What’s your cash infusion plan for 2010?

It’s Black Friday in the USA, a traditional day of spending and the start of the Christmas countdown. So are you heading out there, ready to lavishly spend the results of your hard work on treasures for your loved ones, and doing it with total peace of mind because you’re totally confident about your future cash flow, or does the thought of spending money you don’t have make you feel totally sick?

This is the time of year when your financial state – lacking or abundant – is impossible to ignore. The good news is that now is the PERFECT time to plan for a prosperous 2010.

If you aren’t making enough money (or any – let’s be honest, your business might be in the red or you might not be able to pay yourself), if you’re starting a brand new business, or taking your existing business in a new direction, you need to do the right things to get your business in the black. This could mean doing things a whole lot differently, or making some small adjustments that can make a massive difference to your bottom line.

I’m going to cover some of the biggest reasons that you might not be earning as much as you could, as well as some of the best strategies to turn this around, in a special presentation that’s happening next Thursday.

Think of this as your complimentary “cash infusion plan” and make sure you listen in. If you can’t make it live, listen to the recording – but do it soon after because there’s time sensitive information I’ll be sharing with you.

To get a download of this presentation, simply register by Clicking  HERE

How the Employee Mindset Keeps You Stuck and Broke

Are you running your business like the job you left? If you are, this is a sure path to frustration, not to mention under earning in your business.

Having an employee’s approach to an entrepreneurial venture simply doesn’t work. What’s so ironic about this is that on the outside you may show all the signs of a successful business owner. If you’re lucky you may actually have a lot of clients and to the world you appear to be doing everything right. On the inside though, you might be feeling trapped (that’s a topic for another day) and your bank account might also be suffering.

The employee mindset not only limits your growth, it insidiously works against you financially, often without you even realizing it. When I speak with other corporate fugitives, I often see signs that they have yet to fully break free from their careered pasts. And length of time in business has nothing to do with it!

Here are three ways that holding on to the employee mindset affects the money side of your business:

Under-dreaming:  Most entrepreneurs (or aspiring business owners) come out of their employment background with the sole intention of covering their financial commitments and making as much as they did in their jobs. If pushed to state an income projection, they often set their goal relative to their previous salaries. They also tend to start businesses doing the same thing they did in their jobs, just doing it now as an independent business owner, in the same sector and often getting contracts with their prior employers. They do what they’re already good at and what they think they can make money doing. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless that work doesn’t make your heart sing! Embracing the entrepreneurial mindset means dreaming as big as your potential is, and creating the business that allows you to achieve it. It also means allowing yourself to remove any perceived boundaries and to ask yourself, what is it that you REALLY want in your life, and then your business? And then having the courage to pursue it.

Under-pricing: Business owners coming from a corporate background tend to under price and under value their services, for a variety of reasons ranging from inexperience in the market to underestimating the costs of doing business. Since so many provide consulting or service-based offerings, they also tend to bill at an hourly rate which is often too low to start with, as well as being a bad idea in general. Billing by the hour instead of being paid for stellar results is the cardinal sin for many business owners. In addition, many newer business owners tend to fall into the comparison trap and set their fees in relation to where they think they fit on the totem pole of experience, especially against other business owners they look up to, instead of in relation to the value and results they provide for their clients. Making this mental shift is difficult because often the behavior is unconscious. Years of being educated and then working in a structured environment where time served and working your way up is what yields greater income is a tough pattern to break!

Another variation of under pricing is failing to set up a business model with enough products or services to have more than one stream of revenue, and not having a higher priced or premium service in the mix. Many business owners feel they need to work up to this, when in reality, nothing is further from the truth. Having more carefully designed services at strategically chosen price points makes your business – regardless of age – appear more credible and more attractive to your potential clients who come in all shapes and sizes and will not all want to work with you in the same way!

Under-billing: Undercharging for your work is much more than not setting your price high enough. Many business owners, especially consultants and service-based, simply fail to charge for ALL of their work. This shows up in the form of giving more time to a client than you had intended, allowing extensions to projects that affect your ability to complete and bill for it, failing to keep on top of your financial paperwork and not invoicing in a timely fashion, and not having financial terms with your clients that work in your favor. It can also mean giving away your services in the name of “helping” someone else, bartering, and failing to set boundaries with your clients. Many corporate fugitives fall into the trap of feeling responsible and approach their clients’ missed deadlines, cancelled appointments and endless changes and revisions as an acceptable part of doing business. As an employee, some of this is expected as part of your job (whether fair or not); as an independent business owner, it isn’t. The difference is that you can control this when you are the boss. Your role is to provide an agreed upon value in exchange for a financial payment, you are not indebted to your client. However many ex-corporate employees operate from a place of servitude instead of service in their business.

Which leads to a fourth very important point – if you’re afraid to lose clients and worried about finding new ones, you may tend to hang on to bad clients and work with those who really aren’t a good fit for you. When you operate your business from this place of fear, you may also stop marketing or do it so inconsistently and unclearly that it isn’t getting the right results for you.

