Budgeting with No Cash-Flow

It matters not whether we are talking dollars or hours; it is the same principle.

Let’s Talk Dollars

My neighbour complains that she’s always short of cash, but she has a regular job, gets paid each fortnight. To me it’s an easy no-brainer: Sit down and map out your expenses; trim some. Cook at home instead of ordering take-out, and so on.

Me? I live from cheque to cheque. Never know when the next cheque is coming in. low bank-balance, the usual.

Yet I budget my dollars better than my neighbour.

How?

I sit down at the start of the month and work out what I absolutely have to pay; typically rent, telephone, internet, postage. Food.

If I have cash to cover those, I write the cheques and send them out. Then I economize for the rest of the moth.

If I don’t have the cash to cover all my creditors – I phone them up and tell them so; they appreciate knowing I’ve not skipped the country, and I sleep a little easier at nights.

Let’s Talk Hours

My friend complains that there just aren’t enough hours in the day. She’s wrong.

There are 24 hours in each day, always have been, always will be. (This is not the place to discuss the moon’s gravitational impact on tides and their frictional impact on the earth’s rotation; we know we know that stuff …)

Like you, I woke up this morning with another 24 hours.

Like you, I get to choose what to do.

If I find that I need twenty wide-awake hours to get through the load, I decide that that can’t be done, and I shed tasks until the hours come down to a reasonable level.

Then I start work.

First task is a short email to a couple of people advising them that they WON’T receive an update today after all.

That they won’t receive an update is a pre-ordained fact; I don’t have that much time.

Letting them know in advance that updates won’t arrive allows them to plan their day accordingly.

When you don’t have the resources, managing the resources you do have is doubly critical.

Talk to Me!

Christmas Is Coming! - 3

In Christmas Is Coming! (2) I continued an outline of plans for printing Christmas Cards.

Today there’s a fresh idea that can be used by all of us.

First off: Do you sometimes shudder at the thought of picking up the phone and making a “cold call”?

I knew you did.

I do too.

Sometimes.

Here’s What’s Good About this Time of Year

Call it Christmas, Hanukah, The Big Sleepover, or what you will: just about everybody is going around TELLING people to have a prosperous New Year.

Now let’s suppose you are a practicing Christian; you’ll be OK saying “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”, except for your fear of cold-calling.

Now let’s suppose you are a practicing Jew; you’ll be OK saying “Happy Hanukkah and a Happy New Year”, except for your fear of cold-calling.

Now let’s suppose you are atheist; you’ll CAN be OK saying “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”, except for your fear of cold-calling.

Is it Ethical to Wish, Say, a Muslim a Merry Christmas?

I think so. Does your Muslim (or Jewish or atheist) contact celebrate Christmas? Possibly not.

Does your contact recognize that in your country Christmas (Hanukah etc) is a major festival? Certainly so?

But what if your contact is a rabid anti-Christmas (any-Hanukah etc) fanatic?

Then you probably don’t want to be doing business with them anyway.

Think About it

Business is about compromise; we compromise on features, price, delivery date, schedules. The whole thing about the word “Entrepreneur” (“between”-“taker”) is about give and take, flexibility.

You aren’t asking your contact to meet you for midnight mass on December 24^th.

You are calling to express a genuine hope that the next week or two will be peaceful and restful, and that following the break, the next months will be prosperous for your contact.

Of course you want them to be prosperous: if your contact gets prosperous, there’ll be enough money in the budget to retain you!

Now About that Cold-Calling

Cold-calling has a bad reputation because it seems founded on approaching a total stranger and asking for money; that’s getting awfully close to a hold-up, and that’s not good.

· But for the next 4 weeks you aren’t calling to sell anything.

· For the next 4 weeks you aren’t calling to probe about anything.

· For the next 4 weeks you are calling SOLELY to emit a wish from you to them.

That’s it.

Visualize the Call

“Hi Jerry, it’s Chris. I’m just phoning to wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”.

Suppose the phone goes into voice-mail. That’s a bonus. Your shyness doesn’t matter. You’ve left a short and positive message, and you have re-established your name in the front of your prospect’s mind.

Suppose you get a gatekeeper? You can ask to be put through to Jerry’s line, and if the gatekeeper asks to take a message, You can ask to be put through to Jerry’s voice-mail (see above).

Suppose you get straight through on Jerry’s direct line? That’s just great. “Hi Jerry, it’s Chris. I’m just phoning to wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”.

And that’s ALL you need to say.

You aren’t selling today.

That can come in the New year.

Today you are calling ONLY to express your wish that your contact enjoys this time of year.

Talk to Me!

P.S.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Hanukah, Seasons Greetings, Have a great ....

Why Wouldn’t You Buy this?

I’ve listened to Rick, developed a course outline, built a web page, and emailed the link to him with a question: “Why wouldn’t you pay to attend this course?”.

His reply, naturally, “No reason; I know that you built this course around our lunchtime conversation about my needs!”.

That’s the First Hurdle Cleared

Before I email the link to 100 prospects, I have five more emails to issue, seriatim, as we used to say.

To Promod, Cathy, David, Ken and Wallace, each in turn, “Why wouldn’t you pay to attend this course?”.

Each person will come up with at least one objection, which I can then deal with by adding it to my material;

Another Hurdle Cleared!

In short, by asking a small focus group for their objections up front, I can possibly double the positive response rate to my sales mail-out.

“Why Wouldn’t You do this?”

Talk to Me !

Holiday Priorities

As I write, today is a public holiday. Everybody is on vacation, except me. I’m at work.

Since 1970 I’ve taken options to work on a public holiday and then take a day off when the shops are open. I slept in this mooring, rising after 9 a.m. and I sit down and realize that:-

(a) Today is Monday and I didn’t pre-post my 6 posts for this blog (I post them in advance now, and let them time-release during the week)

(b) Yesterday I did not spend the time working through a week’s accumulation of interesting-links-for-other-blogs

(c) Danny has emailed me a specific failure in one of my applications and

(d) There’s a backlog of personal email to be tackled.

That will do for now; you know what I’m talking about when I say “Four urgent tasks”.

Question is, how to assign a priority to each task; it’s a given that once I start a task I’m going to see it through to conclusion, but which task comes FIRST.

To my mind the best bet is the task that seems to offer the earliest completion. I don’t know what I’ll uncover with Danny’s bug; it could be a five-minute task, it could extend to a four-hour slog through code. But I know that releasing 6 Torontopreneur posts into the wild will take me 20 minutes, tops.

So that’s my urgent task this morning.

I can deal with any personal email within 3 minutes, even to the extent of muttering “There, there, what a pity; please tell me more”, so that’s second.

Danny comes third. It has to be done.

Fourth is wading through “clippings” file and drafting a blog item for each, doing a bit of research, finding or making an image and so on.

Is this the correct sequence? I’ll not know until the end of this day; but I do know that if I don’t set a sequence by priority, I’ll waffle.

Talk to Me !