E-Myth Company Story of the Month March 2010

We started the finance module this week and it's really galvanized me to make some changes and commitments in this area. Here's what I'm working on:

• I've met with my new accountant and will be moving all of my day to day accounting back into my business so I can have on-demand financial reporting for the first time in a dozen years. I can now address getting accurate on-demand reports, review my chart of accounts, and get tax advice on issues I was dragging my feet on that could be disasters if not dealt with proactively (such as child deductions and tax credits)
• I contacted my credit card company to negotiate lower rate, found out (better to know than not to know) that the bank has standard across-the-board non-negotiable interest rates close to 20% so I moved all of my high interest credit card debt to my 6.75% line of credit with another provider and automated minimum monthly payment to ensure payments are never missed to protect my rate (post-dated payments through online banking are not always delivered in time)
• I have begun a review of my sales by item summary to see where the bulk of my revenue comes from and what needs to be dropped or bundled into packages based on revenues provided
• I am revisiting all of my suppliers with an eye to consolidating with single providers with best service/best costs (paying 300% higher than necessary prices for some domain services simply because it's a pain to transfer them, but it's an annual fee, so not insignificant)
• Before I purchased my Mac on a lease, I ran time tracking on several levels on my PC (boot-up time, lost time to crashes and reboots, updating Windows software time, virus issues, time spent researching PC alternatives for and the additional costs of buying software resident on the Mac for multimedia) and calculated a cost analysis on the $111/month leasing costs
• I started a tax-free savings account to take advantage of Canada's new program (that's a month old now)
• I've Instituted a 24-hour delay on all purchases (business or personal) over $20 to reduce impulse purchases (big one!)
• I have standardized products and services so they can be put in an e-commerce shopping cart and tied to my lead conversion system with infusionsoft.com
• I’m mapping all processes in the customer buying and payment cycle
• I’m running outsourcing test projects with benchmarking and tying it directly to revenue or cost-savings through factual tracking now using a very good project and task scheduling application (2doapp.com) that syncs my iphone to my outlook online wirelessly, (no more missed appointments and clear priorities set for each day)
• My sales are up this quarter! It's the first winter in my business that I have not had to finance personal needs with credit.

I would say E-Myth is completely renovating my business and I feel energized, proactive, excited about change, and ready for structured and planned expansion. A huge difference from before I started in the program. Oh, and I'm also taking Friday afternoons off every week!