Feeling lost as an entrepreneur? How do you know what you are doing is working?

Hey, they're my friends. Happy Friday Eve day to everybody. I've got Instagram up here on the camera. I hope last week the signal was really bad. So I think you heard like every other word. I've got Facebook, my Facebook group friends here. We're on LinkedIn. Hopefully everybody can hear me and we're in all the places. Happy Friday to you guys. And happy almost long holiday weekend. Holy cow. So excited to be with you today.

Let me ask you this. Are you actually moving the needle in your business? It’s the question that my clients ask me a lot. How do I know if what I'm doing is even going to work or is it even working on a daily basis?
Let me tell you who I am first, though. I'm Tracy Beavers. I'm a business and sales coach, and my passion is helping you. The small business owner, solopreneur, gain confidence and know that everything you are doing every day is going to move the needle on your business and your goals.
Drive traffic, drive revenue, drive income. Right. That's why we're in business so that we can build a business that brings us the income we need for our families and for our dreams. If you're here live with me on Facebook, I want you to drop a one in the chat. So excited to have you join me live. If you're catching the replay, that's totally great. Drop replay in the chat so I can know so that I can know that you were there later on.

And if you're on stream yard, post your name with your comment so I can shout you out. Cause stream yard doesn't give it. You have to give them permission to see your name I think is what it is. Otherwise it just this Facebook user and I don't know who you are. And as always, if there's something on your mind from last week or this week, if you have a comment about something, a struggle you want to talk about, put that in the chat to you and I'll check all that at the end.

So how do you know that what you're doing everyday is actually working? You can kind of get a feel for it by observing the day to day operations when you're able to pay all your bills, pay yourself and your employees and you have money left over. Those are pretty obvious signs that things are going pretty well, right. And this will work this method of gauging your business will work for you in the short term, but it's not really a good, good plan for the long term. So let me give you some things that you can look for it just in case you want to stop flying by the seat of your pants, and you want to actually start tracking some things and seeing if what you're doing is working.

These just three tips, there are several different ways to measure your business, these are not the only three. The different measurements. Right, range from something that's super simple, like those observations I just mentioned to more complex ratios. But the first one I want to talk about is your revenue is growing and this is very exciting. So how do you know when your revenue is growing? Well, for me, it's looking at my profit and loss statement. I was surprised to, to actually put it all down on paper and actually see how much income I had coming in and what my expenses were.

And the cool thing was I could look at each month and see what was my biggest expense. And a couple of times I was a little surprised and I was like, oh, and there were a couple of subscription software services that I had subscribed to that I wasn't using anymore and I completely forgotten about. And by tracking those expenses, I was able to see it and go, ok, wait, I need to shut that down. So if you're a solopreneur with a product based business, very little inventory and few expenses, you could almost track your profit and loss on a piece of paper. I don't recommend it, but you could do it the best option to track it more accurately. And the one that makes my CPA so very happy is to do, do what I'm doing and use a software program. The one I use is very simple. It doesn't have as many bells and whistles as quick books. That's not something my business needs right now, but it can even be an Excel spreadsheet just as long as you're tracking it. And I can see monthly, quarterly, annually, I can run a balance sheet, I can see my profit margins.

And like I said, I can even see which expenses are costing you the most money. And I can also be sure that my expenses are not growing faster than my income. That would not be a good thing. And it's also nice to look at it when I'm having a bad day. I mean, I don't know about you, but sometimes this entrepreneur or entrepreneur, gosh, it's so hard to say. Why did they have to make it so hard to say being an entrepreneur and owning your own business?

Some days it feels like a lot and you're just like, forget it, I'm going to quit. I'm going to go back and get a job. Why am I doing this? And if I have days like that, what I like to do is go back and look at my profit and loss and be like, ok Tracy, hold on, go back and look at this month over month. Go back and look at it quarter, quarter from quarter and see how much you've progressed.

