Do you budget or need a budget? I’ve found that I spend way more than necessary and often experience cash flow problems if I don’t practice some basic financial planning. The issues with budgeting are twofold:

1. Based on what you’re going to earn in a given period, what are your expenses/investments and how are you going to allocate your money wisely and..
2. when you plan have you considered the time of month that you’ll need your money to meet your obligations? This is called cash flow.

There are a ton of budgeting programs available today for free or small fee but I’ve found myself time and time again referring back to my tried and true Excel budgeting tools. This version of my budgeting tool is the one I use for managing my personal and business financial projections. It’s especially useful if you get income from multiple sources.

If you are interested in getting a copy for yourself visit my blog post at RateState.com to learn more or view the YouTube.com video below to see how it works and download a copy for yourself by clicking on the link below.

Download the Zero-Based budgeting with Business Budget spreadsheet here

photo credit: liquidnight

Something to seriously consider: If you find yourself not working productively – don’t do any work at all!

A rudderless speedboat at full throttle

It’s very easy to begin your day or week with a mental list of all the important things you want to accomplish; some of this work may should even qualify as contributing mightily to your actual success. But what happens if you don’t document your planned work and then conform to some sort of schedule to do the work? You’re like a speedboat without a rudder. You dash to and fro in the oceans of information and diversion called the internet without focus and end up being far less productive than planned.

Doing things that look like work is not a good replacement for actually accomplishing meaningful things. Have you ever heard yourself saying, “Arrgh! I’m sooooo busy!” when you’re really just being…well…busy?

There’s no deeper feeling of satisfaction planning an important and meaningful piece of work and then making a focused effort that leads to its completion. Conversely, knowing you need to get stuff done and then consistently frittering away your time feels like you’ve just kicked your best friend in the balls and cussed out your mom – you feel pretty lame.

Medicine for your troubled mind

So here’s an idea that serves as a kind of reset button for your work life: If you find yourself aimlessly working on mostly unimportant work, stop working and do something totally different and unrelated. Your productive work time will then contrast sharply with your unproductive work time.  And if you do something non-work related you’ll convert what would have been time wasted into time well spent. The hope is that you’ll serve a mild rejuvenating penance while clearing out the jumbled up backlog of unorganized and unprioritized tasks in your head.

There are three steps to the “No productivity = No work” experience:

1. Get away from your work – Run, don’t walk away from your computer/office/desk/shop/sewing machine/backhoe.

2. Do something unrelated to work – This is how you’re being “disciplined” by yourself into not making the same mistake twice!

• Go for a brisk walk around the block.
• Go home early and play with your kids.
• Visit a bookstore and read random magazines about random subjects to expand your knowledge.
• Watch an art film that’ll make you think.
• Pray.
• Exercise vigorously.
• Journal.

3. Plan your work for one hour per week – No hard science here, just basic planning advice. One hour of planning per week should give you a pretty solid outline of what’s important to do and when to do it. Try to group your niggling little tasks into bigger blocks of time.

Sure, your spouse may wonder what the heck you’re doing home at 11:45 am on a Monday but it’ll be better than wasting your time. (In my humble opinion.)

If you’re looking for some more on this subject read my post “How to plan your work quickly” from last August.

Thoughts or insights? Share them in the comments below.

Image by laurenmarek via Flickr

If you’re promoting anything online it can help your sales massively to localize your offer or the data on the page to the visitor.

An example of this might be some copy on the page dynamically generated for the visitor’s area – “Expert house painting in Seattle, WA. Click here for an instant quote.”

The easiest way to do this is if you have the searcher’s location already. For example: If you have a geolocated search campaign where the advertising network is providing you with zip and/or city data you can pass it through as a URL variable like yourpage.php?city=Seattle&state=WA

But there’s a sure fire way to make sure you’re localizing your content and offer to your visitors area; you can run a GeoTargeting PHP script in conjunction with a free zip code database.

I do this for certain things I promote on the internet such as auto insurance offers and other services that aren’t location specific but where I want the visitor to feel like they’re getting a localized result. It’s always resulted in a higher conversion rate when I’ve done that.

Instead of rewriting tutorials that already exist I thought I’d point you to a couple of resources that I’ve used.

