4 Simple Tips for Keeping Your Small Business Finances Organized

 

In the midst of tax season, a lot of us are looking to do better on our finances. Maybe you got a big tax bill and are now wondering where your earnings went. Perhaps you were a little less organized than you would have liked. Or maybe this time just makes you extra aware of where your business is financially.

Whatever the case, mid-points like this are great times to give your finances a makeover! Here are my 4 simple tips for keeping your small business finances organized and intentional.

Review Your Goals

After a big financial event like tax season, the financial goals you set earlier in the year deserve a revisit. Check in with them and ask yourself if they still fit. If not, give your goals a nice update! Make sure what you’re aiming towards is relevant to you. You can check out my article on doing a mid-year review of your finances right here.

If you don’t have any financial goals, now is the time to set them. Harness whatever financial fervor tax season (or whatever other financial situation brought you to this post) has instilled in you.

What are your ideal financial conditions? Dream them up, write them down, and come up with a plan. If you need some pointers, here’s my article “4 Strategies for Setting Doable Financial Goals.”

Set Up a Weekly Money Check-In

So much of creating the life you want is about habits. One of the best habits to adopt, in my opinion, is regular “money time”. Find time each week to check in with your finances. Start with a short chunk, to make it feel more manageable. Fifteen to thirty minutes should suffice.

Use this time to check in with your expenses, upcoming bills, IOU’s, and more as needed. Here are my suggestions on what to look for during your weekly money check-in.

Make a Plan to Stay on Top of Your Books

Especially if organization was an issue this tax round and you run a business, making a plan to stay organized until next tax time is a great thing to do right now. Ask yourself what you need to be able to do this.

Do you need to work with a bookkeeper? Do you need to get some training on how to do your bookkeeping yourself? Identify your needs and take some steps to set yourself on the right path.

Find a Money Buddy

It’s my personal belief that anything can go better when you have an accountability buddy. Find someone in your circle who has a financial goal they’re working on too, and join forces! This might be a fellow business owner, or someone from your church, or another mom from a play group.

“Why You Need a Money Buddy”

Once you’ve found your money buddy, establish the terms of your accountability partnership. How often do you want to meet? How do you want to do check ins? Do you want to learn about finances together, or just trade tips on goals?

These 4 tips will help set you on the right path. If you’re a small business owner looking for more ideas, you might like my free eBook, the Cash Flow Reboot Guide: A Guide to Thriving in Uncertain Times. Click below and get your free copy.

By |2023-04-11T13:53:14-07:00April 11th, 2023|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset, Personal Savings, Personal Spending, Small Business|Tags: , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Always Base your Financial Goals on Your Values: Here’s Why

I’m not a big fan of making money for no reason. When we have an abstract number in our head about how much we want to make, this can be distracting and counterproductive at best, and leave us feeling empty at worst. Financial goals shouldn’t be based on round, nice-sounding numbers that carry an air of success. They should be based on what we actually want to get out of life!

Your Values = Your Satisfaction

The way I see it, your values are pretty simple. The more you incorporate the things you value into your life, the more satisfied you are. In other blog posts, I’ve written about Vicki Robin’s concept of enough, and Lynn Twist’s ideas of sufficiency. Having enough, feeling sufficient and satisfied – isn’t that what most of us really want out of life? Your business, your finances, and your goals should enable you to have enough of the things you value in your life to feel satisfied.

For more thoughts on identifying your values, I suggest reading “What’s Your Money Why?”

Stay the Course

This is much easier said than done! We live in a world where we are met with many different distractions that make us feel insufficient. This can be especially difficult for business owners, because we can get caught up comparing our incomes and lifestyles to others, instead of staying focused on what we want for ourselves.

Creating goals that are based on your values helps you maintain your focus on your own ideas of success. It can help you avoid anxious behaviors like overworking and over-saving.

Assign a Number

Rather than falling for some number that “sounds like success,” it’s important to assign a number to your goals and dreams.

