Sometimes You Need To Hit Rock Bottom
March 26, 2008
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“Success Is How High You Bounce When You Hit Rock Bottom” George Patton.
Sometimes you need to hit rock bottom before you can improve your life and begin to achieve your dreams. This may sound like madness. Surely most sane people wouldn’t want to wait until they’re in a heap of trouble before they try to improve their lives right?
The trouble is, when you’re living quite comfortably - ok job, decent salary, nice house, new car - you don’t have so much of an incentive to improve your life at all. You might dream of starting a business, travelling the world, giving up your job to go freelance or writing a best selling novel. But life is good - it’s easy, so those dreams never materialise because you don’t put them into action.
What happens if you lose that mediocre job with the decent salary? Pretty soon, your nice house, your new car and easy life could evaporate if you don’t do something drastic. And if you’re going through this now, it may sound ridiculous, but this could be the turning point in your life - it could also give you the incentive you need to achieve your dreams.
Every time I’ve had real problems, it’s always given me the kick I need in the right direction. When I was ill with PTSD, sometimes I felt I had no future. My life sucked. I had no job, I was in a bad relationship, I hated the place I was living in - I was afraid to go out of the house. To me, I was in a no win situation. Then, one day, it dawned on me. I was actually in a good situation, because no matter what I did, I had nothing to lose. Plus, if I didn’t do something pretty drastic, I was really going to be in the shit.
Looking back, sinking to the depths of despair did me the world of good. If I hadn’t been ill and I’d just carried on living my life the way I had beforehand, I would have probably got stuck in a comfort zone, with my head full of dreams that I would never make reality.
I bet you’ve heard dozens of stories about people who hit rock bottom before they went on to achieve success. And most of us know that people like Anthony Robbins and Oprah were total losers before turning their lives around and achieving international recognition and fortune. But, what about other non-famous (or not quite famous yet) people like you and me?
Christine O’Kelly is the perfect example of “a not quite famous yet person” who had to hit rock bottom before going on to achieve her dreams. In this article: Lies I Told Myself That Kept Me Broke And Lazy, she describes the lies she used to tell herself that kept her in her day job. But once she was in a position where she no longer had that job, she was able to replace her income quickly with few resources at her disposal. Christine is a perfect example of what you can achieve when you need to put food on the table and a roof over your head.
In Six Months In Business - How Am I Doing? Caroline Middlebrook describes how her world came crashing down in December when she split up from her partner of ten years. On the weekend of the break-up she wrote an ebook, in one sitting. But she felt as though she’d lost all purpose. Then in January - only two months after the break-up, she made more money online than she had made since packing in her job four months earlier.
What do you think? Have you ever hit rock bottom and used it as a motivator to turn your life around? Do you know anyone else who’s done the same thing? Or are you one of those extraordinary people who is quite capable of achieving your dreams, despite already living a comfortable and happy life? Please share in the comments section?
Cashflow Problems: Idiot Proof Your Business
March 25, 2008
Cashflow problems are the major cause of business ruin. In fact, any time I’ve been served with a County Court Judgement or a Winding Up order, it’s been because I’ve had cashflow problems.
So What Are Cashflow Problems?
Cashflow problems are caused when you have less money coming into your business than you have going out. They can be caused if you don’t make enough sales to cover your costs. But, this isn’t always the case. More often that not, they’re caused by people paying you late. Or, they can also be caused by not planning your cashflow properly.
For example, You might make sales of £15,000 per month and have costs of £10,000 per month. Now imagine, you’re getting paid three months after you invoice this work. Maybe people are simply paying you late. Or perhaps the work takes a few weeks to complete. Even though your costs are much lower than your expenses, you’ll still wind up with problems, if you have no cash in the bank to begin with.
By the end of month 3, even though you’ve made £45,000, only £15,000 will have gone into your bank and £30,000 will have gone out. So, you’ll be £15,000 overdrawn. To avoid this, you’ll probably pay your suppliers late instead and that’s when you’ll start getting people threatening you with legal action and trying to bankrupt you.
So How Do You Prevent Cashflow Problems
I’ve not yet found a way to eradicate these problems completely, as you’ll always get a..holes who deliberately pay late, or don’t pay at all. Often these are big companies who can afford to pay, but it causes a trickle down effect, as it puts other businesses like yours in a position where they’re unable to pay their bills.
