Write Your Own Paycheck

Every entrepreneur knows that their income is based upon their input. We simply don’t sit around waiting for things to happen. Hanging a sign on a door and sitting at our desk won’t make the phone ring. It takes time, energy, money, a proper mindset and continuing education to grow a business. The only reason we expect to achieve our goals is because we won’t stop until we’ve done so.

If you want to write your own paycheck as an employee, I don’t know where to send you or how to help. However, if you want to start your own business, knowing how to market effectively will determine the paycheck you write. By understanding the fundamentals and applying them to your business, marketing is the key to unlocking the type of potential most entrepreneurs are striving toward.

Most employers have some type of leverage over their employees to either promote them, give them a bonus, or dock their pay. When you’re the boss and the employee the same principles apply. Either by achieving well, or exceeding expectations, your income grows. When something doesn’t work, or you make a mistake, you pay. Holding all the cards doesn’t necessarily guarantee success, it only guarantees responsibility for the outcome.

• Develop a business model
• Set goals for short and long range
• Evaluate everything, including yourself
• Stay connected to support network
• Spend time each day in personal development

Most business models are short concise outlines that deal with the particular essentials for setup and operation. They include starting costs as well as operation expenses. Anything necessary to sustain the business should be included.

The business model should incorporate the goals we set. Sometimes our goals involve greater expense as we grow and knowing about that in advance helps. If our business is somehow self propelling, meaning that all of the expense is contained in the starting cost, the model should still reflect the steps we’ll take for expansion. Here the expectation is that the long range goals include writing ourselves a bigger paycheck.

Knowing how to track every aspect of our business from our advertising and finances, to our marketing campaigns and feedback, makes evaluation much easier. Having multiple spreadsheets with graphs can help keep a visual representation before our eyes on an ongoing basis. This isn’t an area where we want to procrastinate. Having to evaluate our business, or ourselves, days and weeks after the fact, is like doing homework for five subjects the night before they’re due.

Knowing other people who write their own paycheck is more than a catalyst for the amount of our own paycheck. A solid network can effectively propel an entrepreneur to the next level. Surrounding ourselves with successful people who live their dreams is perhaps the greatest asset to incorporating the millionaire mindset.

Plugging into the correct support network should be included in our business model. When we’re properly aligned with a team that supports our efforts, the confidence to consistently perform at our optimal level can be accomplished. Without this support we had better include a lot of lost time and effort in our business model.

Finally, or perhaps before we even get started, we need to develop ourselves. We need to be absolutely certain of our starting point and the books or training tools necessary for us to reach the finish line.

If we study the biographies of great business leaders, we’ll discover that they’re all acquainted with starting at the beginning and growing over time. Even when they’ve reached the finish line, as business minded individuals, they begin searching for the next endeavor, and willingly start over.

You can write your own paycheck if you’re committed to going into business. Absolutely no one can determine whether or not you’ll succeed by you. The difference between the people who succeed and the people who don’t, is a matter of not giving up.