“Pay Yourself First”
We’ve all heard this one before. The bottom line is, the financial aspect of running your business is always extremely challenging, especially since “you have to spend money to make money”. However, as
the owner of the business, you are responsible for making some very
tough decisions. You have to choose between hiring employees to work for
you to help run the business, or bearing a lot of the burden yourself.
Not to mention, you have to determine what is the most budget-friendly
and effective way to market your business to your customers.
In this article, I’d like to speak directly to all of the small business owners out there. Listen carefully, it is imperative that you pay yourself first. As you know, when there is extreme financial pressure on any
business, large or small, the first place that you cut back is payroll,
since that tends to be the largest expense for most businesses. So, I
would argue that as business owners, we should be a little more
conservative to begin with when hiring, and then maybe we won’t have to
do dramatic cutbacks down the line.
You’d be surprised how many business owners are paying employees to work for them, but aren’t earning a reasonable salary themselves. This is a big problem! If you’re not earning a reasonable salary from your
small business (only you can decide what’s reasonable), you definitely
should not be paying employees. This is a hard pill to swallow for many
small business owners, but it is a reality that is important to come to
terms with.
The owner of any small business works tirelessly to operate the business, resolve conflicts, grow the business, manage day-to-day operations, etc. They are also responsible for the vision of the
business, keeping it fresh, current, competitive, and ahead of the
trends. If you, the business owner, are bogged down with overwhelming
financial stress, how can you grow your business? How can you build
relationships with your clients, if you can barely pay your bills? How
can you realize your dreams, if your dream has become a nightmare?
I don’t say all of this to scare you, but to empower you. Learn to make the tough, right decisions in the beginning, in order to avoid the many unnecessary obstacles that can arise down the line.
Stay tuned for the next installment of this series where I will discuss how social media can save your business…Also let me know if there are any specific topics you’d like to see me write about within
this series.
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