that be on equipment or staff needs to be paid for somehow. For example, if you’re netting 10% profit on the bottom line, a $10,000 expense requires you to generate extra revenue by a factor of 10. In other words, you need to generate $100,000 in additional revenue just to cover the cost of that expense.

So before you or your staff clicks the “Add to Cart” button or slap down your credit card on supplies or that new piece of equipment, you better make sure it’s necessary. Because at the end of the day, that’s less money you’ll be able to take out of the company personally.

Money is such a precious commodity in any business. Some of the benefits of having money in the bank, is that it’s a great stress reliever knowing we have the capabilities to meet our obligations. Taking that stress off the table, then allows us to concentrate our time on more productive duties.

It’s in times of crisis that the importance of money is reaffirmed. Crisis come in all shapes and sizes. From key customers that quit buying to pandemics, each can seriously mess with your business. So by adopting the attitude that you’re in the money business, will go a long way significantly increasing your profitability and your income.

I’d like to know your thoughts if you were faced with a similar situation. So, leave your comments below.

You may also enjoy Clustering for Profits

If you found this of value, please pass this along to any business owner that you fell could benefit by understanding that they’re in The Money Business

Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.

Those of you that know me and have either purchased my book or attended an event that I have spoken at, know that the advice I share is based on getting the basics right. By getting the basics right, you can grow your business and your leadership skills that allow you to attain a high level of freedom by removing the shackles of ownership.

Financial cushion

Unfortunately, what I preach has never been sexy or opportunistic. These basic, time tested business philosophies are easy to understand and don’t require any special skills to execute. The only requirement is that you spend the time to implement them.

It’s interesting that during these surreal times, with a pandemic raging, that those who’ve gotten the basics right, will be just fine. It’s not that they’re thriving at the moment, as a matter of fact, like most, they’ve had their businesses turned upside down. However, what they have in common is that they have built a financial cushion that will allow then to weather this storm and survive.

Where have all the experts gone?

So this brings me to my question- Where have all the experts gone? Where are all those talking heads with the latest and greatest strategy? Where are those experts, with the can’t miss lead generation program or consumer engagement secrets gone? Where are they now when your world has blown up? The thing is, many are one trick ponies and that’s all they’ve been preaching for the past few years. Sadly many entrepreneurs assumed that by following these messiahs all their problems would go away. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. To be successful, you need to hope for the best, but plan for the worst. And it doesn’t get much worse than this.

Not to be let off the hook, let’s not forget all those government funded incubators and post secondary entrepreneur programs that have encouraged thousands of individuals to become an entrepreneur. Where is their voice in all this chaos? Shouldn’t they, with all their expertise, be offering the small business community actionable solutions or ideas to help them survive?

Based on my research, all I see them doing is regurgitating information on the various government emergency programs and not much else. Isn’t this the time when these organizations should be rallying their resources to help their memberships or alumni? It is, but they aren’t.

30-50% will fail

So with all these so called experts, where are they now when the small business community is being decimated? Unfortunately, many of their followers won’t survive as it is estimated that 30%-50% of small businesses won’t make it through this turmoil. Regrettably, how to prepare for economic upheaval, is something they just don’t preach.

For those successful entrepreneurs that will survive, they have a few of things going for them. They remember the past, are focused on the present and are looking to the future.

The past

History has a nasty habit of repeating itself and understanding that economic turmoil is a regular occurrence that hits entrepreneurs the hardest. And each time it happens it decimates a high number of businesses because they didn’t plan for the worst case scenario. Let’s be honest. This pandemic is the proverbial 100 year storm and is extreme, but it still an economic upheaval. Those businesses that will fail, never placed any effort to build a financial foundation under their businesses. They just kept reinvesting everything in their enterprises.

Much like betting at the casino, those that will survive understand that cash is king and when you’re up, you should consistently take some money off the table and continue until such time that they’re only playing with the houses money. Sadly, many just kept betting it all and now they have no money to tide them over and will become a statistic.