Threatening to kneecap the people who do this, with a baseball bat or similar item might prove effective, but it could also get you into a whole heap of trouble.
So, here’s some methods I’ve used personally and some that I’ve not used - to my detriment, to help prevent cashflow problems:
More Work That Pays Immediately
When I first stepped in to save my ex-husband’s business, it was obvious that he had two problems. He had too much cash going out and he wasn’t doing enough work to cover his expenses.
The solution to the first problem was fairly simple - I did a whole heap of marketing to make sure we got plenty of work in that paid immediately. Even though this work didn’t pay as well, it was important, as the bank account was empty. But I also did plenty of marketing for work that didn’t pay straight away, as it paid more per sale; because it was obvious that more work and the cutting of unneccessary expenses was all that was needed. Well, almost all that was needed, but more on that later.
Cut Unneccessary Expenses
Any unneccessary expenses which didn’t contribute to the growth of the business went. Or at least I did my best to get rid of most of them, but when you’re trying to help an idiot, it isn’t easy. Luckily, most of these expenses weren’t even related to the business, although they appeared to be initially. For example - it is quite possible to run up a £2500 phone bill ($5000) over ten days on some porn related Internet sites.
Hopefully, you won’t have those type of expenses to wipe out, but if you’re in a partnership with someone who runs up bills like that, you need to get out straight away. Saving those types does them no good, as they’ll just carry on doing the same old things.
Look for other expenses you have that you don’t really need. Do you pay for staff mobile phones? Get rid of them. Just give them an allowance each month if they have to use their own phones for work. Do you allow them to take company vehicles home and pay for their fuel. Cut that out too. Do you rent expensive equipment that’s useful, but not necessary? Get rid of it.
Draw An Invisible Line On Your Bank Account
Once you begin sorting out your cashflow problems, begin drawing an invisible line on your bank account. Basically, you increase it gradually each month and you don’t allow anyone to draw any cash from the business that will take you below that amount because you might need it in an emergency.
This will work well for most people. It was working well for me. Within a short while, I got our invisible line up to £10,000 ($20,000) and it stayed there for a while. It will work well for you too, if you are disciplined and don’t go into business with an idiot.
But unfortunately, after the first few months, the ass…e I was in partnership with decided he wanted every single penny of that cash. We were snowed under at work and we only had one cashcard. So, he simply emptied the account and told me the machine had swallowed the card because he’d keyed in the wrong number. Also, he hid the bank statement and told me it hadn’t arrived. When I asked the bank for a copy and saw what had happened, it was “bye bye idiot”.
But this system will work well if you don’t go into partnership with an idiot. Most people who go into business have the best interests of the business at heart and hopefully you will choose someone who won’t deliberately jeapordize your business.
This lack of cash could have crippled my business. I was no longer in a bad partnership, but I was entering an extremely busy time (Carlisle floods) with no cash in the bank and a lot of money owing to me. And I was now the sole owner of a business that was once again in financial trouble. It was obvious that a lot of the work I was doing was not going to pay straight away, so here’s what I did:
Negotiate Discounts for Early Payers
I asked two people who we were doing a reasonably large amount of work for to pay us within 30 days, if we gave them a large discount. This might not sound like a brilliant deal, but when many people are paying 90 days later it is and it worked. I was under pressure to pay other bills and this brought the cash into the bank to pay them. The bad news was that my ex-husband still had access to the account, but I’ll cover that problem in the “banks” part of this series.
Always Chase Up Your Debts: Aside from having no cash reserves, I had two major problems. Firstly, because I didn’t have any cash spare, I couldn’t afford to take on someone to chase up any debts I was able to chase and I simply didn’t have the time myself. It was a vicious circle and with hindsight, I should have made it a priority to chase up money owing to us.
Never get yourself into this situation. Know your legal rights and set up a good debt collection system from the beginning. Otherwise you’ll wind up as I did with large companies owing you massive amounts and other large companies threatening you with court and bankruptcy for relatively small amounts. It’s shit, but it can happen.
People who don’t want to pay at all can also cause problems, but there’s plenty of stuff you can do to make sure this doesn’t happen. Read my advice on “guarantees” to avoid this situation.
