A Healthy Budgeting Mindset

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Are you ready for budgeting season?

Hi, this is Judi Otton with GrowthCast and we’re going to be talking about that a lot for the rest of the year.

Before we get into the nitty gritty, how-to kind of stuff, I want to talk about the mindset you bring to this process.

I work with many business owners who say things like I can’t budget. How do I know what I’m gonna sell or spend or do next year? And I get that, it’s not going to be perfect, but you need to get over that. This is your best guess. It’s also a stake in the ground, something that you’re aiming for, which you are much more likely to achieve if you have something to aim for. If you go into the year saying, I don’t know what I’m going to sell, you might sell stuff, you might not, you probably will, but you, you don’t even have a goal. So you need to get over the idea of making this the perfect representation of next year because that’s just not possible. So you’re going to put your best guess in for the things that you know, for the revenue numbers and some of the expense numbers that you might not be able to predict terribly accurately. And you’re just going to have to let go of the need to make that perfect and accurate and yeah, perfect.

The second tip I want to give you is, have some fun with it. Use this as an excuse to imagine what your next year could look like, to think of creative ways to meet those sales goals, improve the efficiency of your business, or launch something new. This is the thing that I love best about budgeting is that, it really for me gets those creative juices going.

And the third tip that I want to give you, and I know there’s some difference of opinion on this, but if you are struggling, I would say start with where you are, start with the numbers that you’re spending in 2023 as your numbers for 2024. And then adjust from there. There are some benefits to starting with a clean sheet of paper, but if you’re really struggling to get started with budgeting, this will give you a head start.

As I mentioned, we will continue talking about budgeting for much of the rest of the year. This is Judi Otton with GrowthCast, and I’ll be back with a new Fiscal Fitness Tip of the Week.