Taking care of your business with the secret river

 

I wanted to share with you my own recent painful tax experience and why you should treat your online marketing ventures as a serious business; no matter what you’re currently earning. Because I recently got back from my summer holidays to find a tax bill that was around $14,000 more than I was anticipating – ouch!

Now after a fair amount of swearing and cussing and then some financial juggling, all is fine again in my business (well except the CRAZY amounts I have to actually pay the damned tax man)! But the point that I want to share is this - that I have spent a lot of time ignoring the basic fundamentals of any good profitable business, much to my peril.

For example I’ve not been ensuring that every last penny is accounted for, that I am on the best tax deals possible, or that I cut costs wherever appropriate. Mainly because to be honest I find this side of my business as dull as dishwater, but now I am suddenly finding it more exciting…

Because my real passion is doing the creative things like producing new products, writing sales letters, putting emails together and planning promotions. As a result I have left myself exposed to serious amounts of money flooding out of my business.

Now I’ve had this breakthrough that I’m actually losing money unnecessarily each month; suddenly I’m finding the idea of filing receipts correctly, going to see my accountant, and seeking the best deals on stuff as much more exciting!

Obviously I still need to do my creative stuff to keep new streams of income coming in each month, but there is also a “secret river” of money flowing out of my business that I never even thought too much about before.

And when you look at it this way it’s crazy to work so hard on making extra money when you are dropping so much unnecessary money behind you on the pavement (sidewalk for my American friends!) behind you.

So the idea of this blog post is to check if YOU are doing all you can do to maximise the profits of your business with those little “behind the scenes” activities that may be leaking money.

Are you subscribed to expensive membership sites that you no longer use?

Do you have a big bundle of receipts somewhere in a bag that need filing?

Are you putting off that appointment that you need to make with the bank or your accountant?

Are you shopping around properly for the software, hardware and other stuff that you need to purchase for your business? (An example this week in my business was that I had my printer’s ink cartridge re-filled in a local store for $16 - for the past year I’ve been buying new cartridges of the shelf for $30!)

So look you don’t need to become Ebenezer Scrooge obsessing over every last penny - but think about where you could tighten up on your business, and plug that “secret river” of cash. Whatever you do can only add to your overall profits.

Until next time….

Happy Marketing.

John Hillage

PS – Things are going well on my new website project which will take marketers just like you on to bigger and better online profits. So keep looking out for more updates and a release date which should be late September.

PPS - Thanks to all those who submitted marketing questions to me last week on email, only 1 person used the blog! I am about to start the report now but if you have 1 last little question - drop me an email or a blog comment and I’ll try and answer it too.