3 Ways to Crush the Recession and Find Lasting Financial Freedom in Your Business

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the inflation rate for September was 8.2%, which means everything is just more expensive. It probably has impacted your business, from inventory to overhead and even labor. You probably have also felt these increases in these expenses in your personal life.

Today I’m sharing three tools to help crush the recession and piece together financial freedom.

Use the Profit First System

You need a cash management system. I use the Profit First System because it's simple and ensures that I spend and save the right amount on the right things at the correct times, keeping me on that path to financial freedom.

Profit First is a cash management system for businesses. It’s adapted to help companies to grow and be profitable from Day One. It’s the envelope your grandma used for her daily budget management, modernized for your business.

Profit First helps you focus on prioritizing your spending and your sales. It works by forcing you to use the cash you have on hand to pay for things coming down the road, and then it teaches you to plan and make a plan to bring in more cash.

Evaluate Your Team

Do you have the right people in the right places? That’s a big question that CEOs need to ask themselves.

I have my team take both the DiSC and the Working Genius assessments because they help me know my team better and how to communicate with them, what tasks they’ll excel at, and which ones they won’t enjoy.

Then, to ensure that I have each of them in the right place and for the best chance of success, I follow these steps:

1. Write down each task or job that needs to get done in your business

2. Write down next to the task how much time it takes to complete both monthly and weekly

3. Write down the traits or characteristics that the task will require to be done well

4. On a separate sheet of paper, write down all your team members

5. Next to their names, write how many hours they work

6. Next to each of the hours, write down their personality traits and strengths

Reviewing the DiSC and Working Genius assessments will help you get to know your team well. Once you have both lists written, compare your list of tasks to your team members, and start assigning names. You may have a gap when you're all done.

The gaps could be a task that doesn't fit with any team member or needs more time assigned to it to get it done well. Or maybe you discover you have team members who still need to have all their time set.

Being in Crisis Mode

When you get into crisis mode, you do anything to get out of that. Whether consciously doing it or not, we try to get out of an uncomfortable area, so we go into crisis mode.

This happens when there are drastic changes in the business, like losing a key employee or not having enough money to pay a bill or payroll. And it's times like these when we really need to ensure that we don't compromise a business's long-term vision or longevity for just short-term temporary relief.

Do the following exercise to help you identify some of those opportunities and identify them as true opportunities or as trapped.

1. Take out a sheet of paper. At the top middle, write down the following:

• your vision for your business

• your ten-year goal for your business

• who you serve

• what you sell

2. Write down the opportunities you're considering doing or taking, and ask yourself these questions:

• How will it impact the business in the next ten minutes if I do this now?

• How will this impact the business in the next ten months?

• How will this impact the business in ten years?

• Does it help me reach my vision in ten minutes, ten months, or ten years?

• Does this opportunity allow me to serve my customers in the next ten minutes, ten months, in ten years?

3. For each question and timeframe,

• If you honestly answer that this opportunity will help you, circle it or highlight it.

• If there is a little bit of doubt or hesitation, cross it off the list.

4. Implement the ONE item from your list that will have the most significant impact in the next 10 minutes.

If you’ve crossed off all the opportunities, it’s back to the drawing board to brainstorm more! You could ask your employees, customers, or other stores for ideas. You could see what your competitors or other businesses in your niche are doing right.

Always run the opportunities through this exercise because it will help you weed out the traps and stay focused on your true path.

Did you know I host monthly webinars where I talk about topics such as bookkeeping, growing your business, and Profit First? Click here to register for the next one!