For example, you take time to really analyze your values and your dreams. You decide that what you want is more fun in your life, specifically through taking an aerial silks class (or whatever intentional choice you might make to increase your value of fun). You would then assign a number to that dream by calculating how much a class and any necessary supplies would cost, plus any other associated expenses you might want to be aware of. That gives you a dollar value that can help inform your financial goals.

Happy goal setting! If you enjoyed this post, you’ll probably like my free e-Book, Reach Your Life Goals: A Business Owner’s Guide. Click there or below to download your free copy.

This post was first published in 2021. 

By |2023-01-27T09:48:00-08:00January 27th, 2023|Categories: Financial Clarity|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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How to Set Doable Financial Goals: 4 Tips

If you set financial goals that are way out of your reach, you’re setting yourself up for defeat and disappointment. Rather than curtail your progress with emotional roadblocks, try simplifying your financial goal-setting for this year. These four strategies can help you create goals that are meaningful, motivating, and realistically achievable.

Check in With Your Values

Check in with your values before setting goals. Your business, your finances, and your goals should enable you to have enough of the things you value in your life to feel satisfied. Basing your goals on your values will also give you a clear way to connect with your “money why” and stay motivated when you’re working towards them. 

Set One Goal

Set one goal, not a dozen. This will make it easier to manage and complete the goal. James Clear is a great thinker around goal setting, and brings up the psychological concept of goal competition. “…Your goals are competing with one another for your time and attention. Whenever you chase a new goal, you have to pull focus and energy from your other pursuits….What often looks like a problem of goal setting is actually a problem of goal selection.”

When you cull your goals down to one, you’re able to direct all your focus and effort towards this one goal. Of course, I’m speaking about the general realm of your finances. In reality you’ll of course still have a full and complex life – all the more reason to simplify things and pick one financial goal to focus on! Which brings me to the next point:

Identify Your “One Thing”

Identify the thing to do in your finances that would make everything else easier or irrelevant. This is from Gary Keller’s book, The One Thing. This book carries a similar message to what I wrote above: multi-tasking is actually holding you back from making progress on your goals. Using the question “What is the one thing, such that by doing it, everything else would become easier or irrelevant?” can help you further cull your goals and make space in your finances to get focused. 

Turn Your Goal Into a System

How will you stay on track with your goal? When setting your financial goal, consider how you’ll turn it into action items, and how you’ll complete those action items. Will you set up a time to make progress each week? Will you find a money buddy to work in tandem with? Will you create a special routine for yourself around checking in with your finances daily? 

Carving out regular time to devote effort and attention to your goal is one fo the best ways to actually achieve it. So when setting a goal, keep in mind how likely you are to be able to do this, and how you’ll set up a system for success. If you’d like to work on a financial goal with my guidance, set up a free Financial Self Care Consultation. Click here or below to schedule:

 

This post was originally published in 2022. 

By |2023-01-18T13:42:48-08:00January 18th, 2023|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments
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A 3-Step Reflection Process for Financial Goal-Setting

To see the best way forward, sometimes it’s important to look backward. Reflecting on your financial history thus far can yield some interesting insights into how to set your financial goals for the year. Let’s talk a little more about why this is an important practice, and then get into the process!

Why Reflect?

Reflecting on your financial journey throughout life can yield several important results. First, it can give you a chance to simply notice what’s changed, and how. The last  few years have been economically tumultuous for most of us. Consider where your finances were at in the beginning of the year, as opposed to where they are now.

Aside from noting change over time, this can also be a chance for you to learn from your past money moves. Perhaps this past year you tried some new strategies or made a big purchase. Reflecting on how different events in your financial life this past year have worked out can give you insights into what to do next, and what you’d rather not do again.

Finally, I personally believe that just giving your money the gift of your attention is a positive thing by itself. Simply making it a habit to check in with your money and what it’s doing right now can be enough to start you off. Reflecting and looking at your money history is one way of doing that!

