Posts Tagged ‘entrepreneurship’

Today we return to my series of lessons on leading your small business as if  it were a mega corporation and you, my small business friends,  are CEO’s with a huge staff of highly trained, highly paid, executive MBA wiz-kids to rely on.

 ”My every waking hour is a contest to see how much fun I can have making money doing what I love to do.”

Meaning Is the New Money

Times are tough, business is tough.  There is a school of thought that says if you are happy, you are successful. 

True but…

 Money is important too. As a mentor of mine often says, money may not be the most important thing but it is the most impactful thing.”  Translation: if you can’t pay the rent, you are going to have a hard time holding on to your happiness.

Which is why, for all the meaning and satisfaction your work gives you, you must, at least occasionally, focus on the money. Focusing on the money is, in mega corporation parlance, the job of the Chief Financial Officer or C.F.O.

Money is Mostly Numbers

Do you know how much money you will make this year?  It is now the fourth quarter of 2010. You should know. If you are not sure, overcome your math anxiety and do a little sales forecasting.

“In math there is always one right answer, and if you can’t find it, you’ve failed.  That makes me crazy” High school math student

Guessing at the Numbers

Forecasting not really math it is more like educated guessing. Guessing about how much money you expect to make in the next month or 3 months or 12 months. To forecast you need to know how many units of each widget you will sell and for what price. Simple multiplication will give you a sales forecast.

10 widgets X $10 each = $100

Math Anxiety is Unnecessary

Being anxious about this simple math is an overreaction because there is no absolute right answer. It is a guess! But it is a guess that will give you some direction in your day to day activities; some way to judge your effectiveness and some sense of security knowing in advance what you might expect for income in the months ahead.

Anxiety in General is Unnecessary

If you are feeling anxious about your any aspect of your business, consider signing up for In The Trenches: the new Working Miracles newsletter for small business leaders with practical tips for consciously turning your work into a miracle of prosperity and meaning

My premier edition is due out in mid October.  The sign up form is not yet up on the web site but I promise to get you on the list.  Just let me know in the comments box below.

Image by Flickr user Al Power, licensed under CC 2.0

It’s been a long, hot week.  Well okay, it was a short week, given the Monday holiday, but I had a great holiday weekend and was not happy about getting back to my work which lately has been a series of problems to be solved. One large problem (“It’s the economy, stupid”) in particular is keeping me up at nights. 

It took me two days just to organize my desk and my numbers enough to figure out that it was time, once again, to reach out for help. It took me another day to pick up the phone and ask for help from someone with more knowledge and expertise than I.  Once I did, I felt a lot better.  The problem – it’s about cash flow, of course – is not solved but just taking steps to find a solution makes me feel so much better.

The difference is that now I am no longer analyzing the past. I am no longer kicking myself for results that didn’t turn out as expected. Now my perspective has changed from regret to expectation. I am done spending energy trying to prove to myself that I wasn’t a fool. I am focused on the future.

So, after a day of searching blog post for something helpful, I want to thank Danielle LaPorte, the creator of WhiteHotTruth.com and The Fire Starter Sessions for this quote.

“… my past pales in comparison to my future, this I know.

 So does yours, I bet.”

Danielle is a new discovery for me. But I am fed up with bloggers blogging about blogging and Danielle claims to write about “self-realization and entrepreneurship”.  I am down with that.  That is what I am doing every day!

 You can read Danielle’s the entire post, published as a guest writer on Jonathan Fields’ blog, Awake at the Wheel, here.  You will be glad you did

Here is an interesting, if somewhat vague, post claiming that entrepreneurs, not governments will lead us out of the recession.

A Tale of Two World Views — or Should it be Three

I don’t know what Mr. Cornwall means by “burdens of excessive government” but I applaud his faith in small business.  It fits nicely with my own belief that we all have something of value to offer and sustainable growth will result from trading our individual, unique value in the free marketplace.