October 20, 2025 • 50 mins
Right Thinking with Steve Coplon.
This week's show is called "Personal Finance and Small Business Ownership - Part I." If you have ever thought about starting your own small business, then this show is for you!
https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/right-thinking
This week's show is called "Personal Finance and Small Business Ownership - Part I." If you have ever thought about starting your own small business, then this show is for you!
https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/right-thinking
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
There must be lies burning blighter somewhere. Got to be
birds higher in the sky.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Or good morning. Welcome to Right Thinking with Steve Copeland.
I'm your host, Steve Copeland, and thank you for tuning in.
Let's have a great day.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Good morning, everybody, welcome back. And I am just glad
to be here, and I'm sure that all of you
are glad to be able to be listening, because we
all got up this morning and we've got our health.
And speaking of our health, so you've been hearing about
my dad. My dad is ninety three years old, and
five weeks ago to Mara, he had a heart attack
(01:17):
and was in intensive care for a couple of days,
and he stayed in the hospital for six or seven days,
and they put him into a rehab center, and then
he had somewhat of a relapse with some internal bleeding
and some other issues, and they had to put him
back into the hospital and give him three days in
a row of trans Jusians. And let me just get
(01:37):
it right to the point. My dad's coming home today,
not back to the rehab center, out of the hospital,
all the way home. And I want to tell you
everybody should take note of this when you've got a will,
there's a way. And my dad is just so full
of energy right now because he survived a lot of
(02:00):
stuff this past five weeks and now he's going home
and big highlights for my dad. He wants to just
get home and be in his own shower. He wants
to be able to have his shower beat down on
him and get a get that feeling that you can
only get from your own shower. All of us, I
think we can relate to that being in the shower
(02:21):
is a great thing. That's when we do some of
our best relaxing, some of our best thinking. Another wonderful
thing today is my mother in law, Agnes. Happy birthday, Agnes.
Today is her birthday, and I just want you to know, Agnes,
but I love you and I'm looking forward to seeing
you today at lunch. And happy birthday, Agnes, many many more. Well,
(02:46):
another reason that today is just good for me is
that have you ever worked really, really hard at something
and it seems like you're never ever gonna get it finished,
seems like it's just knock going to work out and
all that tiredness and that self doubt sets in. Well,
you know, sometimes everything you're working toward it's already been done.
(03:12):
It's right there in front of you, and it's not
going to fall apart. It's who you are, it's meant
to be. You've worked hard for it, and you've trained
for it. You don't need to be afraid of success.
But sometimes sometimes it's you just don't realize it. It's
just right there that's happening to me right now. Today
(03:36):
is my fifteenth broadcast, not counting the first interview that
I had when Jeff Heiser interviewed me back in November.
So today is my sixteenth time on the air, and
I've been trying to get to know everybody, trying to
open up myself to you so you'll know who I
am and tell you about Right Thinking Foundation and the
(03:57):
resources that are available for you. And the purpose of
this show is to be is for me to be
there for people that are going through hardship and for
people that are also trying to be there for people
that are going through hardship. Maybe they'll pick up a
point or two on how to help someone they know
(04:17):
that they care about that's going through a hardship. Well,
I've been doing all these shows and each show has
kind of a different way to get to my central
theme of being there for people that are going through
hardship and to help people get up and like Jeff
Heiser says, take that first step. Well, today I'm gonna
(04:40):
be speaking. Today's show is called personal Finance and small
Business Ownership is really what it is that my program
that I do is all about. I try to help
people have a better life by reducing stress in their life,
(05:02):
by getting on top of their finances, their money. And
each week I've I've had little different parts about why
you need to do that, why you need to take control,
how to stay positive, Napoleon Hill, thinking mastermind groups, surround
yourself with people that all have a common goal. It
just goes on and on and on and so today though,
(05:25):
I am going to start a series of shows. I
called it Part one, and I don't know how many
parts it's going to be, and I'm going to mix
it up with more interviews like I've been doing, trying
to trying to have people stay interested in in my
broadcast by hearing some wonderful guests. Last week Dave Richards
was on here for the third time, and I hope
(05:48):
y'all are seeing something happening between me and Dave, Dave
and I are are just really close, and I just
appreciate him so much because his heart is out there
for so many things. Last Friday, we had an appointment
at the Hampton Roads YMCA of Hampton Roads one one
hundred and twenty thousand members. That's a lot of people,
(06:13):
and they are constantly out there trying to have for
families social responsibility, healthy lifestyle. And so Dave, being the
humanitarian that he is, he's got a lot of resources
to try to help people to have a healthier life.
And so I connected Dave with the YMCA last week. Now,
(06:34):
Dave's been a member of the wife probably his whole
life's that's how I met Dave. I taught his wife,
Jamie Karate about twenty years ago when their son their
son bond and it did my heart good to see
how it's all coming together. So what have I been
saying the last couple of minutes here is this. I've
been I've been tray traying, working hard, staying focused toward
(06:59):
my goal to reach a lot of people and help
them have a better life. And the good news for
me is that I think I got what I want
to do ready to put it in front of you,
so just to put it in perspective. Like I said
a moment ago about the theme for the day, personal
finance and small business ownership, I said, if you're looking
(07:20):
to maybe start your own business, then this show's for you.
I'm sixty five years old. I've been a business consultant
accountant since I was in my early twenties. And two
years ago, maybe three years ago, I went into Deerfield
Correctional Center in Deerfield, Capan, Virginia, and I had a
(07:42):
business class starting your own business class for inmates for
returning citizens. Forty weeks in a row. I went every
every Tuesday, and when i'd get there, we'd be right
in the middle of the pod, one hundred and twenty
men living there, and I I'm so welcome there. I
just love being there. Got a lot of friends there.
(08:05):
And then we take these two long folding tables and
put them up and surround them with chairs. And I
had six six men with my regulars. And then over
the course of the forty weeks, I had about twenty
three or four others come through for anywhere between one
or two sessions of five or six sessions. They were
just sit in and we'd have a nice round table
(08:25):
conversation about how to start your own business. And so
what I'm going to talk to you about now, and
wherever we stop today, I'll pick back up in the
next week or so, depending if I slip a guest
in there or not. But I want to start talking
to you about starting your own business if that is
(08:46):
something that you've thought about now. I like to give
some sort of a glory to God each week here
and put some scripture out there. So today I just
want to introduce the parallel today. And I'm not going
to go deep into it at all, but it's it's
from the Book of Mark, chapter four, just the very
(09:07):
first verse all the way through the verse twenty. It's
it's the parable of the Solar. It's about when when
the man planted the seeds, when the farmer was going
to plant seeds, and there's basically four four ways that
they said that he planted seeds. He planted some seeds.
He threw him out there and they landed kind of
(09:28):
on the path. Well, they they didn't they didn't grow
very good. They got scattered because they just had no
place to really grow. Birds came up and ate them.
And then the second place that the seeds fell was
in some rocky places. And these rocky places they were
real quick, but they they didn't have any real good
(09:49):
root system, and they weren't gonna be there to less,
and the and the soil was just too shallow. And
then and then the fireplace was it got got into
some thickets, and there were weeds there, and when the
sieves grew, they got all tangled up and all these
weeds and things. They got a really kind of messy
(10:12):
and it stifled their group. But then the last thorl
was the full soil, and it fell on the good
soil and it produced the crop, and it says it
multiplied by forty sixty and from one hundred cons Well,
let's talk about what that means in business as it
relates to business. If you are thinking about going into
(10:35):
your own business, you've got to be prepared. You have
to do it the right way. Let me just stop
just for a second. The whole thing that I'm teaching today,
personal finance and small business ownership, is coming from a
seminar that I did over thirty years ago, and it's
(10:55):
in my workbook and you can find it on the
website right think dot org r I g h T
t h I n K dot o RG. So pretty
much everything that I'm going to be presenting today, you
can follow along and go to the website and go
to one of the documents there and it's specifically the
(11:18):
same name personal Finance and Small Business Ownership, and so
I'm going to be trying to direct you into that today,
and this is kind of like the introduction. The reason
that I chose to have this show today and not
just some specific motivational piece or offer one tool to
(11:38):
is that in the last couple of weeks, I've worked
with several people that are clients of mind through redevelopment
and housing, specifically Newport News Redevelopment and Housing community in Virginia,
and I've got three absolutely wonderful people that have come
to me. They came to UH an open house to
(12:01):
see if they it was built as anybody wants to
start their own business come to this UH this presentation
by me, and I met them and they want to
go into an adult daycare where they have a business
that they're very serious about, where they start their own
adult daycare. Because the elderly population there's more, there's more
(12:26):
of us out there. I'm going to be in that
after a while myself. I guess I'm not that far
off of it. But it's healthcare, caring for the elderly,
the agent, it's it's a very very huge part of
our needs and our society, and so that's what they
want to do. So last week I had a session
with them, and and I just love being with them
(12:47):
because they are mature and they are serious, and they're
going to put in the hard work and the homework.