Step One: Try Out Some Prompts

To spur your reflective time, I have a couple different questions you can try asking yourself. These prompts are about your values and your goals, rather than the nitty-gritty details. If you’re more interested in that, scroll down to the review section. You might like to try answering these questions either as journal prompts, or use them as discussion questions with a money buddy:

  • How has my financial situation changed over the course of this year? Where am I now compared to December 2020?
  • Do I feel fulfilled by how I used my money this year? Why/why not?
  • How do I feel about they way I showed up with my money this year?
  • What are my financial lessons this year? What did I do with my money that worked so well, I’m going to do it again next year? What would I like to improve on?

Step Two: Review Your Records

Whether you’re reflecting on personal or business finances, you likely have records of your past money moves. Take some time to reflect on these!

If it’s business finances you’re looking at, I highly suggest doing a year-end bookkeeping review. Even if you do it yourself and then get it checked by a pro, this is a great step in the right direction. Done right, this can give you clarity about what aspects of your business are bringing in the most revenue, and what to focus on.

If you’re reflecting on personal finances, or even your financial picture as a whole, it’s good to get clear on your income and expenses at this stage. For more directions on how to do this, I suggest reading my article “How to Create a Spending and Income Plan, Part One” which goes into detail.

Step Three: Do a Full Check-In

If you’re interested in a more lengthy reflection process, I recommend doing a full check-in. My article How to Do a Business Check-In  goes into detail on a process you can use to do this. I can also recommend my article Three Steps to Financial Clarity for a process that’s less business-focused.

If you enjoyed this article, you’d probably like my free e-Book, Reach Your Life Goals: A Business Owner’s Guide. Click here or below to get your copy!

By |2023-01-11T16:16:45-08:00January 11th, 2023|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset|Tags: , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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5 Steps to Educate Yourself to Financial Success

#1 Consider Your Values, Goals, & Dreams

How do you want financial success to feel in your life? To answer this question, consider your values. These are the touchstones that will remind you of your desired feelings.

Now, let’s consider: What are your life goals? To quote my free e-Book Reach Your Life Goals: A Business Owner’s Guide, “they are not only possible, they are financeable.” And the more you know about money and how to use it, the more easily you can reach those goals.

For more ideas on this step, check out my article “Why Your Should Always Base Your Goals on Your Values.”

Once you’re clear on your goals, winnow them down by asking the question at the crux of Gary Keller’s book, The One Thing: “What’s the one thing I can do, such that by doing it everything else is easier or unnecessary?” This question will help point you in the direction you want to go.

#2 Choose a Learning Objective

Once you’ve considered all the above questions, you’ll likely have an idea of where you’re headed in life, and what financial steps you’ll need to take to get there. Based on your ONE big goal, choose a learning objective to focus your financial education efforts on.

For example, if you decide your one big goal is buying a house for you and your family, then your financial learning objective would be learning everything you can about home-buying. From here, you can resolve to research mortgage types, savings strategies, etc.

If you have clear life goals but are unsure what financial moves you need to get savvy on, make figuring this out your first learning objective. Start by researching financial strategies of people who have done what you want to do, talking to a money buddy about your goals, or speaking with experts to get some resources.

#3 Set Up Some Weekly Financial Learning Time

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, then you know that I advocate for doing a weekly money check-in. Not only is this strategy a great way to get tuned into your money and start making better financial decisions, it’s also a my #1 strategy for achieving financial goals.

Why? Because if you set up a system to make time for something, you will accomplish it. The key is setting aside that time regularly and protecting it.

#4 Optional: Make a Timeline

Depending on your learning objective or the style of goal-setting you prefer, you may or may not feel called to do this. I’m including it as an option because making a timeline can be especially helpful in cases where things are time sensitive, such as in the case of contributing to an IRA.

Or, perhaps you’re the type of person who does better with finite timelines. It’s absolutely true that many of us do better with deadlines or milestones ahead of us. I work in 3- and 6-month coaching engagements with people in part because sometimes commitment to drastic financial change feels more possible over a shorter span of time.

If you know this about yourself, you might like to investigate setting 12-week learning goals. This idea comes from the book The 12-Week Year by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington, and might be worth checking out.

