The characters in today's episode:Your business is being played by a 2011 Toyota PriusYour business' financial function is being played by a flat Yokonowa 15" tireYour accounting talent is being played by a tire jack kit that came with the 2011 Toyota Prius
I walked into my garage the other day and saw that my front passenger side tire was flat. I mean, flat....with a huge nail stuck in the top of it. Being a two car household, I didn't skip a beat as I grabbed the other keys and went about my day. But, I had the unpleasant task of changing that tire in the back of my mind all day.
It occurred to me that I didn't really understand the function of my tires until they couldn't function. it didn't matter that I had been driving for 20 years or that I had the car regularly serviced. When the tire is flat, I'm not going anywhere.
A new start-up or an already-on-fire small business faces a challenge when it comes to the financial functions within the company. Your internal financial function is like the tires on a car. If your financials are flat that car is going to have a hard time getting anywhere, reliably.But the nice thing about flat tires, is that there are plenty of people who can fix them... including, perhaps, you.
"I'm a pretty savvy guy, how hard can this really be? It doesn't cost me anything to change these tires myself, but it costs me $662 to get four new tires from the tire shop and have them put the tires on my car. I've got YouTube, right? I can figure this out and save myself some money. I can take this jack that came with the car and change these tires myself!"
I used the less-than-steller jack and tire iron to remove one flat tire and tighten up the lug nuts on the spare. There were no instructions. I had no idea if I was doing this correctly. It was in the middle of this, confidence shoot, I realized all the things I didn't know about changing a tire. Once changed, I stared at the spare tire incredulously. I had a vision that I would be driving along to find myself stopped on the road somewhere with a spare tire rolling down the highway and lug nuts on the asphalt... In the end, I decided to only replace the one flat tire on my Prius with the spare until I could get the car to the shop. I knew that I wasn't the best person to change the tire, so I hired someone else to do it. What did I purchase? Four new tires and some labor?
No. I purchased peace of mind. I purchased experience. I purchased safe travels in my 2011 Toyota Prius with my family by allowing an expert to put those tires on.
The challenge in your business is understanding how critical the financial function really is. It's so critical that it deserves much more attention than being ignored until the end of the month, or placed into the hands of a receptionist (who is great at that job but has no experience in accounting), or handed to a spouse at the dinner table one night over meat loaf.
What does a business pay our firm for when they ask us financial assistance? Debits and credits? A tax return?No. They purchase the peace of mind that comes with having accurate financial records and the unlimited expert knowledge that we have gained over years of working with other clients.
So, yeah, I paid $662 for some tires and a pro to put them on. But more importantly, I paid $662 to guarantee those lug nuts would stay on the tire, the tire on the car, and me on the road.
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