So that's that's kind of kind of why I brought
them up for a minute. I'm going to teach you
today all for you some of the tools that I
gave him. And I'm not going to go into my
life story today and tell you where I got this
and where I got that from. I just want to
(13:08):
talk to you. If you are thinking about going into business,
I want to give you some what I hope you
take is some sound advice wisdom from years of experience.
I had a conversation with a young man that contacted me.
I have an intern for a couple of years in
my foundation, Right Thinking Foundation named Akusha. She's a wonderful
(13:31):
young lady she's a PhD candidate Olderman in University in
data engineering, and she has a person that she said
to me, and he's twenty six years old, and he
wants to start his own nonprofit and be able to
help people that have been incarcerated find employment through creating
(13:57):
their own company. His basic thought was, they're having a
really hard time getting jobs because the world, the communities
aren't receiving them very well. And so he's motivated to
where he wants to start a foundation that really helps
people that have been incarcerated be able to start their
own business. And so I spoke with him last Thursday night,
(14:21):
I think it was, and we had a long conversation.
He had the time and I had the time, and
I listened to him, and I have to tell you,
I felt like I was listening to myself. This young
man was so passionate about what he wants to do.
(14:42):
He has such a heart for what he wants to do.
I'm not going to tell you his story right now.
Later on will maybe get a chance to do that,
but he's got a personal reason for wanting to do this.
But he had a premise that he presented to me
that was beautiful, but with my experience going in and
(15:05):
out of prisons in the last five and a half
years or so now and over four hundred times. I
didn't agree with some of the things that he said,
but I do agree with what he's trying to do.
He felt that most inmates that are having a hard
time getting a job because they're felons, if they just
(15:30):
knew how to start their own business, they would be
highly motivated jump in and do what they needed to do,
and then they could succeed. And so he wants to
teach them how to start their own business and connect
them with different resources. Some of what I do, but
(15:50):
where I wanted to caution him, and I tried to
do it as lovingly as I could. And in fact,
I'm inviting him to part here, to join up, to
affiliate whatever the word will be, with white thinking, because
we have a common goal, and that's what masterminds all about.
He has the passion, he has a common goal. Well,
(16:12):
I do not agree that the population that he wants
to show them how to start their own business will
necessarily succeed only because they're going to take it serious,
because he said specifically, because they know that they don't
have any other options, so they're going to make it work. Well.
(16:32):
One of the saddest things that I've learned is that
a lot of people that you really want to help,
they don't show up. They don't do their homework, they
don't show up for class, and they start off in
the right direction and then something happens and it just
knocks them down and they get sidetracked. They don't stay
(16:53):
on the path. Well, So what I want to do
today is just show you that, yes, if you want
to start your own business for whatever reason, because maybe
you don't feel that you have any other opportunities, or
maybe because you want more than just being an employee
and not having a real large upside by all of
(17:14):
your hard work, If for whatever reason you want to
start your own business, I want to give an introductory
conversation today on some of the things that are involved
if you want to do it the right way. So
I've talked about pathway success on a couple of different shows,
(17:34):
where you get your vision out there for five weeks
from five years from now, and then you lay out
all the obstacles and then you self train, you self
educate your self direct to get there. Sure, that's part
of it last week, I introduced a new friend of
Mine's conversation with Dave last week where I said that
Rick might a friend of mine at the why he
(17:57):
said that he's always looking thirty years into the future.
They've said, well, that's a long time. Sometimes it's hard
to look at dame in the future. But what Rick
meant was, if you take a look thirty years into
the future, like what some people call that ten thousand
foot look, that's really looking at who you are, your character,
(18:21):
who you want to be as a person. Now, when
you break it down to your five year plan and
your three year plan or your seven year plan or
your one week plan, those are what you mean to
do in the world sense to be able to achieve
your goals, to have certain accomplishments. And so we're all
talking about the same thing, Rick and Dave and I.
(18:43):
But right now I just want to I just want
to lay a couple of things on you. If you
are going to be self employed, if you are going
to want to start your own business and have your
own company, the very first thing that I want to
recommend to you is you need to learn to think
(19:09):
like an owner and not like an employee. So if
you're taking notes, I'm going to say this one really loud,
like in bold eighteen point font instead of a twelve
point fine if you were reading it and big blue letters.
Maybe if you want to be self employed and have
(19:29):
your own business, you have to think like an owner
an owner mentality. Now, if you don't really know what
that is, then start reading up about it. Google it.
One of the things that I do when I do
my seminars with people and how to start a business,
(19:50):
I give them a series of articles that I google
and listen to. This. I passed out these articles over
the last couple of weeks. I had to start a
small business checklist. Lots of things in that article risk
when starting a business, list of risk involved in a
startup business, list of small business risk, risk that new
(20:14):
business states, list of responsibilities of small business owners, job
description of a small business owner, how to start a
one man business. And then I gave them five or
six articles on if they want to go into a
landscape in businesses as a kind of an example of
a business, so I could teach them how to research
(20:34):
and self educate. If you were listening really carefully of
the overview articles that I passed out on checklists and
different things. Four of the four of the six articles
that I passed out other than the example, dealt with
risk factors. Are I s K risk? So one of
(20:57):
my adages in business if you're trying to go into business,
it's on page ten of my workbook that's on the
Internet that I just told you how to get too
Small Business and Personal Finance. It says going into business
for yourself is a very serious undertaking. If it does
(21:20):
not succeed, you could lose everything. I'm going to repeat
that last part. If it doesn't succeed, you could lose everything. Okay,
what I'm trying to get across here is, yes, this
is America, and if you want to start your own
(21:40):
business for whatever reason, you can be successful if you
do all of the great things that the motivational people
are trying to tell you. Napoleon Hill, know your desire
and never quit. Victor Frankel from Man Search for Meeting
is basically, you know, just understand the but don't dwell
(22:00):
on it. And and when you're in the present, just
always have a plan, get a plan, and then never quit.
Jeff Heiser, just take that first step, keep going resilience today.
It was a fantastic show today on not quitting. Resilience
is a is a quality that we all have to have.
(22:21):
I read an acronym and an article the other day
by Jim Stball and it was be your best uh
B for balance, E for enthusiasms for single minded focus,
and T for tenacity. Tenacity. That's that's that ability to
(22:42):
be like a snapping turtle in it. And you ever
been bit by a snapping turtle where it grabs onto
your ankle and are your pants raid? You don't want
to know you cannot get that turtle off your leg
very easily. Okay. So what I'm really trying to say
to you right now is there is incredible risk if
(23:04):
you want to go into business for yourself. And so
one of the very first pictures in my workbook is
a boy scout and it's the picture of the standard
American boy scout, and it's got all the scout things
up there, you know, honesty, loyalty, trust, to know, et cetera.
And he's holding up his hand taking the boy Scout oath.
(23:25):
And my caption under that picture says, be prepared. Okay,
if I already made my point. Yet, I'm trying to
tell you that the most important thing about going into
business that you've got to think about an owner one
and two is you better be prepared. Now, I want
to give you a technique and how you can achieve
(23:46):
both of those things if that's your desire to learn
to think like an owner and be prepared when you
got your idea for what it is you want to
go into I want to teach you a way to
lay out this idea so that you can focus on
(24:07):
some of the things, kind of like pathway to success
for the individual thinker that I've been working on. I
want you to see where you want to be and
then lay out all the obstacles and then make sure
that you don't go out and try to do something
that you're not going to be able to do because
you've missed something. And so I'm going to give you
(24:27):
a technique in a minute that is just really easy
and it's been one of my best techniques I've been
using for probably thirty years and I've had absolutely huge
success with the people that i've shown this technique too.
