For those of you who are regular readers of my articles - you would have seen that over the past few weeks I’ve been concentrating on the topic of money.
Money is often something we don’t talk about with our friends and colleagues, other than the occasional complaint that there’s ‘never enough’ or ‘it’s something you have to work hard for’ – or another similar comment.
The reason I’ve pulled back the covers on this ‘taboo’ subject is because the relationship you have with money can seriously undermine your business’s success.
A few months ago I met Susanna – a Life Coach. She had been marketing her services on a daily basis and attending regular networking meetings. However despite all of her hard work her dreams of building a thriving business remained out of reach.
What Susanna failed to realise was that even with the best business-building strategies in place, because she hadn’t addressed her mindset and the beliefs she had around money, these were now keeping her stuck from reaching her income goals.
The money stories she had grown up with; the way her parents managed their money – in particular her mother’s spending habits – had become a major influence on Susanna’s life.
Taking a step back in her business and asking herself some poignant questions she was finally able to see how her family’s money legacy and her beliefs were the reason why she was struggling to reach her income goals.
Here are some of the ways Susanna’s relationship with money was showing up for her in her business.
By not standing in her power with money, Susanna would often:
• Reduce her fee when providing a quote to a prospect
• Cave in and offer a discount even after she had quoted her normal fees
• Go over the allocated time in her coaching session
• Not track her income
• Not check her bills/accounts/credit card statement to ensure all the charges were accurate
• Not follow up on errors she had found on her bills / accounts / credit card statement
• Not chase up overdue accounts that other people owed her, to name a few
Recognise any of them? What about these?
Not Charging What You’re Worth:
• Not contacting a client to re-negotiate your fee when you realise the project they’ve hired you for is clearly far more complicated and involved than what they led you to believe
• Not putting your fees up even though you’ve been charging a far lower rate than your competitors AND you’re delivering far better results than everyone else
• Putting WAY too much content in your coaching programs
• Being at the beck and call of your clients and dropping everything whenever they contact you – even the smallest of things which should have been handled by your team
• Being far too accessible for your clients and not charging enough for that privilege
• Thinking you’re not good enough and NOT launching your programs
Ineffective Systems:
• Not having a bold money goal
• Not putting away money and having a kitty that you can draw upon for any unexpected situations
• Not keeping a filing system to streamline the tracking and scheduling of your accounts
• Paying your accounts late and getting late fines
• Not regularly reconciling your bank accounts / statements / credit cards
• Not knowing how much money you owe
• Not taking an interest in your business’s financial situation and saying “Oh, my accountant/bookkeeper knows all of that’
• Not being able to understand the important elements of your business’s profit and loss and other business reports
• Not having a budget in place
• Not sticking to your budget and overspending
Tolerating Support Team & Supplier Inefficiencies:
• Bartering and doing contra deals being the ONLY way you get support for your business
• Making excuses for one of your team members who’s NOT pulling their weight
• Not following up with a supplier when they haven’t met a promised deadline
• Settling for second best and/or accepting something from a supplier when the quality they promised is not delivered
Your Spending Habits:
• Buying things that you clearly don’t need and that just end up collecting dust, alongside all of the other things you’ve bought (that you also didn’t need)
• Buying things for other people that they didn’t need and just end up collecting dust
• Spending outside your means because you want to fit in with other people
• Spending money – not because you need the item but because the act of spending makes you feel good
• NOT spending anything on yourself and being too frugal
How many do you recognise?
To step into your power with money (and no longer throw money away):
• Plug up those money leaks by making a commitment to yourself to NOT do any of the things I’ve mentioned above
• Develop some systems/processes to keep you on track to avoid falling back into those old bad money habits
• Get creative and make a Money Vision Board
• Stop complaining about that team member and finally hire someone that will provide you with the level of support you need to take your business to the next level
Annemarie Cross is a Brand Communication Specialist helping ambitious women business owners to get noticed, hired and paid what they're worth! Want to learn simple yet powerful ways that you can build your brand, your credibility and your income? Visit http://www.AnnemarieCross.com to access free inspiring 'how-to' articles and to sign up for our free audio mini-series ‘7 Easy Steps to Build Your Brand, Your Biz, and Your Income.’