Episode 1 of the show. If you own a business and you have ever checked your bank balance from a beach chair, this one is for you. Seven minutes on the only three numbers that let you actually leave, and the one move to make this week.
What this episode is about
In August I spent a week at a beach house in Sea Girt. Saturday morning I sat on the porch with the laptop for two hours, closed it, and went to the beach. I could do that because I had already checked my true cash position on Friday. Most owners can’t, not because the work is hard, but because they don’t have a number they trust. They open the banking app, look at the balance, feel a feeling, and carry that feeling to the sand.
The balance is real. What you think it means is not. A piece of it is payroll tax you are holding for the government. A piece is sales tax you collected for somebody else. A piece is a bill payment that has not cleared yet. And the money your customers owe you is not in the number at all.
Chapters
- 0:00 Checking your bank balance from a beach chair
- 1:15 The only three numbers that matter
- 2:07 What the bank balance really is
- 2:49 Why the feeling is worse than useless
- 3:44 The four-second habit
- 4:17 The fix is subtraction: your true cash position
- 5:04 The wall: a separate account for tax money
- 5:42 The Trip File: my parents’ cruise
- 6:30 Free checklist, a call, and the newsletter
The one move this week
Cash in the bank, plus what’s coming in this month, minus what’s going out this month. What’s going out includes the tax money you are holding. What is left is your true cash position, the number that is actually yours. Then build the wall: open a separate account for tax money and move it the day the money lands. Now the balance stops lying to you about the tax part.
Transcript
So here’s the deal. If you own a business and you’ve ever checked your bank balance from a beach chair, this one’s for you.
I’m Shawn. I keep the books for small businesses, and I plan trips for families like mine. In August, I spent a week at a beach house in Sea Girt, and Saturday morning I sat on the front porch with my laptop for an hour or two. Friday, the books were already done, so Saturday I was just making sure nobody needed me. A couple notes to coaching clients, finishing booking my parents’ cruise. I set the week so I could actually leave. Then I closed the laptop and went to the beach.
Most owners I know could not do that. Not because the work is hard, because they don’t have a number they trust, so they never really leave. They open their banking app, they look at the balance, and they feel a feeling. And that feeling follows them to the beach. They’re on vacation in their body and still at work in their head. I did that for years, and that Saturday I didn’t because I’d already checked the only three numbers that matter. The porch was just the setup. The knowing happened on Friday.
So this is about one thing. Put that trip on the calendar first. Then you build the business that lets you take it, and that’s the whole point, isn’t it? And it starts with the number.
So here’s what I actually knew that Saturday. It wasn’t the balance. It was only three things: cash in the bank, who owed me money over the next month, and what was due over the next month. Bills, yes, and the tax money I was holding that was never mine. Cash in the bank, money coming, money going. That’s the whole dashboard. Not a fancy one, not forty widgets. Three numbers, and then one more. What’s actually left? That’s your true cash position.
I checked them on Friday, the day before. So when I sat down on that porch, I wasn’t doing a forensic investigation of my own company. I was just finishing the week. Two hours of work, not a whole week of peeking at the banking app every time I got out of the water. So if you don’t have those three things before you leave, you don’t have a vacation. You have a laptop that follows you to the sand.
And here’s what the balance really is, because this is the part nobody wants to hear. A piece of it is payroll tax you’re holding for the government. That money’s not yours. You’re just the middleman. Another piece is sales tax you collected for somebody else. Same story. Yet another piece is a bill payment that went out but hasn’t cleared yet, so it looks like you have it, and you don’t. And the money your customers owe you isn’t even in the number. It’s sitting in someone else’s account wearing the word receivable like that’s a comfort.
The bank balance is real. What you think it means is not. It’s a eulogy for money that’s already spoken for. If you make decisions off that number, you’re deciding off a screenshot of timing, not your business’s health.
That’s why the feeling, that feeling you carry around when you are away, is worse than useless. A big deposit lands and you feel successful. It’s great. Lots of money in the bank. Three bills clear the next morning and you’re broke again. Neither one’s information. That’s timing, not health. You didn’t get better at business between Tuesday and Wednesday. The calendar just moved, and that timing is what follows you to the beach. You book the week away, then you spend it refreshing an app, trying to turn a feeling back into a fact.
So you need real numbers, not feels-like numbers. The feeling will lie to you in both directions. It’ll tell you you’re rich when you’re holding someone else’s tax money, and it’ll tell you you’re broke when you are fine and two invoices just haven’t landed. I lived in that swing for years. It’s a stupid way to run a company, and it’s a worse way to sit in a beach chair.
Checking the balance to know how you’re doing is the most common thing business owners do, and it’s the least reliable instrument in the building. We do it because it’s right there. Open the app, look at a number, get a feeling. It takes four seconds, so it feels like management. It isn’t. It’s just the only gauge most of us were handed. The balance can be high, and you can still be in trouble. It can be low, and you can still be fine. Until you separate those two things, every week away from the desk is a little bit of a guess. That’s the habit, not a character flaw, just a bad instrument.
The fix is subtraction, not a fancy dashboard. Cash in the bank plus what’s coming in minus what’s going out. What’s going out includes the taxes you’re holding. That’s your true cash position. That’s what’s actually yours. Do that once and the feeling gets quieter. Do that a few times and the pit in your stomach starts to go away. Now you finally stop asking the app to tell you how well you slept last night.
I’m going to give you a page at the end of this. I’m telling you that now so you don’t think I just talked you out of a dashboard and then handed you a complicated one. It’s a 15-minute checklist, a one-page snapshot, same three numbers. You can fill it on a Saturday morning and go to the beach, and if you only do it on a napkin this week, you already won.
Now the wall. Open a separate account for tax money. Move it the day the money lands. Not a process you remember, a wall you don’t have to think about, because willpower is a terrible accounting system. You will forget. You will borrow from the tax pile on a slow week. You’ll feel generous with money that was never yours.
So do it this week. Open that account. Move this week’s tax money. Look at what’s left. Now the balance stops lying to you about the tax part, and that’s the whole move. Not a new personality, a wall, and the wall is what lets you leave. Which brings me to my parents.
My parents are retired. They just got back from seven nights on a Celebrity cruise out of Miami, a real balcony because that’s what my dad asked for. I found a ship that fit them and a great spot to eat right near the port the night before. The decisions were all theirs. Drinks package or not, excursions and which port, the specialty dinners. They did it all in the app, and my job was to stay out of the way.
And here’s the thing, nobody on that ship was checking a banking app. That’s what retired looks like. And when you go on vacation, you should act like you’re retired too. The numbers are handled. The wall is up. The app stays closed. That’s what a booked trip looks like from my side. The planning gets done early, so the trip is the only thing left to think about.
That’s the episode. If this helped, subscribe. That’s how the next owner finds it. There’s a link below for a 15-minute Money Peace Checklist, free, no call, not a complicated dashboard, just cash in the bank, what’s coming in, what’s going out. That’s your true cash position. If the honest version of your numbers is the thing you keep putting off, the second link is 30 minutes with me, and you leave knowing your true cash position. Oh, and if you want one short email a month, one story, a tip, no pitch, the newsletter link is there too.
Now put that trip on the calendar first. Do it. That’s the whole point. See you next week.
Links from the episode
- Free tool: the 15-Minute Money Peace Checklist
- Thirty minutes with me: book a Bookkeeping Strategy Call
- One short email a month: the newsletter
