RBBP Facilitator Guest Post

Guest post by Cass Mullane, Entrepreneur Coach, Right-Brain Business Plan® Licensed Facilitator, Prosper Creatively, LLC

Recently I had a friend who got smoked on some custom work. He came by the job through a colleague and because, coincidentally, he knew the customer. He did a significant amount of high-quality work that went beyond what the customer asked for and he delivered early. Now he’s chasing payment and his trust has been decimated. Why? Everything was arranged verbally and it was never reduced to writing.

On the flip side, one of my clients found herself in a tough spot because she had signed a rental agreement for a venue and did not actually read and understand exactly what she was signing. She also did not verify that the boxes checked and the numbers written in on the agreement accurately reflected what had been discussed. Then she had to go through an extra layer of difficulty because the person she had negotiated with left the company and the new person was not as accommodating.

Whether you’re arranging custom work or a commission, signing a lease or a purchase order or entering into a gallery exhibition contract, you need to make sure that the terms you agree to are accurately reflected in the written document. Obviously what follows is not legal advice, as I’m not a lawyer. Be sure to have a competent legal professional on your team to create and to review these types of documents.

Regarding commissions and events like retreats, please, please, please get those terms written down and always take a 30-50% deposit. Spelling out the terms sets clear expectations on both ends. Each of you knows what it is you’re agreeing to, how it’s supposed to be delivered, what changes can occur, when delivery is supposed to occur, and how much is going to be paid and by when.

As for deposits, I recommend that you consider making it a non-refundable deposit for a couple of reasons. First, it establishes that both parties are committed to the project and have skin in the game. Second, you’re going to do the work and expend funds, right? So you should be compensated for it. Third, it’s what professionals do. Would you balk if a lawyer asked for a retainer? No. You’re also a professional, so don’t balk in asking for a deposit.

When you’re getting ready to enter into an agreement prepared by someone else, like a lease or purchase order or another contract, you should always feel comfortable reading the agreement thoroughly before you sign it. Take your time and ask for clarification on things that you may not fully understand and sleep on it if you need to. After all, the moment you sign on the dotted line, you are locked into the terms. Remember that you can always walk away if you feel it’s not right… you are in charge of the pen.

One of the obvious benefits of carefully reading your agreement is that you can make corrections on the spot. Simple mistakes happen and it’s up to you to protect yourself.

Another benefit is you often have room for negotiation if the terms are not how you’d like them. If something feels wrong, clarify it. If you agreed to a specific number or date or deliverable, make sure it’s in there. If you find clauses that were not mentioned, discuss them. Oh, and just because someone says “it’s boilerplate” does not mean you don’t read it. Boilerplate becomes legally binding once you put ink on the page.

Obviously, it would be great if everyone had a lawyer in their pocket who could whip up agreements and review documents at a moment’s notice, but the reality is you’re often doing negotiations on the fly. When you do, you need to capture the essential elements of the agreement in writing and both you and the customer need to sign and date the document. Ideally, you’ll have that draft turned into a legal document prepared by a lawyer so it’s done properly and protects both parties.

Cass’ new #1 International Bestseller, The Cool Stuff Jar: Three Simple Ways to Live a Happier Life, is now out on Kindle! Keep tabs on the book launch and all the fun following the launch by visiting www.coolstuffjar.com and entering your email. You can also follow Cass on Facebook!

Guest post by Cass Mullane, Entrepreneur Coach, Right-Brain Business Plan® Licensed Facilitator, Prosper Creatively, LLC

I’m one of those people who likes paying my taxes. It’s because I feel a sense of accomplishment in knowing first, that I earned enough money to owe taxes, and second, that I managed it well enough during the year that I have the cash set aside to cover the payment. It also means that I’m contributing toward the greater good, as at least some of my payment is reaching people who need help.

So how do you feel about doing your taxes? If you’re like a lot of people, you’ve created an emotional morass around a ‘thing’ and the thing is called money.

You need to get comfortable with money… talking about it, looking at what it’s doing through your financial reports and treating it like the valuable tool that it is. In fact, it’s an absolute requirement if you’re in business.

