Perks of Business 101

Editorial

Some of you may know me as “Rachel from HAR,” and even when I wear a different logoed shirt at trade shows, I am still indented that way.  I love my family very much and I am hanging onto their coat tails, while ridding the wave.  I wanted to break away with my own identity, while helping repossessors who I call family.  I have launched a new company, Prestige Management and Consulting, to educate and help companies save the money they have already made.  I am a firm believer that if you gross $1, your profit is 10/15/20 percent, right?  If you save that $1 then the whole $1 is profit.  I help companies keep the money they have already made.

Repossessors constantly say that three years ago is when the downward turn of the economy really hit the repossession industry.  When you have analyzed your bottom line over the last three years, you know that you have taken a hit in your revenue stream.  At best, the amount of profit you are making, or at worst, the amount of money that is on your credit lines, which continues to increase from year to year.   The question is, what are you going to do about it?  How are you going to change to have more money?   What is going to change to make your business more profitable?

What we are going to be focusing on is not how much you make, but rather how to keep the money you have already made. I am going to teach you about The Perks of being in Business that you currently qualify for, that you may or may not know are available to you.  I cannot tell you how to do your job better than you can do your job, BUT I can help you to learn how to better KEEP THE MONEY YOU HAVE ALREADY MADE.

I strongly believe there are at least two ways to have MORE money.  Simply put: Work harder and make more, OR save smarter and keep more.

If you knew that the products and services you are paying for everyday for your business could cost less than what you are paying now, would you change how you are doing business?

One of the challenges is how we look at ourselves.  First and foremost, we are a business.  Every account you have with your vendors that you purchase from should treat you like a business.  They will not solicit you as a business EVER!  You need to tell them you are a business and ask if there is a business discount program.  Every large company out there has business pricing.  You just have to ask.  The biggest one I use is Costco.  The benefit with Costco is that if you order by 3pm, you have your order delivered for free the following morning.  That is considered a business perk!  Welcome to Perks of Being a Business 101.

Did you know that if you have Sprint or Verizon, you can be saving at least 17 percent with your business plan account every month?  Did you know that you can get Group Buying Power discounts by buying together with other companies?  The definition of group buying power is leveraging the number of participants you have in order to get lower prices. You benefit by paying less and the vendor benefits by selling in bulk.  I actually went to Office Depot and use my Flacars and CALR group buying power card and got a $7 set of two scissors for $1.34. This is a savings of over 80 percent.  Did you know that you can order online through Office Depot using your discount card, see exactly what the price is on thousands of items your office needs, shop on your cell phone at midnight when you are waiting for a debtor, then have it delivered the next day at no cost when you spend $50 or more?  Spending $50 at office depot is easily achievable, especially when you are buying printer paper there.  Wouldn’t you like to be saving 15-70 percent on office supplies just by ordering from Office Depot?

Do you clean your own office?  How do you value your time?  What do you value yourself at an hourly rate?  Just analyze for a minute…is your time per hour worth the same as the person who cleans your office?  Or the person who washes your truck?  Or the mechanic you have who maintains your truck?  You need to be getting the bang for buck.  Here is an example:  If you are out repoing a car, you can pay someone $10 an hour to clean your office.  Why are you the one cleaning the toilets, when you can make $200 plus on a repo, or a volunteer repo, where is less work involved then manual labor of physically cleaning?  I would much rather strap a car to the L-arms of my self-loader, than to clean the toilet used by our employees.  Let’s be honest, the cleaning crew will probably do a better job at cleaning than you will anyways.  Faster, Better, and Cheaper than you can do it, because that is their sole job, to clean!!! This is what they are trained to do.  I would NEVER send my cleaning crew out to repo a car, would you?

This is a way to LEVERAGING your time. LEVERAGING your time is a way of keeping your money.   Now, what else are you doing for your business that you could pay someone else to be doing faster, better, and cheaper than you are doing it for.  Do you know that statistically if you give a job for someone to do, they will start at 80% of what you can do at 100% and soon they will exceed your 100% to 110% or more.  How many of you are doing your own bookkeeping?  Did you go to school for bookkeeping?   Did you know that you can pay a bookkeeping service, not a CPA, a trained bookkeeper, as low as $40 an hour, to keep your books up to date daily.  How does it make sense to pay $40 an hour.  A trained bookkeeper, who knows what they are doing, can go into your online accounts, with their own password that you have set up for them, safely and securely, remotely access your office computer, update your books, all in Quickbooks, for you without you even being involved, and faster and more efficiently and more accurately than you can.  What would take a typical business owner 8 hours to do, would take a bookkeeper 2-3 hours.  And at the end of the year, all of this information can be emailed to your CPA, who charges you $200 or so an hour, instead of a show box of receipts.

I would like to remind you of one Perks of Business 101.  Just remember:  you cannot always make more money, BUT there are always ways to keep the money you have made.

Please feel free to ask me about saving money in other areas and how Prestige can help your business.

Rachel Reiter

President

Prestige Management and Consulting

PrestigeMgmt.us

Rachel@prestigemgmt.us

818-945-TEAM (8326)