Ep #49 Cash Flow and the Top 4 Mistakes Business Owners Make with Cash Flow

Posted on 16. Jul, 2008 by Elizabeth Potts Weinstein in Finance, Radio Show

Elizabeth defines and analyzes cash flow and it’s affect on your small business as well as your personal life…not only the amount of the cash flowing in and the cash flowing out, but the timing. She explains how timing and looking forward affect your small business’ cash flow. Elizabeth answers a listener question about Identity Theft and what you need to do if your purse/wallet is stolen and shares her Entreprenuer’s Success Tip of the Week: Time Perception, Doing #1 First.

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Transcript: Elizabeth Potts Weinstein welcomes small business owners, entrepreneurs and anyone who dreams of opening a business someday to this empowering hour of the Wealth Spa Radio Show where you’ll find answers to your most pressing financial and legal questions.  Now here is your host, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth:      Everyone this is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein your host for the Wealth Spa Radio Show.  I want to welcome you to today’s show.  This is episode 49.  We’re coming up on my one year anniversary which is really fun and I’m kind of a surprise when I was calculating out how many episodes I’ve done.  I was like, “Wow I’m getting close to 52, getting close to 53.”  Okay so that’s going to be fun and exciting and we’ll probably do a special show for that.  Today, I got a couple of different things going on.  First instead of having a guest, what I’m actually going to be doing is talking about cash flow and dedicating some extra time today talk about cash flow.  It’s always a number one question that I get every time I do a survey; ask people what question they want answered on the radio show or in my eZine or blogs or anywhere else I’m talking.  Cash flow is a number one thing.  And I have some speaking points I wanted to share with you that I’ve been sharing with a lot of other people radio shows and teleclasses and what have you and I don’t know if I’ve gone through this stuff with you guys, so I want to make that you guys get this information.  The second half of the hour, I will be answering the question of the week and this question is about identity thief.  If your purse, wallet, whatever gets stolen what do you need to do.  Obviously you know call your credit card company and get a new card but besides that what other things do you need to do.  Third, I’ll be covering the Entrepreneur Success Tip for the Week and this week we’re starting a new series of tips which are the time perception tip and you know actually taking another level from time management to time perception, how do you perceived time, and this tip will be specifically about doing number one first.  Now before we get into the content of the show, I just wanted to remind that if you’re going to miss any part of the show or you want to not have to remember when the show is on, get it deliver to you automatically.  You can go to the website thewealthsparadioshow.com, that’s thewealthsparadioshow.com, where you can sign up to get the show delivered to you automatically by email, by rss feed if you don’t know what that is just sign up for the email or via iTunes.  So if you have an iPod, an iPhone or even if any computer, you can get the show delivered to you that way via iTunes.  Also, on there you can listen to past shows and we started putting transcript of show so if you rather read the show or there was something someone said in the last show you listen to and you want to find where that’s written without having to listen to the whole thing over again, you can go that website.  Again, that’s the wealthsparadioshow.com.

All right so let’s get into the content for today.  And as I said, I wanted to speak with you about cash flow specifically the Top 4 mistake business owners make with their cash flow.  And these are not just physical mistake.  These are not just you know making mistakes about how you take a deduction or where you categorize things or what kind of spreadsheet you have.  These are really mental mistakes.  Lets go back to the beginning, you know, where…yes its true that you need to set up things in a certain way in your computer, etc. but a lot of the mistakes that we’re making with cash flow are the stuff that happens in our brain.  Before we even start in putting numbers or looking at spreadsheet or pulling up data, before we even start doing that there’s crazy stuff we’re doing in our head.  So how can we clean that stuff up and what kind of difference can that make in the cash flow of our business.  Now let’s take a step back and analyze that word cash flow because I say this as if you know exactly what I’m talking about but I want to make sure we’re on the same page.  And here I’m specifically speaking to small business owners.  Now as if you’re still employed you do have to deal with cash flow but typically unless you’re working on a commission so there your income may fluctuate, typically your income is the same from week to week or month to month or whenever you get paid.  There your fluctuations are on the expense side.  But a small business owner, our expenses, our cash flow is fundamentally firm.  Here I’m talking about cash flow is the income that comes into your business, the expenses that go out, just the amount of the income and the amount of the expenses with the timing.  The timing is what gets people.  You know we can probably guess how many clients we’re going to have and what they’re going to pay us but not when they’re going to pay us.  We have the clients but they still haven’t written the check to pay us especially right now.  I don’t know about you but have you seen that lately like we had had people bouncing credit cards, bouncing checks not paying you on time.  You know I think there’s a little bit of a crunch going on, same here with expenses.  It’s not just, what are your average monthly expenses for your business.  It’s when are those expenses due.  You may have normal in a month you don’t pay money on your insurance.  You only pay money on your business insurance once a year and its all due on July 15.  You got to have that $500 or $5,000 or whatever it is for that insurance, you’ve got to have that money set aside.  That’s what gets business owners.  It’s not just about the amount of your income, the amount of the cash flow in your business, its not just about the amount of the expenses going out, the amount of the cash going out of your business, it’s about the when.  Let say that we’re talking about cash flow.  How cash flow is in.  How cash flow is out.  So you know how did I get started on this stuff, you know, really this is about, you know, something from a place of necessity.  It’s partially because in my business this is the thing that was missing from me.  You know, I have set up QuickBooks and I know the legal stuff I need to do for my business, but I haven’t really figure out how to manage the cash flow cause yeah clients owed me money but they didn’t pay me on time and the bill was due here and it was just craziness was going on with the timing of the income expenses of my business.  And then I have clients coming in.

