Are you scared about your business numbers?

Are you scared about your business numbers? I’m here to make sure you aren’t scared of them and to help you feel much, much more confident in them. 

Lots and lots of business owners I speak to are not confident in their numbers, they're scared, and don't know what they're looking at.

I also think that there's an awful lot of people who go into business because they're good at what they do. Some people might be creative and are amazing self-employed artists, others might have trained in psychology and become self-employed therapists.

But being good at what you do doesn’t mean that you will know how to manage the numbers in your business.

I'm the opposite. I am totally not creative at all. And I know my numbers inside out. But that's my background, that's what I do all the time and that's what I help other people do.

It’s important to be aware of your money mindset and to think about why you tell yourself you can't understand your business numbers. I think that everybody can understand their numbers! 

Most businesses are not excessively complicated. Product businesses may be a little bit more complicated, but not so complicated that you can't get to grips with the numbers.

For a service business, you really need to just look at your numbers, stop being afraid of your bank account and stop hiding from what the reality is.

I know of lots of business owners that think they have got a great business, but actually, they aren’t paying themselves and end up spending more than they have got in the bank. Or it's the kind of hobby business, which just doesn't really make you any money. 

Would it be less stressful to just sit on the sofa and not spend any money? And would that be better, and less stressful then having a business? Maybe, but that's not the case for most of us who want to be earning money.

I want you to stop telling yourself that you can't understand your numbers. I want you to make a really big effort to look at your bank account and look at what goes in and out.

Who's paying you regularly? Do you have people who don't pay you regularly? Do you have people pay late all the time? Do you need to look at ditching those clients? Are you getting paid as much as you need to? What is your income each month? Are you making on average  £1000, £2000, £5000? Do you have months where that just doesn't happen? Because you're on holiday? Or because it's Christmas? Or it's January and you always have to get a new client?

Do you find you have gaps where you lose clients or projects finish and then you can't recover that? Look at your expenses, most of us have loads of subscriptions.  I go through these at least quarterly and check if I need the latest version.

Sometimes you can downgrade to a free version or to a lower version. Ask yourself do I need the version I'm on? Can I do as much as I do on a free version or a much cheaper version?

You don't need to do this all the time, but I think it's really important to regularly look when things come up for renewal, make sure you've thought about it.

A lot of memberships and insurances come up for renewal annually so it's also really important to make sure that you know what's going to come up in the future. I want you to start to see patterns in your business as much as you possibly can, start seeing things like when do you make the most money? Is there times in your industry where you can be working really hard, but also look at how hard you're working for what's coming into your bank account.

I definitely feel at the moment that I'm working a lot and that's being rewarded in my bank account. Which is fine because it correlates, but sometimes I think you can be working really hard and actually not be earning very much. And also you can be doing all the client stuff and you still have to do your own business stuff, such as your own social media and email marketing. For me, this is time I'm not in front of a client so it's really important to make sure that actually I'm still doing all the things that will generate more money in the future, and not just focusing on the client. I can't work five days a week on clients, if I only want to work four days a week anyway. Also within these four days, I cant spend all that time on clients. So it's really important to get the time you spend on your client work and your own business work sorted out in your head.

If you've not done my pricing calculator, you must do that, to know how much you need to earn to cover everything in your business. But you need to have your business numbers in order to do that.

What I want you to take away from this is to be confident. Don't think that you can't do it, that you're terrible at maths and all of that sort of stuff. Actually, most of the time, it's money coming in, and money coming out and it's just as simple as that. Keep it as simple as that in your head so it doesn't get complicated for you. At the end of each month, just have a look back through your bank account and just go right well how much did I make in income and how much did I spend and how much did I pay myself? Because, actually, if you're not paying yourself remember it’s a really expensive hobby.