Finance 101 & Why You Should Care
By Steve Simonson
Getting your financial house in order can pay BIG dividends. Founders who ignore cash flow, P&L, and the balance sheet stay stuck in the shoe-box years.
From the Catalyst88 archive. Originally published May 16, 2017. The living room is the Chairman's Circle.
Getting your financial house in order can pay BIG dividends in your business.
Here’s a topic that entrepreneurs love to hate: FINANCE.
Well sure, we love to see the results of our endeavors especially when we imagine that scene from the movie Indecent Proposal where a young Demi Moore is rolling around in naked in money, however, in reality, most entrepreneurs HATE bookkeeping and other related financial reporting so much that they completely ignore it.
The only time they deal with it is during tax time and then the process is determining which shoe box or shoe boxes to give to the CPA and let them get the mess cleaned up.
So, like any other pain point, we naturally avoid this. It doesn’t take an MBA or CPA to realize that this practice is not ideal. Even if you don’t expect to rank in the Fortune 500 next year you must realize that understanding your cash flow, profit and loss and balance sheet can greatly accelerate your success.
Since part of our mission is to empower entrepreneur’s lives we took the time to hang out with a 35 year expert in marketing, finance, and operations to help you guys learn more. (see video below)
Michael Pinkowski’s company GO.BE.STRONG. can be an invaluable resource to help you overcome and simplify your financial systems. Just as important Michael can help with a number of other areas that are pain points in your business and is a certified Strengths Based Leadership Coach. He is very experienced in many functional areas of business that I respect!
The point isn’t to get good at the things you hate, but it is to help you harness the power of information whilst making the process of the information gathering systemic and painless to you. (ok, maybe a little pain, but not as bad as doing it all yourself.)
ACTION STEPS:
- Commit to making progress in this vital area of your business.
- Get the books out of the shoe box. Cash flow, P&L, and a balance sheet are not optional once the company is real.
- If the constraint is that you hate the work, hire it — a bookkeeper and a finance-minded operator beat another year of avoidance.
We love entrepreneurs!
At your service,
Steve Simonson