By Design Inc

A good project management system can grow your business by making you efficient and able to track your profit.  Here are 7 tips for finding the right one for you.

1) It allows you to track time and expenses against a project estimate.

2) It thinks the way you do, no reinventing the wheel.

3) It can be accessed anywhere, anytime.

4) You can attach project files, like Word and Excel documents.

5) Great customer service and clear training guides/videos.

6) The reporting is customizable and flexible.

7) It gets used by everyone, without fail!

Watch for reviews of some of the systems available.

Bad choice, good choice, paralyzingly fear of no choice… Which will you chose today for your business?

Mabel and Ed are the mourning dove parents that chose our backyard. When they first started building their nest I thought, “Wow, bad choice!”. After all, they chose a yard with three squirrel obsessed dogs and a dog door. Next choice was to build on a fan under the deck. And in my book, the worst was building on a fan that wobbles with every breeze – positioned over a hot tub. I felt a baby bird baptism gone wrong coming on…

They were determined. And they moved forward.

Dove

And like most choices there are perspectives. Perhaps they see the shelter of the covering over the hot tub? Or trust that the hot tub will stay covered an escapee it will have a safer place to land? Who knows… I like to think Mabel told Ed, “here, it just feels right”.

Bottom line, it all worked. Mabel and Ed’s babies are currently flying around our yard.

The moral of the story? Go with your intuition. Of course, do your research and put in the hard work, but then make a move. Someone will always think it a bad idea and you know best – for your business and your life.

Attention = Intention.

If you want to create profit in your business – you need to attend to it.  One simple way is to keep your overhead top of mind. Then make sure you sell, service and invoice over that amount.  Every month.  As a business owner, if you take a moment on Monday morning and think – “My overhead is $25,000 and I have billed $10,000 so far this month.” you will work more efficiently and make more money.

A quick way to check your overhead is with your P/L statement.  Look at the expenses portion of the report. Take away any billable expenses and what is left is your overhead.  I like to look at the past 12 months and divide by 12.  You can look at it every 3 months to make sure something hasn’t changed and then put a post it note on your computer monitor!

Happy Entrepreneuring…