Now back then I was doing personal finance for people.  I have clients who are coming in to me who were business owners and, yes, it’s true I was giving them advice about their personal finances but you know if you’re business owner your personal finances but you now if you’re a business and your personal finances and your business finances are completely intertwine.  But how such.  You know yeah I could tell them how much money to put in their retirement account, and how to invest it but the problem was the money was coming in at all different times.  The income was fluctuating all over the place.  You don’t know if you’re going to have enough money for certain expenses or even if that expense is a good idea.  I mean the cash flow of their business was the problem that trickles all the way down to their personal finances to whether or not they can save retirement to whether or not they should make other financial decisions in their personal life as well as their business life.  They tried to solve the problem but finding someone who gave good advice about this and that’s why I ended up developing this system that I teach, that I used in my business and I teach the client, have you, is cause I couldn’t find the books.  You know I’ve read all the books about bookkeeping and business finances and they were written to big business or they were way way way too complicated using all these words that I don’t really understand or they weren’t really about cash flow they were about bookkeeping.  So I wanted to go over the difference real fast.

Bookkeeping keeping your book is historical its where…you know looking at the rear end mirror.  Its saying what happened last month, what happened last year.  How much income did you make last month?  What was the expenses last month?  Did you make a profit or not.  How much was that profit.  Bookkeeping looks in the history.  Looks behind you.  Cash flow, planning cash flow and managing cash flow looks ahead.  Its looking into the future.  Its thinking okay when is this income going happen.  When is this expense going to happen?  Making a best guest.  How can we change into a better business planner or marketing plan to making our business better so we better have cash flow, better control of our cash flow?  The idea is yes you may have a wonderful bookkeeping system.  You may read all kinds of books about that and get that but that may not be helping you with your cash flow. Cause cash flow is looking forward and that’s why it’s so powerful and that’s why it’s missing for a lot of it.  So I wanted to get it now and I told a little bit of that story.  I wanted to get in the actual…the four mistakes that most business owners make.  The first mistake is ignoring the problem.  Putting your head in the sand thinking you know I don’t want to deal with this cash flow stuff, I hate that stuff, I don’t need the problem, you know there’s a problem. It may be you know you suspect this client probably owned you money but you don’t even know who owes you money and how you’re going to get them to pay you.  You may have unopened mail stuck up in your desk.  You may have no idea, you know, if I said to you so how much money does your business make.  How much money does your business make last month?  Are you going to make a profit this year and you have like no answer.  Now maybe you have to look at it a little bit but you have absolutely no way to even give me an answer.  You know all I can say to you well do you think you’re going to do next quarter.  Are you going to make a profit next quarter, and how much is that going to be more or less and you have no way to answer me.  That’s because you’re probably making mistakes number one, which is ignoring the problem, and hoping it goes away.

