You are brave. You are in the minority. Yay you!

Did you know that of the working population in the world, only 7% start their own company? It is gutsy to start your own company. It is scary to start your own company. It is so impressive to innovate and start your own company. You put work, sweat and tears into building your company from just an idea. Just stop and think about that: you had an idea and now there is a company offering products and services. Stop. Take it in. That’s amazing!

But for so many of you, somewhere along the way it got even harder, even scarier and now you are wondering why you started it at all. How often do you get compliments from friends, family, acquaintances telling you how impressed they are with you that you have your own business? In fact, have you ever had anyone say to you over a meal “Cool, you have your own business. You can deduct this from your expenses right?” I have been asked that multiple times and while trying to explain that no, that is not the case given the tax laws around deductions, I was also thinking “and even if this was a legitimate tax deduction it is still cash going out of my bank account and I don’t have any spare cash because I have payroll, inventory purchases, rent, and so on and so on.” Let that sink in: how is it that people think “Oh you have your own business, you must be doing so well?” Yet, inside you are saying to yourself “Shit, if they only knew that I only have enough cash in the bank right now to get through the next round of payroll and then what? Let alone paying myself to pay for this dinner! I haven’t paid myself in months!” It’s embarrassing right? But more than embarrassment, it’s downright stressful.

And this year it is unprecedented in how stressful being a small business owner is. It’s freaking stressful I get that.

But even before coming in to this year is different I was treating my business differently in how I was managing my cash flow. Since implementing the Profit First cash management in my business I have set up a separate bank account just to put aside money for inventory purchases called COGS. Every two weeks for the last couple of years when I do my Profit First allocations, I take a % of my revenues that have come in and put it into this separate bank account, just as I do for my pay, my tax reserves and my profit allocations. And so this year, I calculated my inventory projections and simply paid for what I needed. That simple. No stress. No strife. No sleepless nights.

So simple. And yet so game changing. And now I'd like to share this simple, yet game changing methodology with you so you too can sleep well at night.