There were several things I took away from my entrepreneurship courses at bschool that have rung more true then I could ever have imagined. The #1 being that no matter how great a proforma spreadsheet you make - calculating all your sales, fixed costs, variable costs, etc - in the end for a small business what it really comes down to is cash flow. It doesn't matter that you make $1M annually if you don't have enough money in the bank to pay tomorrow's bills. I've talked about this a few times - specifically in the Fall when I'm more often then not waiting for payment from Peter to be able to pay Paul. It's a stressful stressful game to play.
Which is why I've really enjoyed this series of articles from the NYTimes small business section: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/my-week-in-cash-flow/
You'll want to scroll down to the bottom of the page and start with Monday's entry and read backwards, but it's a great example of the cash flow issues small businesses face. Personally, while reading it I felt a mix of "thank goodness someone else also goes through the same thing" and "thank goodness the numbers I'm faced with aren't nearly as large as his!" Regardless, it's a great small business read if you have the time and I think it hits home more strongly then many of us small business owners would like to admit.
The week here is ending up well. My photoshoot went really well yesterday. The majority of the shoot was strictly for product photos (product centered on white background) but there were a handful of more artsy shots and one in particular that when I saw it I said "that's my ad." Too bad I don't plan on doing a lot of advertising this Fall. This photo is almost good enough to make me want to do more!
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