And typically, that’s because you’re probably overwhelmed.  You’re so busy working in your business maybe even working on your business developing new ideas with your business, helping your client, selling your product that you don’t even have take the time to deal with this stuff.  That just seems like such a giant job.  It’s such an impossible job.  The secret, the truth there is that it really is not that difficult and it’s really is not that complicated.  As soon as you start taking control of your cash flows as soon as you start creating the right information to look at and start at the beginning of analyzing it.  Even with just four pieces of information, four little numbers that you look out each week.  You’ll be able to make decision about what to do in your business.  Change what task you do in your business, change the project you’re working, reorder things, change the timing.  It affects dramatic change in your business.  That’s the secret number one, the mistake number one, mistake number one is ignoring the problem, and hoping it goes away.  And the secret there, the truth there is as soon as you start facing the issues, number one they’re probably not as scary as you may think.  You probably not as bad as you think.  I never have someone be worst off than they thought.  Usually you’re coming up with most horrible things you can possibly can when you wake up at three in the morning panic about the finances of your business.  As soon as you know, whatever the situation truly is then you can start making change.  As soon as you have the information, you have the power, that’s number one.

Then number two, this happened a lot especially to people who are in creative or spiritual type business but I think it’s all over the place.  Someone who comes to me and says, “Well you know Elizabeth what I’m not good with numbers.  I’m not a number person.  I’m bad with money.”  This whole story.  I don’t know where it comes from exactly for everyone.  It can come from being bad at math in fourth grade, it can come from your family hating money, hating rich people, I mean there’s all kinds of story that we all have back in our history.  What I want to say to you is that and where about ready to go our first break is that this whole money story is probably one of the things you need to change in your head.  Now, we’re about ready to go to the break.  After the break, let’s talk a little bit of more about business mistakes number two; this whole not being good with money and what you can do to change it so stay in tune for that after the break.

BREAK

Elizabeth:      Welcome back everyone.  This is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein your host for the Wealth Spa Radio Show, and we’ve been talking about cash flow.  We have been going through the top four mistakes that small business owner make with their cash flow and the first one was ignoring the problem and hoping it would go away and mistake number two, which I just started talking about before the break, is this whole story of being not good with money or not good with numbers or even I hate money, I hate numbers.  Now of course if you believe in the law of attraction, universal principles, any of that kind of stuff, you can see for yourself that this is a terrible message to send to the universe.  I’m not good with money.  I mean what do you think is going to happen.  The universe is going send money to someone who says they don’t want it that they hate it, that they’re bad with it, of course not.  Now if you don’t believe in that it doesn’t really matter for the purpose of this.  This is also a big problem because you’re really selling yourself short.  If you’re listening to this radio show or listening to it as a pod cast or recording.  You are perfectly capable of dealing with this stuff.  This is not racket science.  This is not figuring out the origin of the universe.  This is just managing a few numbers.  It’s not as complicated as you may think.  And really, the power is in making it simple.  We’re going to talk a little bit about that in a second with mistake number three.  You know what I recommend for people to do is just use two reports as their primary reports that they used to manage their cash flow of their business.  The first report actually isn’t about money, really.  It’s your marketing and sales report or your promotion and sales report.  This is a weekly report.  It’s how I recommend people to set it up where you’re tracking all the numbers that have meaning for you about how someone goes from being a lead or prospect to being a client or customer.  It may be if you’re web business it maybe about how many people come to your website.  All those people come to your website how many of them take action like buying your product or signing up for your eZine.  All those people who sign up how much money do they typically you know have in sale.  It maybe how many free consultation did you make for new client.  It maybe how many proposals did you write for client projects.  However, it may also be if you’re a network marketing it maybe how many calls did you make.  How many parties did you host?  How many networking events did you go to?  The idea is that however people go from being or business go from being leads or prospect to being clients or customer for you.  You want to come up with numbers that track that process.  What are the numbers that are most important and then you want to track them on a weekly basis.  You may say right now, “Well, Elizabeth I thought this is about money.  I thought this is about finance and cash flow.  What is this tracking and this marketing stuff have to do with anything.”  What it is that if you’re having problems with fluctuating income it’s because there’s something wrong with your sales funnel, with your marketing funnel with your promotion.  That your promotion is fluctuating that’s why you’re income fluctuates.  So if you’re going to have problems with income three months from now is something you did or didn’t do this week.  We want to take control of what’s going on this week based upon what happened last week and what’s been going on in your business lately.  So when the money comes in based upon your behaviour from this week, it’s a lot more even out.  You’re not going have this big drop income cause you’re busy right now, so you don’t do any marketing or you don’t put any networking event cause its a summer or whatever it is the reason that your promotion, that your sales that marketing is dropping off right now.  You want to plug that hole so you don’t have that fluctuating income down the road.

