For Small Business Owners & the Self-Employed

Insider Secret:

More Money With Less Work

Secret to unlimited profits: The High Yield Factor

by Alex Goumakos, CPA

Here’s the scenario.  You’ve finally made it to the point where you no longer have the time to market for new business.  You’re way too busy.  You’ve got backlog written across your forehead.  But somehow it seems the more you work, the less money you make.  How can this be?

Well, for many smaller business people and self-employed individuals, working harder for less money isn’t fiction, it’s reality. And the truth is, many smaller business people are often too bogged down with work or the humdrum details of running their businesses that they often overlook the obvious: there's only so much time in a day!

Instead of wishing there was more time in a day, focus on wasting less of it. After all, unless you've got some magical powers, there's no way humanly possible to squeeze more than 24 hours out of a day. You only get so many hours to work with. So the question is, why waste your limited amount of time with low yield work?  If you’re looking to make more money, become more productive and find more free time, the High Yield Factor is definitely for you!

What is the High Yield Factor?

The High Yield Factor is simple: If you want maximum profits, earn the greatest amount of money with the least amount of effort. I know this sounds simple in theory and perhaps it's even easier to say than do, but the fact is, the High Yield Factor is a very powerful concept.

The first thing to understand is that you'll reach a point in your business where you simply cannot bring in additional revenue until you do something different such as increase your capacity by hiring another person or by increasing your work hours. Sadly, many smaller business owners will opt to increase their work hours in order to keep up with the demands of running their business. After all, increasing your work hours is relatively cost free, or so it seems.

Hiring an employee can be a smart alternative, but in order to do so, you have to be absolutely certain that your business can shoulder the burdens and financial costs of becoming an employer. For many growing businesses, hiring employees is the natural progression of their business cycle, but for others it can be a downright death sentence.

The good news is that there are two inexpensive things you can do immediately:

1. Focus on Better Sales, Not More Sales - The first thing you should do is to focus on high-yield work or contracts.  While this may be hard to do when you're trying to get your business off the ground, the results can simply be amazing. A client of mine in the landscaping and lawn care business nearly doubled his revenues within 12 months by actually letting go of a lot of work. After reviewing his yearly financial statements, I advised him to cut back on the number of small residential customers he was servicing and focus on bigger ticket items instead. Since it took a lot of effort driving around cutting people’s front lawns, he was working very hard for very little money. There was absolutely no way he could take on additional work. Instead of doing the small time lawn work, I recommended he bid for hotel and condominium contracts. He did so quite successfully. The results were amazing. He not only made more money per job, but he actually spent less time performing the services too.
   
   
2. Improve Your Business Systems and Processes The second way to utilize the High Yield Factor is to review your internal processes and systems, i.e., accounting, production, quality control, sales, etc.  The reason for doing this is to pinpoint waste, duplication of efforts and inefficiencies.  While this method will not increase your revenues, it will allow you to work less for the same amount of money. For example, an employee brokerage (temp agency) firm I know had an extremely inefficient accounting and billing system.  It was so inefficient, that they were actually recording time and billing information in two separate programs: one to generate the billing and the other to generate the accounting data. By combining the information on a completely new time and billing program, the company was able to eliminate an entire day from the billing procedure!  This left plenty of time each week for one of the owners to solicit new business: another case of the High Yield factor coming into play.

Being successful as a self-employed person or smaller business owners takes constant vigilance and the ability to implement sound business practices.  The High Yield Factor should be one of your most important priorities.  See if there is any place in your business where you can maximize reward and reduce effort.  Start by reviewing the amount of your average sale.  Ask yourself if there is anything you can do to maximize this amount.  If there isn’t, try taking a look at your processes and systems.  I know from experience that a lot of businesses will always find at least one area where they can improve on.

In my guide, Gold Mine Tactics: The Business Owner's Success Manual. I describe extremely powerful strategies to make more money with less work and effort. Even if you think you've done everything you can to be as profitable and successful as possible, I'll show you a few often overlooked tactics that will greatly improve your company's overall performance, productivity and profits.

For example, I explain step-by-step how to:

• Identify your most profitable products and services and sell more of them at the prices you want.
• Identify your best customers and tailor your promotions to attract more of them.
• Improve and synergize your internal business processes and systems.
• Eliminate bottlenecks and dramatically increase your productivity.

For more information on this one-of-a-kind success manual see below.