The Small Business Doer

Semi-Annual Business Plan Update

Half a year has gone by since I’ve officially started following a business plan. On the whole, I can say that things have gone a lot better than I had originally planned in late 2009 and much better than I would have thought in June 2009, when I first started working in the business that is Greg Lam Consulting.

The Name

I had chosen Greg Lam Consulting because it was generic enough to let me do a variety of things until I found out my focus. I now know that I want to start operating under the name of “The Small Business Doer”. Everything I do will be focused on Small Business, so I think you can agree that “The Small Business Doer” sounds a lot better than Greg Lam Consulting.

The Bottom Line

I said it when I first started the business plan and I’ll say it again, it is nice to know about a business’ strategy, ideas, goals, etc…, but if you don’t know the financials, you’re missing out on a large part of operating a business. Hence, this is why I include my financials online.

While money is not the only goal I have in business, it is the strongest goal. If it is not about making money, it is a hobby. There’s nothing wrong about hobbies, I go snowboarding, play soccer and do plenty of things for the enjoyment of it. For my business, it is about making money. However, the money wouldn’t matter to me if I didn’t enjoy what I was doing and if I didn’t feel that I was helping people out by what I was doing.

So, what is my bottom line in the first half of the year? I exceeded my net income projections by $8,500 or 50%, as you can see in the picture below. You can click on it to enlarge it by the way. There are some items that are over and some that are under, but in general, the real numbers didn’t vary too much from the budget. The one big exception is the revenue from video production and equipment rental income, which largely accounted for the surplus in revenues.

Profit & Loss Budget vs. Actual – January to June 2010

The Amount of Work

The pace that I’ve been doing work is definitely something that I can continue on indefinitely (ha, two definitelys in one sentence). It is a very varied schedule, where sometimes I will be working 60 hours of paid work in one week and then only 10 hours of paid work in the next. Notice I made the point of PAID work. I work more hours than what I’m paid for, as you don’t bill for your time writing posts like this, doing your bookkeeping, doing research, communicating with clients, etc… In general, I spend about 50 hours a week on business related activities. This is fine with me since I include all my commute time into this number (even though I work from home, I have to travel to do work). I consider work hours anytime that I wasn’t able to freely spend doing something else.

Self-employed work also has me working all sorts of shifts, from a 12am to 6am shift to a 6am to 11pm shift. I also work on all sorts of the days of the week, Monday through Sunday. The disadvantage of this is that it is hard to maintain a regular schedule when it comes to personal or extra-curricular things. The advantage is that I can get those day time or weekday chores or activities done without too much of a problem. Things like going to the doctor, going to the bank, going camping (well, I haven’t done this but will), anything where it is easier to do during the day in the middle of the week instead of in a rush in the evening or weekend.

The Next Steps

My next steps are something that I’ve alluded to in past monthly updates. I’ve decided to write an action plan that will help me outline and set up concrete goals for what I want to achieve for the second half of this year. This will be taking my business to the next level, from hourly work / piece work to residual / passive income. It will also shift the work I do from mainly subcontract work to getting work for myself. This is something that I will plan to shift over the period of a couple years, as opposed to happening in a month. However, I had it in my plan to make the shift at some time, but without a timeline, I think I will always push it back. It is now time to consciously focus my efforts on building up my business, and be willing to take a bit of less work and perhaps less money, for a short period of time in order to focus on building up my business to that next level.

Conclusion

Things have gone better than expected and I couldn’t be happier with the results of the first half of 2010. I will write my two additional plans plus my overall action plan.

The Next Update

Check out the July 2010 business plan update.