The second report I recommend is cash flow projection.  You may have tried to this before.  Most will try to do them more complicated and I’ll talk about that in a second.  The secret cash flow projection is you want to want to keep it very simple.  The idea of the cash flow projection is that you’re projecting, you’re making a guess, an educated guess of what’s going to happen in the future.  Typically, I have people set it up on a monthly basis.  You have column for each for the year for instance, and then you have rows across for your income maybe divided into a couple different categories, the different type of income you received, your expenses slash down into a couple different categories, and then you make an educated guess on how much money you’re going to get in August in your income in this different areas where you get income, what are you expenses going in that month.  Yeah of course, it’s a guess.  I mean I know everyone is guessing what their income is going to be in the future.  Fortune 500 companies are guessing about what money they’re going to make next quarter.  Its all complete guess and you can see that a lot when these businesses are wrong.  The idea is is that only by coming from somewhere you have to start with that guess.  Are you going to be able to make decision about your business?  You make a first guess.  You do a first draft of your cash flow projection based upon historical information, based upon your experience, based upon other people in the industry, based upon a guess, based upon your business plan, based upon your marketing plan, and then you proceed forward and see if you’re right or wrong and make changes accordingly.  And that really and we’re going to talk about this in a second a little bit more.  That really is the secret is the making changes and updating thing.  So here’s this whole I’m not good with money, I’m not good with numbers mistake really comes down to the truth that it can be very simple and straightforward.  It’s not as hard as you might think.  It can be as simple as two little one-page report that you’re looking at.  That’s mistake number two.

Mistake number three is making it too complicated and this is the flip side.  I’ll get people who come in who were like oh you know I know all about cash flow and I know all about spreadsheet and I love spreadsheet.  I used QuickBooks all the time and yadi yadi yada and they’ll come to me and have still have cash flow problems.  They’ll come with like all these pages and beautiful spreadsheet and charts and graphs and then color and then what’s the problem.  I look at the date on the spreadsheet and it’s dated like three years before.  Guess what happened.  It was so complicated.  They were trying to be so perfect that it became unusable.  It became unworkable in real life.  Cause here’s the thing.  Its things like cash flow projection, they’re a guess, okay.  You can’t be precise.  You can’t be perfect.  It’s impossible.  You’re trying to predict the future.  If you’re going to predict the future you shouldn’t be doing cash flow projection, you should go to Vegas and placed bets.  You’re making a guess and so the only way its going to be useful and powerful for you is if you’re actually are able to use it by keeping it very simple and straightforward.  You don’t need to have things broken up into 50 different categories.  You don’t need to have everything harsh out into weekly cash flow projection and all of this stuff.  Cause the thing is it is impossible to predict the future that accurately.  On a side note if your cash flow situation is so close that you need to be predicted on a weekly basis then you’re problem isn’t cash flow projection, your problem is you need a line of credit.  Because cash flow is impossible to predict in a weekly basis especially for very small businesses who were dealing with small amount of money and you can’t do good statistical analysis on that number of transaction.  You need a line of credit.  It could be a credit card.  It could be an actual line of credit you have with your bank but you can’t, for a small business that have a relatively low number of transactions, you can’t do statistical analysis that will create weekly cash flow projections, what you need is have a line of credit.  All right so that’s mistake number three making it too complicated and here what I recommend is very simple spreadsheet literally one page top to bottom side to side projecting things on a monthly basis not trying to get down to what income you’re going to make next Wednesday.  Mistake number three.

Now let’s go to mistake number four and this is what it comes down to for a lot of people.  Not having a system.  Now that’s when I started the first iteration of my business.  I did a set of cash flow projection.  Its part of a business plan.  You know I did one of those you know forty-page business plan that comes from the somewhere that we owned.  And created this beautiful business plan, created this beautiful cash flow projection spreadsheet thing and what happened I put the whole thing in a file folder stuck it in a drawer.  Never look at it.  Never use it.  A year later, I was like well I must make my business plan for the next year.  Pulled out this plan, it was like, “oh my god what in the world was it for.”  It was a huge amount of time and effort and a little bit of money and it was completely un-useful and the problem there was because I didn’t have a system.  I didn’t have a habit.  I haven’t created a place in my schedule and in my business to be looking at these things in a regular basis and making adjustment and using them.  What I teach people to do is have a money meeting with themselves in the beginning.  It just you so it’s just with yourself.  Then eventually it will be with a staff and your board of directors or whoever it is as your business grows.  In the beginning, it’s just with yourself.  I have mine; my Monday morning money meeting, sitting down as little as 50 minutes, 20 minutes a week looking at your finance, looking at this marketing and sales projection, looking at your cash flow projection and see if anything needs to be done.  The ideas being these are living documents.  These are breathing documents.  These are things that change all the time and they’re only useful as much as much as you used them.  You could sit here and generates about statistic about what’s going on in your website.  But if you don’t look at those statistics and then make changes either to your behaviour, to delegating stuff to your staff, literal changes to your website.  The numbers are useless and it was a big waste of time.  But at least there’ll be a system.  It can’t be just should that’s a to do list on your to do list on your to do list for the week.  There need to be an appointment, meeting that you scheduled with yourself just as if other people are going to be there, just as if you’re being with a client with your staff with the doctor’s appointment.  And I actually have been having them at the same time, the same place every week that’s why I have a Monday morning money meeting.  And every Monday morning looking at numbers for the past week, making decisions about what behaviour I’m going to change for myself.  What task I’m going to give out whatever it is in the next week.  Now also on a monthly basis you may have a monthly Monday meeting where you’re looking at higher level number made some bigger decisions about your business.  You can even have quarterly and then of course you’re going to have an annual one where you do your big business plan for the next year.  The idea is this need to be a habit, this need to be a system.