#5 Gather Your Resources and Begin!

This is the fun part! Start gathering your learning resources, and then get going. I have a couple recommendations to start you off:

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll almost certainly like reading my free e-Book, Reach Your Life Goals: A Business Owner’s Guide. Click here to download.

By |2022-06-09T17:01:46-07:00June 9th, 2022|Categories: Uncategorized|Tags: , , , , , , |0 Comments
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4 Quick Tips to Get Your Finances Back on Track

Post tax-season, a lot of us are looking to do better on our finances. Maybe you got a big tax bill and are now wondering where your earnings went. Perhaps you were a little less organized than you would have liked.

Whatever the case, mid-points like this are great times to give your finances a makeover! Here are my top 4 tips for getting your finances on track again, whether that’s in your business, or your personal finances.

Review Your Goals

After a big financial event like tax season, the financial goals you set earlier in the year deserve a revisit. Check in with them and ask yourself if they still fit. If not, give your goals a nice update! Make sure what you’re aiming towards is relevant to you. You can check out my article on doing a mid-year review of your finances right here.

If you don’t have any financial goals, now is the time to set them. Harness whatever financial fervor tax season (or whatever other financial situation brought you to this post) has instilled in you.

What are your ideal financial conditions? Dream them up, write them down, and come up with a plan. If you need some pointers, here’s my article “4 Strategies for Setting Doable Financial Goals.”

Set Up a Weekly Money Check-In

So much of creating the life you want is about habits. One of the best habits to adopt, in my opinion, is regular “money time”. Find time each week to check in with your finances. Start with a short chunk, to make it feel more manageable. Fifteen to thirty minutes should suffice.

Use this time to check in with your expenses, upcoming bills, IOU’s, and more as needed. Here are my suggestions on what to look for during your weekly money check-in.

Make a Plan to Stay on Top of Your Books

Especially if organization was an issue this tax round and you run a business, making a plan to stay organized until next tax time is a great thing to do right now. Ask yourself what you need to be able to do this.

Do you need to work with a bookkeeper? Do you need to get some training on how to do your bookkeeping yourself? Identify your needs and take some steps to set yourself on the right path.

Find a Money Buddy

It’s my personal belief that anything can go better when you have an accountability buddy. Find someone in your circle who has a financial goal they’re working on too, and join forces! This might be a fellow business owner, or someone from your church, or another mom from a play group.

“Why You Need a Money Buddy”

Once you’ve found your money buddy, establish the terms of your accountability partnership. How often do you want to meet? How do you want to do check ins? Do you want to learn about finances together, or just trade tips on goals?

These 4 tips will help set you on the right path. If you’re a small business owner looking for more ideas, you might like my free eBook, the Cash Flow Reboot Guide: A Guide to Thriving in Uncertain Times. Click below and get your free copy.

By |2022-05-12T14:30:34-07:00May 12th, 2022|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset, Personal Savings, Personal Spending, Small Business|Tags: , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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My #1 System for Achieving Financial Goals

You reach your goals if you work on them regularly. Things happen one day, one week, one month at a time. So, it might come as no surprise to you that my #1 system for achieving financial goals is making regular time for financial self care. I’ve seen this work with many clients and know that in personal experience, this is what works best for me. This approach is backed by many achievement experts, like Gary Keller. In The One Thing, he suggests setting a single goal and then suggests scheduling focused time to work on it into your calendar and protecting it.

Make financial self care a habit! I frequently suggest checking in with your finances on a weekly basis, but another time interval might work well for you too. Since we’re thinking about self care, consider your weekly financial check-in a part of your overall self care routine. Just like you manage your time and your physical health with self care, your money is a resource to manage and use to your best advantage. Use your regular “money time” to work towards your financial goal. 

Here are a couple suggestions of things to do:

  • check in on your spending for the month to see where you’re at with your spending plan
  • check in with your financial goal for the month
  • talk to your money mentor or your partner
  • spend time learning about finances
  • do any finance-related admin work you need (paying off bills, sending off IOU’s, billing clients, etc.)

