Why You Should Be Tracking Expenses Yourself
If your not tracking your cash flow in and out – your doing yourself and your business a disservice.
In the beginning stages of building your business, you’ll likely wear lots of hats—possibly, every hat. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Yes, it’s a lot. Yes, there’s a steep learning curve. But everyone—or almost everyone—goes through it.
I assure you that all of this learning and doing makes you better.That said, as soon as you can start delegating, you should. By pushing certain tasks off to an personal assistant and/or other team members.
Do this by focusing on the business-building work only you can do! This will supercharge your efforts and taking things to the next level.You can’t do that if you’re busy answering phones, posting Facebook updates and keeping the floors clean.
My Point? Both of these stages of your business evolution have value and meaning. As you transition into this “phase two”, you’ll need to add one more to-do to your list let’s call it trust, but verify.
You aren’t the only one in the driver’s seat anymore, but that doesn’t mean you can afford to take your eyes off the road.
A trust, but verify example is advertising…
You can’t trust another person to handle your ads exclusively until they’ve proven they’re up to the task and totally in-step with your wants, needs and overall vision.
That positive proof takes awhile – believe me.
Another task you can’t take your eyes off? Expense tracking. Never ever trust someone with your finances 100%.
Even when you do trust them, keep tabs on what’s what. Even good people get busy, lazy or complacent, and vigilance can easily fall through the cracks.
Beyond that, some people simply have different priorities than you. They may intend to track things and stay on top of your investments, but they forget.
Sometimes, people you trust take full-on advantage of you and that trust. Sometimes, it’s big. Sometimes, it’s small. Sometimes, it’s sneaking below the surface for a long time before you even notice. When the dam breaks, it can be very bad for you and your business.
I realize how pessimistic this all sounds, but I really want to make sure my message is loud and clear. My father Dave has been doing this for awhile now, and had seen a lot more than he’d ever could have expected.
So he has ingrained with me to be cautious when it comes to my money in our people’s hands. You don’t want to have people try to pull one over on you.
Now, it doesn’t matter how much experience you have when hiring trustworthy staff. Even the most successful entrepreneurs can be taken advantage of by their trusted advisors and/or employees.
Recently, someone pretended to be one of my mentors, going so far as to spoof his email address and request a $20,000 wire transfer from his finance team.
Luckily he watched his cash flow very closely in his business but, to be honest, $20,000 isn’t a huge amount for him anymore.
He said that he might not have even realized the money had been moved, if not for the call shortly after from the person who initiated the transfer – asking if he received the money ok.
He immediately knew something was wrong and set to work trying to get the money back. They succeeded in the end, but now they’re using a system that won’t let that sort of thing happen again.
Granted, he trusted his finance team. This had nothing to do with them, and in reality, they were rushing around trying to do what they thought he wanted. My mentor didn’t fault them for that.
But, when all said and done, no one is as engaged in or worried about your business as you are. If they don’t own it, they just don’t care as much. Remember that and work around it.
If your not tracking your cash flow in and out – your doing yourself and your business a disservice.
Talk Soon,
Nicky Cane
