financial decisions Archives - Solopreneur Profit Coach |

The In-Depth Guide to Mapping Your Money, and How It Can Fortify Your Business, Part III

In the last two parts of this in-depth guide to money mapping, we’ve talked about why it’s helpful and how to get started. We’ve also touched on creating a system of accounts to set up a regular paycheck for yourself and an assurance of profit. Creating your own money map based on these ideas takes a lot of evaluation of your finances. You need to assess your operating and tax expenses and analyze your living expenses and savings goals. Once you’ve assessed these amounts, they translate into the percentages you put into each account.

What’s Your Percentage?

I help clients figure out what their percentages could be. We assess the needs of their business, and we figure out how much they actually need to live on. We discuss their life goals, and how those relate to money. There are good benchmarks for each percentage, which are suggested by Profit First. For your reference, the suggested percentages are: 5% profit, 50% owner’s pay, 15% taxes, 30% for operating expenses. This breakdown applies to most solopreneurs (anyone under $250,000 in annual revenue).If this doesn’t feel doable for you right now, don’t sweat it. It takes a lot of work, evaluation, and good financial habits to create a sustainable money system.

Applying the Model

Let’s look at an example of all of this mapped out. In this example business, the owner is using the ideal benchmarks and keeping a cushion in their Owner’s Pay account. What they do take out is then subdivided, with 20% of their pay taken off the top for three savings goals (I like to call this “paying yourself first.”). The remainder of this money goes to living expenses. While this model might be unrealistic from where you stand, keep in mind that this is something my clients work towards. I’ve included it here so you can start to picture what your own money system looks like.

If you enjoyed this guide, I recommend also checking out Part I, and Part II. And, try going to the Tools page, where you can play with an allocations calculator. Plug in your revenue and your preferred percentages to see what your amounts are! Then you can start filling in your money map.

Money mapping is an important tool, and one that I enjoy walking clients through. If you’re interested in working with me, check out my services page to check out my packages, and schedule a call.

Angela

Image by:

Estée Janssens

There is No Wrong Choice

When you run your own business, you make a lot of decisions, mostly on your own. That grants you enormous freedom, but also leaves you with immense responsibility. This responsibility often hangs over our heads: what if we don’t make the right choice? We stall the flow of our businesses by avoiding tough decisions.

I, for one, have definitely struggled with this. When I was running my jewelry business as a full time project, I often put off making decisions. My avoidance of them was fear-based and emotional. I felt like I had to nail every choice and do everything by myself. Not having anyone else to bounce my ideas off of left me frozen and fearful. You can read more about my experience running my jewelry business here.

Since then, one of my major breakthroughs was realizing that there is no wrong decision. No matter what I decide to do in my business, I am always able to learn from that choice. If something I do turns out to be a mistake, I find a way to recover and learn not to repeat the misstep. However, I find that the vast majority of choices I make in my business are not typically so high-stakes. Often, I’m making choices about how to utilize social media, what to include in a proposal to a client, etc. I can agonize over the details, but at the end of the day, every choice I make is just another step in a larger experiment: my business! And the purpose of my business is to support me and my life goals – the choices I make within it don’t need to be stressful or fear-fraught.

What are some strategies that could help you breeze through decision making with your business? Perhaps you can get comfortable trying out systems and ideas on a trial basis. Maybe it would be helpful for you to find an accountability buddy to talk to and discuss ideas with. Perhaps hiring on an employee or contractor and delegating some of your workload can take some of the pressure off. It could be helpful to journal and investigate the fear or emotions that are blocking you from making a decision. Simply approaching your business with the mindset that you can learn from all your choices can also help alleviate this.

Making decisions in your business confidently and with an air of curiosity and experimentation can make your business more fun for you. And really, isn’t that what we want?

I hope this post inspired you to go forth confidently and make any moves you’ve been stalling. Go get ’em, tiger! If you find you could benefit from an accountability partner and you’d like guidance around your financial systems, I absolutely love to support solopreneurs around these things. Head on over to my Services page, and schedule a call with me.

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Angela

Image Source: Amy Shamblen