Why Women in Accounting Need to Create Multiple Streams of Income
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20% of US small businesses fail in their first year. After five years, roughly 50% have failed. After 10 years, 70% of businesses have failed — leaving only a third alive.
Obviously, this has changed with the COVID-19 pandemic, which has created a reported 41% failure rate from March to June 2020. And this didn’t just impact small businesses or startups.
According to a study by LendingTree, 29% of failed startups report that cash flow was a big reason why they weren’t able to make it. When I hear cash flow problems, I see a few different things:
The product or service wasn’t great, so people weren’t buying.
The company’s marketing efforts were next to none, so no one heard about them to begin with
But, there’s one (huge!) reason that I tend to see more often than not:
Too much weight was placed on one single stream of revenue.
What people don’t realize is that putting a lot of emphasis on one source of income ends up having a ripple effect on your business. Why?
Because with so much focus on making this one stream work, you miss opportunities to diversify and multiply your revenue.
In my opinion, for you to succeed, you need to have at least 7 streams of revenue — and at least 2 or 3 of them need to be passive income. (But we’ll get to that later.)
So, what should those different streams of income look like?
A type of revenue stream that I always recommend for women in finance is creating a product-driven business. This is a business that’s based around solving a problem.
With this kind of business, it’s key to create a product that your potential customer can’t refuse. There’s a pretty big reason for this: you’re creating the product first, and finding your market later.
That’s why you need to create a top-tier, high-quality, deliciously irresistible product. Focus on every element of what you’re creating is essential!
It can be risky, but there are ways to succeed here: namely, by making sure that you’re unique.
Your product needs to stand apart not just from your competitors, but from everyone!
A great example of this comes from an episode of Shark Tank. (You all know I love Shark Tank! Don’t act surprised that I’m talking about them!)
A product was shown before the Sharks that personally, I never would’ve thought to invest in: blanket hoodies. That’s right: hoodies. That looked like. Blankets. That’s it. And guess what? They ended up becoming one of the most successful ventures to come out of Shark Tank.
And one of the main reasons why? They were entirely unique.
No one else was doing exactly what they were doing. There was a Snuggie, but a Snuggie isn’t intended to be something you wear outside of your house. And that’s what I’m talking about when I’m saying unique. They stood alone — and they thrived!