We’re about ready to go to our second break.  When we go there I wanted to give you a place where you can get more information about this.  I have a website that talks about Cash Flow Boot Camp in a Box which is the system that I teach and we’re you can actually fits all templates there for you.  You can go to cashflowinabox.com, that’s cashflowinabox.com.  You can learn about this system and you can also go there and signup to get a free special report on the money meeting.  You can learn how the money meeting stuff work.  So again that’s cashflowinabox.com.  We’re about ready to go our break.  After the break, I’ll be answering a question from a listener about identity thief.  So stay in tune for that after the break.

BREAK

Elizabeth:      Welcome back everyone.  This is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein your host for the Wealth Spa Radio Show.  And right before the break, I’ve been going over cash flow, the top 4 mistakes that business owners make with their cash flow.  I want you to give you the link again to that system that I have for dealing with cash flow, this has templates, there’s a 4 CD class for you to take at home to take control of your cash flow get all of your reports and system setup for yourself.  You can get that information at cashflowinabox.com, that’s cashflowinabox.com.  Also if you go to the same website, you also can signup to get the free special report on money meeting.  So you’re going to get free stuff there too.

Alright so let’s get into the next part of the show and this is a question from one of you all.  Actually it’s a real life question I got from someone where her mother had her wallet or purse I think stolen, everything stolen in it.  Calls of course and get the credit cards cancelled and a new credit card issued and went to get a new driver license and things like that but was wondering what else she should do.  And her mother had heard of this, you know, agencies or businesses that allegedly and you can tell what my answer is going to be.  Allegedly monitor your credit and repair your credit and keep fraud from happening, etc. etc. and she wanted to know are these legitimate businesses, what should you do, what do you need to do to protect your credit.  Now of course, this answer can encompass another of different things.  We want to start from the practical side.  Of course your wallet got stolen as this person figured out, you need to call everything that was in the wallet and get it cancelled to get new numbers reissued, and get new card.  Now people typically do this, one problem that a lot of us went into is that we don’t have those numbers written.  So you have to hunt through your bills and find all the different credit cards and call the right number and get them cancelled and get new numbers issued.  Maybe you forgot that a certain card was in your wallet.  You forgot to call and cancelled that one, very common thing to happen.  You also need to get a new driver license etc. whatever else was in your wallet.  Now incidentally, I recommend that you don’t carry your social security card in your wallet cause there’s like really no reason to do that.  You might as well just keep that in your personal files.  And you want to think about what you carry in your wallet.  Yeah, this is something that you do before the identity thief happens of course but having a list of everything that’s in your wallet and not carrying everything in there.  If you have eight credit cards.  Do they all need to be in your wallet.  The answer is no, hopefully not.  Most likely you need to have your check card or whatever it is for your bank, and then have one or maybe two other credit cards that’s most of the time all you need.  So in my wallet I have the credit card, the check card for my personal, the check card for my business.  I have a business credit card and a personal credit card that’s it.  I have a whole bunch of other credit cards and other bank cards and all kinds of other things.  There’s no reason for those things to be carried in my wallet around all the time.  They can stay in a safe place in my home.  As I said also having a list of what’s in there so that it makes it really easy and straight forward if you have to cancel everything and get things reissue.

