Happy Money Monday!
This Money Monday Message is dedicated to the primary caregivers in the house - the moms and dads whose businesses took a hit (or let's be honest - a nosedive) when the first kid came along. Your income may have tanked, or you may have done your best to maintain the status quo, and stay afloat - doing the day to day to keep those numbers the same.
Keep Looking At Those QuickBooks Reports
As you grow your kid-legs (aka sea legs), things get easier. Because you have less time to f*around making excuses for bad client behavior or lack of pitching for new business, you begin to tighten things up in your business department (or you threw in the towel completely, but since you're a reader of Tin Shingle, you're probably back in the game - YAY YOU!).
Look at your Gross year over year. If you take a salary, look at that year over year. If the number is low, that might be depressing to you. If that number has stayed the same, you have some work to do.
If That Number Has Grown...
But if that number has grown...if you took a salary of $6,000 one year, and $24,000 the next year, well that's some pretty impressive growth right there. While $24,000 in and of itself is far from the 6-digit number you’re going for, you can look at your percentage of growth and know that if you grew the business that much, you can spread your wings and do more.
PS: QuickBooks Has Helped With This Salary Growth
While this is not a sponsorship by QuickBooks (though we are channeling a partnership and do want them in our scheduled sponsor content for you), using QuickBook's Payroll at the full level has helped enormously with the cutting of payroll checks. The first payroll company we used was an old-school company that charged a big fee just to have it, plus a $45 fee to cut a check, and then a $99 fee to cut a check, and then a big old $157 fee for not cutting any checks at all during a quarter.
Having payroll even for just 1 employee has been helpful for avoiding incorrectly estimating taxes. But the favorite part is how easy it is to cut a payroll check any day of the week - even if it is sooner than the regular payday. If you need money now from your business, you don’t need to call 1-800-CASH-NOW, you can just cut a payroll check and have the money go where it needs to for taxes.
How can you not pay yourself as a business owner? Well, as a business owner, you may have another job, a supporting spouse, gifts allotted to you, dividend income, who knows. This has been written about before on Tin Shingle, the Crutch Syndrome, and you should go re-read it if you need a mindset shift in growing profitability in your business.
Meanwhile, have a great Money Monday, and go shake those money trees!