“Stephan, Help ME! I’m going NUTS, I just don’t know what’s going on. I’m working my butt off, all day, and sometimes all night and I’m still not producing the income that I thought I’d produce. It’s like I’m a rat stuck in a exercise wheel because I’m NOT seeing results in my business as fast and as consistently as I like.”

We’ve all been there, we’re working hour by hour and day and day and it seems that we are treading water in our business, staying in one spot, and going against the current. What’s going on? How come you aren’t as far along as you can be.

Step 1: Realize there are only 3 stages to any business

1. Growth
2. Maintenance
3. Decline

Stage 1: Growth

A growing business in my opinion is actually becoming more and more ‘profitable’ from month to month.
By profitable I mean there is an increase in the bottom line monthly. A business that simply makes more money every month but equally costs more to maintain that increase has little or no “profitability”.  It is a maintenance business. Here’s an example that might hit home with some of you.

In month one if a business makes $5000 and the cost of doing business is $2000 the profit would be $3000.
In month two if the cost of doing business increased $3000 and the business made $6000 the profit would be again $3000 contrary to popular belief I believe that this is NOT a growing business.

Most people would say well we got more employees, we increased our marketing, there is more stuff happening, this is a growing business. IT’S NOT! Unless it becomes more profitable from month to month it’s not a growing business. This is a ‘lets have more headaches for nothing’ business model.

A growing business is when:
Your costs are the same but your profit increases
Your costs increase and your profit increases even if it’s just a $1 dollar more a month!

You need to go out and leverage your costs to make more profit period!

Everything else is maintenance or decline.

Stage 2: Maintenance

Your business is in maintenance mode, when you making the same amount of ‘profit’ regardless of how big or how many changes have happened in your business. Sadly, most small business owners perceive the growth of the costs of the business to be the same as a growing business. It’s not. If you are not more profitable from month to month then you’re merely maintaining a business.

Stage 3: Decline

If your business costs are growing and your profitability is decreasing then obviously your business is in a decline… It does not matter its potential! What matters is that your profit is decreasing and that is a RED FLAG for you to realize that you’re probably spending more of your time on Income Maintenance, or ‘Potential’ Income Generation rather than TRUE income generating activities.

When someone is struggling with profitability in his or her business I find the problem is usually that they are tricking their mind into thinking that the work that they are doing day in and day out is Income Generating, Rather than income maintenance, or ‘potential’ income generating activities.

I call the Potential Income generating activities- IF-COME INCOME ACTIVITIES

Do you know the difference? Think about it, you get out of bed in the morning and you start your business day, you start doing tasks that you think you ‘have to do’ and never ask if the tasks your doing are income generating activities.

Awareness exercise:

Pull out a pen and write down all the major tasks you did yesterday. 

For Example: Catching up on emails, talking on the phone with clients, working on your webpage, writing an article or a newsletter etc.

If you take a close look, and ask yourself, is this task going to give me immediate return on investment or is it long term? You’ll be very surprised… more often than not the activities that you are engaged in daily are actually ‘Potential’ income generating.. IF-Come Income Activities.  

Your mind is thinking: If I do this then I might get lucky and make some profit from it.

At the end of the day, think back to all the tasks that you have done

Are they Income Maintenance?
Are they Income Generating?
Or, are they POTENTIAL Income Generating?

You need to realize if your day is filled with Potential Income Generating and Income Maintenance your day will be full of tasks that will rarely give you an increase in your income.

I find most people spend about 75% or more of their time on income maintenance and about 20% of their time on income potential and usually the rest of their time on the rest of their life; eating, sleeping, picking up the kids from their activities, etc, etc.

HOW much of your time are YOU spending on Income Generating Activities?
Most of you I bet are spending your time, on Potential Income Generating Activities not True Income Generating Activities.

If you aren’t making the money you want to make, and not creating the consistency you want to create in your business you are probably spending most of your time on either Income Maintenance, or Income Potential Activities And NOT Income Generating Activities.

The scariest concept to understand is the Income Potential Activities because to many of us, these activities actually appear to be Income Generating. However, the truth is that if a series of tasks you perform don’t produce a financial result – then it’s NOT an income generating activity it’s a potential income generating activity and sometimes our mind mistakes that for income generating activities.

A personal example of this is what I did for the first 6 months of my business, I spend 10 hours a day seven days a week putting together a website that when finished would have the ability to handle hundreds or thousands of visitors per day. It had all the bells and whistles of any PROFESSIONAL and high profile website. I really thought this was an income generating activity but it was not, it was a POTENTIAL income generating activity.

I didn’t really start creating more income in my business until I picked up the phone and called people who were interested in what I had. I didn’t create an income until I put my first AD in the newspaper, I didn’t have income until I setup a marketing campaign that I actually implemented within 1 week of designing.

So be careful are your daily tasks made up of true Income Generating Activities or Potential Income generating activities?

I guarantee that your profit in your business will increase and your business will grow if your day to day tasks are Income Generating.

Step 2. Take out your business statements for the past six months and ask yourself:

Has my profitability remained the same, or has it declined?
Am I spending more time to make the same money?
Am I spending less time and making less money?
Is my business growing but the profitability is the same?

If you have said yes to any of the above questions you are in maintenance mode!
But there is a solution, keep reading.

Step 3.   Go back into your minds eye, and identify all the activities that you did before that created the growth up till this point.

If you are in maintenance mode, you’re probably doing similar activities that you were doing before to get your business going, or you’re not doing them at all and your business is riding on the momentum you’ve created in the past.

This is a RED FLAG. The majority of your daily tasks are Income Maintenance tasks.

So identify the top 5 activities that you did in the past to create the momentum that you had created up until this point, AND DO MORE OF THEM… The majority of your day needs to be on the Income Generating Activities.

Step 4. If you’re knee deep in ‘Potential’ Income Generating tasks or Maintenance Income tasks then DELEGATE:

Your time is way more valuable spent on tasks that Create Income. You have all heard the saying work ON your business NEVER in your business. Identify all the “I’m working IN my business tasks and pay someone less money than you can earn per hour to do them for you!

So pull out a pen and discover all the “I am working IN my business tasks” and delegate them ASAP.

Step 5. Permeate your mind and the majority of your days with income generating tasks.   

Samples of Income Generating activities are

Cold calling
High level schmoozing or networking that produces an immediate result
Follow-ups
Joint Ventures with people that compliment your business
Marketing and Advertising
Tasks that you performed to get your business up to this point but do more of them more frequently

Step 6. Monitor your monthly profitability not your monthly gross revenue.

If you are in business, your responsibility as a business owner is to create a monthly profit increase, not a gross revenue increase… “Why do you think they call it GROSS REVENUE?” 
Monitor your business monthly and if you see your profit going up, that’s an indication that you are spending more of your time on Income Generating Activities. If your profit is the same, then regardless on how BIG your gross revenue is getting you’re growing a maintenance business.. BE VERY CAREFUL this is a tricky place to be in, because it appears you are growing but you really are not.

Carve more time out of your day to do income growth activities because the size of your business is directly proportionate to how you think, and how big your vision for that business is. Think in limitation and you will have a limited business, think in Un-Limitation who knows where it will go, but your day-to-day activities need to support the Un-Limited thinking that you have.

Till next time

Warmly,
Stephan Stavrakis

PS: Do you believe you're as amazing as I do?