I knew nothing about business when I first went into practice for myself.
Reluctant entrepreneur, anyone? Yep, that was me.
But after three years at a law firm, seeing my life get sucked away in billable hours, I had to make the leap.
And it was terrifying.
Especially the money part.
Because I barely had any idea how to manage my personal finances, let alone the finances of a business.
I was financially illiterate. And experienced a ton of shame and fear along with that.
[If you want to skip the rest of this post and just register for the live training I am hosting in partnership with my financial management team to teach you the hard and expensive lessons I learned from not knowing how to manage the money parts of my business so you can manage your business money easily, use this link to RSVP here now.]
So I just kept focusing on making more.
And the more I made, the more went out the door.
And the more expensive, and ugly mistakes I made.
I knew there were reports I should be looking at, but I didn’t know what they were or how to read them.
When I asked my accountant what I should be looking at, she said, well it depends on what you want to know.
But, I didn’t know what I wanted to know!
So I just ignored it.
Then, I got divorced, and the forensic accountant we hired looked at me and said, “your books are seriously messed up.”
My face flushed with shame, but I still didn’t do anything about it. Because I didn’t know what to do!
Then, I got the unexpected $113,000 tax bill. Had to take out a loan to pay it, and fortunately, back then credit was flowing freely. Today, that’s not the case.
And then, I hit a cash crunch and didn’t have enough to make payroll.
You might think these things couldn’t happen to a 7-figure entrepreneur.
But, when you don’t know how to look at the numbers of your business and cancel every financial meeting because “something comes up” that keeps you from making it (because you secretly don’t understand what you are supposed to do or ask on the meetings) and instead think to yourself, “I’ll just figure out how to make more” it’s bound to happen no matter how much you are making.
And, if you aren’t making much, it’s even worse, right?
You would think the final straw would have come when my taxes got audited, but no that didn’t force my hand either.
It wasn’t until I ended up $500,000 in debt with $70,000 of overhead choking my creativity each month and facing down the reality of bankruptcy that I finally woke up and decided to do something about it.
So, I bit the bullet and learned everything I could about how to understand the numbers of my business.
Today, I LOVE looking at my financials. Not because they are always great.
Sometimes, I still hit cash crunches.
Sometimes, I still have to come up with the money to pay my taxes.
Sometimes, I still have to hustle.
But, it’s never scary anymore. I always have plenty of notice so I can put my creative mind to work and get busy when I need to and relax my mind and let it focus on other creative endeavors when I don’t.
I never have to take on a client I don’t want to serve, just for the money, because I know exactly how much money I have, how much I need and where it’s coming from.
I get a succinct weekly report I can read easily. I have a monthly financial call I look forward to, and when I review my financials quarterly, I understand what I am seeing and what they tell me about where I need to take my business next.
Ah, sweet relief.
Over the past ten years of all these crazy mistakes and lessons, I trained my financial team on everything I learned and created easy systems that would have me feeling smart.
I have been begging them to put together a training on these systems, so you no longer have to operate blind like I was for so long.
And, finally, they are doing it!
We’ve teamed up together to offer a live workshop this coming Tuesday, and if you are ready to fall in love with the numbers of your business, and stop being scared, or not knowing what you are doing, I hope you’ll join us.
You can use this link to register now, and we’ll send you the call-in details.
The post The Story of My Deepest, Darkest Money Mistakes and Learning the Hard-way So You Can Get Business Money Smart appeared first on Eyes Wide Open Life with Alexis Katz.