Never Allow A Third Party To Be In Control Of Your Debt Collection: Before my husband joined Rainbow International, I asked the MD if they planned to collect more debts centrally in the future. He assured me that they didn’t, which was important, as I’d read that it was important to avoid a franchisor who did this. I don’t know if he lied, or he just hadn’t accurately visualised the future, because after a while, almost all debts were collected centrally.
Unfortunately, they didn’t collect the debts effectively for a long time. So I wasn’t getting paid. And the worst thing was, we weren’t allowed to chase up those debts ourselves. If we tried, we were told we would receive no more insurance work.
Never put yourself in position where anyone has this amount of control over money owing to you.
A Note On Overdrafts: An overdraft might be right for some people to assist cashflow. But, if you are going to go down that route make sure you’re using the overdraft as a prevention rather than a cure and do bear in mind that you’ll have to pay it back at some point. In my personal situation, an overdraft wouldn’t have been good.
Rainbow International did encourage franchisees to take out an overdraft, but there was no way I was going to do so just so they could pay me several months later. When things got really tough, I stopped paying them until they began paying me. Strangely enough, they didn’t think this was fair, but then some people are just plain stupid.
Luckily, their parent company were a lot smarter and eventually they realised people couldn’t run businesses on fresh air. Allegedly, they eventually got rid of the MD and recruited a team to chase debts owing to franchisees.
Use Decent Software To Forecast Cashflow: Forecast your cashflow right from the start. In the beginning, I used to use a pen and paper for marketing plans and a spreadsheet for cashflow projections. Nowadays I use Cashflow Forecasting Software and you should too. It’s far easier and it will save you a heap of time.
As you can see, cashflow can cause you huge problems. Hopefully, you won’t go into partnership with an idiot, so you’ll never wind up in a situation like I did. And if you’ve been tempted to go into a partnership that may not have been right for you, hopefully this article will put you off.
And if you’re thinking i was stupid for going into that particular partnership to begin with, you might be right. It was stupid mistake that anyone could make. To make sure you avoid making it too, you might want to check out this article: Business - Sometimes You Should Give Up.
And Don’t Forget The Following Points:
Be careful who you go into a partnership with.
Use cashflow forecasting software.
Draw an invisible line in your bank account.
Make sure you’re always doing some work that will bring in immediate cash.
Use guarantees to avoid those who don’t like to pay.
Put a good debt collection system into place.
Consider discounting for early payers.
Don’t put yourself in a position where you are not able to chase your own debts.
I hope this part in the business problem series was useful to you. If you enjoyed it, click here to subscribe in an RSS reader, so you don’t miss the remained of the series.
And if you missed the earlier articles in the series you can check them out below.
There’s No Business Problem That Can’t Be Solved
Risk and Money In Business - The Rules
Business Partnership - Is It Financial Suicide?
Do you have any questions? Do you have a cashflow problem that’s worrying you? Or do you have more advice for people who are suffering cashflow problems? Please share in the comments section.
27 Ways to Fuel Your Imagination And Come Up With Great Ideas
March 24, 2008
When you’re first learning about business, it may be tempting to read nothing but business books, blogs and articles. But to succeed, you also need to do activities that will fuel your imagination and enable you to come up with great ideas. And here’s 27 things you can do to enhance your imagination now:
Meditation: Even if you only meditate for 10 minutes at a time, you’ll soon begin to feel the benefits. If you think meditation may not be for you, because you find it difficult to switch off, don’t worry - many people feel like that to begin with. But, once you’ve done it a few times, it gets easier and it really does work.
Never tried meditating before? Don’t worry, it’s easy to learn. Check out these great resources:
How To Meditate: What You Didn’t Know About Empty Mind Techniques And Your Bliss.
8 Minute Meditation
Get Out Of Your Body: Astral Travel is something I’ve only skimmed the surface of so far. It involves leaving your physical body behind to explore this world and also the Astral Planes. It takes quite a bit of practise, but it’s worth trying and it’s certainly a great way to boost your imagination.
Some people worry about the safety aspect of Astral Travel. So far as I’m aware, it’s quite safe. Try doing it when you have some peace and quiet though and if you share a bed, don’t do it when someone else is lying beside you. If they move about too much, you’ll wind up back in your physical body faster than you can say, “Quit snoring.”
