Entrepreneurship 101 will teach cash flow is king you this, and having nearly run out of cash at least three times since founding the business in 2011, I can attest to this.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that I was pricing the work out incorrectly: I was quoting for the hours it took for me or a staff member to do a task; not the hours, plus my hours, plus the admin costs and overheads.
That’s how you cost.
Plus a little for profits and savings.
And save every penny for a rainy day.
But it’s hard to charge like this when brazil email list your clients are small entrepreneurs. As your team grows and their experience grows, their salaries and your costs grow too. You can’t charge more when your clients aren’t able to afford it – as the size of your clients grows and their budgets increase, then you can make sure you’re invoicing correctly.
And that takes time.
You grow, you learn, your clients get bigger, their budgets increase, and you can’t rush that process if you started at the bottom, as I did. If you come from a big agency, and have a lot of contacts and start your own business with the role of social media in customer loyalty some clients, then you have other lessons to learn.
The business turned around after learning this painful lesson, and after my business partner, Michael Wimpey, joined me.
Hello next lesson!
Lesson 7: Get the Right Business Partner
In the early days I had 4-5 different people or groups try to get me to join them, and each time I turned them down as it just didn’t feel right.
Even though I met Michael in the year I started Shift ONE (we had a mutual client), it took me eight years to convince him to join me!
Michael handles the creative, video, design and technical side of the business while I manage the marketing, social and digital teams… a very germany cell number complementary skillset. We also share the admin work between us, which means we can each do the admin tasks a little better than if it were still just me doing everything.
Having a partner with complementary skills makes the company (read:me) more stable, helps us make better decisions, makes the work easier and the results better.
“I was done in by my business partner” is something I’ve heard many times before, so I was very cautious about who I partnered with, but Michael has taken Shift ONE to the next level and has been a real blessing.
Speaking of great results, my eighth lesson.
Lesson 8: Just Do Great Wor
Until one day I realised my focus was off.
What is focus? It means to look at one thing.
So instead of focusing on money and the fancy car, I changed my focus (my attention) to look at one thing and one thing only: Just doing great work.