Tag Archives: Small Business

How to Stop Your Emails From Ending Up in the Trash

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If you are like me you probably get a ton of emails everyday. Now, I will be the first to admit that this is my fault because I sign up for everyone’s “free report!” Well, if you are also like me you probably check the box next to the emails you want to delete and throw them in the trash with out reading them.So this brings me to my point today, and that is as more and more small business try to use internet marketing as a way to connect with customers how do you prevent a client from deleting your email without ever reading it? The answer is email filtering!

As I mentioned above I get a ton of emails from businesses and people all day and everyday. It really became overwhelming until, I started using an email filtering system. Most email systems like Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook, and others give you the ability to filter your emails into categories or priorities. This has been a great productivity and time saver for me because I only look at the priority mail first and save the other mail for a later time or day to look at, but how do you get your customers to make your emails a priority?

In order to maximize your emails and get your customers to filter you into their priority inbox you need to do several things and in order to better understand the strategies fully take a look at this article from Aweber’s help center on “How to get your emails filetered.” Now, regardless if you use Aweber or not this article is helpful in giving you some simple tips to get your clients to filter your emails and put you on their priority list.

To your success,
Coach Dave

Without a Financial Scorecard Your Small Business is Destined to Fail

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“If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?” – Vince Lombardi. That is one of my all time favorite quotes. Now, I know that there is debate on whether or not we should be a society that stresses winning over doing your best, but when it comes to business, unfortunately, doing your best is not going to keep the doors open. If you are not beating your competition and not making money then the likelihood of your business surviving is at stake. There are several ways you know if you are winning but the best way to keep track is to have a financial scorecard. What exactly is a financial scorecard and what does it mean for a small business? That is exactly what we are going to answer and my hope is to have you understanding enough after this post that you stop what you are doing and start your “scorecard!”

In business numbers are how you are judged and it doesn’t matter how many innovative products you bring to the market if you do not know your numbers you are going to struggle and could be destined to fail. Here is a simple way to look at what your scorecard is and I like to make things simple. Think of your scorecard as after each month, quarter, or year as if you are winning a game. If your sales are higher than your costs you are more than likely winning. Now, before you go saying, “well duh” there are a few more components that you need to consider, but the main point here is your scorecard is the life of your busy and how healthy and strong it is.

So, if your financial scorecard is the lifeline to your small business then what does it consist of? The financial scorecard consists of four components and they are; PNL ( Profit and Loss Statement), Balance Sheet, Cash Flow Statement, and your Budget.

Now that we know what areas consists of our scorecard let’s explore each one just a little bit more.

PNL (Also known as your Profit and Loss statement) – The PNL measures the financial performance of the business for a given time period. The PNL will consists of revenue line items and expense line items. When you have those two set up you then take your revenue and minus it from expenses to get your profit (REV-EXP=Profit). Pretty simple but most small business owners just look at their bank statements each month to see if it is going up or down. Spend the time to write out each month your revenue and expenses. Knowing what areas are bring in you more income or is costing you more will help you budget better and also focus more on either cost reeducation or revenue enhancing strategies!

Balance Sheet – The Balance Sheet is composed of three things; Assets, Liabilities, and Owner Equity. The equation for this is Assets – Liabilities = Owner’s Equity. The balance sheet is used to score the financial condition of the small business at certain point in time. The problem that most small business owners face is that their Liabilities tend to be higher than their assets, which leads to negative cash flow.

Cash Flow – I am sure you have all heard the quote “Cash is King” and it is very true in business, so theCash third component to the scorecard is the cash flow statement. We have all heard the statistics of small businesses failing in the first years of existence and one reason for that is the lack of cash on hand to keep the business afloat. It is important to know your “cash burn rate”, which is simply how much cash you are going through in a specific time period. In order to find out your cash flow and burn rate you need to do the following equation:

Income or Revenue
–
COGS( Cost of Goods Sold)
=
Exp/OH/Fixed
–
Owner Salary
=
Net Profit
+
Equity Inflow
=
Cash Position

It is important to set this up on a monthly basis because each month things change and so does your cash position. For example, one month sales might be 100k and the next month they may only be 50K but your fixed expenses and salaries did not change, which could allow you to have a smaller cash position. There are very few business who will not experience a cash gap at some time during a business year, so it is important to have the cash flow statement to plan accordingly.

Budget – The final and fourth component to the scorecard is the Budget report. It is important to forecast out your revenue and expenses. The budget helps you mange the planned future performance of the small business and also gives you insight as to how well you are predicting outcomes. A lot of times I see small business owners just guess on revenue or expenses because they say that how do I know what is going to happen in the future but this is the wrong thought process.
Let me give you an example, I am sure most of you have heard of Southwest Airlines, and some of you may know that they have put together one of the longest stretches of positive earnings for a public company. Now, remember this company is an airline and as most of who drive we see gas prices go up and down all the time, so then how do they predict gas prices in their business. Well, they hedge their bet. They have people who look at the markets and buy gasoline futures months in advance so that when the price becomes volatile because of some event they do not get caught up in it. As a small business owner you need to do the same. If you buy material know when the material is more expensive and buy more at the current levels. Hedge your bet and forecast into the future.

Alright, I kind of got off track and will probably do a post just on “hedging” in the future but for now go set up your scorecard and start keeping track. Know your numbers! Start having a MBN ( Manage by Numbers) approach to your small business.

To Your Success,
Coach Dave

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3 Website Traffic Methods that you can Bank On

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Hello everyone,

I don’t have much time today because it is 80 degrees here in Texas and I know 80 degrees means 100 is not too far away. That being said, I will get to the point so I can get outside and enjoy the weather!

Over the last several posts I have been promoting some options for you to get a membership site up and running. I believe whether you are a small business or mid size business, having a paid membership site is a great way to add a passive income stream to your business.

Today, however, I want to talk to you about traffic. Yes, web traffic to your site. Unfortunately, if you build it, they will not just come. You have to have a strategy and plan to get web traffic.

I know you have pobably heard of SEO (search engine optimization) and if not SEO is a way to rank high in the search engines. For most of us SEO is not a great strategy to get traffic. SEO can be costly and timely. Also, as you may have heard in the news recently Google changed the way they rank content overnight. For some all their hard work is now down the drain. Now, I am not saying ignore it completely I am just saying you could spend hours on it and get little ROI (return on investment). So what can you do?

Here are three website traffic methods you can bank on that won’t break your bank:

1.) Buyandsellads.com – Buy ads on over 2,900 successful blogs! Just pick the site you want to advertise on, and within minutes your ad will be shown

2.) Stumbleupon.com – Another place you can buy cheap ads that will drive users who are looking for similar content directly to your site.

3.) Tubemogul.com – Create videos and submit them to over 30 video hosting sites at once. A video syndication account is free.

Bonus method

Facebook – I am sure I do not need to tell you how big Facebook is. Let me tell you, if you are not using FB to advertise your site then you are losing out. Facebook is a marketer’s best dream. FB allows you to dial right in to your target audience. For example, I use it to advertise my Working Mom Workouts membership site. I target women who are ages 32-45,  have kids ,with health and fitness as theie interest. And the best part is on go do this locally or go global with no extra cost. Tell me where else can you do that!!

So, once you have your site up and running go ahead and focus on the traffic methods I provided for you. If you have questions please feel free to contact me.

In health and welath,

Coach Dave