The Importance of Cashflow

I’ll be the first person to admit that I am not a number cruncher or someone that sits at a desk for an hour a day measuring every detail of my business.

I’ve always been of the philosophy that if you set your goals on helping more and more people you will naturally grow your business. And although this principle has served me well, I have at points lost track of how much money was LEAVING my business…

So, of course, more money was being generated as I was growing my team and client base, but my expenses were not being carefully monitored , which meant I was paying more for items that could have easily been consolidated or eliminated.

For example, when started hitting 1,000 client sessions a month our water consumption at the studio was through the roof. This meant I was having over 20+ 5 gallon water jugs delivered a month. Madness!

I mean, I’m working with 500 ft of fitness floor and I have 10+ 5 gallon jugs at a time sitting out on my deck taking up space and becoming an eye sore…

So what I did was rent a reverse osmosis water filter from Atlas water company for $50 a month. Now, we’re no longer paying $200 a month for water jugs and we saved a lot of space.

I made these same types of consolidations in about a dozens areas of my business, which saved me about $1,000 a month if wasted overhead.

Save Money in Key Areas

Here are some of those areas:

·Water jugs -> Reverse Osmosis Filter

·Printer ink -> Buy in bulk from cheap online website

·Promotional items -> developed a relationship with company and got deeper discount

·Cleaning company -> Better company with better rates

·Supplements -> bought in bulk for better price

·Marketing items -> purchased quarterly for better bulk price

Those are a few of the areas that I was able to save in, but one of the BIGGEST ways I saved money was in negotiating a better rate on my credit card processing fees. I was paying about 3.9% a month and since I’ve been with the same company for about 6 years and I’m doing a considerable amount of billables per month, I asked them to match PayPal’s 2.9% .

I let them know I have enjoyed using their company, but there are multiple companies willing to reduce my rate to 2.9% and I’d like to stay with them if they can match it.

They did ; )

This saved me 1% on all my monthly credit card charges through Visa and Mastercard. That may not seems like a lot, but check out these numbers…

If you’re doing $10,000/month a 1% savings = $1,200/year

$20,000/mo = $2,400/year
$30,000/mo = $3,600/year
$40,000/mo = $4,800/year
$50,000/mo = $6,000/year

You get the point…

It’s a significant savings that is up for the taking if you’re willing to ask for it and do your homework on which other companies or banks may give you a better rate. 2.9% is pretty standard and it’s a rate you should strive to get after you’ve been in business and charging credit cards for a little while.

So now that I’ve reduced my costs of typical monthly fixed overhead I’m saving about $1,500-$2,000 a month. That’s anywhere from $18,000 – $24,000 a year! And that’s just pure PROFIT in my pocket!

Now it’s your turn…

Cashflow Spreadsheet

Okay, not onto the monthly cash flow spreadsheet.

One of my coaching clients and fellow Smart Studio Systems Member, Robert Selders, created a excellent monthly cashflow spreadsheet that frankly is much prettier than mine. So, I asked if it would be alright for me to allow all Smart Studio Systems Members the privilege of using it and he, being the nice guy that he is, obliged.

So let us all thank Robert for not having to use my black and white excel spreadsheet!

Now back to business… This cashflow spreadsheet is to serve as a template.

What I mean by that is that I’ve taken out all of Robert’s numbers and left the columns blank for you to fill in your own stats. However, the left hand column also contain all of the expenses, as well as profit centers.

I have tweaked his spreadsheet in order to add in more examples of different profit centers you may have, such as supplement sales, small group training, 1-on-1, etc.

And like any good cash flow statement you will want to have all your expenses written as negatives (ex. -1,250) and you revenue as positives (1,250).

This will allow you to create an easy sum at the bottom of your spreadsheet showing you how much money is coming in after all your expenses have been taken out. Remember, it’s imperative that you seek out all the opportunities to reduce your overhead and monthly expenses , while obviously working to boost your revenue.

I state this because people often forget that if you save $1,000 a month that is the same as making an additional $1,000 a month. Only, it’s usually easier to save the money, since consolidating or cutting allows you to not have to do any extra work!

Fixed Costs

At first when you’re filling out the cashflow spreadsheet it may take a little extra effort since you may not have been gathering all your monthly expenses, but after you have the first month down you’d be surprised at how easy (and fun!) it is to plug in your numbers each month. The reason for this is that many of your expenses do not change month to month – which is why we call them “fixed overhead costs.”

These fixed costs are typically:

·Rent

·Electric bill

·Heat/AC

·Cable

·Internet

·Phone

·Wireless phones

·Car

·Ongoing advertising (not big promotional items which are not fixed)

·Loans

·Assistant (although this can be reduced as it is not fixed)

·Water for studio

·Website hosting

·Newsletter/email hosting account

You get the picture…

So basically what you want to do is pull out your credit card and bank statement and find all the debits that come out of your account and write them in your “expense” column. You can then have a miscellaneous column or just keep adding lines of expenses as they come up each month.

What I do is actually have all of my fixed bills debited from my bank account and then my monthly expenses that are in addition to my fixed overhead come out on my American Express business card. This allows me to see how many “soft costs,” I have each month , and those are typically the ones that can fluctuate a few thousand dollars. The itemized list AMEX gives me each month and at the end of the year is a great way for me to make sure I am only purchasing items I need for my studio/business in order to keep costs under control.

So now that you have the nuts and bolts of what I am talking about, please download this S3 Cashflow Spreadsheet and put in some work!

>>> Download the Cashflow Spreadsheet here

Remember, it’s only difficult to get going the first time and then it’s smooth sailing from then on out. Plus, as I stated before it is impossible to know if you are hitting your goals if you’re not actually dissecting your numbers .

Advanced Tracking

Now, for those of you that have already created a cashflow spreadsheet, just look over this new document and make sure you haven’t left anything out. Then if you’re ready for the next step you can begin tracking your bootcamp, small group, or semi-private attendance, and your 1-on-1 sessions. Then you can track all your leads calling in, your comps set up, and your conversion of those leads to clients.

The sky is the limit on what you can track , but I don’t want you to get overwhelemed in the beginning, so I recommend just starting with the financials spreadsheet and then when you’re ready move on to additional numbers.

Lastly, some people can get overly fixated on studying their numbers. However, my advice to you is to look at your financials each Friday and then the 1st of every month in order to take snapshots of where your business is heading and if you’re on target to reach your goals. I believe daily updating and obsession over your numbers takes you away from the bigger picture of focusing on your team and your clients. After all, this is personal training and retention and referrals come from over delivering on your services .