Accounting Bookkeeping Business Home Study

Analyzing Business Needs, Wants, and Desires

When contemplating starting a business, it is a lot of fun to dream about all the money that you are going to make and how it will change your life. This is a great mental activity because you have to really know "What's In It For You". Unless you can picture the positive changes that will happen in your life, you are unlikely to have the drive to accomplish them.

Where Dreams Lead to a Better Reality

Once you have done your dreaming and know why you want to start your own business, the next steps involve analyzing what you will need to make to meet your needs, wants, and desires. Whether you are starting a business to supplement an income or you plan to have your business as your primary income source, this is a great exercise to complete. You can start out in your spare time to build a business, and most students of the Professional Bookkeeper program do just that. Because most of us do not have a large savings account to draw upon, we like the security of keeping our old job and continuing to enjoy the income it provides.

Because this is a hands-on practice, we have provided a form to calculate your Needs, Wants, and Desires. You will want to print out this form, if possible, to get the most out of this exercise. As you go through the steps below, you will be prompted to record your results onto this sheet.
Click HERE to Get the Needs, Wants, and Desires Form

How Much Do You Need?

The first thing to answer when you consider pursuing your dream of your spare-time job becoming your primary source of income is how much you will need to cover your basic living expenses. This includes rent or mortgage, phone and utility bills, car payments, and your other critical payments that must be made to sustain your basic living expenses. This does not include entertainment expenses or perhaps other things that you spend your discretionary spending cash on. That falls under Wants, which we will discuss later.

Many of our students indicate that their bare essential costs range between $1500 and $2000 per month. Again, this is not what they want to make. It simply covers the absolute basic living expenses. For each of us, this number will be different.

Step 1: Take a minute to calculate for your situation what that number would be before going on. Again, this should include only things like rent/mortgage, food, utilities, and so on.

Step 2: Now, consult the illustration below to find for your Needs, how many Accounting clients that you would need to service with your business to earn enough for your Needs. An average client will pay you $300 per month to service their account. If your Needs come to $1500 to $2000 per month, you can see from the chart below that you need just 5-7 clients to meet your basic needs.

How Much Do You WANT?

We need to define what you Want, separately from what you Desire. We will say that what you want is how much that you need to make each month to make what you are making now, and maybe a little extra spending money. We are not talking about a huge house on the hill or dream vacations. That is covered in what you Desire below. A typical amount for Wants is around $3,000. It takes just 10 clients to meet a Wants level of $3,000 (since an average client will pay you $300/month). It takes just 20 hours per week to service 10 clients, or about half-time work.

Know that once you meet the level of your Wants, you have options. If you work at a traditional 9 to 5 job, you have the option to fire your boss, because you are now making part-time what your employer pays you for full-time work. Many Professional Bookkeeper graduates have found that their old boss becomes one of their best clients. Once you make sufficient income to meet your wants, you may choose to just work less hours, essentially semi-retiring early. Maybe increasing income beyond your wants doesn't interest you. Few moms (or dads, for that matter) these days feel that they have the option to stay home and spend more time with their children. When you are making as much working part-time as you did before full-time, the limited quality time that you are able to spend can be replaced with the financial freedom to spend more quality time with them. Remember, this is your business, so whether you want to make more money, work less hours, or pursue other interests, those are all great reasons to go into business for yourself. For some, financial motivation is their driver, but you may find other reasons that may be much more important to you that make starting your own business appealing.

Working for yourself, you can make your own hours and no longer be bound to a job because you do not have a choice. Knowing that you are working where you want to work makes all of the difference. Having options means having financial freedom, because you are where you want to be, not where you have to be just to get by.

Step 3: Take a moment to write down the amount you will need to supply your Wants. A good guideline for your wants is to put down what you make now plus an extra 10% for spending money. Consult the graph above and determine how many clients that you will need to meet your Wants and record that value as well.

How Much Do You DESIRE?

Alright, now we come to the fun part, what you really Desire. This goes beyond merely what you would be comfortable making. This includes living the kind of life that you have always dreamed of. This may include going on cruises, early retirement, a bigger house, or that sports car you have always wanted. Maybe for you, your motivation is to get completely out of debt so that you can keep more of what you earn. Take a minute to dream about the kind of life that you would lead if money didn't hold you back.

There is no right or wrong answer as far as what you desire. For some, they love what they do now and they just want additional side income. Others may want to aggressively market their business and maximize their income. Still others want to capture more time in the day to do things that matter most to them. Money may not make possible what matters most to you. For some, their Desires are to make exactly what they are making now, but to only work half time or to work for themselves. This is YOUR business, so success can only be measured by you.

Step 4: Write down some of the benefits of having more income or more freedom in your life. Some might want to double their current income. If you are making $3,000 per month or less right now, servicing 20 clients (considered a full-time business) will at least double your income to $6,000 per month. Increasing your client list by just two clients per month will give you the income that you Desire in just 10 short months.

How Long Will It Take To Reach Your Needs, Wants, and Desires?

With the step-by-step marketing method taught in Module 4 of the Professional Bookkeeper program, you can find a new client every week, spending only a few hours per week marketing your service. You will find that this is a very attainable goal as you follow the techniques and secrets taught in the Professional Bookkeeper program. To be conservative, we will use 2 clients per month for the rest of our calculations below. So how long will it take to meet your Needs, Wants, and Desires? Let's find out.

If you find just 2 clients per month, you will increase your income by $600 per month, since an average client pays you $300 per month. To find how many months after starting your business that you will meet your Need, Want, and Desire level, just divide the amount for each by $600.

Step 5: Take the amount that you recorded for your Needs and divide by $600. Round your results up to the nearest whole number. So if you recorded $2000 as what you need to meet your needs, take $2000 and divide by $600, giving you 3.3 months to achieve your wants. We want to be conservative in our estimates, so we will round up to 4 months to meet our needs. Record this number to refer back to later.

Step 6: Divide the amount that you recorded for your Wants and divide by $600 and round the number up. A typical Want of $3,000 divided by $600 gives 5 months to achieve your Wants. Recall that once you earn your Wants, you are making as much or more than you do right now. If you Want $3,000 per month, in 5 months, you can quit your job. You have options at that point.

Step 7: Divide the amount that you recorded for your Desires and divide by $600 and round the number up, as we did in steps 5 and 6. If you Desire to make $6,000 per month in income, in just 10 months, you will be living your dreams. Think back 10 months. If you had started your Accounting and Bookkeeping service with the Professional Bookkeeper program, you would be making $6,000 per month right now! Don't find yourself 10 months from now looking back and wishing that you had got started today.

You Can Do This!

The Professional Bookkeeper program has given thousands of graduates the tools needed to start and grow a successful Accounting and Bookkeeping service. You will learn the skills needed to do even the more complicated Accounting tasks quickly and efficiently. Your clients will be astounded by the hands-on knowledge that you can immediately apply in real-world Accounting and Bookkeeping tasks.

Most importantly, because most of us are not trained as marketers, the Professional Bookkeeper program will teach you the proven techniques for finding clients that are already looking for your services. You will learn the secret to pricing your services in a way that will make you $30 to $60 per hour doing even the most common Accounting and Bookkeeping tasks.

Learn More About Starting a Successful Accounting Service With the Professional Bookkeeper Program

Get Started Today!

You have it in you to take control of your financial future. You can make your dreams become your future, and it is just not that difficult. So many have followed the path laid out by the Professional Bookkeeper program that you can know that it simply works. We look forward to you becoming the Professional Bookkeeper program's next success story.