Running a bookkeeping service is like having VIP backstage access to what really works and what doesn’t in business; you want to know who has the best champagne back there? Ask the bookkeepers.
Now take a cross section of 50-odd different businesses – products, services, micro, million-dollar, whatever: want to know the what most often separates the folks that do well and make it from the ones that slide backwards or stagnate?
The leaders that engage with their financials regularly are the folks that thrive. The people that avoid or ignore them, are the ones that don’t.
Throw a multi-year global and economic crisis on top, this divide has only proven more true.
In their essential essence, businesses are repeatable processes that make money.
Money is an inert substance; it moves because we build systems and processes to move it, and because we make all the millions of daily decisions about what to spend and how to generate it within our businesses.
If a business is a repeatable process that makes money, then money is the essential feedback loop for what’s working or what’s not working.
Avoiding the money means that your decisions aren’t grounded in the core feedback loop of your business.
It’s not exactly a secret that I have grown Wanderwell without building an audience on social media. While there are a whole slew of reasons why I’ve made that choice, at the end of the day the reason I knew I wasn’t dooming us to failure? Because money flows through the business whether I spend time on the ‘gram or not.
If you’re not engaged in the feedback loop of how your decisions impact the money moving through your business, then you’re not grounding your decisions in the essence of how your business works. And that’ll catch up to you sooner or later.
As important, for anyone interested in social change, economic justice, or finding ways to do less harm in their business, understanding how the money moves is absolutely essential. More on that here.