Eric Nagel’s Geo-Targeted PHP script

Free Zip Code Database from the Zip Code Guy

Have fun and let me know how it works for you!

photo credit: Christine & Eric

If you want to be good at something, practice it until you’re good at it.*

Haha! Isn’t that hilarious? But it’s true. Here’s a conversation I’ve had too many times to count…

“Hey Mark. I want to start my own business.”

“Really? That’s awesome! You know what I think of that! It’s the best way to financial prosperity – Kapow! And now let’s do a dance of celebration!”

“Yeah,  yeah. Anyways, I’m kind of stuck. How do I start?”

“Well, what do you want to do? Do you have a product or service you want to sell? A unique idea that you’re not sure how to capitalize on?”

“You see, that’s the thing. I want to sell X but I don’t know how to do it!!”

“Ok. Totally. But why don’t you start by looking at where you want to go with X and then reverse engineer your success?”

“What do you mean ‘reverse engineer’ my success?”

“What I mean is, what’s your goal? Define what that successful business would look like and then deconstruct the steps it’d take to achieve it. Figure out what you need to know that you don’t know yet and then learn those things as you take those steps.”

“Yeah…I should go back to business school I guess. Get an MBA or something. Then I could start.”

And from there the excuses for not starting pour in. And they’re all very credible excuses at first glance. I’ve had many versions of the above conversation ranging from  “I just can’t learn how to use this program therefore I can’t do X therefore I’m a failure.” to “I need to get my sub chapter S Delaware LLC set up with my iron clad operating agreement in place before I can get started.”

You don’t have to have a degree, pedigree, trust fund, bank loan, bank account, advisor, mentor, board of directors, letter from your mom or have “The Secret” memorized to get started down the path towards success. What you do need is a determination to learn and practice. All of the other stuff will happen as it needs to happen.

*I realize this whole post is an over simplification of a process that has a thousand sub-components but it’s the truest thing I’ve ever written.

photo credit: amiefedora

One of my favorite blogs is Trizle. They have a unique and goofy way of communicating basic business truths. The topics they cover resonate with me because they are the foundational concepts that lead to success; just really good common sense stuff. Today’s post caught my eye though. It’s about failure and why it works in making a person successful.

I’ve pondered failure a lot in my career as an aspiring entreprenuer. I’ve gone from avoiding it all costs to embracing the eventuality of it because I know failure leads to success. I even have a saying that I foist on anyone who’ll stick around long enough for it to make it out of my mouth when the topic of failure or success comes up. Ready for it?

“Fear of failure will cause you to fail before you can fail from trying”

Get it? You know, being afraid will cause you to fail before you can…aww, whatever. I’m sure you get the point.

Anyways, here’s the post from Trizle. Check it out, join Trizle’s mailing list, tell me what you think about their post and Trizle in the comments, and most of all, have a Rocking day!

Say X has an 80% chance of failing.

• So, X has a 20% chance of succeeding.

That means, you succeed 1 time for 5 tries (on average); or even better:

1. You succeed 2 times for 10 tries.
2. You suceed 5 times for 25 tries.
3. You succeed 20 times for 100 tries.
4. You succeed 100 times for 500 tries.
5. Etc., etc., etc.

That is, the more times you try/experiment/test, the
more successes you’ll find.

Why Failure Works from Trizle – Full Article here

If you’re one of those people who earnestly seeks to understand this whole “social media marketing” craze but is often left scratching their head, well then, this very funny article from the New Yorker speaks for itself. (and you!)
It’s a good reminder that although there’s always a new and innovative way to promote something it’s important not to be overwhelmed or too disappointed because, at some point, it’s going to start sounding like nonsense anyways.

If you already have a blog, make sure you spray-feed your URL in niblets open-face to the skein. We like Reddit bites (they’re better than Delicious), because they max out the wiki snarls of RSS feeds, which means less jamming at the Google scaffold. Then just Digg your uploads in a viral spiral to your social networks via an FB/MS interlink torrent. You may have gotten the blast e-mail from Jason Zepp, your acquiring editor, saying that people who do this sort of thing will go to Hell, but just ignore it.

