First Step in Making Money: Send the Paperwork to Your Worker Bees

What’s the #1 concern of small business owners?  

How to manage up’s and down’s in business income each month.  

What’s the #1 concern of individuals? 

How to save more money & have more money available to spend on improving their lifestyle.

Either way, it’s all about managing cash flow.  

Whether you put it under the category of budgeting, cash flow management, pro forma’s, financial planning, or balancing your checkbook, it all comes down to creating a system to achieve your goals by managing and strategizing the cash coming in and going out each month.  On The Wealth Spa I’ve talked about the 4 Step System to Manage Cash Flow.  You can use this system for your household finances, your home business, or a multi-million dollar corporation — the same universal principals apply.  

The first step in managing your cash flow is to get the details out of your way.  One of the details is all the paperwork and records we are required to maintain for tax purposes.  I’m talking about all the documentation to support tax income and tax deductions.  On the personal side, it’s salary information, investment records (both purchases and sales), and deduction records (i.e., property tax, mortgage interest, charitable deductions).  On the business side, it’s income records (invoices and deposit slips) and expense receipts and cancelled checks.  

Whether or not you use this original data to prepare your tax returns (we’ll discuss that next week), you do need to keep all of it in case you get audited.  But you must not get bogged down in these details, because it dose not help you manage you cash flow. 

How to Keep Records:  Personal records may be kept in files by year, along with the tax return for that year.  Business records may be kept in 4 monthly expanding files — one for income, one for deposit slips, one for cancelled checks, and one for receipts.  You may combine travel, automobile expenses, entertainment, and dining records with the receipts (just write notes directly on the back of the receipt), or keep logs in a separate file or journal - whatever is easier for you.

You can keep these documents as electronic files.  But, I find that scanning the documents takes more time then throwing them into files.  And who cares about having a pdf of a Starbucks’ receipt from 1998 on your computer?  

How to Maintain Records:  If at all possible, delegate to your Worker Bees!  Have your Virtual Assistant, Personal Assistant, Professional Organizer, spouse, responsible teenager, stay-at-home-mom neighbor, or babysitter take over this job.  (And yes, not only rich people have VA’s and PA’s - you can get someone for just 2 hours a week.)  All they need to do is sort the paper by year or month, label the files, and stick the documents into the files.  There is no reason for you to do it, except to manage that it gets done regularly (at least monthly).  

The Wealth Spa Minute

Do you have a pile of receipts?  Cancelled checks?  Notes and logs?  Stop dealing with this paper and get it off your desk into a simple expandable file.  Even better - delegate this task to your Virtual Assistant or Personal Assistant.  

 

The Delegation Dilemma: Do I Have to Learn it Before I Outsource it?

 

Guest post by Melanie Benson Strick, The Million Dollar Lifestyle Business Coach

With so many tasks and so little time, we all get the value of delegating to other people to get more done. The ability to leverage other people’s strengths can not only bring more joy and excitement back into your life (cause you aren’t doing tasks you hate) but the revenue potential is unlimited.

So why then is James spending so much time and energy learning how to do the shopping cart so he can outsource it to someone else? Why is Amy investing $2000 on a “learning to blog system” when there are other’s who can do it better, faster and cheaper than her?

Maybe it’s the compelling feeling that many of us have to learn. The quest for knowledge that somehow validates a deep need to know it all. And I think for some, it provides a sense of security or control to know how everything is supposed to work. But is it really serving you to spend your valuable time, money and energy learning all the ins & outs of your business?

I remember the feeling I had when I graduated from San Diego State with my Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management. After getting past the culture shock of not having piles of assignments and the constant pressure of assignments due, I felt like there was a big gaping hole in my life. I missed learning.

So what did I do? I of course took on more learning…taking every class that Motorola offered on leadership, team building, project management, and soon found my way to my Master’s program in Organizational Management. Not too long after graduating again…there was that old “void” again. I needed my learning fix…and I started taking spiritual classes at my church (which 8 years later resulted in my spiritual counselor license) and at the same time I decided to get trained as a coach. Then it was on to marketing, online traffic generation, blogs, social networking…you get the point I think.

