The Secret to Building A Profitable Business:
If you face financial challenges in your business, chances are, it’s not your fault—truly. Deep down, you understand that you have the brilliance, experience, and extraordinary talent to create a difference in the world. However, you may periodically feel as though your business doesn’t have enough resources or that you do not have the means to make your goals happen. You are not alone—many small business owners struggle with these same issues and feel the same as you do.
Poverty Consciousness
What is Poverty Consciousness?
Poverty consciousness, in its simplest meaning, is defined by the belief that we consistently lack or do not have enough of something. For many business owners in the developed world, this can range from hours in the day to business resources or profit margins. Perhaps you grew up being bombarded with these types of messages from your teachers, parents, siblings, family members, and friends—that no matter how hard you worked, it was never good enough—you could always be doing more. In most cases, they meant well—those messages came from a good place of heart, and your mentors and loved ones wanted you to make decisions that led you to success. However, well-serving that advice is at the time, it becomes outdated and counterproductive as we move into building our lives on our terms.
Healing Poverty Consciousness
Healing poverty consciousness begins with setting yourself up in an environment where you can be seen and heard. When you surround yourself with other like-minded souls who can see your potential, hear your ideas, and recognize your brilliance, you begin to internalize these beliefs more deeply for yourself.
Secrets of Business Success
You have drive, but you’ve begun to recognize that it takes more than hard work and ambition to get you to where you want to be. As you’re trying to grow your business, you may consistently feel as though you’re missing out on something that can help you reach your maximum potential. Although you are putting your best effort forwards, sometimes it just seems like your best just isn’t good enough. I am here to tell you that isn’t necessarily true. Growing your business can indeed be challenging, otherwise, there would be a lot more millionaires in the world. On the other hand, growing pains are often temporary—the solutions to your problems may lie within a different approach or a different type of support. You know you have to do things differently. You want to figure out how you can do more— but you are unsure where to begin. This is where our community can help you out.
Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday
Don’t compare your progress with that of others—it has proven time and time again to be an unreliable measure of your progress and a surefire way to hold yourself back. Instead, reflect on your own progress by comparing your current self with your past self.
Why is it Important to Reflect on Your Progress?
Whether you compare yourself today with yourself five years ago or ten years ago, it provides you with an accurate analysis of your growth. Tracking the small details, changes, and victories over time can become a resource during your journey, help you visualize your progress, and keep you motivated during difficult times. Instead of only working for money, aim to make your money work for you.
How to Make Your Money Work for You
Love Your Numbers
Our society tends to be quite fond of the quote, “Money loves clarity.” As small to medium-sized business owners, most of us have faced financial challenges, obstacles, or situations that left us feeling exceptionally anxious, stressed, or overwhelmed.
However, I challenge you to take a step back, slow down, and consider this: money, in its simplest form, exists as numbers. As individuals, we hold the power to influence and change our numbers. As business owners, money is a tool that is here to work for you. Chances are that while most of us struggled with money, we were in a place with new or difficult concepts we hadn’t yet grasped at the time. When you learn how to optimize your opportunities and how to correctly use your numbers, your money will work with you instead of against you.
1. Business expense and revenue tracker:
One of the most profound things you can do as a business owner is to learn what your numbers are and how to properly track them. For those of us who haven’t done it before, it may sound like a complicated concept. However, there are lots of tools available today to help you break it down. As a business owner, you probably have at least one or more business bank statements. The simplest method is to use a business expense and revenue tracker.
- I have used Quicken for many years. It is now called Mint, but I still consider it to be one of the best apps for tracking business revenue and expenses.
- The app provides a super simple, affordable program that helps you keep track of what’s coming in and what’s going out. On average, it costs most business owners around $39 USD per year.
2. Learn about what you can deduct as business expenses:
There are many tax deductions, benefits, and incentives for small to medium-sized businesses in the US. Unlike employees, most business owners in the US pay taxes after taking our deductions.
| Employees | Business Owners |
| Receive paycheck from work | Revenue comes in |
| Taxes come out of their paycheck | If you learn what is legally deductible, you will know what business expenses you can write off |
| Employee receives the amount of money left over | Pay taxes after your tax deductions |
While some business owners prefer to perform this work themselves, you always have the option of hiring a local bookkeeper to work with you if you feel uncomfortable with making the calculations yourself. Learning about what business expenses you can deduct from taxes and how to maximize your tax deductions can go a long way in helping you increase your profitability.
3. Increase Your Profitability
One of the most rewarding aspects of my job is getting to witness the positive business impact that my coaching brings to my clients. When you learn how to make your money work for you, it becomes easier to turn a profit, increase your business profitability, discover new opportunities, and build a profitable business with a positive impact on society.
Small Businesses that Give Back
Limitless Women
After many years of experience as a business coach for women, I founded Limitless Women, a women-led business community to empower, support, and stand with female entrepreneurs like yourself. From businesswoman to businesswoman, I want you to know that I wholeheartedly believe in you and your business. Our community can provide you with the guidance and resources to help your business succeed. Join our community and network with an entire brigade of businesswomen here waiting to support you. We look forward to meeting you!
More Resources
Video Transcript: The Secret to Building A Profitable Business
If you’re struggling financially in your business, chances are, it’s not your fault. In today’s video, I want to share with you one of the secrets that we use again and again behind the scenes to help women just like you build businesses that are profitable and creating a difference in the world.
[Music]
Look, you’re probably like me. You probably heard some messages when you were a youngster that told you that there just wasn’t enough no matter how hard you worked. No matter how much you did, there was always kind of that other shoe that dropped that said you could do more, you could be more. The bottom line is this the people around us are doing the best they can, but that’s what they understand too. Chances are if you’re feeling like there’s not enough hours in the day or you’re not making the money that you feel like you want to be making, there’s something underneath all of that and that’s what we call the poverty consciousness.
The message of not enough is very prevalent in the developed world, and the people around us—teachers, parents, siblings that tell us that there’s not enough or we’re not enough—heard those same messages themselves. These messages are old and they’re probably driven by something that’s really good at heart trying to help you have more and be more, but the problem is they don’t really work right. If working hard was the secret, lots of people would be millionaires. What has to happen for you in the healing of your poverty consciousness is that you need to be in an environment where you’re seen and heard.
What I love about our Limitless Women community is we’re a community of givers. Every one of us has a calling to change the world with our work. And so when you surround yourself with other people who can see you and hear you and recognize your brilliance, you start to see it yourself.
Let me just say this about the comparison game: if you’re going to compare yourself, instead of comparing yourself to she’s farther along or she makes more money or why am I not doing what she’s doing, I invite
you to take a step back and compare yourself to your former self. Look back 10 or 20 years, and look at how far you’ve come. I want you to know that you have wisdom, you have experience, and you have some really great talents to share with the world. And when you hold yourself back with I’m not enough or someday maybe I’m going to get there, you miss out on the opportunity to be of service right here, right now.
If you’re looking for a community of like-minded souls, please check us out. You can join our free Facebook group with 800 other women. As I’m shooting this video today at limitlesswomen.group, it’s a place where we share ideas, we share resources, and we share opportunities for you to be seen and lifted up. It’s also a place for you to share your voice, so come visit us at limitlesswomen.group. Let me know personally I’m in there all the time how I can support you and know that you’ve got this.
If you found this video helpful, subscribe now so you’ll be notified as we share new tips and trainings. To learn more about how we can help you grow your business, visit us at limitlesswomen.com and check out our business school, community, and live events. I look forward to connecting with you soon!