This Thursday I will be talking in a round table discussion format with a great group of other industry experts about how to take your business to the next level.
I will hopefully be talking about something I know Social Marketing and how to integrate it into other Marketing campaigns you may; or I suppose may not be running.
But what I wanted to touch on was an area that I admit I am terrible at, and it’s something the other speakers are talking about, and that is Financing and Money.
Money effect’s our life’s and every part about it seems to affect us and our culture, from the moment we are born, even perhaps before that if you asked our parents.
I always say I wish my school was more advanced at the time and had allocated educational time to teach us naïve kids about money and financing. I’m surprised sometimes I can manage to balance a checkbook (Ok i admit this too, my wife does it). When it comes to the end of my business year and the sudden arrival and denial of accounting time that I’m almost in complete panic about what I should do, what I should have done as if it was a new thing and I had never done it before.
Personally I think financing is one of those things that I feel I should know a lot more about and that perhaps I have always been too afraid to ask for advice, because I believe it is such an important part in our lives and I should actually know this information.
It wasn’t until today that I heard one of the upcoming presentations for this Thursday mentioning specifically an approach to this problem, and that I may not be alone. That especially for businesses banks are looking for exact numbers and not just estimates out of the back of your mind ( I am good at making those up). And believe it or not that there are advisors, banks and normal people like you and me out there whose business is to help you find that information, and what to do with it, and help us benefit from the knowledge.
With the way the social interaction is changing, I believe this is an ideal opportunity to change that stigma of I don’t know what to ask when it comes to money and financing. That online world has presented us an open and somewhat unlimited and interactive forum in which to learn and ask questions about some crazy subjects such as paying bills, mortgages, registered retirement savings plans, stocks, financial investments and yes and probably the best way to balance a checkbook.
So if I filter out my spam tweets that are telling me how to make a gazillion dollars a day by tweeting, and follow some of the new links to financial blogs and blogs that have been produced by banks or investors that perhaps at the end of the year I may surprise my self and my accountant and at the least have my receipts put into the correct folders.
So my simple question to you is are you honestly afraid of money, banks, investments and how it is controlling your life. Do you wish the education system would have spent more time or given you more resources in getting you up to speed about what it would mean when you left school. Are you still looking for more interaction on how to manage your mortgage or how to successfully budget for the financial requirements of your monthly living? Perhaps a massive area that could have changed many lives is what you may need to know to start up a business or to go into a business venture.
Please let us know, are are you in control of the $$ or is it in control of you?