The present

Those that understand the past and have built their financial resources, can calmly focus on maintaining what they’ve built. To be sure, it’s not business as usual and they’re feeling the pain, but having the financial wherewithal allows them to scale down their business and focus on surviving. Although they are still feeling the stress with the current situation, they’re not panicking and are able to focus on reinventing or innovating in a calm manner. Let’s be honest, making decisions under duress is never a good idea, simply because we’re not thinking clearly.

The future.

Those entrepreneurs with a financial cushion, know that things will get better in the future and are preparing for the day that things turn around. They understand that when that day comes, they can once again accelerate their business growth and with far fewer competitors they’ll easily make up any lost ground. As an added bonus, they will most likely grow their margins because they’ve either innovated and/or found savings by just doing things a little differently.

Maybe things will change once this is over. Maybe how we promote entrepreneurship will also change, but I have my doubts. Growth for the sake of growth increases risk far greater than necessary and needs to be tempered with a good dose of common sense.

You may also enjoy Starting Over 

Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.

In the movie City Slickers, Jack Palance’s character Curly and Billy Crystal’s character Mitch are riding along having a bonding moment, when Curly turns to Mitch and asks,

Curly: Do you know what the secret to life is?

Mitch: No What?

Curly: This! (As he holds up one finger)

Mitch: Your finger?

Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else doesn’t mean (expletive).

Mitch: That’s great, but what’s the one thing?

Curly: That’s what you gotta figure out

I’m always reminded of that scene whenever I ask my clients “What’s the number one thing every business needs in order to succeed?” Inevitably, I get a number of different answers that include reputation, a good product, good customer service, great staff, hard work and so on. 

Quite frankly they’re all wonderful valid answers and easily qualify within the top 5 items, but not what I consider the most important item. However, every once in a while, I get the answer I’m looking for, and that answer is money!

Try doing anything without money

Money pays the rent, the staff, the new pc’s, product or service development, etc. It’s what keeps the lights on. Money affords you the opportunity to create great products or services. Money allows you to provide great customer service. Money allows you to provide a great work environment. Don’t believe me? Try doing anything in your business without money.

Generating profitable revenue, getting paid and controlling expenses are the key elements to getting money. Do enough of these you’re your bank account grows. I know this sounds pretty simplistic to many, but unfortunately, countless owners don’t get it. What I typical come across are owners spending their time on non-revenue generating activities. Although they’re busy, these activities are just a waste of time and are usually a substitute for doing the things that they should be doing, but don’t like doing, such as a prospecting, follow up calls or networking.

The thing is, the longer they put off doing the important stuff, the longer they’ll struggle. What they fail to realize is that they only have to do these uncomfortable tasks until such time as they can afford to hire someone else to do them. Therefore, it’s in their best interest to focus as much of their attention on generating as much profitable revenue as possible.

Other reasons for building a healthy bank balance is to avoid stress. Running a small business is full of stress and an opportunity to minimize the any of it, is welcomed. Having a healthy bank balance means not stressing over making payroll or paying your suppliers. Having money in your account means being able to take a regular paycheque.

Weather any storm

One of the biggest benefits to having money in the account, is being able to weather any form of revenue drought. Over the course of the 17 years I owned the Marketing Resource Group, we would inevitably have one month of the year where revenues would go to zero. Not just slow down, but really go to zero!

When it first happened, I remember getting very concerned wondering what the heck was going on. Had our service model run its course? Had our clients found another supplier? Had they found an alternative solution? It’s the kind of thing that could really ruin your day, week or month and keep you up at nights.

The first time it occurred was in January, I justified it by saying our clients are just a slow getting back into the swing of things following the Christmas holidays. The next year, it happened again, but this time in March. Once again, I was stressing over it. However, when revenue recovered the following month, I chalked it up to Spring Break distracting my clients. Year over year in continued to happen, but strangely never the same month. Fortunately, as time went on, it became a non event and I just accepted the fact that we would lose a month of revenue every year.