At a bare minimum, you need to know what you’ve earned and what you’ve spent each month. Plus, you need to know what’s coming up so that you can generate enough revenue to put money aside for things like taxes, insurance, rent, dues, conferences, workshops, payroll, whatever you’ve got planned for your business. This means a preparing budget and tracking all your transactions, both revenues in and expenses out, against that budget.

This does not mean that you need to do everything yourself. You’re the CEO, right, you’re not the COE (Chief of Everything). In fact, if you’re hung up about money, you should not do it yourself. Here’s something that you can do differently: Make a very near-term goal to hire someone to help you create a budget, keep your books and generate your monthly financial reports. Get referrals from your colleagues, do a few interviews to make sure you’re a match, then pull the trigger and make the commitment. Hire a person who loves doing books for businesses of your size. You’ll make them happy and you’ll be happy. The second part of this goal is to pour the time that you would have otherwise spent on bookkeeping into revenue generating activities for your business. That way you’ll easily pay for your newly hired contractor.

If you’re comfortable with money and have the discipline to do your books efficiently on a daily or weekly basis, then go ahead. Just remember that you won’t be generating revenues while you’re doing your books. If it’s a long process, someone else should be doing the data entry and you should only be checking the input for accuracy.

Regardless of who does your books, you need to pay attention to where your money is and what it’s doing through your monthly reports. Are you on track with your budget? If not, where are the variances and what are you going to do about them? How is your cashflow, are you robbing Peter to pay Paul or do you have enough at the end of the month to set money aside for what’s coming up?

Think about what you will do differently to make money a simple, yet powerful tool in your business toolbox. Hire someone to do what they love so you can stick with doing what you love. Everybody wins!

Like many great innovators, Cass Mullane has the unique combination of being a strong creative as well as a strategic thinking MBA. After departing the corporate world in 2004, Cass built a thriving business and personal coaching practice that focuses on accountability and specializes in solid business skills for right-brainers and creatives. Tapping into this whole brain approach has helped to make Cass a highly valued coach with an international clientele.
Cass’ new #1 International Bestseller, The Cool Stuff Jar: Three Simple Ways to Live a Happier Life, is now out on Kindle! Keep tabs on the book launch and all the fun following the launch by visiting www.coolstuffjar.com and entering your email. You can also follow Cass on Facebook!

Guest post by Cass Mullane, Entrepreneur Coach, Right-Brain Business Plan® Licensed Facilitator, Prosper Creatively, LLC

In my last post I talked about getting very clear on your current customers and your desired customers so you can make sure you’re in front of your real buyers. I also talked about approaching pricing from a different perspective: start by figuring out how much do you need to net each month. Then pricing becomes more of an exercise in simple math and less of an emotional battle.

So let’s do some simple math. We’ll only focus on four of the key factors that you need to consider when pricing: Materials, Overhead, Production Time and Your Time. These factors are applicable to both products and services.

We’ll define Materials as the cost of the actual supplies you use to produce your product or service. Overhead is what it costs you to run your business and it includes things like your studio, tools and equipment, utilities, insurance, taxes, marketing, etc. Production Time is how long it takes you to produce your product or service. Your Time is what you pay yourself hourly to produce your product or service.

So, here’s a real example that was an eye-opener for one of my clients who makes funky jewelry on the side. My client wanted to make $500 per month from selling her jewelry. She was successfully selling, but she could not figure out why her bills were piling up and she had no time to keep up with fulfilling orders. It turned out she thought that when she sold a piece of jewelry for $40 and it cost her $10 in Materials, she was earning $30 on each piece so she would only have to make and sell 17 pieces each month. She was so excited to be selling her pieces that she forgot to take into account her Production Time (3 hrs/piece) and her Overhead cost ($11/piece).

For my client, once we figured this out, it meant she was really netting about $19 per piece and earning about $6.33 per hour. If you’re working for cups of coffee, that’s great. But if you need to support a business, $6.33 per hour isn’t going to cut it.

