Future-Proofing Your Business: Real-Life Strategies to Prepare Your Business for Tomorrow, Today

Chapter 10. Show Me the Money

"The key to taking the cash flow stress out of growth was to try and be more of a conduit between my vendors and my clients."

Business and money. The two are inextricably linked; yet we do everything we can to separate them. In my lesson on strategy I gave a brief explanation of my financial planning philosophy: "First what, then how."

Now that you've had a bit of a reality check on the strategic positioning of the business, let me explain in a little more detail exactly why this is my philosophy.

Now, I need to be clear: I am not a financial planner, nor an accountant—nor do I hold myself out to be either. In truth, I am pretty crappy with the detail of numbers. I think back to my days at school when I used to sell condoms for $1 each to my fellow students. I remember that I could do the numbers in my head and figure that I was making a profit, but I was never very good at honing in on the details.

Note

It's usually not until someone begins to lose money in business that you determine how to get the most out of the money you do have.

The following describes some of my good days and my bad days and my lessons on money.

Any form of growth in business—in products, people, planning, promotion, or business preparation—costs money. And the easiest way to accommodate that cost is to plan for it.

It took the experience of running five companies before I was able to slap some sense into myself and stop trying to convince myself—and others—that growth would not need ...