And it's not complicated. You don't have to have a computer,
you don't have to know how to do spreadsheets. All
(24:48):
you got to do is have a brank piece of
paper and do the following. I call it a float chart,
now a float shart. There's many ways to do a
float chart. It's basically on in squares and boxes and
circles and air rays that go from one to the
next to the next, kind of like just decision tree.
(25:12):
Some people call it if you go here and this happens,
and go up here. Just to kind of get too complicated.
Is it's like when you're trying to figure out how
to do it tax return manually. If your income is
a higher than this, go to form this. And now
I'm just joking that I don't want to confuse you.
I just flew in. But a float chart is basically
(25:32):
showing you, in a graphic way, like a little stick drawing,
how to lay out your idea to get it focused.
And we've had whole shows on Focus, okay, And one
of the things that I want to tell everybody that's listening,
A lot of you listening will never have your own
(25:54):
business because that's not the direction that you choose to go.
But you will be in employees for companies, creating an
income and when you're going to be an employee creating
an income, you will do so much better at your job.
You will get raisers, you will get advancements, you will
(26:16):
have new opportunities. You might go as far as you
can in one company and have another company want to
hire you. If you look at your job as a
learning experience, doing the very best you can for your employer,
and knowing that this is a means to an end.
I have a whole show on that topic. So here's
(26:38):
what I'm telling you. If you are going to go
into a business and you don't have any real experience
in that business, you might before you try to invest
in your own business and then roll the dice and
take a chance. You might want to work for somebody
(27:01):
that's already in that business, and when you're there, it
might be a lower level job. But guess what, you're
going to have that lower level function in your own company,
so you might as well learn it inside and out
and be getting paid for it. And after you've mastered it,
maybe you'll move on to another part of the company
(27:23):
that you need to learn about. So, if you are
at a job making a wage and you're doing the
very best you can, and instead of getting bored, you
start thinking. You know, if I was an owner here,
I wonder how I could make this better. You know,
cut my costs, get more prodic out in a shorter
(27:46):
period of time, get more efficient, you know, start thinking
like that instead of just oh, well, I guess when
I get off tonight, I'll go to a movie. Y'all
like movies, but I like to concentrate when I'm working
to make more money for my employer. Well, here's in
my introduction on page four of Personal Finance and Small
(28:07):
Business Ownership, I got a little paragraph here. The importance
of having enough money and knowing what that amount of
money is to support one's lifestyle is one of the
main things of this seminar. This is the key right here.
Whether one's income is derived from being self employed or
from working as an employee for a company other than
(28:30):
your own, the income that flows into the personal budget
works the same way. Okay, I'm gonna stop on that
for a minute. On page twenty two, the whole key
to this seminar that I'm trying to teach is called
the personal and business relationship. Now, for all of you
(28:51):
that know you never want to have your own business.
I still want you to learn my course because you're
going to be working as an employee with the mindset
of a business owner, and you will increase your value
to your employer and consequently or subsequently, you will probably
(29:11):
get promotions and raises and be recognized for doing such
a good job because you'll be conscientious and the go
to guide or gap. So here's the here's the business
personal relationship. All of us in our life want to
have enough money to support the way that we live,
(29:35):
and I call that your personal lifestyle. And if you
don't have enough money coming in to pay your bills,
your personal lifestyle is going to get really kind of
difficult to support. There are four parts to this that
I want you to see. One is you have resources.
(29:59):
You have things of value, You have assets, you have savings,
you have bank accounts, you have comic book collections, you
have things that you can sell at a yard sale.
You have stocks and bonds. Maybe if you've got enough
money to be an investor, you've got resources. And if
(30:22):
you're gonna if you're gonna be funding your own small business,
sometimes you have to put those resources into work for you,
into your business. And so there are two things that
I'm gonna caution you if you want to go into
(30:43):
business for yourself, if you do not have these two things,
I guarantee you that your chance to succeed is really,
really slim. Number one, you have to have credit available
(31:04):
to you. And number two is you have to have
working capital, which is another name for money to use
until your business starts to create enough money to pay
its own bills. That's the investment that you make. That's
the funds that you have to use in your business
(31:26):
until the business itself starts to move toward profitability and
be able to pull out some money. On one of
the pages of the seminar, I call it the proverbial
cocktail party, where this couple that owns their own businesses
is sitting there and talking to somebody and the person says, hey, so,
how's your business doing, And they say, hey, it's going great.
(31:49):
We ought to be able to draw a paycheck in
a couple months. Well, that's a failing business because unless
they it could be successful if it was in the plan,
and they've got enough work capful to carry them through
those periods of time until it starts producing. But for
the most part, the business and to think like an owner.
(32:09):
Even if your employee goes like this, the purpose of
your business is one thing and one thing only, and
that is to support your personal lifestyle, whatever that may be.
So when I teach how to go into business for yourself,
(32:29):
before I even show you how to succeed at business
by doing it the right way and controlling your costs
and making sure you get everything set up to actually
have your operations be successful and have the right structure
and the right employees and so forth, I want you
to know this. You do not want to be in
business for any other reason than to support your own
(32:53):
lifestyle to help you achieve the goals that you have
set for yourself. So you need could be very, very
proactive in knowing what you need from your business, because
I've been a small business counselor for forty five years plus,
and so many small businesses that are failing, they don't
(33:17):
know what they need. They just go out there and
they just start doing it over and over again every day,
but they really don't know why they're doing it, and
they got so far into doing it, they're caught up
in it and their business is taken over twenty hours
of their day and they have a basically very very
stressful life and they don't have enough money. So remember this.
(33:41):
If you are going to be in business for yourself,
don't do it because you got an ego when you
say I always wanted to have my own business. Do
it because it is a way for you to pay
for what it is and life. It costs money. It
could be your future savings for retirement, it could be
college for your kids, plus all the normal things that
(34:03):
you deal with in your daily life. So your reason
for being in business is not just to say I
have a business. It's to support and provide the money
that you need to pay for what you want to
do in life. So thinking like an owner is one
of the things I'm trying to tell you. So, if
you go into a job and it's a job that's
(34:24):
related to the kind of company that you want to start,
go in there and learn everything you possibly can and
become the world's greatest employee. And then when you think
you're ready and you've got enough money saved up to
invest in your own business, and you've got good enough
credit to give you even more. If your idea is
(34:44):
good enough, other people might want to back you. Banks
might loan you money. And so if you don't have
credit and you don't have working capital, if your business
doesn't reach what it needs to for you to get
that Patieck, remember this. Remember this. When you're in business
for yourself, you're the one that's responsible. You're supposed to
(35:08):
be the last one that gets paid. And if you
don't pay your employees before you pay yourself and there's
not enough money, you better pay your employees. You're not
going to have them next week or tomorrow. So just
remember this. When you go into business for yourself, you
need to have enough resources available in the form of
(35:29):
savings to provide for your working capital and credit so
that you will be able to stay afloat until it happens.
Because there's two things that happen in business, and this
is an absolute fact of life. Generally, the sales that
you project that you're going to be bringing in the
(35:51):
revenue to pay all the costs and then all of
the overheads and other expenses. The revenue that you're going
to produce in your business generally comes in slower than
what you expected or projected it to be. So what
(36:12):
am I telling you is that if you're going to
go into this business and you've got certain expenses that
you're stuck with, rent, teletoon utilities, other overheads, insurance, expense
of payment for a vehicle, employee expenses, or if you're
just your own employee and you don't have other employee expenses,
but you have all the different costs of your operations,
(36:34):
which we'll talk about in detailed leader. If you don't
have the amount of money income revenue coming in from
the sales or the services that you're selling, something's going
to give. You're not gonna be able to cover all
your bills, and you're not gonna be able to bring
home the amount of money you need. And those resources
(36:56):
that you have in your personal life from number page
twenty two at the center. Those resources that you have
have to keep being pumped in, pumped in, pumped in
to your business in order to keep it operating because
you know that soon, you hope that you're going to
turn the corner and start to get to a sales
level that you need to be able to cover everything,
(37:18):
including paying yourself. So the first step of the personal
and business relationship that I'm explaining is as you go
into your business. If your business is not producing enough
money profit net income, whatever we want to call it,
to pull money out to pay you so that you
(37:41):
can pay all your own lifestyle bills and expenses. Your
personal resources will start to be used up and they
will diminish. Okay, The second step of the personal and
business relationship that you really need to understand because of
the seriousness of going out into business for yourself. If
(38:03):
it doesn't work the way it's supposed to, where that
might leave you. The second part is your personal budget.
