Increase Your Profits

Your bottom line profits on your income statement should be the most important number you, as a business owner should look at FIRST; unfortunately, most business owners think of “net bottom line profits” as what is left after everyone else is paid.

I do not subscribe to that way or running your business, and as a retired marketing / business analyst I can show you how to do the opposite. Pay yourself first and everyone else last AND build net profits!

If you have been in business more than three years, and have ever spent one dime on traditional media, (Yellow Pages, Newspaper, Magazine, Radio, TV etc.) or worst yet are still spending money on traditional media; I can show you how to increase your bottom line profits in ten minutes. Simply eliminate all traditional media and shift a portion of that savings to the bottom line, and the other portion to the internet.

Case in point, you reached this page and the only place this page was promoted was on Google, therefore the only place you can have found this page was on Google using specific key words that indicated you might want to learn some thing about net profits.

My official title used to be “marketing analyst”; and over the years my role in business was to help owners increase top line sales, but that was when I was spending OPM, (other people’s money).

Then, when I owned my own company and started to spend my own money I quickly became a business analyst, and net profits become my obsession. My business was renting computers and your net profits shrink very quickly when your inventory is obsolete in less than one year! My solution was that I would rent a computer until it generated enough revenue to pay for itself (usually six months) and then I would sell the six month old computer for half of what a new one cost and that was my "net profit" - I never had a computer that was more than a year and half old.

A wise old man once told me: anyone can pay themselves a lot of money – it’s the guy that can pay himself a lot and make his company profitable; that is the true entrepreneur.

The next time you are put in a position to spend money on traditional media (or anything for that matter), keep this little formula in mind.

Take your last month income statement; and look at the “bottom line profit”. Let’s say it’s 10%; now look at the proposal and see what you have to write a check for; let’s say its $400 a month for an ad in a local publication. Simply divide that amount by 10% ($400 / 10% = $4,000); therefore that one ad has to generate over $4,000 a month in sales to “break even” on the transaction, actually it has to bring in more than that to make it worthwhile.

I promise you if you do this on every deal you make you will think twice about writing a check.

One of the things that I found fascinating about my business analyst career were the number of owners that told me “net profits are not relevant … because, I pay myself very well…”.

My response to that was always the same “so if your company struggles, so does your family?” But more importantly when it time to grow the business, and you approach a bank for that extra cash to get you over the top and your business has never made any money. . . do you think the banker wants to hear – “yeah but I pay myself well”.

If you’re not worried about the net bottom line profits, then you really just bought yourself a job and are not really running a business.

Register and download my 99 things you must do to increase bottom line profits, and I’ll show you how to increase your profits or you won’ pay me a penny until you increase your net profit… it usually takes about 90 days to start showing increases.