A little while back, somebody within a Facebook community I am part of shared a situation about the financial struggles they were having in their business and was seeking guidance.
I was immediately struck by the number of women that responded to this post stating; “You have a money-mindset issue.”
It really got me thinking about all of the men that I work with. I’ve worked with a lot of successful men who have built multiple 6 and 7 figure businesses and it occurred to me that I never once heard them talk about their money-mindset issue.
I began to wonder…
Do women automatically get painted with a money-mindset issue and…is it really a money-mindset issue?
Don’t get me wrong…
There are mindset issues that can totally get in the way of your success. But can we stop for a minute and talk about math? A business exists to generate profit, and the only way that a business generates profit is if you earn more than you spend. There are some simple mathematical basics that will help you to determine if you have a math or a mindset problem.
You don't have a #mindset problem, you probably have a math problem. #Entrepreneurship Click To TweetLet me break it down for you:
TOP LINE REVENUE – ALL OF YOUR EXPENSES = PROFIT
You have to be able to drill down to those numbers and understand how you’re pricing your products and services. Maybe the way that you are pricing things is being skewed by your mindset and you’re not charging enough money. Or maybe you’re underestimating what your operating costs are. Therefore you’re not pricing things with a large enough margin. Unless you are charging for a serviced-based offering that is solely based on your delivery, I have a hard time understanding how mindset gets in the way of you operating a financially successful business.
It’s not mindset, it’s math.
You’ve got to look at the numbers and measure what matters. You need to understand what you’re selling, what is generating the biggest profit, where you are spending money, where you are wasting money and what things you need to start spending money on.
When you start to understand the math in your business, you can make better logical decisions around how to grow your business.
When I first opened my retail store and I found out that I owed $100,000 in inventory and I didn’t have $100,000, I had to eat some humble pie. I needed to learn about restocking and cash flow and everything else in between. It had nothing to do with my mindset. It had everything to do with math. It had everything to do with understanding the financial metrics in my business and how the math worked.
The problem that I have with money-mindset is that it’s flawed. Your mindset might not be strong enough for you to be able to charge what you’re worth in your business and maybe that is a part of it, but it is not all of it.
You need to understand the metrics in your business and you need to measure the things that matter. You need to understand mathematically where the problem is in your business.
On a basic level, if you’re not making any money, you’re either not selling enough or your spending too much. If you drill down and look at what you’re selling, you can figure out what things you should sell more of and what things you should stop spending money on now. You can actually make logical decisions based on math versus based on “I feel like buying that thing for my business.”
As a whole, we’ve got to stop acting like women have all of this mindset junk that gets in the way of creating financially successful businesses.
It’s just not true.
It's not your #mindset, it's simple #math. Click To TweetI do not hear men talk about their money-mindset issues and I fundamentally believe this is something we’ve got to stop doing.
When you drill down on the math, maybe there is a mindset issue and if that’s the issue, diagnose it. But, maybe it’s a marketing issue, and if that’s the issue, diagnose it. Maybe it’s a pricing issue, and if that’s the issue, diagnose that. But you cannot diagnose these things in isolation of looking at the numbers so please, for the love of all things business related, stop trying to do that.
You are doing yourself a disservice as a business owner if you don’t understand or look at the numbers in your business.
If you stick your head in the sand and you don’t look at your profits vs. losses, your balance sheet, your expenses or your bank account on a regular basis, then you’re not really running a business.
It’s the numbers in your business and it’s the data that you can glean from those numbers that will help you grow and scale and create more money and help you serve more happy customers in your business.
Remember:
Don’t buy into the “mindset” belief until you’ve done the work on math. I’m not trying to say mindset is never an issue, if it’s a real mindset issue, then diagnose it and get some help. But before you default to assuming it’s your mindset, do the math.
Tell me, what is REALLY getting in the way of your business? Is it a mindset issue or is it a math issue? I’m going to guess that it’s a math issue or a marketing issue far more often than it is a mindset issue and those two things are 100% within your control to fix.
Leave me a comment and let me know about a time where you experienced a math issue within your business, and share what you did to overcome it.
2 thoughts on “Is it a Money-Mindset Issue or Simple Math?”
Hi Lisa, I love this. As a consulting CFO many of my clients are freaked out about cash flow. My crunching the numbers for them, showing them exactly how much money they need to bring to reach a target and when, calms them down and gives them peace of mind. Showing them cash flow projections also has a calming effect.
Lisa, you highlighted the mindset issue, not simple math. Because it is always indifference from all facilities.