Here’s a little more info on this scenario. Since my client was actually paying herself only $6.33 per hour for her jewelry, she needed to make and sell 26 pieces each month in order to put $500 in her pocket. Since it took her about 3 hours to produce each piece, this meant she needed to spend 78 hours making her jewelry each month. Of course, this does not take into account the time she needed to spend marketing and running her business. Basically, at these prices, she was working nearly full time at night to net only $500/month.

So what did she do? She focused carefully on each of the four factors, one at a time, and made changes. She started buying supplies in larger quantities and reduced her Materials cost from $10 to $5 per piece. Then she found a number of areas where she could reduce her Overhead and dropped from $11/piece to $1/piece. Finally, she started using a timer each time she sat down to make a piece. She discovered that she was averaging 3 hours per piece, mostly because she let herself be interrupted continually. She fixed this by designating specific times during which she produced her jewelry, without interruption. This cut her Production Time from 3 hours to 1 hour per piece.

The end result, my client started netting $34 per piece, needed to spend 15 hours per month making 15 pieces and boosted her hourly rate to $34. This year, she increased her price to $50/piece, still produces 15 pieces per month, nets $44/hour and has increased her monthly net to over $650.

So, figure out what you’d like to put in your pocket each month. Then, take a look at each of the four factors in your business: Materials, Overhead, Production Time and Your Time. Figure out what the real numbers are for your business and what Your Time is actually worth at various price levels. Then, make adjustments, one at a time, to generate an amount that will make you happy.

Cass Mullane’s calm, comfortable approach consistently yields positive results for clients. Her business and personal coaching practice, www.prospercreatively.com, specializes in delivering solid left brain business skills in a fun, visual way. Cass in an international best selling author, a contemporary artist, and creator of the Cool Stuff Jar™ coaching program. Her book, The Cool Stuff Jar: Three Simple Ways to Live a Happier Life, is available on Kindle. You can also visit Cass on Facebook!

Guest post by Cass Mullane, Entrepreneur Coach, Right-Brain Business Plan® Licensed Facilitator, Prosper Creatively, LLC

One of the more challenging tasks you may have to do in your business is setting a price for your products and services. If you go too high or too low, people might not buy and you will find yourself in a cash crunch rather quickly. While pricing is critical, it will make no difference whatsoever if you’re not in front of your real customers.

You must know your customers. Spend time looking closely at who you are serving and who you really want to work with. When you’re very clear on who your customers are, price becomes less of a factor in the buying decision because your customers already want what you’re offering.

For example, I regularly hear “people won’t pay me that much.” When you say that, what you immediately need to do is stop, step back and take a hard look at who you are marketing to. Are they really your peeps? If they will not pay you for your work, you may need to look for another market. And believe me, there are tons of markets out there. Put your creative muscles to work and broaden your horizons.

I have a client who makes beautiful textiles but who was not selling much at shows. The feedback was that her work was too expensive. So we took a close look at the shows she was participating in. She regularly bought booth space at several local craft fairs and often her booth was between or in close proximity to booths with mass-produced, very low-end items. The people that attended these shows were not the people who were buying higher end textiles for their homes and offices. The next season she bought space at two interior designer and two legal industry trade shows. The booth cost was quite a bit higher, but the investment paid off because her work sold well and she received commissions for future work. All she did was look closely at who her real customers were and made a change so she could put herself in front of them.

Once you’ve really gotten to know your actual and your desired customers, what I’d like you to do first is not get hung up on what the price of an individual item or service should be. Instead, approach this from another angle: How much you need to net each month to be comfortable?

Pay yourself first. Is it $500 per month? Is it $5000? Whatever the number, once you set it, you can more easily figure out how many items or services priced at $40 and how many priced at $4,000 you need to sell to earn that amount. It becomes a simple math exercise, not an emotionally laden mental roadblock.

In my next post, I’ll talk about simple math and four important factors in pricing: Materials, Overhead, Production Time and Value of Your Time.

Pricing is a flexible process. Set your revenue goal, find your real customers and price accordingly.