So the first part was you got resource, you got assets,
you got things of value, and you're having to use them.
You're having to use them in order to keep your
business going until it gets to a level where it's
bringing enough back to you. But now we're talking about
(38:27):
the budget. I've been talking about budget for three months
on this show. The need to have a budget, use
the cash flow, budget, track what comes in and goes out,
the flow of your money, all those things. I've said
that the more lead time you have to deal with
the situation to hire, the probability of success. I've been
teaching budget for a couple of months here, but now
(38:49):
I'm not teaching budget. I'm going to tell you something
about your budget, assuming that you know what a budget
is and that you're using one. When your personal resources
start to be diminished because you don't have enough income
coming in, whether it's from your business that you started,
(39:10):
or whether it's just because your income that you're making
from your jobs not enough. If your budget is going
to suffer because you don't have enough income coming in.
As your budget suffers, you get led into the next thing.
That's the trap that's out there. The credit will comes
(39:33):
at you, and some of the credit that's available to
you is very expensive, very expensive. I gave an example
and my first lessons on credit that you could have
a dollar balance on a credit card that you didn't
know you had, and you get a thirty five dollars
(39:54):
late charge because you didn't pay the dollar. Now you're
thirty six dollars and it's just wasted money. You know,
go back and listen to the episode on credit because
I cover these kind of things. But as your budget
gets harder and harder to meet, your credit debt using
goes up. You start using credit to pay for things
(40:15):
that you really either can't afford that you still need,
so you have to like medical bills. Hey, I personally
get stuck when I don't have enough income because I
got like fourteen different sets of medical bills and doctors
because of the cancers that I carried. I use credit
cards when I have to, and then for a couple
(40:36):
of months, I'm trying to get more income established because
I know out of cash flow a budget, I know
how to look in the future. But that's not today's lesson.
All I'm telling you is is that if you don't
have enough money coming in from your business to pull
that paycheck that you need to yourself, your resources get
diminished and you have less and less. Your budget gets
(40:57):
harder to pay bills on time. Your credit card debt
starts to get up, which makes your budget even harder
to get your bills paid because more is going toward
the credit card charges. And the effect of all that
that I just said is that your credit worthiness, your
ability to secure credit, is really reduced and not there.
(41:23):
That's the worst part about it. Your credit worthiness becomes very,
very diminished. It goes down. So if you're in business
and you're depending on your own hard work to run
your own business to pay all your bills, and all
of a sudden, your income in your business isn't as
(41:45):
much as you hope that it would be. All those
things happen in your personal life, so it gets harder
and harder to succeed. The second thing that can happen
to you in your business that's kind of universal is
that your expenses will generally be more than what you thought.
(42:10):
There's almost always something that you missed. It's very very
rare to be able to see your expenses be less
than what you thought they were going to be. Generally.
The reason that this is true is because if you
lay out what your expenses are going to be, and
you list all of them that you can think of,
(42:33):
you can look at other business models and financial statements
of other businesses or whatever. You'll know what your expenses,
the categories of what those expenses are going to be,
so you'll you'll lay them out. But the chance that
you're going to forget one of them. No, you wrote
it down, you know what expense is going to be there,
and it may be higher than what you thought might
(42:56):
not be. But the chance that you might have not
thought about some expense that's gonna take some money from you,
it's always there. There's always generally something else that's gonna
come up. So with that said, the reason that your
money from your business might not be as much as
what you hoped it would be to support your lifestyle
(43:18):
that puts pressure on your ability to pay your personal
bills and succeed is because your income and your business
generally is slower coming in and your expenses are more
than what you thought. So those two things added together,
compound it together mean that you're gonna have less money
coming out to pay yourself and your life's gonna get harder.
(43:41):
So there's a lot of things you can do to
avoid this situation. And one of the ones that I
want to suggest to you right now is It's a question.
I've asked it before, but this might be your first time,
or you might have missed that episode. If you were,
I'm gonna well, let me ask it the way I
(44:03):
always do. Do you like to play Monopoly? Have you
ever played Monopoly? The board game where you're going around
the board and rolling dice and passing go and all
that good stuff. Sure we all have. We all love Monopoly,
We grew up on it. So the question is this,
would you rather lose all of your investment, all your
money in life? In a board game like Monopoly, or
(44:29):
in real life. Yeah, of question, it's kind of obvious.
I don't want to lose any money in real life,
So let's just play a game and if I lose,
it doesn't make any difference. Well, here's what I'm trying
to tell you, when I'm trying to tell you simply this,
if you go into a business and you haven't planned,
like the parable of the sewer that I started the
(44:49):
show with, if you don't find the good soil to
plant in in your roots, don't code deep enough, you're
probably gonna fail. You will not see success. So you
need to go into your business before go into business
with the most complete, comprehensive business plan that you can do,
(45:14):
so that you can see all the obstacles and analyze
all the things that you've got to have more information
on before you just go out and start doing it. Okay,
And I'm going to read a little email that I
wrote here. I wrote this to the head cognitive counselor
in the program at Politan Correctional in twenty thirteen. I
(45:38):
just passed out the business plan class exam and here's
what I wrote. I said, attached is a business plan
class exam. As you can easily see, the purpose of
the exam is to have the student review the workbook
and their class nets. Everyone that takes the test should
be able to pass and receive a certificate if they
(46:00):
put any effort into the exam at all. I suggest
you give everyone a week to complete exam and get
it back to you. There are many many acceptable answers.
The exam was real simple. Give me ten reasons why
you should do a business plan before going into business,
and this is the basic answers that I was telling
(46:20):
her I'm looking for. There are many many acceptable answers,
such as to focus your ideas, to organize your ideas,
to identify obstacles or hurdles, to identify cash needs or
your capital requirements. To prepare for banks, investors, partners, to
(46:41):
develop projections and budgets. To analyze your competition, to develop
your pricing, to research your costs, to identify your target market,
to understand your unique selling proposition, to develop your marketing plan.
To see you on paper if your idea is realistic.
And then I it's better to lose money on paper
(47:01):
before launching the business than to start the business and
then find out that it can exceed. These are just
a few reasons. So what I want to suggest to
you is this, and we're going to stay on this
topic for a long time because this is really what
I do. I want to help each person out there
be able to manage their money as if they were
(47:22):
a business owner, even if they're an employee, because it's
the same mentality because basically, I'm responsible for myself. I'm
responsible and even if I've got a job and I
choose to work two jobs where I get a W two,
that's my choice. So I view myself as if I
am self employed, even if I'm an employee. When you've
(47:43):
got that attitude, you're going to be a winner. You're
going to succeed. But you got to do the best
you can for your employer because it's a learning experience
for you as well as getting a paycheck. So here's
what I want to tell you. The tool for today
is this is your homework assignment. If you want to
stay with me, go to the website, join enroll, send
me an email, communicate with me. I'll send you more information.
(48:06):
I'll answer your questions right dot org. All right, so
take a big piece of paper like seventeen by eleven
or whatever, and I want you in the upper right
hand corner just put a circle say these are my customers.
And then over on the side say these are the
products or services that I'm gonna sell my customers. And
(48:27):
then come down from from your customers and come down
and draw an arrow to a box and say, this
is where I am going to operate from. This is
going to be my facility. It might be a home
based business, that might be you gotta pay rent somewhere,
And then say another box flow that inside that facility.
(48:47):
This is how I'm going to conduct my operations. I'm
gonna need to have this, I'm gonna need this equipment,
and I'm gonna keep right on going. So the idea
is this if you draw these little air and stick
figures and you just just show, okay, these are my customers.
This is how my money comes in. What I'm trying
to show you on a piece of paper is just
(49:09):
through a real quick floatshart saying my money comes in
like this, and this is what I have to spend
the money on to produce the product or provide the services.
And then when you do all that to get it
down to a profit. When you do that in an
outline form, what will happen is is that you'll start
asking yourself all the questions that you need and you
start doing more research to get better prepared. Well, that's
(49:29):
pretty much gonna do it for today. I hope that
you found it interesting. I'm here for you, so come
into the website, stay in touch with me, and I
just want to tell you that if you look at
yourself and take responsibility to produce the income you need,
whether as an employee somewhere or whether your own business,
(49:51):
you will succeed. So God bless you and I'll see
you next week.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
Thanks for listening to right Thinking with Steve Cooper. I
look forward to being with you again next week, and remember,
don't quit plan ahead. It will get better. God bless
you and have a great week.