If Astral Travel is something that appeals to you, you can learn more about it in: Our Ultimate Reality
Morning Writing: If I’m looking to come up with an idea, or a solution to a particular problem, I’ll think about it before falling asleep. Then as soon as I wake up in the morning, I’ll begin to write whatever comes out. This can work really well, as your subconscious mind still functions whilst you’re asleep.
You can write by hand, or on your computer - whichever feels best for you. The important thing is to begin as soon as you wake up. If you’re a coffee junky like me, just flick on the switch and get your coffee when you’re done writing. It’s much easier than it sounds once you’ve got into the swing of writing this way.
If you enjoy morning writing, I recommend checking out The Artists Way for more great ways to boost your creativity.
Get Into The Flow: Can you imagine experiencing a state where your work is a pure joy and your day flies by, no matter how hard you work? To do this, you need to get into the flow. And Jonathan Fields explains how to do that in this great article.
Exercise: Any exercise that allows your mind to wander whilst you’re doing it is good. Do what feels right for you. My preferences are walking and swimming.
Self Hypnosis: A great self hypnosis CD or download can really help to stimulate your imagination. Here’s a link to the downloads that I use regularly.
Doing Something Different: Try doing an activity you’ve never done before. It might just open your mind up to new ideas. What about a sporting activity such as climbing or kayaking? You could even try your hand at painting, or a dance class. The possibilities are endless. And you have nothing to lose. If you don’t enjoy it, you can always try something else.
Read Stuff You Don’t Usually Read: Reading materials on a topic you know nothing about is a great way to expand your knowledge and enhance your imagination. If you’re not sure where to begin, here’s a few ideas:
National Geographic
The History Channel
Science Mag
Unesco Culture
Talk To New People: Talking to people is a great way to share ideas and fuel your imagination. Speaking to people you’ve never met before can often be the trigger for new ideas. Children and the elderly can also be great sources for sparking your imagination.
Research Business In Other Fields: Research businesses in fields other than your own. What do they do that’s really great? How do they do it? What could you do to apply similar ideas to your business?
Do Things To Stimulate Each Sense: Do activities that will stimulate all six senses: touch, taste, smell, vision, hearing and the six sense. Also try blocking out one sense to enhance the others when you’re trying an activity - eg. by blindfolding yourself, or cutting out all sound.
Capture Your Ideas: When you come up with ideas, write them down. I keep a notebook with me to do this, as it’s easier to forget things that you think you’ll remember later. Another interesting way to capture your ideas is by creating a visual diary that contains images of your ideas as well as writing. You can find some great tips on how to do this here.
Play Games - Doing puzzles such as crosswords, chequers (drafts), scrabble, charades, tetris and pictionary. I’m enjoying Bloxorg at the moment. It’s similar to Tetris and was forwarded to me by Britney via StumbleUpon, so if you get addicted you can blame her. Thomas Edison was known to use word puzzles to stimulate his imagination.
Use Scenario Analysis: Use Scenario Analysis to explore the variety of possible consequences of taking a particular course of action. As well as helping you to make decisions this will open your mind to new things. You can read more about Scenario Analysis here.
Choose What Happens Next: When you come to the end of a good book, do you often wonder what happens to the main characters next? Try creating that story in your mind. Books like Alice In Wonderland and Charlie and The Chocolate Factory are wonderful for this exercise.
Read or Reread Children’s Books: When you’re a child, anything you imagine seems possible. If you can imagine it, it’s believable. But when you become an adult work, bills and worst of all - OTHER PEOPLE’s OPINIONS, can begin to stifle these possibilities. Reading wonderful children’s books, such as The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and the rest of the Narnia series can help to open up your mind again. A book I’m really enjoying right now, which was written for both children and adults is: Runemarks by Joanne Harris.
Art: Looking at art can be really inspiring. Even if you don’t have time to visit an Art Gallery, you can browse some amazing pictures on the internet. I’ve found some great stuff through StumbleUpon.
Use SCAMPER To Generate New Ideas For Products Or Services: Scamper is an acronym for: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, Reverse. This article explains how it can be used as a checklist to help generate new ideas.
Photoshop Your Vision Of The Future: If you believed anything was possible, it would really open your mind to new ideas right? Well, Stirling has this wonderful idea about creating a photoshop image to remind you of your goals. Do check out this article to learn more about it and don’t forget to watch the video of the guy walking on water.
