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Why Selling More Doesn’t Mean Making More

I assume that when you started your business, you wanted to put money in your pocket. Whether your goal for that money is to use it to fully support yourself or your family, or to fund a particular life goal, your business is meant to supply you with money. As such, making money by selling product is often the business owner’s most common focus. Enter, the hustle timeline.

The Hustle Timeline

When we first start a business we have to get out there and hustle to sell something; to get things moving. Eventually we start rolling. But at some point we want to make more money, and we believe that growing our business is the way to make more profit.

So, we hustle some more. We do more gigs, we move more product, we sign on more clients. There is more money coming in, but there still doesn’t seem to be enough. Then we set our sights on a particular goal, the gig, the number, the client that’s big enough to put us over the edge so we can put more in our pocket. But it never really happens. Here we find ourselves trapped in the timeline; always hustling, and never quite reaching our goals.

The Answer

There are only two ways to put more money in your pocket: increase margins or decrease expenses. If we are using the same labor, materials or processes as we increase sales we are increasing our output, but not gaining anything. Perhaps we may have even added to our spending to buy that new printer or new app to handle the increase in sales volume. If we haven’t examined our spending, we aren’t gaining anything. Taking a good look at our margins and our business expenses is an important step to upping the profits of our business.

To examine your expenses and profit margins, ask yourself these questions. Is your product or service priced appropriately, or are you undervaluing it? Comparing your prices industry standards can help you suss out an answer. So can calculating in materials, labor, and other costs. If you’re unsure how to price your product or service, do some research to get other opinions and methods!

Are you delivering your product or service in an efficient manner, or are there places you could cut time and expenses? Look at your processes, and be discerning. Have you reviewed your business expenses lately to see if it’s really all necessary?

Ask yourself these questions and review the inner workings of your business. This is where your profit is hiding. Let’s get it into your pocket.

☮

Angela

Image Sources: Roman Kraft , Nik MacMillan

Profit First Overview

The Profit First formula is the opposite of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or GAAP, which determines a business’s profit is Sales – Expenses = Profit. Simple, logical and clear. Unfortunately, it’s a lie. The formula, while logically accurate, does not account for human behavior. In the GAAP formula profit is a left over, a final consideration, something that is hopefully a nice surprise at the end of the year. Alas, the profit is rarely there and the business continues on its check to check survival.
Sales – Expenses = Profit Sales – Profit = Expenses
With Profit First you to flip the formula to Sales – Profit = Expenses. Logically the math is the same, but from the stand point of the entrepreneur’s behavior it is radically different. With Profit First, you take a predetermined percentage of profit from every sale first, and only the remainder is available for expenses.

PARKINSON’S LAW

Author and historian C. Northcote Parkinson theorized that our demand for a resource increases to meet the supply of it. That is why when we are given two weeks to do a project it takes two weeks, and when we are given eight weeks to do the same project it takes eight weeks. That is why when given $1,000 to complete our work we get it done with $1,000 and when given $10,000 to complete the same work, it takes $10,000. Profit First makes Parkinson’s Law an asset. By taking profit first the money available for expenses lessens, and we are forced to find ways to get the same things done for less money.

BANK BALANCE ACCOUNTING

Most entrepreneurs don’t have the time or gumption to read the different accounting statements necessary to manage the financial aspect of their business. Theoretically you should review and correlate your Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement monthly (or more frequently), but few entrepreneurs do. Most resort to “bank balance accounting,” where we check our bank balance every day and make financial decisions based upon what we see. Per Parkinson’s Law, we consume what we see in our bank account. Profit First encourages the entrepreneur to continue “bank balance accounting” by first allocating money to profit (and other accounts) so that the entrepreneur sees the actual portion of deposits that are available for expenses and they automatically adjust their spending accordingly.

DON’T CHANGE HABITS, LEVERAGE THEM

Many entrepreneurs try to force themselves to become better at accounting and to become more disciplined in their fiscal management by pure willpower. But just like a muscle, willpower can be drained. And in a moment of financial stress or bigger than expected expenses the entrepreneur will break their own fiscal rules and spend the money they have. The Profit First principle does not try to change your habits (that is nearly impossible to do), Profit First works with your existing habits. By first allocating money to different accounts, and then removing the temptation to “borrow” from yourself, your business will become fiscally strong and you will benefit from regular profit distributions