Business It’s easy to think that any business can be successful if you work hard enough, but there are many situations where this just isn’t so. Consultants, coaches, and other service professionals often start a business believing that all they need to do is charge a “reasonable” fee and sell “enough” of their time. But unless you do the math to prove or disprove your assumptions, you may be creating a business that can never succeed. My client Molly was selling her services as an image consultant to individuals who wanted an updated or more professional look. She charged $50 per hour, which she thought was the most anyone would realistically pay to work with her. In most cases, she traveled to a client’s home or went shopping with her client. Business - List of business/finance/loan/mortgage resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Computers - List of computer hardware/software/peripheral resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Internet - List of webhosting/webdesign/internet marketing resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Software - List of software resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Web Design - List of web design/development resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Web Hosting - List of web hosting resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Web Promotion - List of search engine optimization/internet marketing resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Web Resources - List of other web resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Recreation - List of travel/hotel/cruise resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Casino - List of online gambling/poker/blackjack/roulette resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Health - List of online pharmacy/hospital/health resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Shopping - List of online shopping/gift resources more 1 2 3 4 5 Miscellaneous - List of all other resources not stated above more 1 2 3 4 5   Including travel time and lunch meant that Molly could only make two appointments in one day. The average appointment was two hours long. So the maximum amount Molly could earn in one day turned out to be $200. But in order to earn that amount five days per week, Molly would have to schedule ten different clients, all of whose schedules were able to adapt to whatever times she had available. This was hopelessly unrealistic. Even if Molly had been able to make the scheduling work, when would she have had the time to do the marketing required to land that many clients? It turned out that the maximum Molly could really earn using this model was about $500 per week. After paying her taxes, she couldn’t even cover her monthly living expenses.