PP 231: The Importance of Knowing Your Numbers

Transcript not yet cleaned up but thanks for checking it out!

Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. I’m so happy that you are here to join me today. And today I want to talk to you about knowing your numbers.

At the time of this recording, it is the beginning of 2018, and I’ve just wrapped up assembling my finances for 2017. I’ve been looking at my income and my expenses, and although I had started 2017 with the intention of doing this on a monthly basis, halfway through the year, I fell off. And let me tell you, it was a little bit of a shock to see where some of my money went.

The Importance of Knowing Your Numbers

In the past, I realized that by not staying attuned to where my money was going, I spent so much money on tools and software and training I really didn’t need. However, I was caught up in shiny object syndrome.

What I mean by that was that I was seeing that this person and that person were using this training or that tool to bring greater success to their business. And I was buying into all of it and in the end, I never Went through the training. And I also rarely use the tools that I was signing up for. While I did make a big dent in this in 2017.

The Importance of Knowing Your Numbers

When I was looking at my finances, I realized that there was one tool specifically that I had let go for six months longer than necessary, just because I’d forgotten that it was hitting my account on a monthly basis. While this wasn’t a huge expenditure, compared to what it could have cost me that $400 really could have gone somewhere else in my business. Just to put things in perspective for you. I spent the same amount on expenses in 2017 as I did in 2016. However, 2017 also included coaching expenses and mastermind expenses, which were not a small chunk of change. The investment into the mastermind as well as coaching benefited my business. So greatly and also kept me on track for cutting out shiny object syndrome. In previous episodes of the positive productivity podcast, I’ve talked about how we should outsource tasks that are not in our genius zone. And bookkeeping and accounting are definitely not in mine. So in 2018, I am definitely going to be having a further expense in this area. If you’re tired of barely being in the black every month, or if your income is just not looking as high as you want it to at the end of the year, I really want to encourage you to take a look at every single item you spent money on in the previous year or in the previous month and see what you can cut out of your monthly budget. I don’t plan on ever sharing monthly income reports on the podcast or on my site, but just to give you an idea of what my monthly expenses look like. Without contractors, my monthly expenses run about $2,000. This involves tools such as Infusionsoft and lead pages, my WordPress hosting and a whole lot of other software and tools and resources that I use on a monthly basis. I’m comfortable now, after having wrapped up my finances for 2017 that I have cut out all the unnecessary items. When I was going through, I did see that one unnecessary item and I went and cancelled it immediately so they don’t have to worry about it in the future. I want to challenge you to go do this for yourself today. Look at the past month and see what you don’t really need. Take the five minutes and go on to the website and cancel that recurring charge. Those recurring charges add up so quickly over the course of the year, and that money could definitely be spent better elsewhere. Now with all this said, Go forth and make it a positive In a productive day