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What Is the Biggest Money Mistake In Business?

By: Kalinda Rose Stevenson, PhD

I once took a daylong course called "Accounting For Non-Accountants." The CPA who taught the class said business owners don't need to do all of their own accounting, but they do need to know what is happening with their money in the business. He said that the biggest mistake business owners make is to hand over the accounting to someone else.

Many business owners get into business to do what they love to do. Paying attention to money feels like a big distraction, and they are eager to let someone else take care of it. People who get into business to do what they love can also be influenced by the idea that money will come if they do what they love to do.

I once heard a charismatic speaker talk about money in his business. He talked at length about his office manager who took care of his finances for him. He said that he was so grateful that he didn't have to think about money at all, and was free to do what he loved to do. He lavished praise on his office manager for her ability to take care of the money for him.

Less than a year later, I took another seminar with the same charismatic speaker who talked about how heartbroken he was. He had recently discovered that his wonderful office manager had embezzled more than $1 million from him. This brilliant speaker had made the mistake so many business owners make. He had handed over complete control of his finances to someone else, thinking that money was a distraction from his real work. In the process, he missed the fundamental difference between a hobby and business.

The IRS makes the difference between a hobby and a business clear. The primary function of any business is to make money. You can do what you love and forget about the money if you have a hobby. If you have a business, not paying attention to the money is the shortest path to business failure.

Isn't it odd to think that the primary reason to have a business is to make money, and yet many business owners don't want to deal with the money?

If the reason to have a business is to make money, why would you surrender control of the money to someone else? On the other hand, it is also shortsighted to become so involved in taking care of the finances that you have no time or energy left over to do the work you love to do. If you are spending much of your time doing data entry and paying bills, you are paying too much attention to your money.

This leads us to the question: What do you do about money in your business? The lifeblood of your business is money and knowledge of money is power. The fastest way to give up power in your business is to give control of your money to someone else.

Unfortunately, business success requires you to know what is happening with money in your business. You can never find the royal road to business success that will allow you to simply hand off all knowledge and responsibly about money to someone else. In the worst cases, you are at the mercy of embezzlers and incompetents. In the best cases, you'll never feel completely in control of your business, as long as you don't understand what is happening with the money in your business.

The solution is to understand that your business exists to make money. As a business owner, it is up to you to control the money coming in and going out of your business. You don't have to do the data entry, but you do need to understand the data.

Article Source: http://www.articlewheel.com

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