“Ka-Ching” is the sound that many people hear on their cell phones on the 25th, 27th or 30th of every month. It is the notification that their salary has been paid into their bank account. They may do a dance and think, “YAY pay day” and then not give another thought to that payment.

To those of us who are entrepreneurs, it is a real shock to leave the safe space where a “ka-ching” happens and venture into that space where there is no safe salary. Think about it, when you work for a company – no matter how you spend your working day, you are paid your salary. Even if you spend the day drinking coffee with colleagues, friends or customers, you get paid.

Many of you will know that when we work for another company we often spend the time day dreaming of running our own company and thinking how awesome it would be to be our own bosses.

The truth is that many people leave their paying jobs and set up as their own bosses and it is many months before they are able to pull a salary, let alone anything like they used to earn. It is easy to imagine your salary will be easily achieved in the entrepreneur world.

Let’s look at some examples:

You earn R15,000 in your paying job

As you daydream you imagine
• You will charge your clients R500/hr and just like that with only 30 clients you have reached your old salary.

No one stops to think where do those 30 clients come from and how long it will take you to sign up and keep those 30 clients? Another question here is do those 30 clients spend R500 again the next month or do you need to find a different 30 clients?
• You plan on offering a service and will charge R500/hr and you do the calculations in your head R500/hr multiplied by 8hrs/day multiplied by 5 days/week multiplied by 4 weeks/month gives you a whopping R80 000.

How easy is that – more than five times your salary!!!

Rewind – can you really work 8 hours every day with no break? And then repeat that every day of the week and then the next week? No, you cannot. Besides – where are those customers coming from to fill up those hours? You would need 160 customers in our example.
• Or you are going to sell widgets at R200/each. 75 widgets and you have made up your salary.

Rewind – how much are you paying for the widgets? Let’s say you are paying R100 for each widget.

You then need to sell 150 widgets to get to R15,000.

Before you do a dance of delight…. Do factor in your expenses of petrol, marketing, cell phone data and airtime etc. and suddenly you haven’t made R15 000.

Also ask yourself where you are going to sell these widgets. 150 of them. It is easy, maybe for one month. What about the next month and the month after that?

What now?
I am not suggesting that you should not daydream and plan, but you should use realistic numbers and stories. You may think that your salary is tiny and easily replaceable, but in truth it is a major hurdle.

Suggestions
1. Appreciate your salary and hearing that ka-ching every month. Believe you me you will miss it when it is gone. Being grateful for what you have is a sure way of attracting more.
2. How could you legally and ethically do “AND” – how can you have your salary and work on your entrepreneur business? This will allow you to see how hard it is to recreate your salary.
3. Save from your current salary so that you have a nest egg to fall back on. Many people will tell you that you will need 6 months of your salary. It is never enough and rather save to have two years’ worth of salary saved up if you are planning on giving up that safe “Ka-ching”.
4. Don’t fall into the trap of hating your current job and counting down days until you are your own boss. You never get those days back again and there is really no point to being miserable every day. Rather reframe the situation of how every day at work is a blessing as it allows you to save and to move ever closer to your dream.
5. Whether you are an entrepreneur now or not, spend a week monitoring how you spend each day. How much of your day is actually income generating?
6. Have a realistic look at your salary and how you could recreate it, without resorting to magic mathematics.

submitted by Colleen Qvist (Master Coach)
[email protected]

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author.