Declutter: Have a really good spring clean. I’ll admit it, I don’t exactly love cleaning the house either, but clearing the clutter from your house seems to declutter your mind too, leaving more room for creativity.
Be ruthless - get rid of everything you no longer use or need. And don’t let the task overwhelm you. Concentrate on one room at a time. Once you’ve attacked the first room, you’ll feel the benefits and you’ll be keen to tackle the rest. And if you really don’t know where to begin, check out this great resource: Declutter Fast - Get Your Home In Order Now.
Uncover Your Past Lives: Have you often wondered what you were in a past life? Are you curious as to what you have to learn in this life? Then why not try uncovering your past lives? I don’t think it matters whether the past life you uncover is really yours or not. But going through the process of exploring your past lives is a great way to fuel your imagination. And you can do it at home. You can also explore how to do this in: Our Ultimate Reality.
Freewriting: This is a great way to come up with new ideas. Just begin writing, whatever comes out and continue for ten minutes. Don’t worry about grammar and don’t stop to correct typos. If you’ve not done it before, it can be difficult, but once you get used to doing it, you’ll always be able to do it.
Freewriting On A Topic: This is really useful when you’re looking for a solution to a particular business problem. Just think about the problem for a little while, then grab a book or magazine at random and freewrite on the title. Once you get used to doing this, you’ll find yourself connecting the book title to your problem and you can really come up with some interesting and innovative solutions this way.
Taste: When you lead busy lives it’s often too easy to eat without really tasting what your eating. Try eating simple foods, with different tastes whilst concentrating on nothing but the taste of the food. Your senses will be heightened even more if you blindfold yourself while you do this. If you’re a writer and you really want to experiment with taste and use it to enhance your writing, some people recommend licking the walls. I haven’t tried this, but if it appeals to you, it’s meant to work really well.
Learning Opens Your Mind To New Ideas: Set a goal to learn, or study one thing this year that is not related to business. Choose something that appeals strongly to you, whether it is learning a language, a sport, a musical instrument, art, history, science or anything else you can think of. If you feel that you can’t possibly spare the time to learn anything new, remember that only ten minutes a day is 60.66 hours a year.
Challenge Your Beliefs: Write down a few statements that you strongly believe are true - then come up with as many opposing arguments as you can. If you struggle to come up with opposing arguments, use the Internet to research some. For example you may have a list something like this: The Death Penalty is Wrong; Capitalism is Evil; The Devil Does Not Exist; Russia is Dangerous Place; Vegetables Are Good For You (note - these are not necessarily my beliefs, just ideas for you to challenge).
This article is the second one in a two part series. If you enjoyed it, why not check out: So What Is This Stupid Box In Your Head?
Which of these ideas appeal to you most? Have you tried any before? Which worked best for you? Would you like to share any other activities that you do to help boost your imagination? Please let us know in the comments section.
You’re All Absobloodylutely Amazing
March 23, 2008
Over the last week or so, I was strugging with just about every single aspect of my life and I confessed, in this post that I was even struggling to blog. And I also shared the fact that I’ve been having problems with Sky TV, who stole from me.
I received an overwhelming number of supportive messages from many of you - it will probably take me a year to reply to them all. And you have no idea how much they helped. Also, many of you stumbled the Sky TV post to ensure it was seen by thousands of people and I’m sure that will make a huge difference.
Knowing that you’re not alone makes things seem so much better when you’re having problems. So I decided to write a thank you post to you all - very basic and to the point as usual. Then I read this post by Joanna Young. She uses a really cool quote by Luciano de Crescenzo to describe how all her supporters have helped her and let them know how grateful she is.
Well, after I read that - a plain old thank you just didn’t seem good enough. It was clear that a bit more effort was required. So, I started again tonight and I thought I’d look to Liz Strauss’s blog for a bit of inspiration. Well, I’d been so wrapped up in my own problems that I hadn’t realised that Liz has also been struggling. And she used this wonderful post to thank all her supporters, describing them as wildflowers.
And it dawned on me - I just couldn’t express my thanks as creatively as Joanna or Liz had, because I don’t speak the same way they do. And any attempt to do so would have made me look a bit of a tw.t, as it just wouldn’t have sounded genuine and you’d all be wondering what I’d been smoking.
So, thank you to everyone who has supported me recently - You’re all absobloodylutely amazing.
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