Dear Entrepreneur, Are You Having a Business or an Expensive Hobby?

Many people think that they have a prosperous business when in the real sense they only have an expensive hobby. If you want to know whether you have a business or an expensive hobby, there are questions that you need to ask yourself. According to the Flipboard, 25 key questions will determine whether you are running a business or sustaining a liability.

Do you have a three-year plan for your business?

• Do you have a clear financial goal for this year which is written down?
• Have you shared your financial goals with your teams/partners?
• Do you know who your ideal clients are, is this written down?
• Do you know what success looks like for your business?
• Do you have the roles and responsibilities for you and your team clearly defined?
• Do you spend more than 50% of your time on the business?
• Do you delegate your administration work?
• Do you review how the business is doing against the plan with your team each week/month?
• Do you have clear targets for each member of your team?
• Do you have a clear list of products and services which are easy to understand?
• Do you have a clear and consistent pricing strategy for new, repeat and referred customers?
• Do you know how many products/services you need to sell each month/week/day to meet your financial targets?
• Do you have a simple value proposition which you can explain to your customers in one sentence?
• Do you know which sales channels your ideal clients use?
• Do you know the cost of sale for each product/service?
• Do you know the gross margin per product/service?
• Do you know the net profit per product/service?
• Do you know where you are against your targets right now?
• Do you track the progress of your business against the target monthly/weekly?

If you answered 80 percent of the questions, you are running a business and if not, my friend, you are running an expensive hobby.