Guest post by Cass Mullane, Creative Innovator, Right-Brain Business Plan® Licensed Facilitator, Prosper Creatively, LLC

We’ve all felt it… that time when you know something is wrong, but you don’t want to make a fuss or draw attention or make someone mad or even get someone fired. Where‘s that line for you? How often do you kick yourself for not speaking up, for not doing something that you knew needed to be done?

You’ve all had times when a vendor delivered a damaged or incorrect product. Most of the time you don’t give it a second thought, you just send it back for a replacement or a refund. It’s an impersonal transaction so you probably don’t have much emotional attachment to either the problem or the outcome.

So why is it any different for a contractor who doesn’t deliver or a vendor who might be an acquaintance, not just an online presence? What about an employee who is not performing? Your personal connection with them can cloud your ability to see the situation clearly and of course, can affect your ability to deliver an appropriate response.

When you start having thoughts that someone is not doing what they’re supposed to be doing for you and your business, what do you do? Do you have the conversation that you know you need to have with them or do you just let it go… again. People often tell me that having that conversation is one of the hardest parts of their business. True, it may be hard. But so’s going bankrupt. And which is better for your business, having the hard conversation or not delivering value to your customers because of someone else’s ongoing issues?

I heard someone say, “The first time you think about firing someone is when you should fire them.” Sounds a bit harsh, but when you think about it, it’s not. When you decide to accommodate or “fix” someone else’s problem you’re setting yourself up to waste a lot of your precious time and resources. Obviously, you can give someone a break for messing up. But when the problem is recurring or systemic, you must deal with it or you could very well be looking at the same problem months or even years from now with no resolution in sight.

The best way to tackle this is to set very clear expectations up front, lay out the consequences of inadequate performance, then enforce the consequences. And rest assured, once you have one “hard” conversation, it gets easier. Plus, your communication might be able to open the door to a much better relationship over time.

You have high standards for yourself and your business. You should be able to expect the same standards for people you choose to work with.

Stick to your guns. After all, your business is certainly worth that level of effort, isn’t it?

Cass’ new #1 International Bestseller, The Cool Stuff Jar: Three Simple Ways to Live a Happier Life, is now out on Kindle! Keep tabs on the book launch and all the fun following the launch by visiting www.CoolStuffJar.com and entering your email. You can also follow Cass on Facebook!

Guest post by Cass Mullane, Creative Innovator, Right-Brain Business Plan® Licensed Facilitator, Prosper Creatively, LLC

As the end of 2018 approaches, it’s time to take stock of what needs to be cleared from your life to make room for all the cool stuff that’s coming up in 2019. This is when you look hard at things like:

• Jobs you’re doing that someone else could, and should, be doing
• Making sure you have the right staff and contractors in place
• Stepping away from participation in groups that no longer serve you
• Disconnecting from people that do not enrich your life
• Cleaning up your contact database
• Cleaning up your emails and unsubscribing from everything that no longer serves you
• Checking in with clients (current and past) to keep them engaged through the holidays into the new year
• Clearing your To Do list of all that has been lingering
• Finishing up outstanding projects
• Tidying up your books and your finances so you can go into the new year clean (BONUS: You’ll have all your info ready for taxes by the middle of January – easy peasy!)
• Looking at your current business processes and deciding what is working, what needs tweaking and what needs to be tossed out and revamped
• Eliminating useless podcasts, TV, and blogs that clog up your mind and do not serve your greater good

What you’re doing is clearing the business clutter and making room for your innate creativity and your ability to dream your future into existence. In fact, doing this now will make your holiday season more pleasant as you will be free of the stress brought on by carrying all this clutter around with you.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a little exercise: Do a Vision Board for 2019 RIGHT NOW.

Can you do it? Is your head clear enough to see into 2019 and beyond? Or are you stuck barely being able to see beyond 3:00 p.m. today?

If you are ready to knock out your Vision Board now, congrats! You definitely have your head in a good place. If you find yourself in the latter category, then take heart, you’re not alone. I know I’m certainly not immune to overwhelm. I think it’s safe to say that all small business owners find themselves overwhelmed from time to time. The question is, what are you going to do about it?