But now let’s talk about what these companies allegedly do.  We monitor your credit.  Here’s the thing.  I can’t testify what all these different companies do.  Some of them may do very special or unique.  But the ones I’ve seen do something that you can do yourself.  You can do yourself and have it be free and easy.  Here’s one of the dangers with identify thief.  This is the one of the simple thing that someone could do to you.  They steal your credit card and yes you call and cancelled that credit card but now they have your identifying information.  They have your address.  They have your name.  They have your social security number.  They have your driver’s licence number.  They have all kinds of stuff for that they got in your wallet.  So one of the things they do is start going and opening up new accounts in other places.  They go to stores.  They go to credit card companies.  They go even to bank and open up accounts in your name and, you know, start using that credit card for something else.  So how can you stop this from happening?  One thing that you can do that you can do yourself.  And you can actually do this at any time is you can put a fraud alert at the credit reporting agencies on your account.  You call up or go on the website to give the information for the three major credit bureaus here in the United States, which is Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.  If you don’t remember those names cause they’re kind of weird names just go online and search credit bureaus.  You will get the name Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.  These are the three big credit bureau agency and you have a file in each of those places.  What you can always do at any time is put a fraud alert on your account there and what it does is it puts little things in your files, it says fraud alert.  And for the next three months, the next 90 days no one can open up a new, the effect is no one can open up a new credit card or any sort of credit account without someone from that place calling your home phone number and someone at your house has to answer and say, “yes this is you”.  So for example, let’s say they try to go buy a car and get a car loan with your name, right.  The bad people are at a car dealership, trying to buy a car with your name.  Let’s say you actually right now have wonderful credit and would be wonderful to afford this car.  So it was going to pass the credit agency report.  Well instead of them at this car dealership being able to get the credit, instant credit, you know how those instant credits now work.  Now that, the loan department of the car dealership will call your house and you or your spouse or partner or whoever will answer the phone and be like, “No, I’m not at a car dealership right now trying to buy a car.  That person is a bad person.”  And then the police will come and hold them off, at least in theory.  It’s a great way to protect yourself from that happening.  The same thing with credit card, opening up a card at the store, at the target or wherever, at Sears.  They will have to call your house and talk to someone at your number.  It’s very powerful.  Now the neat thing is you can do this at anytime.  So you don’t even want to have get instant credit.  You don’t care about being able to buy…go to a car dealership and buy a car instantly or get a Sears card the next time you’re at Sears buying a washer and dryer.  If you don’t care about instant credit, you can go place this fraud alert right now.  Do it on all three agencies.  You have to renew it every 90 days.  And what some of these companies, who sell this credit monitoring, what they do is they do the automatic 90 day renewal which is funny and inexpensive.  It may be worth for you to do, for a lot of people its not.  So what I recommend is that if you have your wallet or your purse stolen, you go put this fraud alert as soon as possible on all three agencies.  And if you’re the kind of person where you don’t care about having instant credit then it may make sense for you to go ahead and put this fraud alert on there yourself.  Now of course if you do have your wallet stolen, another thing that you’re going want to do is check your account on a regular basis.  And so pulling all your credit reports, if you haven’t had pull credit report recently, you can pull your credit report for free from all three agencies.  Just go on line search free annual credit report and make sure its one that you don’t pay for it.  This is completely 100% free.  You don’t have to give them your credit card numbers.  You know also check also your bank account.  Check weird bank account you haven’t had open in a long time.  This is another thing with identity thief.  You don’t want to have bank accounts open at every, you now, bank you’ve ever been in the whole world.  You don’t need to have that going on all the time.  You want to close those little bank accounts that have $50 on them.  So that’s what I recommend if you have identity thief.  Most of those big companies I think they’re doing a lot of the same things that you can do for yourself, that’s my short answer on identity thief.

