No one will care about your own finances as much as you do.

No one will understand your P&L in as much depth.

I learned this from one of our interviewees Matt Aitchinson. He told the story of how during his first in-depth talk with one of his mentors David Osborn (another UA interviewee), he got grilled on all aspects of his finances. David said something to him that he’s never forgotten, “You will never be successful if you don’t understand your own finances, they are your foundation to build on.”

That line stuck with him. He vowed to never be caught off guard on how he runs his finances. Why? Because freedom is hard to have when you can’t feed your family and put a house over their heads. Freedom to explore new businesses and find true success depends on you being able to afford the risks. All freedom rests on financial freedom.

So Matt made a promise to himself and wrapped a process around it, the best way to create change. Every week he has Financial Friday’s, where he goes over the finances of all his businesses every single Friday in order to keep a pulse on where they are at. This includes a check on his own finances and an overview of all the investments he has his hands in. 

I, of course, stole this idea, as one is mandated to do for all good ideas :). I have a Financial Friday overview 1x a month. My fiancee and I go over our personal finances with a spreadsheet that looks a lot like this: 

This is an overview example of a personal P&L (Profit & Loss), you get a copy of this template when you sign up for the course. It shows a couple of different COA’s (courses of actions) that you can manipulate in order to figure out what your income and expenses could look like if you changed varying aspects.

How to get Financial Freedom – Treat money like a game.

After all, it is, we’re all just here trying to pick up coins like Mario cart. The goal isn’t the money itself, it’s what you can do with it. It’s the change you can make, it’s the way you can give back, it’s the businesses you can build, it’s the people you can employ.

It all lays on a foundation of green. 

So if you don’t already, start having Financial Fridays. Start with your own P&L. Then bring in your varying business leaders to read out on the KPI’s (key performance indicators) that drive their business. For example: what is their revenue, costs, are they profitable, what is the trend line month to month, week to week, what is working, what isn’t? You’ll learn and when you learn, you earn. 

Yours Unconventionally,

Codie Sanchez & Ryan Snow

Co-founders, Unconventional Acquisitions

You can also register for the course here OR if you are serious about buying a small business, join our Mastermind.