How to save money – Are you wasting money in your business?
It is so easy to waste money in your business, especially when you are excited about everyone knowing about your business. It is great to be excited about starting a business and getting it established but you do need to maintain a level head about managing your money within your business and take time to look at it every week. Only 1 in 5 businesses survive 5 years in business and the main reasons for failure are lack of planning, poor cash flow, financial acumen as well as poor health caused by the stress of having a business.
I’m very honest in my book, Are you worth it? A Spiritual Guide to Managing Your Money Mindset for Business Owners about how I managed to get into significant debt for a variety of reasons such as being bad at maths, not having a clear target market, lots of personal loss (Miscarriage, failed IVF attempts, Mum dying, cat dying, sister in law dying, and my husband leaving me with all the debt!) as well as just not having a good plan which I kept on track with. I had massive self worth issues, which I had no idea I had.
My best advice to you in business is to be frugal! Do you really need the course, book, training, event, you are offered. Ask yourself, is this a need or want? If it is something you need and want, then find a way to make the money to pay for it, before you pay for it!! It is so easy to add something to your credit card to pay for later and to be in bad habits about money. Before you know it, you owe far more money than you realise and you will find it harder to make money when you have a debt to pay back.
The key is to look at your income and to put 70% aside to pay bills/tax, 10% to spend on yourself to value the work you are doing, 10% to save and 10% to give to charity. If you are in debt, do not give to charity. Use any money you get to pay off your debt as fast as you can.
Some money saving tips for you…..
- Bring water or a coffee with you rather than buying an expensive a coffee when you go to a network meeting
- Go to free/low cost network meetings until you can invest in paid for ones. Have a networking strategy
- Only book onto training that you actually need, when you actually need it and can afford it. Do not sign up to two courses at once as you will overload yourself
- Stop going for coffee meetings with no purpose or to ‘catch up’. Only go if you think you could joint venture together.
- Avoid creating and distributing promotional material to give out when you don’t have a clear business plan/vision for your business and what you want out of your life
- Define your spiritual purpose and what you want out of life first and then decide how your business will run.
- Identify your target market and ideal client before spending loads of money on your website, promotional literature, advertising in magazines, business directories, etc
- Avoid putting courses you want to attend on credit cards and not paying attention to interest rates and payment dates, so you incur charges. Courses always run again. There are always special deals again in the future. Be careful of being sucked into a sales technique.
- Manage your personal expenses effectively, so you do not incur admin fees as your direct debits bounce. Personal and Business finances go hand in hand.
To help everyone learn from my mistakes, I have a new Business Essentials workshop starting on 21st July and I aim to run them on a monthly/6 weekly basis depending on interest. We will cover why you need to understand yourself first in business to gain success and I will help everyone uncover potential money mindset blocks. I will cover hints and tips about starting a business and remaining in credit right from the start. It is much easier to stay happy in business when you do not have the stress of being in debt. We look at how to use your mind effectively so that you are projecting your vision and how to capture this in your business plan as actions. The first workshop is on 21st July in Leeds, Maidstone from 9.30-4.30pm and is only £45 plus booking fee. Book at http://insightfulminds.co.uk/businessessentialsworkshop/
