Business Plan Update March 2012

Overview

Financials were through the roof this month. I did a lot of subcontractor payments, but still good numbers in the end.

I’m lagging in sales in other parts of business and it seems like video is kind of taking over. I’m slowly freeing up time to work on non-video projects and every month I’m getting rid of some responsibilities that are taking time away from my business growth projects. It’s getting better though.

Business Activities

Video, online training with a huge emphasis on video, and bookkeeping are my company’s main focus now. I know the first two are quite related, being video, but it may seem to the observer that bookkeeping isn’t so related.

Bookkeeping has come out as one of my interests. I don’t like it because I like entering transactions, I like it more for the challenge of creating a system that’s efficient. I feel there’ s a lot of room for improvement in this area. Also, financials are a core component of every business, so making the whole process better will help out all businesses, which is what I’ve set out to do with Small Business Doer.

I helped to upgrade the BCPVA website. I volunteer as an executive there. We had an all day coding session, which worked wonders. We were able to revamp the site in a day, and because there were three of us together, we could quickly make decisions and get all we wanted to done. It took 11 hours and we got it done. If we had tried to do this separately, a few hours here, a few hours there, I don’t think it would have gotten done, especially since it is a volunteer, non-paid position.

I’ve been looking into online accounting software for the needs of a few bookkeeping clients. I’ve been feeling that getting through QuickBooks is not easy enough for the average person doing bookkeeping (who’s not trained to do bookkeeping).

Beta testing the QuickBooks Bookkeeping System Video Course has been ongoing. I had a couple initial testers who gave me a bit of work in revising / improving the course. I want to open it to a wider audience as soon as I can, but still don’t want to launch a paid course until I feel it is solid. I know that I will continue to revise the course as time goes on, however, I don’t want the course to scare away people because it feels unfinished.

Projects

A few projects I worked on this month are below.

Vmax Fitness Machines (link to video to come)
UBC Lectures
Small Modern Living
Altec

Profit & Loss Budget vs. Actual – March 2012

Income went quite well this month. As mentioned, I’m lagging in the non-video categories at the moment. I’m currently working on optimizing my site to promote my educational products and bookkeeping services, so this should start to change in April and May.

This month, like February, not much advertising expense (due to not officially launching the QuickBooks course) and no professional fees (although they’ll be in next months budget).

Profit & Loss Budget vs. Actual - March 2012

Conclusion

I’m getting really excited about finally being able to launch my QuickBooks Bookkeeping System Course. It feels like after all the work creating, editing, and revising, the big task is now going to be promoting the course.

April is not looking as busy as the past three months, so hopefully the down time, and the fact that I was able to bring in extra money in the first quarter of 2012, will let me comfortably work on growing my business.