At the end of the day, having a business can be so much more than getting paid for something you’re good at. If you’re choosing self-employment, make it work for you, instead of you working for it!

Want to use this article? You can as long as you include this footer: Sherri Garrity is the Chief Corporate Fugitive and creator of the Five Keys Success SystemTM for ex-corporate employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to break free from the confines of their corporate experience and live outside of the ordinary. The Corporate Fugitive system demystifies the business of setting up, managing, marketing and growing a successful and extraordinary business. Visit www.corporatefugitive.com for information and step-by-step resources to take you from overwhelmed employee to extraordinary entrepreneur.

How to Build a Business that Fits Your Life

There’s a reason the first question I ask a client is “what do you want your life to be like?” It’s because without a clear and vivid vision of what YOU want, you won’t be very likely to get it.

This sounds trite and flippant, but I assure you, it’s by far the most important question you need to ask yourself as you build a business.

Who you are, what you love, what you hate, how you like to work, how you like to play, and how much money you desire and need are all important ingredients that will allow you to create the business that really fits you best. Doesn’t this sound better than if I were to ask you what business model is right for you?

Here are two scenarios of people in the same kind of business, yet set up completely different:

Peggy absolutely loves to nurture and care for her clients and enjoys lots of interaction with them. Her passion is taking care of her clients’ needs and making their lives easier.  In her career she was a high level executive assistant in the corporate world. She left her job in her early 50s to care for her husband who became unable to work. She also has a daughter in university. She needs to have a consistent income, and a predictable daytime schedule. She needs to be at home. What works for Peggy’s virtual assistant practice is to work very closely with mainly local clients, from her home office. She does administrative work for a small number of ongoing clients in a particular industry. She can be available to them during their business day. She takes on a small number of virtual clients outside of her geographic area for task-oriented, as needed projects to diversify her income.

Sandra has a pre-school child and gave her letter of resignation soon after going back to work so that she could be home with her young child. Her income from her job was not enough for her to make working for someone else worth it financially and emotionally. Her schedule is completely erratic and she requires absolute flexibility. Her income needs are not high, and is a second income for her family. She loves variety and the satisfaction of turning projects around quickly and moving on to the next one. She tends to get bored quickly, just likes to get the work done and move on. She dislikes the day-to-day administration and works best when she has a clear direction and a definite project end.  Her passion leans toward technical problem solving and creativity. What works for Sandra’s virtual assistance practice is a specialty in online marketing software. She sets up electronic newsletters, and manages the back end of her clients’ shopping cart systems and email marketing. Because she is so specialized, she often is not the sole virtual assistant for her clients and frequently is a member of a project team. She likes this because she doesn’t want to be the point person and also due to her schedule, she isn’t suited for customer service and regular interaction with her clients and their clients. She can handle a higher number of clients and most of the work she does can be done at any time of day or night as long as she meets her deadlines.

As you can see from the above examples, Peggy and Sandra have entirely different needs. Had either of them chosen each other’s model to follow, they’d be miserable. Their businesses would soon feel like a job, and you can bet their relationships with their clients would be less than effective.

So, how do you avoid this in your life and business? Take the time to figure out what you truly want, and custom fit your business to your life plan.

Here are some tips to get you thinking:

1. What’s your “sweet spot”?

Jim Collins, the author of the Good to Great leadership books, says it is where all of these three things intersect:

• Something that people will pay you for – these are your marketable skills that you have
• Something you’re passionate about
• Something that you’re put on this earth to do – the elusive “purpose” many of us seek

2. What kind of lifestyle do you want?

Explore and carefully consider how you want your life to be, now and in the future. Look at each of these areas:

Personal and family responsibilities

Financial obligations and desires

Amount of time you want to spend “doing” client work

Degree of flexibility in your schedule

Willingness to travel, or need to work from local base

How you prefer to work (degree of autonomy and interaction, short turnaround or long haul)

Energy level (prefer steady and predictable, or adrenaline junkie)

Risk tolerance (lots of security and stability, or open to uncertainty)

3. Who needs you?

There’s a client out there right now, just waiting for someone like you who understands their needs and is ideally matched for you.

If you “do the work”, you’ll reap the rewards. These guidelines will help you to identify what you really want and what is ideally suited to you, so that you can build the business that is your best fit.

Want to use this article? You can as long as you include this footer: Sherri Garrity is the Chief Corporate Fugitive and creator of the Five Keys Success SystemTM for ex-corporate employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to break free from the confines of their corporate experience and live outside of the ordinary. The Corporate Fugitive system demystifies the business of setting up, managing, marketing and growing a successful and extraordinary business. Visit www.corporatefugitive.com for information and step-by-step resources to take you from overwhelmed employee to extraordinary entrepreneur.

