Do You Want to Make More Money?
Posted On: 2016-07-27
It's the end of the month already. How did that happen?
Winter here is two-thirds over and Christmas is only a little over 100 days away ... at least I think it is. I don't really want to know if it is now less than 100 days, with a family the size of mine the thought that we might have less than 100 days to go till Christmas is rather scary.
And of course all that means is that we are now well into 2016 and that leads on to thoughts of what I have actually achieved so far this year. Have I really moved ahead with my business? Is my business pretty much the same as it was at the beginning of the year? Has my business actually gone backwards?
The answer is that we are just coming out of one of the worst periods I can remember. For the last eight weeks, business here in Australia has been in a total hole thanks to a looming election. I don't know what happens in the US or other parts of the world but when an election is called here in Australia businesses become too frightened to spend any money.
Fortunately, the election is now over and we are beginning to see some business confidence return but things were not good towards the end of that eight-week period. I know, I haven't put my head in the sand like so many business people do.
I've watched all the vital signs for my business but what about you? Do you actually know what is happening to your little business? Are you moving ahead and growing or are you on the verge of slipping into reverse?
It is so tempting not to look at how your business is really going. It is so tempting just to keep your head down and keep on working at producing more and more and not think about money or the future but is that really what you should be doing?
There are a lot of great examples out there of people who have started with nothing and grown exceptional businesses and nearly all of them have one thing in common ... they track and measure everything. They don't think that they can achieve wealth just by winging it.
They track and measure everything to do with their business so that they know what is going on in their business. They are not going to wake up one morning and discover that the ten bucks they have in their wallet is all the money they have left in the world. They track and measure so that they can respond to problems that are arising and prevent them from turning into a disaster for their business.
Yes, knowing that your business is about to start going downhill is scary and no one really wants to know that. There is no joy or fun in finding that your business is about to hit a wall but there is even less fun in suddenly finding that you're out of cash and out of options and totally screwed.
When you track and measure everything about your business you are listening to its heartbeat and when that beat starts falter you may have time to find ways to overcome the issues that are beginning to affect your business. But if you don't know about the problems till they have become so huge that you can't get over ... or around ... them then your business is finished.
So what are you tracking and measuring?
And, while we're talking about people who have come from nothing to positions of wealth and power, we should look at another interesting trait that many of these people have.
Research has shown that many of these people slowly move from quantity to quality in their businesses. How many of them continue to do the same old thing day after day? How many of them have obviously begun to work smarter rather than harder and focused on increasing the value of what they produce in the time they are working?
The hours in our day are limited so are you going to spend eight hours producing something that may bring you $100 or are you going to find some way of increasing the value of what you are producing so that you can produce something that will bring you $200 with only 4 hours of work.
As we do move into the last part of this year the value of what I produce in the time I work is something that is really making me think. I don't want to work harder than what I am ... I just want to increase the value of the time that I work.
Of course, I could just increase what I charge clients ... or I could offer a more valuable service / product.