The Basics of Building a Business You Love
When people talk to me about building a business they love, one of the things I notice is that they don’t take the time to discover what that really looks like in practice — and this is critical.
It’s your aim.
You need to be crystal fricken clear.
Here’s how 👇🏽
1/ Start with something I call a Values Analysis.
It’s as straightforward as it sounds:
What do you value most *right now* ?
E.g. flexibility, learning, helping people, money, being part of a team, independence, utilizing your skills…
2/ Write down with SPECIFICS your ideal day.
Client Services example:
- Wake up at 10am
- Make breakfast at home
- Get on a client call
- Check emails for 20 mins at noon
- Take one hour to write
- Work on a client project for 2–3 hours
- Eat at a local spot for dinner
3/ Write down your ideal WEEK.
Please don’t try to do this in your head. Take advantage of the magic (scientific) power that writing things down has and just write. down. your. ideal. week.
e.g.
- Creative days Mon/Fri
- Client days Tues/Thurs
- Wednesdays off
4/ Get your numbers straight.
Start by gather your expenses in two columns:
- Recurring expenses
- One-off expenses
- Don’t forget food. People always forget food.
- 5/ Create a nice-to-have and a basic-ass-responsibilities total.
- The latter is your minimum necessary recurring revenue.
- “But how do I have recurring revenue when I’m working on one-off projects?”
You don’t. You *make* recurring net revenue.
If base expenses are $2500 and you have a 5K project, here’s how to run it:
20% for taxes = $4000 revenue
4/2.5k = 1.6 months of recurring revenue (we call runway)
10K project:
- 2K for taxes = $8000 revenue
- 8/2.5 = 3 months of recurring revenue
These are the basics.
If you get these down, you’re building a business you love because you’ve:
1) Covered your responsibilities
2) Are intentionally spending your time the way you want.
It requires a little more thinking than people like to do, but it’s worth it.
I’m always open to how others are doing it so feel free to respond or hit follow → @tanyamoushi and we’ll stay connected.
Happy Building. 💛
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