Be a PROFITABLE Badass Small Business Owner

Do You Have More Business Than You Can Handle? We all hit a wall in our business where the business grows so much, that we just run out of time. Jobs start to push back 2-3 weeks, we end up working 7 days a week and still, at the end of the day, we aren't making the profits we should. We need to keep growing but don't know how. We are hitting the wall on energy and time. What do you do? Let's dive...

Can You Afford to Hire an Employee? The comes a tipping point for each business owner when they need to bring aboard some help. Maybe that new employee is so you can expand your business or maybe even take stuff off your plate. Either way, you need to make sure that your business can afford that new hire. Here we take a quick look at how to do the quick math on what you need to produce in new sale...

Are You Being a Coach or a Boss? Are You Being a Coach or a Boss?  A Leader or a Manager?  Let's face it, we all want to have productive, employees that do their best. Do these people need a great boss or a great coach? How about we strive for being a great coach who happens to be their boss? It all comes down to communication and how you help your team be the best they can be. Let's discuss how f...

How Much are Your Broken Processes Costing You?   Time to Figure Out How Much Money You Are Leaving on the Table! Have you ever stopped and put the numbers together to see how much in potential sales/profits you are losing by not taking a few minutes to figure out what the broken process is costing you?   For example, if your employees have to keep stopping to get direction on what to do next, it...

Why You Need a Simple Employee Checklist Every small business owner dreams of building their business. Creating more sales and more profits. I often hear how they feel frustrated by their employees. Either the employee turnover is high, they can't find good help or the employees just seem to always stopping and asking questions.   Both of these problems can actually be helped by having an employee...

RANT - Why You Need to Know Your Dang Numbers I have had several coaching calls and one on ones the past few weeks and I've been coming across folks that still aren't diving into their business numbers. By having their head in the sand, they are costing themselves thousands of dollars in profits and sales. Why do you insist on working harder and harder vs just working smarter? What is Keeping You...

The 5 Mile Radius Rule So how far do you search for business?  Do you travel 5 miles? 10 miles? Up to 50 miles? What if I told you that the vast majority of your business should be coming from within a 5-mile radius?  Most neighborhoods have thousands of potential customers within any 5-mile radius. The key is to focus on solving a pain point that many of the folks in that area are searching for....

  Using Your Profit & Loss to Determine Your Hourly Wage As a small business owner, your goal is to create a better a better life & income for yourself. But have you ever stopped and figured out what exactly you earn an hour? Sure you work tons of hours, but what exactly to you make? What if you could take your profit & loss statement and the number of hours you work, and using a simple calculatio...

  How a Mindmap Can Help You in Your Business A mindmap is a great way for you to breakdown a process in your business that you want to streamline and improve. Having processes in place, add to your bottom line profits and sales, but it all starts with getting it out of your head & on to paper. But sometimes, your head is a jumbled mess, so mindmaps are a great way to take that chaos and start to...

Diving Into Your Profit & Loss Expenses In the next part of our Know Your Business Numbers Series, we will take a look at the next part of the profit and loss statement, your expenses. Your expenses are all the other costs of running your business other than your cost of goods sold. Like your cost of goods sold, your expense will be a percent of sales on your profit & loss. Your expenses will be b...

      An Expensive Lesson to Learn A Small Business Owner Learned a $10,000 Lesson and wanted me to share what happened in order to help others learn from her and her husband's mistake. Well, technically, they didn't make a mistake, but in trying to solve one problem, they discovered another. Both lessons are things I see and hear about all the time and in this episode, I share what happened in ho...

    What Goes Into Your COGS In this week's know your business numbers series, we will discuss the next part of your P & L Report - Your COGS.  But what exactly goes into your costs of goods sold? Where does payroll go? Cogs or Expenses?  Should you breakdown your COGS into categories? We will take a look at these items plus why your COGS might be lower or higher than what you actually use that mo...

Fine Tune Your Elevator Speech Leave Them Knowing the Pain Points You Solve | Whether you are at a networking event or being asked what you do for a living, you often times only have 30, 60, 90 seconds to tell folks what it is you do.  Many of us, tell them the industry we are in but fail to tell them the pain points we solve. One is about 'branding' and the other is what will help them refer you...

