I am a do as I say not a do as I do person when it comes to capacity. I have no idea what my bounds are because I am pressing on them and expanding them every day. I hope a year from now I will have a different story. I’m working on it! By making a calculator!

Capacity, interestingly, means both “the maximum something can contain,” and the “amount something can produce.”

These are some ways to think about business capacity:

Contain:

Produce:

And then there’s personal capacity:

Contain:

Produce:

In an ideal scenario, you would have a good understanding of your personal capacity so that you could prioritize it and put up boundaries around it. From there, you could figure out what time you have remaining, and figure out how to make the business work on your terms.

As an aside, people do achieve this. And many successful business people credit their continued success to having a life that works this way: personal needs are met first, then other endeavors. But achieve is the operative word.

The reality, for most of us, is that we don’t have lives that we can rebuild from scratch to optimize to our capacity.

We have needs.

We have responsibilities.

We have restrictions.

We have dependencies.

We have debts.

So instead of treating capacity like a true limit (a boundary) we treat it like spray foam insulation. We just hope that it will stick and expand to fill in the gaps.

My take home pay and pricing calculator starts with figuring out exactly how much money you need to bring home each month to cover your business expenses. From there, it calculates business operational costs. Then, it calculates all of the relatives fees that come out of gross revenue. Next, it calculates backward the gross monthly revenue your business needs in order to cover all of the fees, taxes and business costs so you can take home your desired amount.

The next sheet is a pricing sheet that helps you figure out how many sales you’d need to make each month to meet your revenue target based on package prices. This is enlightening!

Then, there is a sheet to estimate how many leads you need to generate in order to close that many sales. Enlightening, or overwhelming? TBD.

Finally, there is a capacity planning sheet. And, I’ll be honest. This sheet is not a calculator. The numbers don’t automatically flow into the cells in this sheet and give you a clear cut answer.

Rather, the cells have question in them. Things like:

I provide some suggestions for each one about what “levers” may exist to optimize your capacity given existing constraints.

The intended goal is that me and my clients get to this sheet and have a moment of honesty with ourselves.

For example, if based on the current numbers, the only way I can meet my revenue target is by making 10 sales a week—I’ve got a problem!

But the beauty of the calculator is that the issue becomes visible. And every step of where the money goes, and how it changes from initial charge to depositing in a personal checking account is detailed.

So now, I can make changes. I can change my pricing or change my offer. I can reduce my business expenses if I need to. I can outsource if it makes sense to boost lead generation over cost cutting measures.

Anyway, isn’t that cool?!

If you’re feeling out of your capacity, what are some ways you can make your capacity more visible?

It might not tell you exactly what to do, but it can guide you to start asking the right questions.

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I appreciate you! ❤

Warmly,
Jennifer