Entrepreneurs hear it all the time. We’ve been guilty of saying it.

You have to grow your business to be a BIGG success. You have to scale.

No you don’t.

You don’t have to build something large.

You don’t have to hire employees.

You don’t have to go public.

Listen to this post. Click a player to hear George & Mary-Lynn on The BIGG Success Show Podcast.


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Before we get into them, we should note that we’re really focusing on the financial side of your business in this discussion. So you won’t hear warm and fuzzy terms. Just the basics.

And we should emphasize another point:

Your business won’t just give these things to you.

You’ll have to work hard to get them.

With all that in mind, here are the three things your business must give you:

Enough money today

This is the obvious one. Assuming it’s a full-time endeavor, your business has to provide you with enough money to sustain your standard of living.

But what’s not so obvious, perhaps, is that you need to be able to sustain your standard of living in the future too. Your costs will increase. Your business must give you enough money to meet these future costs.

If you don’t want to work more, you must have the ability to charge your customers more in the future when your costs increase. Otherwise, you’ll have a lower standard of living in the future.

Replacement customers

No matter how well you serve your customers, you are likely to lose one from time to time.

Hopefully, your churn rate is really low but almost every business experiences some customer turnover. You’ll need to find new customers to replace old customers who do less business with you or no business at all.

Otherwise, you won’t have enough money today. Your income will fall. So it’s important to continue marketing your business, to continue networking, no matter how busy you are right now.

Enough money tomorrow

Even if you are a solopreneur, you need an exit plan.

You may reach a point where you don’t want to work. You may reach a point where you can’t work.

Your business must give you enough money so you can set aside something for tomorrow.

The three “do somethings”

At a minimum, your business must give you the lifestyle you want for now and the future. If it doesn’t, you have three choices.

We’ll call them “do somethings”.

• Do something more
  

  Grow your business by doing more for your existing customers or getting more customers.
  

• Do something additional
  

  Is there another business, perhaps related, that would give the extra something you need. Or could you get a part-time job to fill the gap between what you need and what you’re taking in now.
  

• Do something else
  

  Sometimes you just have to accept that it’s not going to work. Be realistic. But be careful that you don’t give up too early. BIGG success usually comes with a price. You will be required to push yourself beyond what you thought were your limits if you want to reach it.
  

  But you’ll grow so much personally and professionally in the process. And that’s what will lead you to BIGG success!
  

What do you want your business to give you?

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file | podcast:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/biggsuccess/00740_092911.mp3

Image in this post from stock.xchng

We caught an interesting piece on CBS Sunday Morning a few weeks ago. Not surprisingly, a lot of yacht owners have given up the boat as a result of the Great Recession.

Image in this post by wilksailor

We’re used to seeing investments show up on our Balance Sheet. We buy a new computer and we see it added there.

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When we spend money on advertising or office supplies, it shows up on our Income Statement rather than our Balance Sheet.

But we’re still spending money. It’s an investment for the purpose of increasing our sales.

The financial statement on which it shows up on is based on accounting rules. We have to understand that we are spending the money with the purpose of increasing sales.

Interdependence of business and personal finances

While we say business owners, this concept applies to our personal finances as well.

As a business owner, particularly a business owner who owns 100% of your firm, your business finances and personal finances are completely linked.

Not in a legal sense – you’ll want to talk with your attorney to select the right entity for your company – but in a philosophical sense.

Your business has to do well or it will affect your personal finances. We all get that.

What a lot of people forget is that their standard of living may affect their business. If you spend too much personally, you put more of a burden on your business to produce more income for you to take out of the business. It can really add to the pressure, particularly for a start-up business.

In our personal lives, every penny we spend should add to our happiness. If it doesn’t, it’s not a worthwhile expenditure.

Start from scratch

There’s a technique that helps you decide if the returns you’re getting are sufficient. It’s called zero-based budgeting.

For every line item on your Income Statement, you assume you don’t need to spend any money. Then you add to it for the outlays you determine will give you the return you desire.

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I do this in my businesses every three years. Costs can creep in. You commit to this service or that program. It all adds up. Instead of doing it all every three years, you may pick a few line items every year for review. Just make sure you cycle through all of them every few years or so.

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Let’s take an example that applies to our businesses and our personal lives – our cell phone. I might ask myself: Do I need the package I currently have or could I cut back? Do I need unlimited texting?

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You’ll also consider alternatives. If you weren’t spending this amount of money on your cell phone, what might you spend it on? You might find you could increase sales faster or be a lot happier if you spent this money on another thing.

You might decide to increase your long-term happiness and invest this newfound money. That may make you happier now and then.

By justifying the expense all over again, away from the emotional point of purchase, you’ll spend your money on what you really want. You’ll get the returns you seek. That’s bigg success.

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Thanks for the gift of your time today. Please join us next time when we ask, “Have you evolved enough?” Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00492-093009.mp3

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