Читать книгу Motivating Business Mums - Debbie O'Connor - Страница 5

Because You’re Worth It

Sumi Olson

Create a support structure which will allow you to grow your business and spend more time with your loved ones

Many women take up self-employment after they’ve had children because they believe it will allow them to devote time and care to their families whilst bringing in an income. However, the extra work, stress and responsibilities can mean that the pressures of running a home and a business combined creates the very opposite of the life they’d dreamed about.

I’ve titled this piece ‘Because You’re Worth It’ because I wanted to emphasise that the process I cover here will help you to focus on something that is easily forgotten by women who perform a multitude of roles as well as run a business—your time and effort is worth something tangible. Treat it—and yourself—with the respect you deserve!

This is something that I see both in fellow mumpreneurs as well as in my own work-life as I adjust to working life with two toddlers and a growing business. I realised that on returning to (paid) work, I had to create a business model that allowed me to have the family life I wanted, as well as a business that brought me a viable income. I also had to learn to value my own time and contribution to my business and my domestic life.

I hope that my piece will give you the guidance you need to evaluate your own business model and begin the process of helping you create an income stream whilst developing a business that doesn’t take over your life.

One step on the journey is to make a plan for yourself which outlines your goals, objectives and timelines. Other sections of this book cover goal-setting in more detail so use this knowledge to think about what your strengths and weaknesses are, what approaches will suit your time, budget and target market, and what your priorities are.

Preparing yourself means that you focus your valuable time and resources to further your goals without getting side-tracked or bogged down with other commitments. It is also a reminder of why you went into business—to provide your family with an income, to create a flexible environment so that you can spend more time with your family, or even to have extra money for treats and luxuries for you and your loved ones.

We’ll start by working out your cost to your business. On a piece of paper, write down how many weeks you’d like to work over the next 12 months. Remember, you’re looking at creating a business model that allows you to balance your home and work life—you want a business that works for you, not the other way round!

So, on that assumption, you might decide that you want to work during term times only. So, let’s say 40 weeks for ease of calculation. Next, how many days a week do you want to work? Let’s say four days. How many hours a week? Let’s say 20 hours. That’s 800 hours in total.

You might have already set an income goal for yourself for the next 12 months, but again, for this example, let’s say £50,000 is your goal for this period. To work out your hourly rate (not your billable rate), divide your financial target by the total hours you plan to work. In this case it would be £50,000 by 800. In this example, your hourly rate is £62.50—your billable rate would usually be between 2 to 3.5 times this amount, so let’s say £187.50 if taken at three times. Does this tangible figure surprise you…?

This approach might seem revolutionary to those self-employed people who are pricing to external factors. Pricing to internal factors allows you to first structure your business systems and processes and then concentrate your time and effort in finding the necessary number of clients who will allow you to meet your financial goals.

In this case, you’re looking at 266 clients over 12 months, if taken at £187.50/hour. But remember you’ll need fewer clients if you put together some bigger-ticket, more value-laden offerings and packages amongst your services.

Now you’ve worked out your financial targets and working patterns, it will be easier to plan the necessary products and services you want to create. Also, remember, while you might be working for 20 hours a week, you won’t be using all this time in direct contact with your customers, you’ll be doing admin, marketing, research, bookkeeping and other back-office functions. Or will you? Let’s review what you need to do for your business for it to function smoothly.

Make a list of all the things, large and small, that you do each day or week to maintain your business. Include things like filing, having sales conversations (i.e. talking to customers to sell them your goods and services), providing services to clients, creating content such as marketing materials, answering correspondence, dealing with emails and phone calls, cold-calling, presentations, preparing proposals, ordering stationery. Be sensible but ruthless: now is the time to be looking at how you’re working, so don’t leave things out.

It’s a list that most of you are doing on your own. But having just worked out your hourly cost to the business—£62.50 in this example—is it the best and most cost-effective use of your time…? If you now divide your list into high-leverage, medium-leverage and low-leverage activities, it becomes clear that as a business owner, you need to be concentrating your time on the high-leverage tasks such as having sales conversations, or holding presentations or working on billable work with clients which bring in the money.

This isn’t a validation to avoid filing and other boring admin tasks, as we all know that they need to be done. It’s a financial incentive for you to structure your business so that you can do what you do best to bring in the money. Outsourcing admin, bookkeeping and other important but low-revenue producing tasks, allows you to spend that same time in doing the things that will earn you your target income.

A VA (virtual assistant), bookkeeper, an admin helper who comes in once a week for a couple of hours to sort your paperwork (could even be the same person who does the bookkeeping), these are part of the support structure you need to consider if you are going to be freely available to grow your business. Remember, in this example, the billable rate was £187.50—so an hour spent working with your client is clearly more profitable than the same hour spent filing.

Could your VA help you set up appointments so that all you need to do is hold your meeting or phone call and make the sale? Could they write your marketing copy, newsletter and update your blog, Twitter feed and other social media platforms? Could your bookkeeper/admin helper stuff the envelopes for your next mailing campaign? Could you automate some of your processes using technology?

What stops many small business owners from being successful and creating a business that works for them is their mindset. Reasons range from not wanting to lose control (a resistance to delegate), a poor sense of time management (they feel they can’t spare the time to train or monitor an assistant), to a reluctance to spend money. Successful business owners have moved beyond these internal restrictions and realise that they need to let go of their emotional baggage if they want to fly…

As a mumpreneur, you have an array of domestic duties to add to the list you’ve just created. Again, using the same principle, at £62.50/hour, what’s going to help your grow your business and allow you to spend time with your family?

Outsourcing domestic services such as ironing, cleaning, and baby-sitting/child-care and getting support from home-helps, etc. will mean that you can spend your time doing the things that are worth more to you, both emotionally and professionally.

Here, the additional mindset restrictions we place on ourselves are even more complex, because they relate to our perceptions and feelings as women running our own homes as well as our businesses. We want to be able to do it all and do it well. Therein lies the problem—the inability to accept that one person cannot do it all and do it well.

Instead of being intimidated by stories of apparent superwomen who are combining business success with domestic goodness status, take a few minutes to see how they are achieving their success. Without doubt, you’ll find that they have a team of supporters around them in their domestic and professional lives which allow them the time and freedom to create their wealth and success. When you have your own team around you, you’ll be able to thrive too.

Having the right mindset and the right support structure are two of your strongest assets and I know that with both in place, you’ll make every success of your business. Just by turning your contribution into a tangible figure as we’ve done today, you can see ‘you’re worth it’.

I hope that by reading this short piece, you’ll be able to work out at whether your business model is taking over your life. By confirming how you want to work, when you want to work, how much you need to charge and what you need to be doing to make these changes work for you, you’ve begun important first steps on your journey to that work-life balance you want to create. Enjoy the journey!

Sumi Olson, based in Liphook, Hampshire, is a sales and marketing consultant, speaker and author offering training, help and strategic support to authors/professionals/SME businesses. You can contact Sumi at www.olsonservices.co.uk