Change can be intimidating. You realize that you have a problem, something that you don’t like or want to be different. You even know what the solution is, but implementing that solution can be daunting. The perceived pain of the change will keep you in place until the pain of the problem exceeds it.
So let’s lower the pain of change. Here are two easy, quick solutions to start implementing Profit First.
First, open a savings account and start putting 1% of each deposit into it. If you have a $5,000 payment from a customer, put $50 of that into the new savings account. The remaining $4,950 goes into your normal account.
Do this with each deposit for one quarter (13 weeks), and ignore the account completely. When the quarter is over, look at your savings account. I guarantee that you will be surprised with how much money is in that account. Congratulations! You’ve started Profit First.
The second item is to do an Instant Profit Assessment. I discuss this in Profit First for Creatives in more depth, but the Instant Profit Assessment is like your weigh in on your fat-loss journey. You are simply seeing where your business profitability is.
You can find the Instant Profit Assessment on (with video instructions) on my resources page. Once you’ve completed your Assessment, you know exactly what your profit looks like, and you can determine how far you have to go to reach your goal.
Your initial profit goal should be to fund your lifestyle. By this I mean, the lifestyle you want, not necessarily the one your are currently living. Take a look at your household expenditures to start, and then add amounts for anything that you wish you had, but currently can’t afford. This total is your target.
For example, if you’re current household expenditures are $80,000 a year, but you really wish you could travel more, then your target might be $100,000. Make sure that you include taxes paid in this total.
Now you can look at the profit from your Instant Profit Assessment and see how far you have to go to get to the $100k. We do this using the Quarterly Implementation Plan (also available on the resources page, which we will discuss in our next article.
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