Views: 32
The strategy to get the organization back in the Office is in heavy development.
It is not that easy to get this done.
Opportunities need to present themselves.
Lessons learned from the last time the WALKINSTAIRS.com had an office and showroom is that you can not build on one source of income. You need to differentiate.
For example; if you work a webshop or website client, you can put like €50 an hour on a bill. That seems quite a lot, which means that if you work a workday of 8 hours, you earned €400. Do that for two or three days, and you can pay the rent of the Office.
However, it does not work that way.
Usually, you work more hours than you can bill, which are also spread out through the week. Also, you work 30 minutes there, the next day 1 hour and at the end of the week another 2 hours, that only adds up to 3,5h * €50 = 175€. Do this for four weeks and you have 700€. That seems a lot.
There is however, more time in the week. You can say, then you need more clients and more bills sent; yes, that’s right. That is one strategy.
At first, the freelance business was build around these clients.
The reality is that you are always running after your money, as there’s always at least a 30-day payment term, which is not always met.
If you work a month on a project, bill it at the end, the money comes in at least two months after the work started. You need to be able to pay the bills in these two months.
Then, when the office rent had to be paid, you got a problem.
This got fixed with working shifts during the day/night time in bars, hotels and restaurants all over the Country.
Why work 13 – 20€ a hour shifts if you can earn 50€ / hour?
Because there was the option to get paid out in three days.
That means that work on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and you got paid by Saturnday, which means; ±100€ / shift = 300€, paid by the end of the week. This got in the money to start new shifts (benzine, food, etc etc) starting Saturnday.
Keep working those shifts, get paid out in three days, will quite easy get you a solid payment structure in place, which gets the cashflow to work even more.
That is the duel income structure;
Yes, we build webshops to put 50€ / h on the bill, which adds up until the job is done. The office did not depend on this income to pay the bills.
Yes, we worked horeca shifts to gather at least 500€ / week, which leads to ±€2000,- a month, paid within the month.
So, that solved a lot of stress, as everything was paid for during the month and once the bigger bills of 50€/h eventually got paid, that money could be used to further invest and build out the organization.
Back to that structure again and see the Organization in a solid Office in this Q1,’24.
