By Charlotte Kemp

Controlled time is our true wealth. Buckminster Fuller

The title is actually one of Jim Rohn’s 4 Steps to Success. He says they are:

• Have good ideas.
• Have good plans.
• Learn to handle the passing of time.
• Learn to solve problems.

I have singled out time today because, well mostly because I have an issue with time. Besides being a chrono-optimist (happily underestimating how long something will take me), I am also exceptionally impatient. When I see a good idea I cannot understand why I can’t make it work right now!

My brother loves gardening, and took me once to an obscure cycad nursery in the KZN Midlands. There were hundreds of varieties of plants there, at all different ages and sizes, and he was pointing out the different prices. He made such a profound observation when he explained the difference in price between the young and old plants – you are not paying for the size of the plant as much as for the time taken to get it there. I could have bought young plants that day and waited 20 years to see them look impressive. I could have paid 100 times the price and bought mature plants that already were full grown. Or I could have paid a few cents for some of the seeds and given my as yet unimagined grandchildren a gift one day. Besides the commodity of the plant, I would be paying for, or saving money, in the currency of time.

Our businesses and lives are like this too. I have heard it said that we overestimate what we can do in one year, and yet underestimate what we can achieve in 10 years. We make wonderful plans and expect to see them completed or fruitful within a season, and then we become so disappointed in ourselves when they do not work. Sometimes our response is to give up or quickly change course rather than be consistent or persistent with our original good plan, which only needs time and effort to come to fruition.

I have a large white board calendar next to my desk and I have indicated certain expected events and milestones for the year. In January it was painful to look at that whole white board and see some of my goals impossibly far away. But each day I cross off one day and now I am sitting with a board that is half dark half empty and now I am worried that I am too close to my expected goals and I am not sure if I will achieve them in time. But the point is that time has passed. As painful as some of these last days have been, still dealing with issues around the failed business, time still passes. And if we can learn to handle that passage of time well, then we can make better progress towards our goals rather than just float through our lives.

Do you have a hurdle you are trying to overcome that is before you? Do you have a goal that seems impossibly large today? Look back on your life and find something similar to compare it to, and know that in the past you faced similar things, but time passed and you are beyond those things now, and you will get beyond these things too. Time continues to pass and we need to learn to put that to our advantage rather than fight against it.

This blog is an exploration of the lessons I learned when my business failed. Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas, as well as your own experiences. It will eventually be published as a book – hopefully as a warning to new entrepreneurs to avoid some of these mistakes. Please see the first few posts as an introduction.

By Charlotte Kemp

“We must anticipate, and not make the same mistake once.” -Capt. Jean-Luc Picard

You are not your business.

You are going to pour your heart and soul into your business. You may sacrifice free time and sleep, you may sacrifice your salary and certainly drawing any potential profits in the early years. But you are not your business and you should not comingle your finances, and certainly not your debts, together.

While we all start our businesses anticipating success and profit, just in the same way we start our marriages anticipating growing old together, things do go wrong and mistakes are made. One of the mistakes we can anticipate easily and not make, is that should we fail to make proper financial plans, then when things go wrong – when they go wrong – we will pay heavily.

There are so many variables in a business that could affect the outcome. We do not want to be negative and we make the best plans we can, cover contingencies and take out business insurance. But when we allow our own financial profile to be totally eroded by our business, then we are being irresponsible to ourselves and our families.

A business may fail, however regrettably, but we need to be able to pick ourselves up and go onto the next part of our lives. We cannot do that if we have maxed our personal credit out trying to prop up a business that should have been ended earlier.

My situation now is exactly like that. I paid salaries and creditors’ accounts from my personal funds, and used to pay the business rent from my bond. Now my personal income has been reduced from other sources, I had to sell my house at a loss, the business has ended, I am trying to pay off creditors, and I cannot invest in any marketing or promotions or even the daily part of my own business because I have insufficient income and credit.

I think it comes back to that unsexy word, margin, again. If you have comingled personal and business finances and either side of the equation is negatively affected, then both sides suffer and you have no margin to recover. And if we are in business long enough, then statistically speaking something will happen to affect one side of that equation sooner or later. So anticipate, and don’t make the mistake even once. Keep those finances separate. Keep excellent records. Keep separate credit or debit cards for personal and business expenses. And create a fund for emergencies and large purchases for both your personal life and business life. It will make it so much easier to cope with the crises of life as they come along.

This blog is an exploration of the lessons I learned when my business failed. Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas, as well as your own experiences. It will eventually be published as a book – hopefully as a warning to new entrepreneurs to avoid some of these mistakes. Please see the first few posts as an introduction.

By Charlotte Kemp

Happiness is a positive cash flow.

Fred Adler

Well this looks like a pretty easy topic to wrap up quickly. Make sure your business model produces a positive cash flow or you will be both stressed and out of business. Ensure there is money in the bank at all times.

That is all.

Have a good day.

Still here?

Then I have to admit it, don’t I? My business ran with a negative cash flow. It never really broke even and I funded the short fall from my bond. Except that my personal cash flow was running backwards and when I eventually had to sell my house it all fell to pieces. When I stumbled across the term “toxic assets” I was finally able to describe what I had been struggling with for so long with both my house and business.

What happens emotionally when your business is running negative and there is no money in the account? Well you have to answer for yourself, but I can tell you from my side that I shut down. I become paralyzed. It becomes impossible to make any decision because obviously every decision implies I need money and there is none.

Now just so you know a little about me, one of my shortcomings is an impatience with people who can’t make decisions. Especially when I can see clearly how a scenario unfolds and someone ums and ahs and just refuses to commit for some unstated reason, it frustrates me. Apparently this is more of a male trait than a woman’s – I should be more empathetic, and maybe I will discuss it with a counselor one day. But now I found myself in the same position and it made me feel so incompetent. It became so bad on occasion that I would be at a shopping centre walking towards the bank to do something, but debating whether that was the right course of action at this time. Perhaps I should first contact someone else, or try something else. So I stopped and turned to walk in the other direction to go to CNA and but some stationery I needed. Then I remembered than, considering my cash flow, that sort of stationery should wait. So I turned around again. Then I just stood there. I could not decide what to do. I could not decide where to go. I wasn’t just paralyzed in my thinking and strategizing about my business, but I was standing stock still in the middle of a shopping centre, where people knew me, like some idiot mime who forgot her makeup.

That was my reaction to being constricted in my choices by my lack of cash flow. On the other hand, when there is money in the bank, I find that I have a little mental breathing room to be creative, to work at solutions, to find alternatives, and to be – really be – with my loved ones.

There are ways to manage cash flow a little better, unless one’s business is really headed for trouble. But I urge you to find ways to create margin in your life. ‘Margin’ sounds so tame but is like a little mantra for me when I get anxious – I want margin. A margin of time before a deadline to make sure things are right; a margin of money before the end of the month so that I don’t snap at my children for their innocent requests that cost something; a margin of energy in the day to enjoy some of these awesome 24 hours we have in this incredible country, instead of just churning out work.

If you don’t have positive cash flow, it isn’t just affecting your business, but your soul as well. Take some time apart from your business to decide how you are going to cope with this situation and make some serious changes to your life and your business before you completely run out of options. It is not about the money – it is about the choices and the freedom, or for some people, the security.

This blog is an exploration of the lessons I learned when my business failed. Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas, as well as your own experiences. It will eventually be published as a book – hopefully as a warning to new entrepreneurs to avoid some of these mistakes. Please see the first few posts as an introduction.