There must be lies burning blighter somewhere. Got to be
birds higher in the sky.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Or good morning. Welcome to Right Thinking with Steve Copeland.
I'm your host, Steve Copeland, and thank you for tuning in.
Let's have a great day.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Good morning, everybody, welcome back. And I am just glad
to be here, and I'm sure that all of you
are glad to be able to be listening, because we
all got up this morning and we've got our health.
And speaking of our health, so you've been hearing about
my dad. My dad is ninety three years old, and
five weeks ago to Mara, he had a heart attack
(01:17):
and was in intensive care for a couple of days,
and he stayed in the hospital for six or seven days,
and they put him into a rehab center, and then
he had somewhat of a relapse with some internal bleeding
and some other issues, and they had to put him
back into the hospital and give him three days in
a row of trans Jusians. And let me just get
(01:37):
it right to the point. My dad's coming home today,
not back to the rehab center, out of the hospital,
all the way home. And I want to tell you
everybody should take note of this when you've got a will,
there's a way. And my dad is just so full
of energy right now because he survived a lot of
(02:00):
stuff this past five weeks and now he's going home
and big highlights for my dad. He wants to just
get home and be in his own shower. He wants
to be able to have his shower beat down on
him and get a get that feeling that you can
only get from your own shower. All of us, I
think we can relate to that being in the shower
(02:21):
is a great thing. That's when we do some of
our best relaxing, some of our best thinking. Another wonderful
thing today is my mother in law, Agnes. Happy birthday, Agnes.
Today is her birthday, and I just want you to know, Agnes,
but I love you and I'm looking forward to seeing
you today at lunch. And happy birthday, Agnes, many many more. Well,
(02:46):
another reason that today is just good for me is
that have you ever worked really, really hard at something
and it seems like you're never ever gonna get it finished,
seems like it's just knock going to work out and
all that tiredness and that self doubt sets in. Well,
you know, sometimes everything you're working toward it's already been done.
(03:12):
It's right there in front of you, and it's not
going to fall apart. It's who you are, it's meant
to be. You've worked hard for it, and you've trained
for it. You don't need to be afraid of success.
But sometimes sometimes it's you just don't realize it. It's
just right there that's happening to me right now. Today
(03:36):
is my fifteenth broadcast, not counting the first interview that
I had when Jeff Heiser interviewed me back in November.
So today is my sixteenth time on the air, and
I've been trying to get to know everybody, trying to
open up myself to you so you'll know who I
am and tell you about Right Thinking Foundation and the
(03:57):
resources that are available for you. And the purpose of
this show is to be is for me to be
there for people that are going through hardship and for
people that are also trying to be there for people
that are going through hardship. Maybe they'll pick up a
point or two on how to help someone they know
(04:17):
that they care about that's going through a hardship. Well,
I've been doing all these shows and each show has
kind of a different way to get to my central
theme of being there for people that are going through
hardship and to help people get up and like Jeff
Heiser says, take that first step. Well, today I'm gonna
(04:40):
be speaking. Today's show is called personal Finance and small
Business Ownership is really what it is that my program
that I do is all about. I try to help
people have a better life by reducing stress in their life,
(05:02):
by getting on top of their finances, their money. And
each week I've I've had little different parts about why
you need to do that, why you need to take control,
how to stay positive, Napoleon Hill, thinking mastermind groups, surround
yourself with people that all have a common goal. It
just goes on and on and on and so today though,
(05:25):
I am going to start a series of shows. I
called it Part one, and I don't know how many
parts it's going to be, and I'm going to mix
it up with more interviews like I've been doing, trying
to trying to have people stay interested in in my
broadcast by hearing some wonderful guests. Last week Dave Richards
was on here for the third time, and I hope
(05:48):
y'all are seeing something happening between me and Dave, Dave
and I are are just really close, and I just
appreciate him so much because his heart is out there
for so many things. Last Friday, we had an appointment
at the Hampton Roads YMCA of Hampton Roads one one
hundred and twenty thousand members. That's a lot of people,
(06:13):
and they are constantly out there trying to have for
families social responsibility, healthy lifestyle. And so Dave, being the
humanitarian that he is, he's got a lot of resources
to try to help people to have a healthier life.
And so I connected Dave with the YMCA last week. Now,
(06:34):
Dave's been a member of the wife probably his whole
life's that's how I met Dave. I taught his wife,
Jamie Karate about twenty years ago when their son their
son bond and it did my heart good to see
how it's all coming together. So what have I been
saying the last couple of minutes here is this. I've
been I've been tray traying, working hard, staying focused toward
(06:59):
my goal to reach a lot of people and help
them have a better life. And the good news for
me is that I think I got what I want
to do ready to put it in front of you,
so just to put it in perspective. Like I said
a moment ago about the theme for the day, personal
finance and small business ownership, I said, if you're looking
(07:20):
to maybe start your own business, then this show's for you.
I'm sixty five years old. I've been a business consultant
accountant since I was in my early twenties. And two
years ago, maybe three years ago, I went into Deerfield
Correctional Center in Deerfield, Capan, Virginia, and I had a
(07:42):
business class starting your own business class for inmates for
returning citizens. Forty weeks in a row. I went every
every Tuesday, and when i'd get there, we'd be right
in the middle of the pod, one hundred and twenty
men living there, and I I'm so welcome there. I
just love being there. Got a lot of friends there.
(08:05):
And then we take these two long folding tables and
put them up and surround them with chairs. And I
had six six men with my regulars. And then over
the course of the forty weeks, I had about twenty
three or four others come through for anywhere between one
or two sessions of five or six sessions. They were
just sit in and we'd have a nice round table
(08:25):
conversation about how to start your own business. And so
what I'm going to talk to you about now, and
wherever we stop today, I'll pick back up in the
next week or so, depending if I slip a guest
in there or not. But I want to start talking
to you about starting your own business if that is
(08:46):
something that you've thought about now. I like to give
some sort of a glory to God each week here
and put some scripture out there. So today I just
want to introduce the parallel today. And I'm not going
to go deep into it at all, but it's it's
from the Book of Mark, chapter four, just the very
(09:07):
first verse all the way through the verse twenty. It's
it's the parable of the Solar. It's about when when
the man planted the seeds, when the farmer was going
to plant seeds, and there's basically four four ways that
they said that he planted seeds. He planted some seeds.
He threw him out there and they landed kind of
(09:28):
on the path. Well, they they didn't they didn't grow
very good. They got scattered because they just had no
place to really grow. Birds came up and ate them.
And then the second place that the seeds fell was
in some rocky places. And these rocky places they were
real quick, but they they didn't have any real good
(09:49):
root system, and they weren't gonna be there to less,
and the and the soil was just too shallow. And
then and then the fireplace was it got got into
some thickets, and there were weeds there, and when the
sieves grew, they got all tangled up and all these
weeds and things. They got a really kind of messy
(10:12):
and it stifled their group. But then the last thorl
was the full soil, and it fell on the good
soil and it produced the crop, and it says it
multiplied by forty sixty and from one hundred cons Well,
let's talk about what that means in business as it
relates to business. If you are thinking about going into
(10:35):
your own business, you've got to be prepared. You have
to do it the right way. Let me just stop
just for a second. The whole thing that I'm teaching today,
personal finance and small business ownership, is coming from a
seminar that I did over thirty years ago, and it's
(10:55):
in my workbook and you can find it on the
website right think dot org r I g h T
t h I n K dot o RG. So pretty
much everything that I'm going to be presenting today, you
can follow along and go to the website and go
to one of the documents there and it's specifically the
(11:18):
same name personal Finance and Small Business Ownership, and so
I'm going to be trying to direct you into that today,
and this is kind of like the introduction. The reason
that I chose to have this show today and not
just some specific motivational piece or offer one tool to
(11:38):
is that in the last couple of weeks, I've worked
with several people that are clients of mind through redevelopment
and housing, specifically Newport News Redevelopment and Housing community in Virginia,
and I've got three absolutely wonderful people that have come
to me. They came to UH an open house to
(12:01):
see if they it was built as anybody wants to
start their own business come to this UH this presentation
by me, and I met them and they want to
go into an adult daycare where they have a business
that they're very serious about, where they start their own
adult daycare. Because the elderly population there's more, there's more
(12:26):
of us out there. I'm going to be in that
after a while myself. I guess I'm not that far
off of it. But it's healthcare, caring for the elderly,
the agent, it's it's a very very huge part of
our needs and our society, and so that's what they
want to do. So last week I had a session
with them, and and I just love being with them
(12:47):
because they are mature and they are serious, and they're
going to put in the hard work and the homework.
