When we are first starting out we have a tendency to overspend and we quickly begin to run through our limited funds in record time and create an enormous amount of debt and even more so if it's not our money. What would you spend your money on if you knew it was your last one hundred dollars? That you were not going to get more money for a long time? You would focus only your most pressing needs. You would be forced to assess each area to find out if you are getting the results that would justify spending your last bit of funds.
You would try to find or create ways to promote your business that didn't require a lot of expense. Labor intensive rather than spending any more money. What could you do?
You could barter for ad space; you could carry the flyers yourself instead of paying a kid to do it. You could cold call rather than spend it on advertising, you could place cheap ads in e-zines or on-line newsletters, you could collect e-mail and send out a free newsletter every month, you could target your advertising to your local area, you could team up with other local businesses for referral business, you could cross promote, you could make presentations for the chamber of commerce for free and see if they will pick up the cost of the event, you could call the local library and see if you can make a presentation or speak on a topic that could be noteworthy or of interest to the general public, you could write articles or a column in your local paper with consumer tips, or post articles on-line about your specialty.
Of course we live in the real world of everyday expenses and you have to spend money when you are in business on delivery charges, utilities, phone services, monthly services, classes or seminars, emergencies that unexpectedly happen, business trips, and car service to the airport sometimes.
But by budgeting those things into your calculations and keeping money on hand in case of an emergency it will conserve your funds and force you to think more creatively. Now when you are thinking of taking a risk with that last $100 you will have a pretty good idea if it will fly. What you have to do is picture where you want to go and what you want to achieve. With the last of your dollars will you achieve a big windfall or pull in an expanded income?
Even if you have thousands of dollars coming in per month it is a good idea to assess each area of your business to see if you can improve the processes to make it more efficient, that you can save money by implementing a new feature, or that you are making the kind of money you envisioned, with the new improvements.
In the end when you are making money remember to replace your emergency funds, pay down your debt and continue to improve your services and also keeping your costs budgeted, and keeping a check on your credit card spending. Paying high credit cards is not where you want to spend your last one hundred dollars.
When we are making a little more money is also the time that we are tempted to overspend. We justify this by saying I have a lot of money coming in now. Be warned that everything can be fleeting if you don't set up a budget, manage your expenses, and keep a good eye on your results.
0 Commentaires