Okay now I wanted to go in to the Entrepreneur Success Tip for the week.  We’ll have a little bit extra time today and we haven’t gone to the next break yet.  This is my first in the series of time perception tip, not time management tip as you can tell from the language that I just used time perception.  So what do I mean by time perception.  You know we are trying to manage time a lot and I don’t know about you but I bought all kinds of different book on how to manage time.  I’ve gotten all kind of different, you know, time management guides and calendars and check list and software that I used for my computer, all kinds of different stuff that I try to use to take control of time, to manage time and with some success. You know I get a lot of stuff on time.  I wasn’t getting everything done that I wanted and I felt I didn’t good about it.  Okay, I felt overwhelm.  Yeah maybe, you know, I was getting a lot of stuff done but I felt overwhelm.  I felt like I wasn’t getting done what I needed to get done.  So I knew I was missing something.  And one of the things that I discover is when it come down to just managing time.  That’s kind of the first level, you know, figuring out how to do your to do list.  How to manage your calendar, how to your priorities.  It’s not just about managing time.  Cause we all have the same amount of time.  A lot of this is not about that.  It’s about how you perceive time.  How you’re approaching this entire situation.  A lot of it is from a very mental perspective.  Cause the thing is you probably know exactly how to do this.  Cause if you’re a time management junkie, you may actually all the information that you’ll ever going to need about how to manage time but you’re not doing it and why is it because there’s something in your head that’s holding you back, really taking control of the situation and getting everything done that you want to get done.  So what I recommend is shifting something in your head.  It’s your time perception.  It’s your perspective on managing time, on your schedule, on your to do list, on your project list.  So my tip this week is the first in the series and this is a tip called do number one first.  And this is the thing, that it’s a very funny lesson.  We’re about ready to go to our next break but I believe I’ll tell the story before we go to our next break.  It’s a funny lesson because this is something that I’ve know for years and refused to do.  It’s rebellious against ourselves.  It’s really hilarious.  I first read about this task specifically from Tim Ferriss in the 4 Hour Work Week.  And the idea being is that during a particular day as you sit down to start your work day, you should do the number one most important task or project first.  Not answer email, not sit around with the phone or return phone calls, not dealing with your staff, none of that stuff.  The first thing you should do is the most important thing.  The thing that’s going to make you the most progress with your goals, to the vision of your business whatever, however you would have value it.  Do that one thing first and why.  Cause you’re going to get it done.  Cause you’re going to have so much more control of the rest of the day.  Because you’re going feel much better that you made a lot of progress even if that’s the only thing you get done all day, you made progress through your goal, to completing that project, whatever it is.  It totally changes your outlook on the day.  Now I read that.  Thought it was a good idea but didn’t do it.  What I did then was I still have my to do list and I put like a star next to the most important thing or next to the most two most important thing and sometimes I’ll do them first but a lot is I would answer email because I wanted to keep my VA busy and what if something happens and then I would have to do that I need to do and so I wasn’t following something that I knew was a wonderful piece of advice.  So after the break I’m going to tell a little bit more about the story, about doing number one first and the changes that that made for me in my business and I perceived on it.  So stay in tune for that after the break.

BREAK

Elizabeth:      Welcome back everyone.  This is Elizabeth Potts Weinstein your host for the Wealth Spa Radio Show and I was talking with you about the Entrepreneur Success Tip for the Week is our time perception series.  The first one of the series on time perception and this is about doing number one first.  And as I talked about right before the break, this is something that I’ve known for a very long time.  That you start out the day, you should do the most important, the most influential task first that’s going to lead you towards your goal and it could be anything.  It could be working on the client project.  It could be writing copy that’s going to go on your website.  It could be talking to that joint venture partner.  I mean all kind of stuff that could be the most important task for the day and that something that you have to decide.  But the idea is do that first.  As I said I got this from Tim Ferriss the 4 Hour Work Week.  But I wasn’t doing it.  I was like starring stuff.  I was still like answering email or I would do this thing where I have a whole bunch of little task and then I have the most important task and I’ll be like well I don’t I get this four little task first then I’ll feel better, and I’ll cross a lot of thing off my list.  So I sit down to do all the four little tasks.  That totally was not working.  It wasn’t as powerful as it could be.  Then my friend, Marie Forleo, I’m actually in one of her classes right now, which is actually starting in like 15 minutes.  I bought a course from her on time management for entrepreneurs and she suggested something very similar to Tim Ferriss which is the whole doing that number one thing first.  So I said well you know what, I was having all this problems and I wasn’t getting a lot of projects done.  I’ve been sitting on my desk for like weeks and weeks and weeks.  I just felt very ineffective and overwhelm.  Those were a couple of weeks ago.  So I was like maybe I’ll actually Marie’s advice, I’ll follow Tim’s advice and start doing the number one most important thing first.  I look at my project list and there was one project, we called it one project that was three little client project.  It was these three clients that I needed to get something too, right.  Being that they’re relatively small but I just haven’t done it.  It just kept being procrastinated.  I was like you know what today I’m going to do that first.  I’m not going to leave it to the end of the day.  I’m not going keep procrastinating it.  I’m going to do it here at 9 AM.  I’m not going to check email.  I’m not going to answer the phone.  I’m not going mess around in social networking Facebook, Twitters or any of that.  I’m just going to work on this number one most important thing, this three client project.  Now this is the day when my daughter was going through preschool in the morning from 9 to 12.  But I have to take her there; I have to pick her up.  I also had a teleclass that I was going to that I need to be at from 10 to 11:30 so I didn’t have a huge amount of time to work on this number one most important project but I resolved.  I was not going do email, not going sit around with anything else until I got this thing done.  So I didn’t get it done until like 2:30 that afternoon.  Let me you probably it did not take me very long in total.  It was spread in little pieces of time of the day cause I have other things that were on a schedule that I had to attend or go do but it got done.  One of the things that I’ve been sitting on my desk for like April and it was June when I did this so obviously I feel like that was a long time ago.  I felt so much better this stuff is off my table.  And why because, not just because I need to do it, and it has been there for months.  Because I hated the fact that I haven’t got this things done and it annoyed me and it had been nagging me and these people have actually been nagging.  Sometimes in a metaphysical way that I can feel them like pinging me from face, but sometimes in a little way, you know, actually one of the clients actually email me [50:04] working on her project saying do you need anything else or I’m going to get this through you.

