Are You Really Making Any Money?
Posted On: 2011-05-30
I guess that's a rather rude question ... after all you don't know me and I really have no right to ask you personal questions like that.
But that's ok ... because you might get even more upset when I ask you this follow up question ... would you really know if you were making money?
So are you making any money and would you really know if you were making money?
Sure you might have money coming in ... checks might be arriving in the mail and payments might be hitting your bank account ... but are you actually making anything or is it all going out just as fast as it's coming in.
Sadly there are perhaps millions of small business people around the world who have no idea whether they're actually making money or not. Just like you, the money is coming in but it's going out just as fast and they're not amassing any wealth at all.
Yes, they might be living well ... they may have a nice home and a cool car and a jet ski tucked away in the garage ... but what happens if they lose their job or suffer an illness or injury that prevents them from working?
And the really sad part is that they ... and quite possibly you ... don't realize that financial ruin is just a heartbeat away. So many people think that as long as the cash is coming in then everything is fine and the good times will go on being good. They fail to understand that there's a world of difference between breaking-even and making money.
They spend time working on their business and they throw money at their business from time to time to keep things going but they never really know whether the time and the money they have spent has produced a return on the investment or not.
Just last week a major survey of business involvement in social media was released here in Australia and the findings were mind-blowing. Businesses ... both small and medium ... are prepared to throw lots of money at marketing their products but very few of them actually stop to measure just how effective their marketing is.
The spend money but never bother to see whether it was money that was well-spent or not. And if they don't monitor their marketing dollars then it's quite likely their not monitoring expenditure either.
So are you monitoring your business? Do you know whether the money you spend is well-spent or not or do you just throw money at traffic buys and guaranteed listings and never stop to measure whether it's producing a positive result or doing no more than just barely breaking even?
Yeah I know ... counting beans isn't sexy ... it's not exciting ... it's not what gives most of us a buzz but if you're not making money then you're in trouble and you need to know that you've got a problem.
I also know that ignorance is bliss ... you may not want to know that you're not really making money and you're just barely getting by ... because when you do know how dire things might really be the color of all your days change and life becomes much harder.
But you need to know the truth ... you need to know what your true financial status really is. You started in this business to make money and you need to be sure that making money is what you're actually doing because if you're not then you're living in a fantasy world and as well know fantasy worlds have a habit of disappearing in a puff of smoke.
So before that puff of smoke happens and you find yourself left floating on nothing but air take the time to honestly answer that one important question that I asked right at the start of this column.
Are you really making any money?
If you're not really making any money then what are you going to do about it? Are you going to take the time to look at every bit of time and money you invest in your business to see if you can extract a better return from that investment? Or are you going to hope that the nagging doubt I've placed in your mind will just go away and you'll go on making enough money to get by?
After years in this industry I can tell you that if you want to do nothing then that's what you will end up with ... absolutely nothing. Your business will collapse and you'll out of this business backward. But if you're prepared to work at your business and watch almost every penny to ensure you get a return on every one of them then you will make money.
So now let me ask you ... are you really interested in making money?