So I don't know about you, but I have days like that where I need a good shot in the arm of sunshine and unicorns and looking at my, I'm looking at my profit and loss statement helps me do that. The second thing I want you to think about is you have a nice mix of new and repeat customers coming through acquiring new customers costs your business money, did you know that it is five times more expensive to attract a new customer than it is to go back and warm up an existing one?

And it's really because attracting those new customers takes so much time, so much energy. There's usually a spend on marketing and/or sales. The onboarding process, the educating repeat customers don't cost you any more money because they already have all those. They're already in the door and they're likely to refer their friends, which is really, really cool. Now, we can't go based. We can't build our business just on existing customers. But new customers do protect your company from being from completely relying on your current customer base as your only revenue source.

So, you do need a mix of the two. Having new customers also helps you, like I say, hedge that risk and protect your revenue when some of your existing customers do decide to leave you, which does happen over time. But looking at your customer base and seeing a good mix of both new and repeat customers, that should bring you confidence to. And number three. You are not doing this by yourself anymore. And what do I mean by that?

When you look at your business and you realize you've been able to hire some people, when you first start your business, you're alone, you're it. You are the chief, the cook, the bottle washer. You're the front of the house. You're the back of the house. Order taking, order fulfillment, shipping, receiving, accounting, web design, social media. Oh, my gosh. And don't forget, you actually have to perform the product or service that you're selling.

So it's a lot like I said, you're it with a capital I and a capital T, and if you're looking back from where you from when you started and you see growth and you feel a difference from those first few days and you have other people that are helping you like a business coach. Sorry, don't fire me. I had to go there.

But you do hire people like maybe you have a part time employee or a virtual assistant or you did hire a social media manager and you have a team now. It's not just you. You're definitely gaining ground. And what you're doing is working when you reach a point where you're OK, delegating and taking your hands off every single dial in your business, this is a sign that what you're doing is working and this is the sign you're confident and your decisions are the right ones.

I'd love to know if you made a decision recently to hire some great people to help you, because I did. And it feels amazing. And I hope they're on here because I want to give them a quick shout out. Julie Ann, Jill, Michelle, Jenny, Abby, Dorothy and the absolutely amazing Melissa. These ladies have helped me in ways I can't describe over the last few weeks launch what's coming up next, my workshop in June. And I want to talk to you about it.

I want you to get your calendar out right now, Mark. June 7 to June 11, each day that week. I only need fifteen minutes of your time. I want you to hop and live with me at 11:30 central to about 11:45 central. We are going to talk about the five biggest mistakes that business owners and salespeople are making, because I want you to avoid those mistakes. And I'll tell you, you'll be surprised because these are not the mistakes that you're thinking. We're going to give some fun prizes away every day and there's going to be a grand prize of a free coaching session with me.

So if you're watching this from our Facebook group, you're all set for the workshop. You don't have to do anything else because you're already here. Just make sure you check you mark this on your planner and be here and join us live. If you're joining us from Instagram, you need to hop on over to Facebook and join our Facebook group. Same thing for you, LinkedIn. And if you're watching from the Facebook business page, you all need to come over to the group.

The Facebook group is called Be a Confident Entrepreneur, Gain Confidence and Grow Your Income. Super simple to find. There's a picture of me. I want you to join us, make yourself at home and soak up all the support and collaboration from other business owners that are just like you.

As always, I'm here for you. If you want to discuss coaching or what that looks like, what we can accomplish together, shoot me a DM or contact me through my website and let's talk about it.

I want you to have a great balance of the week and a long holiday weekend. Be safe. And remember, when one of us rises, we all rise. So I'm going to check the chat now so I can see who my friends are that are here. Look this is my favorite part, y'all. I'm so glad you're here. Hey Kamisha, hey, Josh. Hello, hey Dee. Dee says revenue is growing, look at profit and loss statement, yes, and start hiring people.

I love it. Hey, Lelani, so glad you're here. All right, guys, I hope that this was a value to you. Let me know what you need. Let each other know what you need. A few of you posted in the group that you are looking for positions to be hired for your companies. That's so exciting. That means your revenues growing. That means the things that you're doing are going well. I appreciate you guys so much.

I'm going to sign off. And I'll see you next week.