Debt – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

As a business owner, or aspiring entrepreneur, you will be faced with making many choices that can either move your business forward, or hold it back.

Although most of us would agree with the concept that you have to spend money to make it, when it’s your signature on the check, and your bank account that’s being depleted, it can be really difficult to put that adage into play.

And no matter if you work at home, or rent office or storefront space, make no mistake: there are start up costs and ongoing expenses involved in launching and running a business.

The difficulty I see most corporate fugitives have is deciding when to spend, and what to spend on. Unfortunately (and sadly) I have seen many people overspend on items that are not poor choices in and of themselves, but are made at the wrong time, and end up being almost a complete waste of money.

Especially when your business is in its early days, you will not yet have a predictable cash flow pattern and most likely you will turn to personal credit to fund your business expenses. Even though this isn’t the textbook way to do it, I can tell you that most of us have done this, myself included.

So before you whip out your credit card for the next “must have” item, take a look at these guidelines to help you make a good decision.

Good Debt

• Equipment and tools you need to deliver your services
• Professional advice that impacts the legal and financial operation of your business (such as a financial advisor, accountant or lawyer)
• Professional advice that is pertinent to where you are at in your business right now (such as a business advisor or marketing strategist)
• Training programs or products that address an area of weakness that is keeping you from earning money (for example, how to set up your business model, pricing, marketing, sales)
• Participating in coaching or mentoring programs in which the content you are learning can be applied within a year and will return your investment multiple times over
• Assistance to help you generate revenue faster by freeing up your time to spend on your clients instead of administration or activities to run your business (for example, a virtual assistant, a bookkeeper)
• Memberships and events that put you in contact with people who will help you move your business forward (either by increasing your skills, connecting with your target market, or finding strategic alliances and other business owners who you can work with for mutual benefit)

Bad Debt

Any expense or investment that does not have an immediate or short term return can be considered a bad debt in my books. For example:

• Training or products that are valuable but which you can’t implement in your business within the next year
• Participating in programs that are so far beyond where you are in your business that you just don’t fit (for example, joining a program that focuses on a specific area, or is designed for business owners at a higher revenue level – there is a fine line between stretching yourself and aiming higher, and totally frustrating yourself because you don’t have the resources to keep up)
• Overspending on randomly selected marketing activities without having a business and marketing strategy in place (it’s better to do less activities consistently and strategically, than to scatter your marketing)
• Spending indiscriminately on getting help with different aspects of your business, without having a cohesive plan in place to manage this (for example, hiring different people to do different things for you, without ensuring they all understand the big picture and how what they do for you relates to the others on the team)
• Purchasing high ticket products or services that sound like a good idea someday but don’t have an immediate fit in your business model (for example, investing in a program that teaches you how to run a high level group program, when you have no plans within the next year to launch this service; or investing in capital expenses like fancy equipment that is more than what you need)
• Buying anything from someone who has questionable expertise and no proven track record ( the internet is full of the “one chapter ahead” crowd)

And ugly debt? Ugly debt is when you have reached the point that you have exhausted your resources, you don’t see a return in your revenues, and you’re contemplating folding up your tent and going back to the job world. Don’t let this happen to you! With a solid plan in place, and the ability to make informed decisions, you will be able to design the business of your dreams, without breaking your spirit or your bank.

Want to use this article? You can as long as you include this footer: Sherri Garrity is the Chief Corporate Fugitive and creator of the Five Keys Success SystemTM for ex-corporate employees and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to break free from the confines of their corporate experience and live outside of the ordinary. The Corporate Fugitive system demystifies the business of setting up, managing, marketing and growing a successful and extraordinary business. Visit www.corporatefugitive.com for information and step-by-step resources to take you from overwhelmed employee to extraordinary entrepreneur.

Are you ready for 2010?

Tracy Jones is. She is the first person enrolled in the Corporate Fugitive Action Group that starts in a few weeks. This step-by-step program is the only one like it – because it allows you to set up your business the way that is right for you, shows you how to market and attract your ideal clients, and deals with the all-important mindset shift to take you from the employee to the ENTREPRENEURIAL mindset.

Tracy is so excited, she’s working on a video right now! I am so excited for her, because I know she is ready to build the business that she REALLY wants (I’ll post the video when I get it).

If you are thinking about this program – or just curious – I encourage you not to wait. There are limited spaces because this program includes a combination of group work, as well as individual coaching and advice from me. In fact I’m holding meetings with each participant this week and next before the classes begin.

Your questions about how to set up and package your services, how to get cash flow, how to market yourself and how to make your operations run smoothly will all be answered, and you’ll walk away with the same kind of plan that I use to run my business (and the same kind of plan that I charge MUCH more if you want me to do it for you.

P.S. I know many of you are still working in a J.O.B. For this reason, the classes are held in the evenings. And for those of you who have already made the escape, I find that holding them in the early evening allows you the separation between working in your business and working on your business.