Most importantly, make sure this time is enjoyable so you can keep coming back to it every week. Try to limit the amount of time you spend, so that you finish off your money time by completing a task. I suggest starting with twenty or thirty minutes and slowly increasing the amount as your finances become more interesting for you to work with. Pro tip: when you end on a high note, it’s easier to keep the habit going. And don’t forget to reward yourself for sticking with this habit!

If you liked this article, you’ll probably like my free e-Book, 9 Secrets to Financial Self Care. Click here to download.

By |2022-01-28T13:23:15-08:00January 27th, 2022|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset|Tags: , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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4 Strategies for Setting Doable Financial Goals

If you set financial goals that are way out of your reach, you’re setting yourself up for defeat and disappointment. Rather than curtail your progress with emotional roadblocks, try simplifying your financial goal-setting for this year. These four strategies can help you create goals that are meaningful, motivating, and realistically achievable.

Check in With Your Values

Check in with your values before setting goals. Your business, your finances, and your goals should enable you to have enough of the things you value in your life to feel satisfied. Basing your goals on your values will also give you a clear way to connect with your “money why” and stay motivated when you’re working towards them. 

Set One Goal

Set one goal, not a dozen. This will make it easier to manage and complete the goal. James Clear is a great thinker around goal setting, and brings up the psychological concept of goal competition. “…Your goals are competing with one another for your time and attention. Whenever you chase a new goal, you have to pull focus and energy from your other pursuits….What often looks like a problem of goal setting is actually a problem of goal selection.”

When you cull your goals down to one, you’re able to direct all your focus and effort towards this one goal. Of course, I’m speaking about the general realm of your finances. In reality you’ll of course still have a full and complex life – all the more reason to simplify things and pick one financial goal to focus on! Which brings me to the next point:

Identify Your “One Thing”

Identify the thing to do in your finances that would make everything else easier or irrelevant. This is from Gary Keller’s book, The One Thing. This book carries a similar message to what I wrote above: multi-tasking is actually holding you back from making progress on your goals. Using the question “What is the one thing, such that by doing it, everything else would become easier or irrelevant?” can help you further cull your goals and make space in your finances to get focused. 

Turn Your Goal Into a System

How will you stay on track with your goal? When setting your financial goal, consider how you’ll turn it into action items, and how you’ll complete those action items. Will you set up a time to make progress each week? Will you find a money buddy to work in tandem with? Will you create a special routine for yourself around checking in with your finances daily? 

Carving out regular time to devote effort and attention to your goal is one fo the best ways to actually achieve it. So when setting a goal, keep in mind how likely you are to be able to do this, and how you’ll set up a system for success. If you’d like to work on a financial goal with my guidance, set up a free Financial Self Care Consultation.

☮

Angela

By |2022-01-19T14:45:56-08:00January 19th, 2022|Categories: Financial Clarity, Money Mindset|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments
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Why You Need to Consider Your Hourly Wage As a Business Owner

How much does your business pay you, hourly? Whether you’re working on a pricing strategy or just feeling burnt out by your business, this can be an important thing to consider.

Why Think About Your Wage?

Knowing your hourly wage can help you be more aware of the time and effort you’re putting into your business, and what kind of return you’re getting. Calculating your hourly wage can be a great tool for a perspective shift. For many business owners, even if they work 12-hour days and have just enough to cover bills, they might not see that their business isn’t paying them enough until they’ve figured out their hourly rate. If your hourly wage would make you want to leave your position if you were an employee, that’s a great clue that some new thinking about your pricing is in order!

Appropriate Pricing

Understanding what your hourly wage is (and what you want it to be) can be a huge help in pricing your products appropriately. First you need to understand your money why, or why you earn the money you take in from your business.  This will help you understand if your current prices can really sustain the goals that you have financially. You can learn how to set informed income goals here. Once you understand what your income target is, you can work backwards and see how much of your product or service you would need to produce and sell in order to make that income. 

