What if I told you that I had a magic spreadsheet?

What’s magic about it? It is like a crystal ball for your business–you can use it to see the future!

My spreadsheet can tell you:

• How much money you are going to make this year. So you can plan your personal budget — When you know how much your business is going to make you can predict your personal income and spending. Can you take that summer vacation, or not?
• How much you can spend on rent, for travel and other expenses. I see small business owners worry about taking on a new lease, or sponsoring that big industry conference, or hiring a new person. My spreadsheet can tell you how that investment will pay off in your earnings by the end of the year.
• How many employees you are going to need to make that money. Sure you’ve got aggressive growth plans, but if hitting that sales goal means hiring five more people are you OK with that?
• When you need to hire your next employee. If you wait until everyone is TOO busy and then start hiring you’ve got 2 – 3 months of late nights and whiney employees before you’ve got that new person hired. If you can get going on hiring ahead of the need, you can have good candidates ready just as things start to get too busy.
• How many new clients you’ll need to land this year. If you want to hit your growth and income goals do you need one client a month? Do you need 10? My magic spreadsheet will tell you!
• And so much more.

All of that from one spreadsheet?!?!? Sounds pretty neat, doesn’t it?

It is! It is one of the most valuable tools I offer to business owners!!

But when I suggest making one for my client’s businesses they frequently scrunch up their nose and change the subject.

What?

Yes. The most valuable tool I have in my toolbox (that delivers all that knowledge and more) gets rejected by most small business owners. (Well, everyone told Jack that his beans were worthless too…)

When I can convince clients that it’s worth it to spend the time to build my magic spreadsheet just for their business they experience some amazing things.  They can ask “what if” questions and see how it’s going to impact their profits:

• One client bought a building to move their agency into.
• Another fired a large, pain-in-the-ass client that they discovered was costing more than they were worth.
• A third focused on a specific segment of their business so that they could grow sales and profits without adding a lot of people.

What’s the same for all that use the magic spreadsheet? They all get more in control of their business.

But it can be such a struggle to get business owners to spend the time in front of a spreadsheet to understand what’s driving their business. They more often want to lead by instinct, gut-feel, or adrenaline instead of getting inside their numbers so that they can add some head to that gut instinct.

Where are you on this journey? Are you still all gut-feelings? Do you have some ways of projecting your business success?

I’ve got a chance for you to download my magic spreadsheet… on this next post!