So that's that's kind of kind of why I brought
them up for a minute. I'm going to teach you
today all for you some of the tools that I
gave him. And I'm not going to go into my
life story today and tell you where I got this
and where I got that from. I just want to
(13:08):
talk to you. If you are thinking about going into business,
I want to give you some what I hope you
take is some sound advice wisdom from years of experience.
I had a conversation with a young man that contacted me.
I have an intern for a couple of years in
my foundation, Right Thinking Foundation named Akusha. She's a wonderful
(13:31):
young lady she's a PhD candidate Olderman in University in
data engineering, and she has a person that she said
to me, and he's twenty six years old, and he
wants to start his own nonprofit and be able to
help people that have been incarcerated find employment through creating
(13:57):
their own company. His basic thought was, they're having a
really hard time getting jobs because the world, the communities
aren't receiving them very well. And so he's motivated to
where he wants to start a foundation that really helps
people that have been incarcerated be able to start their
own business. And so I spoke with him last Thursday night,
(14:21):
I think it was, and we had a long conversation.
He had the time and I had the time, and
I listened to him, and I have to tell you,
I felt like I was listening to myself. This young
man was so passionate about what he wants to do.
(14:42):
He has such a heart for what he wants to do.
I'm not going to tell you his story right now.
Later on will maybe get a chance to do that,
but he's got a personal reason for wanting to do this.
But he had a premise that he presented to me
that was beautiful, but with my experience going in and
(15:05):
out of prisons in the last five and a half
years or so now and over four hundred times. I
didn't agree with some of the things that he said,
but I do agree with what he's trying to do.
He felt that most inmates that are having a hard
time getting a job because they're felons, if they just
(15:30):
knew how to start their own business, they would be
highly motivated jump in and do what they needed to do,
and then they could succeed. And so he wants to
teach them how to start their own business and connect
them with different resources. Some of what I do, but
(15:50):
where I wanted to caution him, and I tried to
do it as lovingly as I could. And in fact,
I'm inviting him to part here, to join up, to
affiliate whatever the word will be, with white thinking, because
we have a common goal, and that's what masterminds all about.
He has the passion, he has a common goal. Well,
(16:12):
I do not agree that the population that he wants
to show them how to start their own business will
necessarily succeed only because they're going to take it serious,
because he said specifically, because they know that they don't
have any other options, so they're going to make it work. Well.
(16:32):
One of the saddest things that I've learned is that
a lot of people that you really want to help,
they don't show up. They don't do their homework, they
don't show up for class, and they start off in
the right direction and then something happens and it just
knocks them down and they get sidetracked. They don't stay
(16:53):
on the path. Well, So what I want to do
today is just show you that, yes, if you want
to start your own business for whatever reason, because maybe
you don't feel that you have any other opportunities, or
maybe because you want more than just being an employee
and not having a real large upside by all of
(17:14):
your hard work, If for whatever reason you want to
start your own business, I want to give an introductory
conversation today on some of the things that are involved
if you want to do it the right way. So
I've talked about pathway success on a couple of different shows,
(17:34):
where you get your vision out there for five weeks
from five years from now, and then you lay out
all the obstacles and then you self train, you self
educate your self direct to get there. Sure, that's part
of it last week, I introduced a new friend of
Mine's conversation with Dave last week where I said that
Rick might a friend of mine at the why he
(17:57):
said that he's always looking thirty years into the future.
They've said, well, that's a long time. Sometimes it's hard
to look at dame in the future. But what Rick
meant was, if you take a look thirty years into
the future, like what some people call that ten thousand
foot look, that's really looking at who you are, your character,
(18:21):
who you want to be as a person. Now, when
you break it down to your five year plan and
your three year plan or your seven year plan or
your one week plan, those are what you mean to
do in the world sense to be able to achieve
your goals, to have certain accomplishments. And so we're all
talking about the same thing, Rick and Dave and I.
(18:43):
But right now I just want to I just want
to lay a couple of things on you. If you
are going to be self employed, if you are going
to want to start your own business and have your
own company, the very first thing that I want to
recommend to you is you need to learn to think
(19:09):
like an owner and not like an employee. So if
you're taking notes, I'm going to say this one really loud,
like in bold eighteen point font instead of a twelve
point fine if you were reading it and big blue letters.
Maybe if you want to be self employed and have
(19:29):
your own business, you have to think like an owner
an owner mentality. Now, if you don't really know what
that is, then start reading up about it. Google it.
One of the things that I do when I do
my seminars with people and how to start a business,
(19:50):
I give them a series of articles that I google
and listen to. This. I passed out these articles over
the last couple of weeks. I had to start a
small business checklist. Lots of things in that article risk
when starting a business, list of risk involved in a
startup business, list of small business risk, risk that new
(20:14):
business states, list of responsibilities of small business owners, job
description of a small business owner, how to start a
one man business. And then I gave them five or
six articles on if they want to go into a
landscape in businesses as a kind of an example of
a business, so I could teach them how to research
(20:34):
and self educate. If you were listening really carefully of
the overview articles that I passed out on checklists and
different things. Four of the four of the six articles
that I passed out other than the example, dealt with
risk factors. Are I s K risk? So one of
(20:57):
my adages in business if you're trying to go into business,
it's on page ten of my workbook that's on the
Internet that I just told you how to get too
Small Business and Personal Finance. It says going into business
for yourself is a very serious undertaking. If it does
(21:20):
not succeed, you could lose everything. I'm going to repeat
that last part. If it doesn't succeed, you could lose everything. Okay,
what I'm trying to get across here is, yes, this
is America, and if you want to start your own
(21:40):
business for whatever reason, you can be successful if you
do all of the great things that the motivational people
are trying to tell you. Napoleon Hill, know your desire
and never quit. Victor Frankel from Man Search for Meeting
is basically, you know, just understand the but don't dwell
(22:00):
on it. And and when you're in the present, just
always have a plan, get a plan, and then never quit.
Jeff Heiser, just take that first step, keep going resilience today.
It was a fantastic show today on not quitting. Resilience
is a is a quality that we all have to have.
(22:21):
I read an acronym and an article the other day
by Jim Stball and it was be your best uh
B for balance, E for enthusiasms for single minded focus,
and T for tenacity. Tenacity. That's that's that ability to
(22:42):
be like a snapping turtle in it. And you ever
been bit by a snapping turtle where it grabs onto
your ankle and are your pants raid? You don't want
to know you cannot get that turtle off your leg
very easily. Okay. So what I'm really trying to say
to you right now is there is incredible risk if
(23:04):
you want to go into business for yourself. And so
one of the very first pictures in my workbook is
a boy scout and it's the picture of the standard
American boy scout, and it's got all the scout things
up there, you know, honesty, loyalty, trust, to know, et cetera.
And he's holding up his hand taking the boy Scout oath.
(23:25):
And my caption under that picture says, be prepared. Okay,
if I already made my point. Yet, I'm trying to
tell you that the most important thing about going into
business that you've got to think about an owner one
and two is you better be prepared. Now, I want
to give you a technique and how you can achieve
(23:46):
both of those things if that's your desire to learn
to think like an owner and be prepared when you
got your idea for what it is you want to
go into I want to teach you a way to
lay out this idea so that you can focus on
(24:07):
some of the things, kind of like pathway to success
for the individual thinker that I've been working on. I
want you to see where you want to be and
then lay out all the obstacles and then make sure
that you don't go out and try to do something
that you're not going to be able to do because
you've missed something. And so I'm going to give you
(24:27):
a technique in a minute that is just really easy
and it's been one of my best techniques I've been
using for probably thirty years and I've had absolutely huge
success with the people that i've shown this technique too.
And it's not complicated. You don't have to have a computer,
you don't have to know how to do spreadsheets. All
(24:48):
you got to do is have a brank piece of
paper and do the following. I call it a float chart,
now a float shart. There's many ways to do a
float chart. It's basically on in squares and boxes and
circles and air rays that go from one to the
next to the next, kind of like just decision tree.