Take a moment to consider the cost of low prices, too. Look around at what other people in your industry are selling their product for. If you’re giving your goods away because they’re priced so low, you’re not doing anyone any favors. Remember, selling more doesn’t mean you’re necessarily making more. You aren’t making money, you’re reducing the value of what you do in the eyes of the buyers and you’re making your industry fellows unhappy.

Consider Your Time

When you are considering how to price your product or service, you may take into account the cost of supplies, transportation, and other materials. However, you must also take into account the cost of your time. If you were working for someone else and getting paid, you would receive an hourly wage, so consider that just as important in your own business. If you hired someone to help you with production, you’d need to pay them an hourly wage too. If you’re planning to scale up a business you’ll need to be able to hire other people and your prices need to be able to sustain that.

Another thing for product-based businesses to consider when looking at your pricing is your interest in wholesaling. When selling wholesale, you will typically  sell at 50% of your retail price. If, at this price, you’re not covering your costs, labor and making a profit that supports your financial goals, you need to raise your prices. 

Taking your hourly wage into account can help you accurately price your products and meet your income goals. If you’re interested in learning and thinking more about pricing formulas, I encourage you to check out my interview with Megan Auman. Our talk, plus my articles on how artists define their own success and how business skills and artistic sense can coexist, are great resources for anyone with a creative business looking to tinker with their profit model. Enjoy!

 

☮

Angela

Photo: bruce mars 

This blog post is a tweaked and re-published version of the original, posted in 2019 as part of a series for creative business owners. Check out more articles on that topic here. 

By |2021-05-17T11:25:55-07:00May 17th, 2021|Categories: Cash Flow, Small Business, solopreneurs|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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How to Set Financial Goals for the Next Quarter

 

April marks 1/3 of the way through the second quarter of 2021. How are your goals doing? Whether you typically set goals for the whole year, or in twelve-week increments, taking some time to check in with your goals and set new, more relevant ones, is a good idea. 

What Do You Need to Succeed?

When setting any goals for your business, it’s important to consider what you need to succeed. If you’re at a point where you’re unsure about that, I suggest doing a business check-in first. If you’re working on the personal side of your finances, this process can easily be re-shaped to fit that, too. Feel like you’ve got a good picture of your current financial strengths and needs? You can go ahead with the goal-setting.

When setting a goal concerning your finances, here are a couple tips. First, set one goal, not a dozen. This will make it easier to manage and complete the goal. Second, identify the thing to do in your business finances that would make everything else easier or irrelevant. This advice is from the book, The One Thing – you can read my book review here. In a small business or personal finance context, this could look like setting up a money system, finding a good bookkeeper to work with on a regular basis, or building a money team. We’ll talk more about potential goals below, but the important thing is to set your sights on the thing that would make the biggest difference to you.

Create Good Habits

One potentially life-changing goal you could set for 2021 is to go through the year with good money habits. When I say “money habits,” I mean checking in with your finances on a weekly basis. The more aware you are of where you stand financially, the better. I’ve written about the stressful weight that feeling vague about numbers can create for business owners. If you look at your records every week, this won’t be an issue for you! In fact, you’ll be better able to make financial decisions, because you’ll be more aware of the information you need. If you need more ideas about what to look for during your weekly check-in, read my articles on knowing what your numbers are telling you and creating more revenue.

Prioritize Financial Self Care

I whole-heartedly believe that your finances are the key to self-care in your life. If you’re having trouble thinking of a goal to set in the realm of your finances, why not try prioritizing financial self care? That will look different for everybody, depending on your habits, values, and intentions. For more goal ideas in this realm, check out my article on simple ways to infuse for financial self care into your routine.

I hope these ideas have given you some thoughts on what the best goal is for you and your business. In my private work with clients, we do a lot to make sure they meet their goals. If this sounds like it might be helpful for you, you can reserve a space in my private coaching program, 4 Week Money Refresh, through April 30th!

 

☮

Angela

Image: Gift Habeshaw

By |2021-04-26T10:22:56-07:00April 26th, 2021|Categories: Money Mindset, Small Business, solopreneurs|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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