As I got serious about my business I had to reflect on how much time and energy I was spending learning new things. What was my time worth and did it really make sense to keep investing in all this learning? What was it getting me? I began to ask myself the tough question with every learning opportunity “Is this going to make me more money?”.

The truth is I was just feeding a little gremlin inside of me. For me, learning gave me a sense of control and power. If I knew what to do and when to do it, then maybe I’d be good enough to have my dream lifestyle and business. What I realized is that learning kept me from doing what would actually make me successful. It was like a big cozy comfortable blanket that kept me safe…and kept my worst fear in front of me…a real lack of financial results.

At some point I had one of the “I should have had a V-8 moments”. It hit me that no matter how much I learned it was not helping me get there any faster. It was much more cost effective to hire someone who knew how to do it so it would get done faster and hence, make a lot more money. If I had to learn it first, then I became the bottleneck!

The key to mastering delegation is adopting this CEO Mindset:

“Know enough to set the vision, goals and desired results. Delegate the tactics to people who can do it faster, cheaper or better than you.”

Here is an example. I have absolutely no idea how to update my website. I know what I want it to look like, what should happen when a visitor is on the site and even what experience I want them to have. But I made it a point to not learn how to update it.

Same thing with most of our marketing efforts. I know what I want done and I hire talented people who already know how to do it. I have a vague idea of what steps my team goes through each month to publish this ezine but I have no idea how to publish one myself. Set up a bridge line? Nope. I’m talented enough that I could probably figure it out (and I know my team has the system published in our online procedures guide) but why bother?

My job as CEO is to stay focused on my top 5 – 10 high payoff activities like writing, mentoring entrepreneurs on how to create their ideal business, designing powerful programs that serve my clients, and planning out where I want to be in 90 days to 5 years from now!

My challenge to you is to look at where you are holding yourself back by being the bottleneck. Where is your need to learn and be in control getting in the way of what you delegate? What are your false beliefs about what can be delegated well costing you playing the bigger game?

If you haven’t yet downloaded our free report on the 101 Ways to Triple Your Income by Outsourcing Your High Payoff Activities, I highly encourage you to do it now. This process will help you get clear on your highest payoff activities and bust this delegation dilemma for good!

About the Author:

Most entrepreneurs are continually battling overwhelm with too many things to do, opportunities to capture and money to make! Melanie Benson Strick, Million Dollar Lifestyle Business Coach & Virtual Team Building Expert, teaches entrepreneurs how to stop feeling overwhelmed so they can create more money, more freedom and more prestige.

Get the Entrepreneur’s Secret Weapon to revolutionize your results and get on the fast-track to a freedom based business. Take this free chapter from my book, The Power of The Virtual Team, as a gift from me at http://www.thepowerofthevirtualteam.com

Copyright 2007 Melanie Benson Strick and Success Connections Inc.

 

How to Delegate: Why Are You Doing Everything Yourself?

Guest post by Ali Brown

One problem I often see with solo professionals is that their businesses aren’t growing because they’re simply not making enough time to do it! 

It’s not that they don’t understand the value of those efforts, or they don’t WANT to make the time. It’s that they’re simply trying to do too much by themselves. They’re so busy running their business that they’re not working ON their business.

Are You Spending All Your Time on the Little Stuff?

Owning your own business requires wearing a lot of hats. But it seems that when many people leave their jobs to “go solo,” they think they must work completely solo as well. They insist on doing everything themselves — even tasks they know darn well they’re not good at. 

They try in vain to design their own Web sites and brochures, write their own sales copy, process their own orders, manage their own mailing list, personally respond to every customer call and e-mail, ship their own products, and more. Pretty soon they’re running around like that proverbial headless chicken. Read more

Practice Complete Delegation or Don’t Bother

By now, you’ve heard me tell you that you must be delegating; you must be outsourcing your phone calls, emails, bookkeeping, and formatting to a Virtual Assitant, and you must be outsourcing your errands and organizing to a Personal Assistant.  Maybe you’ve tried to follow my advice, but you’ve found that it has not saved that much time overall, because you still have to manage the new person. 