Maintain discipline

The upside of this, is that those quiet months would give us almost four weeks in which to get caught up on a ton of housekeeping activities that we couldn’t get done the rest of the year. Eventually, we actually, planned these activities for our down month. All this to say, that this is another luxury of having money in the account. We didn’t panic, or should I say I didn’t panic anymore. We didn’t rush out and change our strategy or desperately take on any old piece of business just to generate some cash. And we didn’t lay off anyone. We just kept doing what we had always done. We maintained our discipline in targeting those clients we wanted to do business with and with full confidence that the business would return to normal. You can’t do that when your account is empty.

I do recognize, that having money tempts us to get little careless and spend it on “nice to have, versus need to have” items. But those temptations are easier and less stressful to deal with, than having no money.

Curly might be right, that as individuals we each must find our own “one thing” but when it comes to owning a business, there is only one thing, and that’s money!

You may also enjoy Pricing For Profit

Copyright © Greg Weatherdon 2018

Sign up above to receive email notification of the latest update to this blog.

Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.

Successful people are always on the lookout for ways to improve themselves and their businesses. Unfortunately, with the advent of Social Media, there are now an overwhelming number of so called experts promoting the latest and greatest way to take you and or your business to the next level.

Scream Loud Enough

I get the sense that they believe that if they scream loud enough or post frequently enough, people will automatically assume that they are experts.

Rarely however, have these denizens of success achieved the level of achievement they proclaim that you can attain. Just because they say so, doesn’t make it so.

I like to say “that most of the people making money on the internet are those individuals selling you courses on how to make money on the internet”. Buy their book, sign up for their course, and you too will become successful.

Granted, there are some individuals that have actually achieved success in their chosen field and are now sharing and yes, capitalizing on their knowledge they gained over a lifetime and you know what? That’s okay. Unfortunately, they’re in the minority.

Get Experts To Help

A simple and effective alternative, is to find someone in your community that you admire, that has done their time. and is successful. Offer to buy them a coffee or lunch to get some insight into their successes and failures.

It has been my experience that truly successful people are willing to help and share and most don’t care how many likes, followers or friends they have on social media.

Their strength and knowledge comes from experience. Or as an ancient proverb says “Age is the price of wisdom”

If you found this helpful, Tweet, Like or tell a friend.

Copyright © Greg Weatherdon 2017

Sign up above to receive email notification of the latest update to this blog

Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.

Validating your idea, is one of the best pieces of advice I can give start-ups as well as existing business owners. This one item should be at the top of your to do list if you’re considering starting a new business or thinking of adding a new product or service to your existing operation.

You may think it’s a great idea and all your friends and family nod their heads in agreement, but frankly they don’t matter. The only opinion that counts is those people you want as customers. It’s their opinion that matters, so get out in front of them during the concept stage, to see if there is any interest, would they willing to buy and at what price?

The upside to this exercise is that you may find out they like it and they may even give you an idea to improve it prior to you making a large irreversible investment. The downside of course is that may not see any value in it and tell you they wouldn’t be a buyer. In fact that may be an upside, when you consider how much time, effort, money and grief you’ll save by not pursuing it.

This way you’ll live to fight another day.

I’m Greg Weatherdon and this has been your Small Business Minute.

Copyright © Greg Weatherdon 2015

 

If you found this helpful, Tweet, Like or tell a friend.

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of the latest update to this blog.

 

 

 

Get More LIFE Out of Your Business

You shouldn’t be the hardest working person in your company.

Many small business owners find that even after the struggling start-up years, they’re working too many hours and still managing every aspect of their businesses.

Greg Weatherdon has been there, done that. As an entrepreneur, he learned not only how to get a business to the point of running smoothly, but also how to reduce the number of hours he worked, delegate more responsibility to his employees, and take longer vacations while his business chugged along like a well-oiled machine. And now he is providing the secret to success.

Do you suffer from any of the following?

1. Business ownership isn’t living up to the dream.
2. Endless workdays.
3. You can’t find good people.
4. Profits are less than expected.
5. You can never take a vacation.

You’re not alone. But there is a solution. As Greg demonstrates, with some time and effort, you really can Get More Life Out Of Your Business.