The vi-spi is cross-platform, but don’t worry if you think you’re not on Facebook, because you actually are. Jason enrolled you when you signed the contract last year, or at least he was supposed to, and he told Sarah Williams he did before he had to retire and Sarah left for nursing school. You currently have 421 Friends, 17 Pending Requests, 8 Pokes, 5 Winks, and 3 Proposals of “Marriage.”

Read the Full Article at the New Yorker here

I start my day with the best of intentions. I know what matters to my bottom line, what I need to delegate, and what I want to accomplish. I’m locked, loaded and ready to go!

I march into my office eager to get started on all my predefined and important work and then…A fuzzy haze washes over me. I find myself staring with unfocused eyes at my computer screen and all that focus has just flown out the window. What happened?!

Even though I know what I need to do – my to do list is evidence of this – I often suffer from some sort of productivity paralysis. It’s a fantastic disappointment to me to look back on my day/week and see what I have not done. Things that should have been reasonably completed within the hours I allot to work.

There’s a deeper significance to my lack of productivity. Time I could be spending with my family and friends is instead filled with make-up work. Being productive in my work is a passion I’m cultivating. I simply don’t want to be defined by the amount of work I do. I’d rather be defined as someone who chooses the right things to do that make a huge difference to the bottom line.

Via LifeHacker.com I found a great article entitled “An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day” by Peter Bregman that gives me hope. I’m going to read and re-read this article a few times and try implementing it this week.

Yesterday started with the best of intentions. I walked into my office in the morning with a vague sense of what I wanted to accomplish. Then I sat down, turned on my computer, and checked my email. Two hours later, after fighting several fires, solving other people’s problems, and dealing with whatever happened to be thrown at me through my computer and phone, I could hardly remember what I had set out to accomplish when I first turned on my computer. I’d been ambushed. And I know better.

Even though I’ll probably always struggle with scheduling out my work throughout the day it really makes sense. I’m going to work on whipping my planning and resulting work into shape.

Let me know how you plan and stay productive in the comments below.

Full Article by Peter Bregman here. (via LifeHacker )

There’s a huge difference between having a business and having a business that is systematic. A systematic business will reproduce its success over and over again while any other type will require repeated and unique effort for every profit generating event. The best conceived business systems will thrive whether you’re managing it every day or not.

Why do you want a systematic business?

If you own a company that is creating profits day in day out that performs independently of your own daily efforts you can enjoy life more while not sacrificing your income. It’s a simple concept but it doesn’t happen automatically. You have to plan and be persistent until you get it right.

There’s a difference, in my mind, between a business that does the same thing over and over again – like an accountant repeatedly doing taxes for a set group of people – and a business that has a few distinct systematic elements.

• Scalable – If it works well small it will work well large
• Independently reproducible – Success doesn’t require you to be hands on for every sale
• Predictable – Through a combination of demand and marketing you can largely predict your growth and success
• Outsourced – Whether the work is done by in house employees, contract labor, or vendors, you’re not responsible for executing the work.

For example: A website designer that creates websites on a case by case basis is different than a business that sells custom designed websites based on a predictable template, at a price that is attractive to the largest demographic of potential customers, and is staffed by talented contract employees.

Here are a few more examples of what I consider to be great systematic business:

Affiliate Marketing – Find a product niche and create a low cost website to promote the product. You are then paid by the merchant whenever someone clicks from your site to their site and makes a purchase. Merchants will also pay for leads and sometimes clicks. Even though you may set up the initial offers and maintain them they are working for you day and night.

Low cost products sold over the internet – If you can come up with a useful product to sell that lends itself to internet or mail order sales you can produce a pilot run of the product and ship directly to the customer. Don’t be scared of competition. The more the better. As a matter of fact, if you sell your product directly to the consumer you may have a huge advantage as you’re not having to pay distributors who receive a large percentage of the profit in exchange for their services.

Any service business – You could start a copywriting service, a website design company, a consulting firm for a particular business niche, or any other you can think of. The important thing to remember is that the demand you create should not be met by you alone and you’ll need reliable employees who know their stuff and can work efficiently based on the particulars of the business system. You’ll also need a methodology for acquiring new customers predictably.

I’m working on a few business systems right now: An online mattress sales company, a website design service for small business, an affiliate marketing company, and internet leads sales.

What about you guys? Who’s successfully running a profitable system?