At 7.1lbs she really is the perfect little bundle of joy ?
Having said that, she did give us a scare as Florrie was very nearly born in the car park!! Yes, ‘real’ labour, from start to finish lasted probably a little less than 30 minutes.
Suddenly the earlier part of the day chilling and eating take away food and watching Netflix seemed a distant memory.
There was no time to do anything other than engage my instinctive birthing partner skills, remain calm, focused and engage my two ears and one mouth in that order. I suppose I did manage to give myself a silent high five for my driving skills as we moved very quickly across the RVI car park… Although to be fair at 11pm on a Friday night even this bit was pretty straight forward.
The wonderful Florrie entered our world and as the next few surreal hours passed us by we were even treated to a few hours of well earned sleep as Florrie swaddled up in her crib slept like a baby!!!
Then all of a sudden it was a lovely sunny crisp November Saturday morning…..now this is when I have a confession to make!
Someone once said to me to run a successful business you just need to have lots and lots of really successful little habits. That 10% improvement is all about little 0.5% tweaks and adjustments. So here is my thing! Every Saturday morning as I am having my coffee I do a quick cashflow review of the business!
Now these days with all of this wonderful cloud accounting software that should not be difficult at all. Right!!!!
Even in the RVI maternity ward just 8 hrs after the birth of my second child I should be able to do what I do every single weekend…. Hell yeah…..it’s cashflow review time. That special time of the week we can give ourselves a quick pat on the back for being brilliant business owners and then get back with family life again.
And that is exactly what I did, albeit with a little bit of stealth of course!!!!!
So, as mother and baby were Skyping a very excited Auntie Jessica who lives 100km outside of Melbourne (don’t you just love technology!!!), a very proud daddy made his way down the corridor to Costa coffee and fired up the laptop and did what he does every weekend and tells every one of his clients to do (practice what you preach).
What’s that?
A quick tot up the weeks inbound receipts and outbound payments (I do actually hit this daily, that’s a different story though)…a review of our three way cashflow, profit and loss and balance sheet for the next 4 weeks….. 12 weeks, 12 months and 60 months!!! That’s what!
Sanity check, complete!
Pat on the back for being a great disciplined business owner, complete!
Now it is back to the real business of the moment safe in the knowledge that Blu Sky’s 5 year strategic plan is still on track. Whoop!
What’s that…… Surely you must have been missed by the family? Come on this a special time you shouldn’t be working? Get a grip man, what were you thinking firing up XL in the hospital, wasting time doing a bank rec and how the heck did you access your accounting system outside the office!?
Well…. armed with three 21st century cloud accounting tools, this was super quick, easy and not an XL spreadsheet in sight… 3 tools you say? What are they?
– A bank feed! Yes, you can hook you online banking up to your cloud accounting system! Boom.
– Xero – yes beautiful cloud accounting software that all Blu Sky clients are using and can be accessed anywhere you have a web browser and wifi!!! Boom.
– And our very own Blu Sky white labelled product ‘Blu Prints’ – easy visual forecasting and KPI reporting – time for a quick dad dance.
So yes I barely had time to drink my double expresso before my ‘job’ was done and I could go back in the maternity suite (it really is amazing in there, wide screen TV, mood lighting, Jaquzzi err birthing pool) safe in the knowledge that:
– debtors and creditor days were as they were expected,
– monthly cash targets were being met and
– the businesses strategic plans for the next five years were still on target cash wise at least.
So after another silent high five, I even got a quick few minutes on Skype with my brilliant sister and law in Australia….Happy happy days…..
If you want to find out more about how cloud accounting, cashflow management or being an excellent birthing partner could change your business growth strategy for the better please give me a shout at jon@blusky.co.uk @bluskytaxjon or 0191 258 7676.
I will gladly share how this very small and quick habit has helped my own and many many clients businesses steady then grow their cash reserves to enable the business to leverage long term strategic growth.
Bye for now, I have nappies to change.