Here’s a suggestion: Pick one or two big items on your list and get them done. Once they’re complete, take stock of how you’re feeling physically, mentally and emotionally. I think you’ll discover that you’re feeling stronger and happier in all categories. I think you’ll also discover that a huge weight has been lifted and you’re able to engage more fully in your business and your life.

Now think about how you’re going to feel when you knock out a couple more. It’s pretty safe to say that you’ll continue to feel lighter and more open and available. Clearing your headspace is essential not only to your ability to clearly see what’s possible for you and your business, but also essential to your sense of well-being.

Use the exercise of creating your Vision Board as a barometer to measure how clear your head is and whether or not you can see what’s possible for 2019 and beyond. If you’re all jammed up, then jettison some of that clutter you’re carrying around. Whether it’s people, subscriptions, groups, work others could do or something else now is a perfect time to make a clean sweep. Think about how great it will feel.

Cass’ new #1 International Bestseller, The Cool Stuff Jar: Three Simple Ways to Live a Happier Life, is now out on Kindle! Keep tabs on the book launch and all the fun following the launch by visiting www.CoolStuffJar.com and entering your email. You can also follow Cass on Facebook!

Guest post by Cass Mullane, Creative Innovator, Right-Brain Business Plan® Licensed Facilitator, Prosper Creatively, LLC

I just finished my third online jigsaw puzzle of the day and I stretch. My gaze drifts over to my whiteboard and I see several, ok, 11 tasks that have been up there for so long that the ink seems to be fading into the board. I’ve looked at them so often that they barely register in my mind. I remember that I have to do them, but I skip over them.

It’s not that they’re not important or that they’re super hard, I’m just putting them off. As a business and accountability coach, I know better. I chide myself for continuing to avoid them. Then, I start looking around for something more interesting to do.

What’s wrong with me?! Some of those tasks have been there for more than a couple of months. They’re in various stages of completion, some just lacking a little, some barely started. I guess I’m just human and I’m wishing my work away rather than simply doing it. Even now, as I’m writing this post, I’m glancing over at the art calling to me from my studio table. I feel my creative brain starting to conjure up possibilities…

Stop it! Back to the screen. Focus girl, focus!

I know exactly what’s wrong with me. I’m suffering from procrastinitis. And I know exactly what the cure is: DO SOMETHING! The minute you move into action, you tend to stay in action.

There are real problems with not getting things done:

Delaying is creating more work for you
You are adding to your overall stress
You are creating an opportunity to beat up on yourself
You are making yourself feel pressure that you don’t need to feel
You are pushing yourself closer to deadlines when the things will suddenly catch fire and turn into a crisis.

So, pick something small and do that. Now. Then you will have one less thing on your plate and you will have the satisfaction of completing a task that has been hanging around.

After that, tackle something pressing and something large. Could be the same task or could be a couple of tasks. Either way, set your priorities and get to work.

Since I’m all about accountability, here’s what am I going to do about my lingering tasks:

I’ll take literally three minutes to prioritize them, assign due dates to them and put them in my calendar. I’ll be quick and clinical. I won’t spend time over-analyzing them or wallowing in them or thinking about them. I’ll just make decisions, knowing that I’m already intimately familiar with them and I KNOW what needs to be done and in what order.
Then, I’ll pick one to finish tonight before I go home. (Just so you know, I’ve picked number 3 on the list, it’s been hanging around for nearly two months and it will take no more than an hour to finish… SHEESH!)
Tomorrow, I’ll get to work on numbers 4, 7, 8 and 10 from the list. They’re just phone calls and a little bit of research.
My date to have EVERYTHING off that whiteboard is Nov 15. You can hold me to it!

So what are you going to do the next time you know you’ve got a bad case of procrastinitis? How will you tackle your lingering tasks? What’s the date you will have them done and off your plate? Find yourself an accountability partner and help each other kick that procrastinitis to the curb.

Cass’ new #1 International Bestseller, The Cool Stuff Jar: Three Simple Ways to Live a Happier Life, is now out on Kindle! Keep tabs on the book launch and all the fun following the launch by visiting www.CoolStuffJar.com and entering your email. You can also follow Cass on Facebook!

The Right-Brain Business Plan®