Follow The Money

If you listen to the advice which says “Do what you love and the money will follow” you’re in for a rude awakening. Just because you love something does not make it a financially viable business model, in fact, it can be exceedingly risky to buy into this nonsense.

Instead of focusing on what you love, you need to follow the path to where the money comes from in your business and look for opportunities for growth. This is the very hard work that clients who work with me sign up to do – and trust me, they don’t love it until they get the results they want the most in their business.

Remember, a business isn’t a business until it has a customer. You might love it but if your customer isn’t buying it, you don’t have a business, period.

A few years back, a business coach told a client of mine that it would take her 5 years to make any money in her business. She was advised that her desire to make money right now was not realistic or remotely probable, making her question her entire business model.

This coach was 100% wrong.

Working together, over a five year period, she built a half a million dollar business, made it more profitable than she could imagine, and then sold it.

She didn’t do this by doing what she loved every moment of every day. That is a myth.

Instead, she did the hard work of digging into the financial details of her business and identified the best way to supersize her business by reaching out to her buyers and it worked.  She got really uncomfortable picking up the phone and following up on sales until she was able to turn leads into customers. She learned how to sell in a way that felt good to her and kept focused on building her business even though it was completely out of her comfort zone.

She continuously kept evaluating her pricing model and business financial statements to figure out the best ways to increase her sales, and decrease her costs all while creating a great experience for her clients and overcoming her fear that she would lose business if she increased her prices.

She rolled up her sleeves and got serious about business development, marketing, regular content creation, and social media. She figured out how to adjust her model to retain her customers even longer creating increased sales and profits, and minimizing the number of times she needed to sell.

She didn’t love any of these things – but she did them and it paid off.

If you’re working with a business coach who is telling you to do what you love and the money will follow, chances are they don’t really understand how to build a successful business.

While I agree, you should choose a line of work that you enjoy, you will not love every aspect of running your business.

You should also not fall for the bad advice that you need to hire someone to do everything you dislike doing or you’ll never make any money.

Running a successful and profitable business requires you to learn new skills, take action when you least feel like doing it and to pay attention to your numbers in a really big way.  If you’re avoiding the numbers and you’re not making the money you’d like to be making, stop following bad advice. Find a coach that knows how to build a long term viable business and stick with them.

Leave me a comment and let me know one of the most valuable things you learned to do in your business, that you don’t particularly like to do.