So if you’re feeling overwhelm in your business or in your personal life for that matter.  What I may recommend for you is as you’re sitting down at the end of the day whether your day starts at 6 AM, it starts at 9 AM or you’re moonlighting and it starts at 10 PM after the kids are in bed, instead of doing email, instead of returning phone calls, instead doing a whole bunch of little tasks, instead of going on Twitter or Facebook or whatever it is you’re social networking addiction, sit down and do the most important powerful influential thing you could do for your business.  Don’t just put out fire.  Do that number one most important thing.  It may be the thing that you promise people that you haven’t done.  It may be the thing that’s going to make you the most money.  It maybe something that’s very long term project and you’re going to get started now.  Whatever it is start with that most important thing and not only will it change your entire attitude and outlook for the rest of the day, you will be as you do this on a daily basis even if you can only do it a couple of days a week, you will make dramatic change in this very short amount of time.  Just since I started doing this, I’ve gotten so many things done that have been on my to do list for weeks or even months.  It really didn’t take that long.  When I was waiting to the end of the day to do them, they didn’t get done and sitting down and doing them first made all the different.  And it’s actually been a few says where that’s all I can do.  My daughter got sick early this week and there was one day where I couldn’t get that much work done.  I normally would have sent her to preschool and she didn’t go.  She was sick.  But you know what I get the most important thing done cause even though over a whole course of the day if you’re taking care of kids, you could get one thing done, if you’ve done anything else, you can get one thing.  And that’s what I mean.  I still get the most important thing done even though life happens in the interim.  So that’s my recommendation for the week.  Just try and experiment.  Tomorrow morning do the number one most important thing first.  Okay.

So I wanted to share with you about next week, next week, I have Alice Collier on.  She is an expert in TV media coaching.  The first time I meet her I could immediately tell that she was on TV.  She looks likes a TV host.  She looks like a new host, you know.  She fully has her act together.  She’s an amazingly powerful women and full of wonderful information about being on TV and what to do if you get that phone call.  Yes, we’d like to come interview you.  Cause you don’t want to look like an idiot right on national television or even local television.  So tune in for her next week, where she’s going to talk about the 7 insider secrets to being a competent and compelling guest on television.  Again if you’re going to miss that show, you can always go to thewealtnsparadioshow.com to signup to get that show delivered to you automatically by email, rss feeds, iTunes.  You can also go to thewealthsparadioshow.com to read transcripts of prior shows or to just listen to prior shows.  So there’s an archive that you can tune in into.  And then you can signup to get the show delivered to you automatically, you don’t have to remember what time to tune int.   Also on the website, wealthsparadioshow.com, there’s a place to ask question.  As you have noticed, I answer a question from a listener each week.  So if you have a question about laws, finance, personal finance, business finance, business strategies, time management, anything that you think I may have an opinion on, go ahead and submit your question there and I can answer it live on the show.  So thank you so much for listening to today’s show.  If you miss any part of the show, you can find it again at thewealthsparadioshow.com and make sure you tune in or signup to get next week’s show delivered to you automatically so you can learn how to be a competent and compelling guest on television.  And again if you want to learn more about cash flow, you can always go cashflowinabox.com.  Again that’s cashflowinabox.com.  Thank you so much for listening and I look forward to speak with you guys next week.  Bye.

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