Have you ever seen times in your business where, even though you’ve been profitable, you feel like you should have been better off or more profitable?
Do you ever feel like you work too many long hours for the profits you see come home?
Having shown hundreds of entrepreneurs, especially chiropractors and dentists, how to find, on average, an extra $34,000 per year, I’ve noticed that it’s not how much you make.
It’s how much you keep… and then make!
I learned this firsthand as I was working with the financial education firm, Freedom FastTrack, back in 2007. I had come out of retirement to help start that company, and we were in our first year of business. Start-up expenses were high and I had given up some residual streams of income to be there. I noticed that I was depleting savings and beginning to run up loan balances. I finally had the courage to look deeper into my numbers May of that year, and what I found both shocked and frightened me all at the same time.
Between my business and personal expenses, I was short by $16,000 each month!!!
I knew at that moment that changes had to happen quickly or I’ll be sunk.
However, sometimes the worst experiences provide the best lessons, don’t they?
Although it wasn’t pretty, I got creative in finding ways to make my expenses as productive as possible, while looking for ways to increase my income. By 2009, I was well in positive cash flow territory, and over the following few years, I was able to pay off over $900,000 of debt.
There is a law that I refer to as the “Law of Atrophy/Decay.” Whatever you ignore will eventually atrophy, decay, and disappear. If you ignore your health, it will leave you. If you ignore your family, they’ll leave you. And if you ignore your money, it will leave you too!
I’ve seen this time and time again with many entrepreneurs. Common money leaks include:
- Not tracking money closely enough, allowing money to slip through their fingers
- Losing money in overpaid taxes (even though they all have qualified CPA’s)
- Not tracking productivity of your team/employees (huge costs in customer conversion and unnecessary overtime wages)
- Not valuing your services enough where you could be generating more revenue
- And many others.
And this doesn’t even include ways you’re leaking money at home!
In the last year, I worked with two dentists that freed up anywhere between $10,000 – $15,000 per month, just in their practice, by “trimming the fat” and looking for ways to make their expenses more productive, and that doesn’t include the thousands per month we found at home too!
Whether you’re a dentist, chiropractor, coach/mentor, etc, you are leaking money, whether you know it or not. However, when we’re trained how to find those leaks that most do not, then it’s possible to keep the money we have and make a lot more too. At that point, you’ll begin to feel like you’re being paid more in your business and at home!
My call to action to you is this:
Weekly track your money by reviewing your Quickbooks accounts. If you have a bookkeeper, have them send you a weekly report so you only have to spend a few minutes getting a pulse on your business. It will amaze you what you’ll begin to find and it’s easier than you might think!
Just imagine how much more freedom and peace of mind you can have just by controlling this one little area!
Remember, it’s not how much you make. It’s how much you keep, and then make on top of that!