by Kenneth Medford
You stand atop the mountain, ruler of all you survey. The only problem; it’s cold up here alone. Even with a small team, maintaining good financial habits can create a level of dread usually reserved for horror movies. Fear not, you captain of industry. Nav.It can help you alleviate some of that financial stress and let you stay focused on the business at hand.
Budgeting
This goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway; there is no success in the business world without a solid budget. One of the best ways to protect yourself is by utilizing best budgeting practices like overestimating expenses, not underpaying yourself, and, of course, revisiting your budget often.
This is one of the many places Nav.It can become one of your go-to tools. Plugin the necessary account info and the Nav.It app can track your income, your expenses, and help you keep a watchful eye on just how your money is moving. Having this level of vision with your funds puts you in control and gives you solid numbers that you can base your decisions on.
Proper budgeting can also prepare you for future growth. Something as easily overlooked as comparing month to month numbers can make a huge difference. You may notice certain trends in your industry that you may have missed otherwise and that may be what separates you from the crowd.
When you’re able to see the numbers in front of you, hopefully watching them grow, you can see what it took to get to where you are and help you strategize ways to replicate your success in your next venture, be that a second store, a new product line, or that wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man you always wanted to put in front of your store. OK, maybe not that last one, but you see the benefits here.
Maintaining Financial Wellness at Work
So, that probably looks weird to you, right? Financial wellness is simply how “healthy” you are monetarily speaking. Consider the level of financial anxiety that envelopes your average person when they even consider starting a business. For that matter, imagine the level of financial anxiety that drowns a person when they open their bills every month. That’s not a healthy way to live and it certainly isn’t productive. For the sake of your financial future, for the sake of your health, just for the sake of your sanity, finding ways to understand your finances and take ownership of how things move has to be a priority.
This is another reason why exercising good financial habits is so important. As a small business owner, when you have exceptionally good times, you may be tempted to get reckless with your dollars. Maybe you want to take a trip to some country you can’t pronounce that has food you’ve never heard of. Maybe you want to, for whatever reason, put more money in Elon’s pockets and get that Tesla you’ve been thinking about. You might even go as far as getting that 6 bedroom house that looks just like the one you saw on HGTV. (Trust me, that’s not the move.) Where most people sabotage themselves is spending beyond their means. That’s essentially putting yourself in a position to be “sick” financially.
Finding a Method and Becoming Financially Resilient
Now, no one is saying you can’t have all the pretty nice things you want, there just has to be a method to the madness. You need to establish an emergency fund for, you guessed it, emergencies. If you get sick and couldn’t work for 2 weeks, does your world fall apart? If the answer is yes, you may not be financially sick, but you’re definitely not healthy. Let’s consider it a preexisting condition. This analogy may be getting away from me, but the core point is don’t do too much too fast or you could undermine all the hard work you’ve put in to become the success you always knew you could be.
Now, if you find yourself having difficulty determining when you’re close to crossing that line, the Nav.It app can help keep you in check. The Financial Health Check that it provides using a combination of your provided financial information and the three Nav.It principles for basic financial health (having an emergency fund, the amount you spend, and your high-interest debt) the app can give you a visual for just how well you’re doing because who really needs guesswork, right?
Controlling Your Future
Any small business owner worth their salt is going to constantly have eyes on the future. Along with considering ways to innovate, expand, and possibly even diversify, thoughts of legacy and generational wealth may find their way into your stream of thoughts. Once you’ve benefited from good financial habits, your goals may begin to shift to how to make this last forever (Am I the only one that heard Mariah Carey’s voice? Cool, just checking). Like the MCU’s Endgame, your endgame has to start early. You don’t get the full impact of that final “Avengers, assemble” without building a solid foundation and, you guessed it, Nav.It has you covered there as well.
After you have the basics of financial health down pat, you can shift focus to the Wealth and Legacy Health Checks. The Wealth Health Check will help you keep an eye on paying off those seemingly unceasing student loans, retirement accounts, brokerage accounts, and any other investments you may have.
Hitting these target points will put you in a position where you can buy all the ridiculous things mentioned earlier without the storm cloud of impending fiscal doom hanging out over your head. This is also how you take the reins on not only your future but your family’s future. Being mindful of how these numbers are growing will go a long way in decreasing financial stress and allow you to make moves with confidence knowing you’re prepared for just about anything that may come your way.
Insuring Your Empire and Legacy Lives on
The Legacy Health Check helps you protect what you’ve put your blood, sweat, and tears into building. Here you can keep track of how much health and life insurance you have, whether or not you have disability insurance, home insurance, who will have power of attorney for you, what’s in your will (because you should totally have a will), and any health directives you may have. If you didn’t get the vibe from that list, it’s all the stuff most people don’t want to talk about. . . I’m sorry, it’s all the stuff most people don’t even want to think about until it’s usually too late.
Let me take the morbid stigma out of this for you; every single successful person you know and don’t know already has all of this worked out. Gary V, Jay-Z, and every other letter using person already knows where everything is supposed to go when their time comes.
You owe it to yourself and your loved ones to take control of what happens with the greatness you’ve created. Also, in my personal experience, facing these less than thrilling points of discussion helps to quell the general heebie-jeebies that come when broaching these topics. Having the peace of mind that your hand-built empire will survive you and the people you care for most will be taken care of because of the choices you’ve made has helped many entrepreneurs sleep well at night.
Never Stop Learning
So, here we are. You have your budget on lock, you’ve mastered the concepts of financial wellness at work, you have 20/20 future sight, what else could we possibly have to offer you, oh ruler of all the sun touches? Just this one little, tiny truth; things change.
Whether they change overnight or they change over the course of decades, things will always change. Companies that were thought to be “too big to fail” are being put to that test as we speak thanks to a pandemic that no one could have possibly been prepared for. I grew up without a computer in my house until I was maybe 16 or 17 years old. Now I walk around with a phone that puts what I thought was universe-shattering technology to shame.
In order to get ahead and stay ahead of the competition, you must constantly and consistently seek knowledge. See someone prospering in another industry? Look into how they got there and see what parts of their plan you can add to your toolkit. Have peers that are thought leaders? Have a chat with them and see what insight you may be able to glean from the conversation. Do informational interviews with people within your industry that you feel have a similar vision or that you respect.
Financial Literacy is Built-In to Your Money Management app
The path of least resistance here would be reading. Pick up a book or two about an aspect in your business that you think might be a weakness for you or one that you want to focus on. Of course, in the digital age, articles are a fantastic way to increase your knowledge and get your gears turning on some ideas you may not have considered before. But you knew that last part because, here you are, increasing your knowledge, gaining new perspectives, and taking control of your present and future through knowledge.
As you’ve already seen, posts like this one have untold value for small business owners. You never know what little detail can make the difference in your game plan and take you from everyday struggle to the Forbes Small Giants list. The Nav.It app keeps articles like this and so many more at your fingertips so you never have to look far for that elusive piece of info that will change the game for you.
Can you see it now? I think it’s fairly clear why Nav.It should be a part of your success story. Defeat the demons of financial stress and anxiety, and achieve financial wellness at work via the good financial habits you learned and mastered right here with us.
Related Reads:
Downloadable Guide to Budgeting
Downloadable Guide to Emergency Funds
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Writer, rhymer, gamer: the easiest way to define the man known as Kenneth Medford. I’m a simple man who loves to learn and loves to help and I wander the digital world trying to find ways to sate my hunger for both. Basically, I’m Galactus but helpful.
Check out my other work here or reach out to me on LinkedIn.