(25:12):
Some people call it if you go here and this happens,
and go up here. Just to kind of get too complicated.
Is it's like when you're trying to figure out how
to do it tax return manually. If your income is
a higher than this, go to form this. And now
I'm just joking that I don't want to confuse you.
I just flew in. But a float chart is basically
(25:32):
showing you, in a graphic way, like a little stick drawing,
how to lay out your idea to get it focused.
And we've had whole shows on Focus, okay, And one
of the things that I want to tell everybody that's listening,
A lot of you listening will never have your own
(25:54):
business because that's not the direction that you choose to go.
But you will be in employees for companies, creating an
income and when you're going to be an employee creating
an income, you will do so much better at your job.
You will get raisers, you will get advancements, you will
(26:16):
have new opportunities. You might go as far as you
can in one company and have another company want to
hire you. If you look at your job as a
learning experience, doing the very best you can for your employer,
and knowing that this is a means to an end.
I have a whole show on that topic. So here's
(26:38):
what I'm telling you. If you are going to go
into a business and you don't have any real experience
in that business, you might before you try to invest
in your own business and then roll the dice and
take a chance. You might want to work for somebody
(27:01):
that's already in that business, and when you're there, it
might be a lower level job. But guess what, you're
going to have that lower level function in your own company,
so you might as well learn it inside and out
and be getting paid for it. And after you've mastered it,
maybe you'll move on to another part of the company
(27:23):
that you need to learn about. So, if you are
at a job making a wage and you're doing the
very best you can, and instead of getting bored, you
start thinking. You know, if I was an owner here,
I wonder how I could make this better. You know,
cut my costs, get more prodic out in a shorter
(27:46):
period of time, get more efficient, you know, start thinking
like that instead of just oh, well, I guess when
I get off tonight, I'll go to a movie. Y'all
like movies, but I like to concentrate when I'm working
to make more money for my employer. Well, here's in
my introduction on page four of Personal Finance and Small
(28:07):
Business Ownership, I got a little paragraph here. The importance
of having enough money and knowing what that amount of
money is to support one's lifestyle is one of the
main things of this seminar. This is the key right here.
Whether one's income is derived from being self employed or
from working as an employee for a company other than
(28:30):
your own, the income that flows into the personal budget
works the same way. Okay, I'm gonna stop on that
for a minute. On page twenty two, the whole key
to this seminar that I'm trying to teach is called
the personal and business relationship. Now, for all of you
(28:51):
that know you never want to have your own business.
I still want you to learn my course because you're
going to be working as an employee with the mindset
of a business owner, and you will increase your value
to your employer and consequently or subsequently, you will probably
(29:11):
get promotions and raises and be recognized for doing such
a good job because you'll be conscientious and the go
to guide or gap. So here's the here's the business
personal relationship. All of us in our life want to
have enough money to support the way that we live,
(29:35):
and I call that your personal lifestyle. And if you
don't have enough money coming in to pay your bills,
your personal lifestyle is going to get really kind of
difficult to support. There are four parts to this that
I want you to see. One is you have resources.
(29:59):
You have things of value, You have assets, you have savings,
you have bank accounts, you have comic book collections, you
have things that you can sell at a yard sale.
You have stocks and bonds. Maybe if you've got enough
money to be an investor, you've got resources. And if
(30:22):
you're gonna if you're gonna be funding your own small business,
sometimes you have to put those resources into work for you,
into your business. And so there are two things that
I'm gonna caution you if you want to go into
(30:43):
business for yourself, if you do not have these two things,
I guarantee you that your chance to succeed is really,
really slim. Number one, you have to have credit available
(31:04):
to you. And number two is you have to have
working capital, which is another name for money to use
until your business starts to create enough money to pay
its own bills. That's the investment that you make. That's
the funds that you have to use in your business
(31:26):
until the business itself starts to move toward profitability and
be able to pull out some money. On one of
the pages of the seminar, I call it the proverbial
cocktail party, where this couple that owns their own businesses
is sitting there and talking to somebody and the person says, hey, so,
how's your business doing, And they say, hey, it's going great.
(31:49):
We ought to be able to draw a paycheck in
a couple months. Well, that's a failing business because unless
they it could be successful if it was in the plan,
and they've got enough work capful to carry them through
those periods of time until it starts producing. But for
the most part, the business and to think like an owner.
(32:09):
Even if your employee goes like this, the purpose of
your business is one thing and one thing only, and
that is to support your personal lifestyle, whatever that may be.
So when I teach how to go into business for yourself,
(32:29):
before I even show you how to succeed at business
by doing it the right way and controlling your costs
and making sure you get everything set up to actually
have your operations be successful and have the right structure
and the right employees and so forth, I want you
to know this. You do not want to be in
business for any other reason than to support your own
(32:53):
lifestyle to help you achieve the goals that you have
set for yourself. So you need could be very, very
proactive in knowing what you need from your business, because
I've been a small business counselor for forty five years plus,
and so many small businesses that are failing, they don't
(33:17):
know what they need. They just go out there and
they just start doing it over and over again every day,
but they really don't know why they're doing it, and
they got so far into doing it, they're caught up
in it and their business is taken over twenty hours
of their day and they have a basically very very
stressful life and they don't have enough money. So remember this.
(33:41):
If you are going to be in business for yourself,
don't do it because you got an ego when you
say I always wanted to have my own business. Do
it because it is a way for you to pay
for what it is and life. It costs money. It
could be your future savings for retirement, it could be
college for your kids, plus all the normal things that
(34:03):
you deal with in your daily life. So your reason
for being in business is not just to say I
have a business. It's to support and provide the money
that you need to pay for what you want to
do in life. So thinking like an owner is one
of the things I'm trying to tell you. So, if
you go into a job and it's a job that's
(34:24):
related to the kind of company that you want to start,
go in there and learn everything you possibly can and
become the world's greatest employee. And then when you think
you're ready and you've got enough money saved up to
invest in your own business, and you've got good enough
credit to give you even more. If your idea is
(34:44):
good enough, other people might want to back you. Banks
might loan you money. And so if you don't have
credit and you don't have working capital, if your business
doesn't reach what it needs to for you to get
that Patieck, remember this. Remember this. When you're in business
for yourself, you're the one that's responsible. You're supposed to
(35:08):
be the last one that gets paid. And if you
don't pay your employees before you pay yourself and there's
not enough money, you better pay your employees. You're not
going to have them next week or tomorrow. So just
remember this. When you go into business for yourself, you
need to have enough resources available in the form of
(35:29):
savings to provide for your working capital and credit so
that you will be able to stay afloat until it happens.
Because there's two things that happen in business, and this
is an absolute fact of life. Generally, the sales that
you project that you're going to be bringing in the
(35:51):
revenue to pay all the costs and then all of
the overheads and other expenses. The revenue that you're going
to produce in your business generally comes in slower than
what you expected or projected it to be. So what
(36:12):
am I telling you is that if you're going to
go into this business and you've got certain expenses that
you're stuck with, rent, teletoon utilities, other overheads, insurance, expense
of payment for a vehicle, employee expenses, or if you're
just your own employee and you don't have other employee expenses,
but you have all the different costs of your operations,
(36:34):
which we'll talk about in detailed leader. If you don't
have the amount of money income revenue coming in from
the sales or the services that you're selling, something's going
to give. You're not gonna be able to cover all
your bills, and you're not gonna be able to bring
home the amount of money you need. And those resources
(36:56):
that you have in your personal life from number page
twenty two at the center. Those resources that you have
have to keep being pumped in, pumped in, pumped in
to your business in order to keep it operating because
you know that soon, you hope that you're going to
turn the corner and start to get to a sales
level that you need to be able to cover everything,
(37:18):
including paying yourself. So the first step of the personal
and business relationship that I'm explaining is as you go
into your business. If your business is not producing enough
money profit net income, whatever we want to call it,
to pull money out to pay you so that you
(37:41):
can pay all your own lifestyle bills and expenses. Your
personal resources will start to be used up and they
will diminish. Okay, The second step of the personal and
business relationship that you really need to understand because of
the seriousness of going out into business for yourself. If
(38:03):
it doesn't work the way it's supposed to, where that
might leave you. The second part is your personal budget.
So the first part was you got resource, you got assets,
you got things of value, and you're having to use them.