That’s because you have made a grave mistake.  Read more

Part 2: The 3 S’s of Investing in Your Business - Systems

This is the second blog post in a three part series about investing in your business. Systems What do I mean by systems? No, not your computer systems (even though they may be involved), and I don’t mean organization systems (even though you may need those). Systems means ways to take all the tasks, projects, and items on your to-do list, and create a system to get it done faster & easier, to leverage your time to get the really important things done (like getting new clients, servicing your clients, and enjoying your life).

• Checklists/Flowcharts: Do you have tasks that you do over and over again? Examples - setting up a new client file, handing a prospect call, promoting a teleclass, sorting your email. Next time you have this task, keep a short, bullet point log of the steps you use for that task. Now, you have a great checklist, so (1) you can get through the task faster next time, and (2) you can eventually delegate the task to someone else.
• Automate: Do you perform tasks that could be performed by someTHING else? Examples - answering the phone, responding to emails, sending out bills, and scheduling appointments. Brainstorm ways you could use computer, telephone, or other automation systems to perform these tasks. For example, I use Appointments Plus for clients to schedule their own appointments … preventing at least 3 hours each week of phone tag.
• Delegate: Now that you have a checklist for those administrative tasks … why are you doing those tasks? You need those 4-10+ hours a week to get clients, not for filing paperwork. Hire a Virtual Assistant to answer your phones, answer your email, do your Quickbooks, send out mailings, format documents, and do anything else that does not need your expertise. VA’s are independent contractors, and you can hire one for only 2 hours a week. Yes, you need to pay them $20-50/hour … but if you are billing at $100-300/hour, isn’t it worth it?

The secret of my success …

How am I able to do it - run a business, a family, and a household, without (completely) loosing my mind? #1 - I Get Help Difficult for many of us perfectionists to do, but necessary if you want to achieve big results in more than one area of your life. It’s very hard, if not impossible, to do everything 100%, at least not at the same time. Personal Assistant - I hired someone to run my errands, 3 hours per week. She does my grocery shopping, dry cleaning run, mail & bank run, Target shopping, office supplies, and returns to the mall. She also helps me with organizing closets and sorting through piles of stuff for charity, as well as random projects, like finding a good long term storage place. Virtual Assistant - I have a virtual assistant for my business who answers my phone, answers my email and website inquiries, transcribes audio, formats documents, does research, compiles data, does data entry, and other random stuff. She works for me 2-10 hours per week. Misc - guy who does the lawn every other week, service that cleans the house every other week. Occasional babysitters (no family in town to do that). #2: I’m always learning I’m constantly taking online classes, listening to audio self-study programs, going to seminars, watching DVD classes, and reading books (about 2-4 per week). About business strategy, writing copy, financial planning, law, personal growth, computer software, law of attraction, and … astronomy, linguistics, decorating, travel, child development, and … biographies and fiction (epic fantasy). Keeps my brain constantly growing, and gives me tons of ideas for my business & life. #3: I know myself I hate cleaning, so I hire that out. I would go nuts with Gracie here all day, so she’s in preschool some of the time. I never remember to pay the bills, so I have most of them on autopay. I forget to do our IRA contributions, so I have them on auto investing. I forget to buy fruits & veges, so I have them delivered. #4: Cut out what’s not working I stopped watching TV after Gracie was about 6 months old. I still watch some nature, history, and science shows, some movies, and educational DVDs, but I stopped watching regular TV shows. Wow, that gave me hours every day to spend on other stuff — my business, reading, playing with Gracie, or whatever. I quit volunteering with the Junior League. It’s a great organization, but I was not getting much out of it anymore, and it was a HUGE time committment, especially in the evenings (and I always had to get a babysitter). What a relief to resign - now I can spend my volunteer hours and dollars exactly how I want, targeted to my particular goals, and on my ideal time schedule. Do you have secrets to your success? Leave a comment and share your ideas …