Imagine this.  You want to lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle.  You are serious about it and you are pumped.  You are going to exercise and eat nutritious foods.  Yet day after day you are surrounded by people who hang out in front of the television eating pizza, chips, and ice cream.  They complain all of the time about not having any energy and feeling lousy, but they never do anything about it.  How successful do you really believe you are going to be unless you change your environment? Read more »

As entrepreneurs, it is easy to sometimes feel like our finances are outside of our control.  Especially in the early years of your business you may not have the regular earnings that came with a job. Our spending often varies as well, since building a successful business costs money.

These factors make it even more critical that we develop financial consistency.  Keeping a handle on the ways of managing our money that are within our control, will go a long way towards building financial stability and avoiding the financial roller coaster that plagues many small business owners. Read more »

One way to success as a small business owner, network marketer or solo entrepreneur is to act like an athlete.

Have Discipline – a wonderful aspect of being an entrepreneur is the freedom to create your own schedule. For the most part no one dictates when you have meetings or when you start and end your workday. However, for many entrepreneurs this freedom is also their curse as they struggle to develop the daily disciplines that lead to success in any small business.  We cannot imagine the Olympic runner pausing between laps to check his e-mail or agreeing to grab coffee with a friend in the middle of a scheduled training session. Likewise, as you plan the daily and weekly activities that will result in growth and business progress, block out concentrated work periods where nothing is allowed to interrupt. Read more »

One of the challenges of being a small business owner can be the often times solitary nature of your work. The desire to connect with people can easily turn into regular restaurant lunches and meeting friends for dinner or drinks. Never mind the fact that, with a couple of $10 drinks, a $15 plate of food and a 20% tip, that social hour ends up costing you over $40.  Doing this just a couple of times per week adds up to an extra $320 each month that you could really do with avoiding.  BUT…everyone else is doing it, and you don’t want to be the one to admit that finances are tight, and be a downer on the evening.  So you go along and have a good time, but all the while you feel just slightly anxious because you know that most of this is going to end up on a credit card at the end of the month, and those bills are getting high enough as it is…

So the question is: how do we balance the need for a social life with the realities of a tight budget? Read more »

You’re committed to the success of your small business right? So let’s think about what makes a business a business.  Think of how a big company runs things.  They have a business bank account and business credit cards, they keep records of all business expenses and sales, and they know when they have made a profit and how much.

Do you run your business like this?  If the answer is no, then you don’t actually have a business. You’re merely engaging in a hobby, and it may be an expensive one.  You might be saying, “But I’m not an accountant.”  True.  However, as challenging as it may seem initially, you can absolutely learn to keep proper track of your business finances. It is critical to your success as a small business owner. Read more »