You're having to use them in order to keep your
business going until it gets to a level where it's
bringing enough back to you. But now we're talking about
(38:27):
the budget. I've been talking about budget for three months
on this show. The need to have a budget, use
the cash flow, budget, track what comes in and goes out,
the flow of your money, all those things. I've said
that the more lead time you have to deal with
the situation to hire, the probability of success. I've been
teaching budget for a couple of months here, but now
(38:49):
I'm not teaching budget. I'm going to tell you something
about your budget, assuming that you know what a budget
is and that you're using one. When your personal resources
start to be diminished because you don't have enough income
coming in, whether it's from your business that you started,
(39:10):
or whether it's just because your income that you're making
from your jobs not enough. If your budget is going
to suffer because you don't have enough income coming in.
As your budget suffers, you get led into the next thing.
That's the trap that's out there. The credit will comes
(39:33):
at you, and some of the credit that's available to
you is very expensive, very expensive. I gave an example
and my first lessons on credit that you could have
a dollar balance on a credit card that you didn't
know you had, and you get a thirty five dollars
(39:54):
late charge because you didn't pay the dollar. Now you're
thirty six dollars and it's just wasted money. You know,
go back and listen to the episode on credit because
I cover these kind of things. But as your budget
gets harder and harder to meet, your credit debt using
goes up. You start using credit to pay for things
(40:15):
that you really either can't afford that you still need,
so you have to like medical bills. Hey, I personally
get stuck when I don't have enough income because I
got like fourteen different sets of medical bills and doctors
because of the cancers that I carried. I use credit
cards when I have to, and then for a couple
(40:36):
of months, I'm trying to get more income established because
I know out of cash flow a budget, I know
how to look in the future. But that's not today's lesson.
All I'm telling you is is that if you don't
have enough money coming in from your business to pull
that paycheck that you need to yourself, your resources get
diminished and you have less and less. Your budget gets
(40:57):
harder to pay bills on time. Your credit card debt
starts to get up, which makes your budget even harder
to get your bills paid because more is going toward
the credit card charges. And the effect of all that
that I just said is that your credit worthiness, your
ability to secure credit, is really reduced and not there.
(41:23):
That's the worst part about it. Your credit worthiness becomes very,
very diminished. It goes down. So if you're in business
and you're depending on your own hard work to run
your own business to pay all your bills, and all
of a sudden, your income in your business isn't as
(41:45):
much as you hope that it would be. All those
things happen in your personal life, so it gets harder
and harder to succeed. The second thing that can happen
to you in your business that's kind of universal is
that your expenses will generally be more than what you thought.
(42:10):
There's almost always something that you missed. It's very very
rare to be able to see your expenses be less
than what you thought they were going to be. Generally.
The reason that this is true is because if you
lay out what your expenses are going to be, and
you list all of them that you can think of,
(42:33):
you can look at other business models and financial statements
of other businesses or whatever. You'll know what your expenses,
the categories of what those expenses are going to be,
so you'll you'll lay them out. But the chance that
you're going to forget one of them. No, you wrote
it down, you know what expense is going to be there,
and it may be higher than what you thought might
(42:56):
not be. But the chance that you might have not
thought about some expense that's gonna take some money from you,
it's always there. There's always generally something else that's gonna
come up. So with that said, the reason that your
money from your business might not be as much as
what you hoped it would be to support your lifestyle
(43:18):
that puts pressure on your ability to pay your personal
bills and succeed is because your income and your business
generally is slower coming in and your expenses are more
than what you thought. So those two things added together,
compound it together mean that you're gonna have less money
coming out to pay yourself and your life's gonna get harder.
(43:41):
So there's a lot of things you can do to
avoid this situation. And one of the ones that I
want to suggest to you right now is It's a question.
I've asked it before, but this might be your first time,
or you might have missed that episode. If you were,
I'm gonna well, let me ask it the way I
(44:03):
always do. Do you like to play Monopoly? Have you
ever played Monopoly? The board game where you're going around
the board and rolling dice and passing go and all
that good stuff. Sure we all have. We all love Monopoly,
We grew up on it. So the question is this,
would you rather lose all of your investment, all your
money in life? In a board game like Monopoly, or
(44:29):
in real life. Yeah, of question, it's kind of obvious.
I don't want to lose any money in real life,
So let's just play a game and if I lose,
it doesn't make any difference. Well, here's what I'm trying
to tell you, when I'm trying to tell you simply this,
if you go into a business and you haven't planned,
like the parable of the sewer that I started the
(44:49):
show with, if you don't find the good soil to
plant in in your roots, don't code deep enough, you're
probably gonna fail. You will not see success. So you
need to go into your business before go into business
with the most complete, comprehensive business plan that you can do,
(45:14):
so that you can see all the obstacles and analyze
all the things that you've got to have more information
on before you just go out and start doing it. Okay,
And I'm going to read a little email that I
wrote here. I wrote this to the head cognitive counselor
in the program at Politan Correctional in twenty thirteen. I
(45:38):
just passed out the business plan class exam and here's
what I wrote. I said, attached is a business plan
class exam. As you can easily see, the purpose of
the exam is to have the student review the workbook
and their class nets. Everyone that takes the test should
be able to pass and receive a certificate if they
(46:00):
put any effort into the exam at all. I suggest
you give everyone a week to complete exam and get
it back to you. There are many many acceptable answers.
The exam was real simple. Give me ten reasons why
you should do a business plan before going into business,
and this is the basic answers that I was telling
(46:20):
her I'm looking for. There are many many acceptable answers,
such as to focus your ideas, to organize your ideas,
to identify obstacles or hurdles, to identify cash needs or
your capital requirements. To prepare for banks, investors, partners, to
(46:41):
develop projections and budgets. To analyze your competition, to develop
your pricing, to research your costs, to identify your target market,
to understand your unique selling proposition, to develop your marketing plan.
To see you on paper if your idea is realistic.
And then I it's better to lose money on paper
(47:01):
before launching the business than to start the business and
then find out that it can exceed. These are just
a few reasons. So what I want to suggest to
you is this, and we're going to stay on this
topic for a long time because this is really what
I do. I want to help each person out there
be able to manage their money as if they were
(47:22):
a business owner, even if they're an employee, because it's
the same mentality because basically, I'm responsible for myself. I'm
responsible and even if I've got a job and I
choose to work two jobs where I get a W two,
that's my choice. So I view myself as if I
am self employed, even if I'm an employee. When you've
(47:43):
got that attitude, you're going to be a winner. You're
going to succeed. But you got to do the best
you can for your employer because it's a learning experience
for you as well as getting a paycheck. So here's
what I want to tell you. The tool for today
is this is your homework assignment. If you want to
stay with me, go to the website, join enroll, send
me an email, communicate with me. I'll send you more information.
(48:06):
I'll answer your questions right dot org. All right, so
take a big piece of paper like seventeen by eleven
or whatever, and I want you in the upper right
hand corner just put a circle say these are my customers.
And then over on the side say these are the
products or services that I'm gonna sell my customers. And
(48:27):
then come down from from your customers and come down
and draw an arrow to a box and say, this
is where I am going to operate from. This is
going to be my facility. It might be a home
based business, that might be you gotta pay rent somewhere,
And then say another box flow that inside that facility.
(48:47):
This is how I'm going to conduct my operations. I'm
gonna need to have this, I'm gonna need this equipment,
and I'm gonna keep right on going. So the idea
is this if you draw these little air and stick
figures and you just just show, okay, these are my customers.
This is how my money comes in. What I'm trying
to show you on a piece of paper is just
(49:09):
through a real quick floatshart saying my money comes in
like this, and this is what I have to spend
the money on to produce the product or provide the services.
And then when you do all that to get it
down to a profit. When you do that in an
outline form, what will happen is is that you'll start
asking yourself all the questions that you need and you
start doing more research to get better prepared. Well, that's
(49:29):
pretty much gonna do it for today. I hope that
you found it interesting. I'm here for you, so come
into the website, stay in touch with me, and I
just want to tell you that if you look at
yourself and take responsibility to produce the income you need,
whether as an employee somewhere or whether your own business,
(49:51):
you will succeed. So God bless you and I'll see
you next week.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
Thanks for listening to right Thinking with Steve Cooper. I
look forward to being with you again next week, and remember,
don't quit plan ahead. It will get better. God bless
you and have a great week.
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