Navigating Success: Staying Close to the Money in Your Business

Today we're diving headfirst into a topic that’s both critical and often ignored—money. Making it, managing it, and allocating your time correctly.

Setting Clear Money Goals

When it comes to money, do you have goals?

Everyone knows they want more, but that's not a very quantifiable goal. To succeed financially, you need clear, measurable monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals.

When someone asks you “How much money do you want to make?”— more money is not a good answer. You need to know exactly what you're hoping to do year-over-year and month-over-month, as well as the bare minimum you need to hit to keep the lights on.

Get Cozy with Your Financials

Stay close to your spreadsheets.

Become best friends with your accountant.

Understanding your financials is non-negotiable for business success. I spent too many years not paying attention, ultimately leading to a major overhaul (read: painful in all the ways) of the inner workings of my business over the past two years.

Don’t let your limiting beliefs about finances hold you back. You're not good with money? You just don't have the time? Put all that stuff in the dumpster. We're going to get rid of it because if you want your business to succeed, this is the most important thing that you need to pay attention to: Stay Close to the Money.

Stay Close to the Money

So how do we stay ‘close to the money’? How we keep our focus on the things that actually make us the money we need to thrive and have a profitable business? Let’s go!

1. Prioritize High-Leverage Activities

First, identify the activities that give you outsized returns for your efforts.

If writing content for your blog is something that you enjoy, that post will live on your website, can be shared with your newsletter subscribers and recycled across your social media channels throughout the month. Another bonus? That blog page will still be getting hits a year later, if SEO optimized. That has a ton of leverage. It may have taken you 30 minutes to do it, but it goes on the internet forever.

The highest leverage activity might be going out and making connections, meeting people through networking, and identifying new business opportunities. That is a high leverage opportunity because you know that for every 10 people you meet, you're going to close two of them and they're going to be worth at least five grand. That's an extremely high leverage activity that only YOU can do.

If you’ve never spent an ounce of time in business development land, it’s time to start. This is the most high-leverage activities you can do: actively growing your business and reaching out to people outside of your network that need your help. It gets easier the more you do it and the return on your time spent here can’t be overstated.

If social media doesn’t bring you a single lead, don’t spend your time writing those posts. Content take a lot of work to get into a rhythm and inevitably most of us fall off the rails if someone else on the team isn’t’ in charge of it. If you are getting leads of IG, Great! You need to focus on that. If you aren’t, the Internet won’t kick you off if you choose to not include it in your business development strategy.

At the end of the day, make sure you aren’t spending 1,000s of dollars on managing a channel with no ROI.

2. Don’t Follow the Herd - Make Smart Choices

People want to tell you that you should X, Y and Z (even me included)—don't listen to them. Listen to what is best for you in your business. It’s essential that you build a filter that you pass all advice through. You know your business and your clients AND your bandwidth. Pick and choose wisely and start trusting your judgement.

I have a lot of different people that I listen to—some people for certain things and some for others. I choose the advice that fits my business and ethos. Don't listen to anyone who tells you to do something that you know is not a right fit for your business.

Instagram was not right for our business. It doesn't matter how many algorithms change. It's not the right fit. It may have taken years and years to figure it out, but we finally broke up with Instagram. It takes a lot of money to manage and curate, and we never got what the business needed from it. It’s activity that we decided to not waste our time and resources on anymore.

Repeat after me: My time is the only thing that is a finite resource. It is limited and I will only use it on activities that make money.

3. Audit Your Time and Resources

Where do you spend your time?

Speaking of Instagram, do you spend it scrolling? Do you spend it writing content? Do you spend it working in your business on client work? Do you spend it in meetings? What are you doing and where are you spending your time?

You can't get more of it.

Especially if you're paying someone to watch your children or you're paying for a co-working space. You are paying for that time in some form or another.

Oftentimes, our time is not being used correctly. And sometimes it happens so slowly we don’t even realize how unproductive our days are. So audit your time, see where it's going. See if it makes sense AND if it's worth the money. A lot of times, even if it’s a high leverage activity, like making sales calls, ask yourself if you are the only person that can do this? Are you the only one in your business that can be successful at that task?

OR

Could you hire two people for the cost of you and get 20 calls a day? That's better leverage.

Now you freed up your entire day or morning to work on the things that only you can do AND that makes your business money.

Think bigger and audit your time to see if there are gaps you can close.

Now ask yourself: Are you staying close to the activities that only you can tackle that make you the most money?

4. Embrace the Power of Data

The next thing we want to look at is the data. Data doesn’t lie, it’s understanding what it’s telling us that can be the hard part.

Begin by looking at what activities are moving the needle the most.

Are you posting on LinkedIn with thoughtful content that gets a giant reach? Are you sending targeted emails to your best clients asking for feedback with an 89% open rate?

OR, are you spending $1,500 a month on ads and they're not bringing you a single right fit client? If so, then you need to make a change. You need to find a new ad management company, or you just need to maybe pause that until you get your messaging right. OR maybe you need to take the pilot’s seat on business development and stop leaving it to chance and the whims of those Google searching.

Sometimes the data is right in front of us, but we are just too stuck to see what it is telling us. Data can be scary but it doesn't have to be overwhelming. If you need help, of course, we're here for you.

Be Brave, Be Different

And finally, like I said before, listen to what you and your business needs. Put your money, your effort and your time where it makes the most sense for you.

What's best for me might not be the best for you.

This is just my experience and the experience is meant to show you that you don't have to live your life the way people tell you to. And you certainly don't have to run your business in a conventional way.

There are people that have no social media and are making over a million dollars a year. It's possible. Social media is not a requirement for all businesses to have massive success. And if it doesn't make sense for you, don't do it.

If you're in business, you're in business because you're brave and because you are able to make bold choices.

And that is something worth celebrating.

You can do this. Be Different and do what works for you and your business.

Most of all? Protect your time at all costs and focus on the things that will help your business will grow. I guarantee you'll see results you’ve been looking for.