  Breaking Down Revenue on Your Profit & Loss Statement In today's episode:  In this week's episode of the Know Your Business Numbers Series, I want to share why I think you need to break down your sales/revenue categories on your income statement. By looking at each core area of your sales, you can gain a lot of intel on where you should be focusing your energy and time to grow your sales, but al...

Too Busy to Work "ON" the Business vs Just "IN" the Business In today's episode:  What if You Are Just Too Busy to Do Anything Else When Your Hair is On Fire and Business Is Going Crazy? When all the time you have is trying to stay afloat and keep things going? Is it ok that you don't have the time to work "ON" the business since all you seem to be doing is working "IN" the business?   ~~~~   The...

Are You Leveraging Your ROI? In today's episode:  Why Do You Need to Know Your Return on Your Investment? Everything you do is tied to ROI. When you invest your time & money into your systems, people, programs, advertising, etc., you want to make sure you are getting the right ROI. Too many small business owners just look at how long something will take or how much it will cost without realizing t...

  What You Could Learn from Jack Welch on Leading Your Team In today's episode:  Jack Welch was one of the greatest CEOs who believed strongly in the power of developing a great team around him. Every small business owner should look at what Jack Welch believed in and how they can work the same mentality into how they build their team. What he a perfect leader? No, but there was a lot that he did...

Calculating Out Gross Margin In today's episode:  Figuring Out Your Gross Margin Percentage is a Simple Calculation You Should Be Doing on Each of Your Products and Services as Well as for Your Business Overall. Without this knowledge, you are flying by the seat of your pants and "hoping" you guess right. This is one number you MUST know and it is easy to do, so let's take a look at how and why.  ...

Stop Shooting Yourself in the Foot! In today's episode:  Stop Shooting Yourself in the Foot!! | You Are Your Own Worst Enemy & You Are Costing Yourself Sales, Profits and Customers! I'll share the story of 3 different business owners this past week that are shooting themselves in the foot and yet still wonder why they are losing business.     QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "Your attitude, not your aptitude, w...

  Understanding Your Profit and Loss Statement In today's episode:  The cornerstone of knowing your business numbers begins with your business report card – Your Profit & Loss Statement.  It is important that you know some of the key areas you should be looking at each month. Let's walk through a typical P & L statement and how you can use to understand your profitability. Increase Your Profits by...

4 Fears Holding You Back | Fear of Failure | Fear of Success | Fear of Finding Out | Fear of Looking Stupid In today's episode:  We take a look at 4 common fears that prevent people from taking the next steps in their business. Not everything is a fear of failure. While yes, it is a common one, it isn't the only one that holds people back.  Let's take a look at a few others tend to hold folks back...

What is Your Business's Breakeven Point? EPISODE 251 of The Local Small Business Coach Podcast   In today's episode:  Do you know what your sales need to be to Breakeven? If you are like most business owners, you don't. However, this is one of the most important numbers you need to know. Especially if you have a seasonal business. Your Breakeven point is where the sales you produce allow you to pa...

  9 Lessons I Learned from My Ice Cream Shop EPISODE 250 of The Local Small Business Coach Podcast   In today's episode:  Lessons to Share from My Business to Yours | Going from Corporate American to Local Business Owner was an interesting transition. During my 5 years of owning my ice cream shop, I learned a few things that every future small business owner making the transition, will probably le...

How to Find Money Laying Around EPISODE 249 of The Local Small Business Coach Podcast In today's episode:  How to Find Money Laying Around | Time for You to Address the Inventory You Are Sitting On – One area that many business owners fail to realize is keeping them cash poor is the inventory that they are sitting on. Product that is sitting on shelves, in boxes in a bedroom, out in the shed or ga...

Having Boundaries for Family Owned Businesses EPISODE 248 of The Local Small Business Coach Podcast In today's episode:  Having Boundaries for Family Owned Businesses | Why Most Family Businesses Struggle & Fail – I'll share with you a recent email I received from a business owner who is struggling with his family business and we will go over why having boundaries are key to success. We will also...