Monthly Archives for March, 2011

To Everything There is a Time

To Everything There is a Time

To everything there is a season. We gather information, processes it/think it through, and act on it. GATHER During gather time, I read, listen to interviews, watch videos and movies and talk to everyone I meet.  This is a rich, productive discussion and sharing time.  I share what I find and my initial thoughts. Processing […]

What I look for right now on my Finan...

What I look for right now on my Financial Statements

When I look at the statements for my bookkeeping company every month, I’m looking for several things: Did I make a profit? In a service business, you should pretty much expect to make a profit from the get go. What’s my gross margin*? For a service business, I like to see between 40-60%.  Some business […]

Keep Going

Keep Going

I watched Bourne Identity over the weekend.  One of the things that really struck me was that he didn’t stop.  Before we get going here, I recognize this is a movie and therefore may be somewhat artificial, but A) I’ve seen how this works in real life and B) I’ll take lessons from Bourne any […]

Financial Statements

Financial Statements

The new workbook is posted under the members tab.  Here is a synopsis. Your Profit & Loss tells you how much money you brought in, how much you paid for expenses and how much was left. Your Balance Sheet tells you what you have or own in the business and how you paid for it.  […]

Other Numbers of Business

Other Numbers of Business

This month we are looking at the numbers of business.  I don’t intend for us to get too deeply into any particular numbers, rather that we get familiar with them and, more importantly, comfortable with them.  Numbers are the language of business.  We use numbers all the time to talk about time, for instance and […]

Economics and Small business

Economics and Small business

The term economics refers to the study of the movement of money at the population level.  Economics looks at the aggregate of all the grocery shopping (for instance) by everyone and makes inferences and predictions based on how much, how often or how little we spend as a group. What does that have to do […]

February Reading

February Reading

At Home: a short history of private life by Bill Bryson.  An interesting exploration of home mostly in England and some in the US with riffs about historical bits – inventors, disease and governments.   Spies: a novel by Michael Frayn.  I enjoyed it, but didn’t think it was a happy novel.  Another of his […]