Within the Chaos

Stilling waves of anxiety starts with separating the temporary and the permanent. What do you want to keep? Holy and worth protecting. What is open to change? Holey and worth allowing to pass. What are the problems you genuinely want to solve? 

There will always be problems. As Nightbirde pointed out, you can’t wait to be happy. Calm exists within, rather than after, the chaos. 

When we are filtering good ideas and good business ideas, business ideas might get elevated because they are easy to contain. The ideas that you can’t contain may be the most valuable. This is not a problem. 

Good business ideas are problems we can solve that we want to go away. Not problems that we want to perpetuate to deliver a rent. You don’t want a good business idea to become part of your identity, because then you will become part of the reason that it doesn’t get solved... making you irreplaceable. 

When something is a good idea, but not a good business idea, it is often something you want to keep. To build on. These are the activities, ideas, and relationships you sustain by building engines of capital. Ideas that are worth spending money on, but don’t generate money. They tend to focus more on abundance, permanence, sharing, and connection. 

For problems that are temporary, we need a process to develop the skills and knowledge to be able to meet challenges and move on. That requires constant learning, reinvestment, and reinvention.

"Chaos amongst the Calm" Nathan Jones

Financial Calm

Financial calm does not require you to be loaded. It comes from a level of confidence that you can cope in three dimensions. 

1) With decisions that take you left or right. 

2) With the unexpected bumps of ups and downs. 

3) With the endurance to keep on keeping on. 

Financial calm can come with belief in your plan. Not a crystal ball that sees the future. Instead planned capacity for futures. When you know you are living within your means, then deep soaking calm builds your strength, flexibility, and control. In a way that radiates through how you move. 

Stress releasing from your muscles and joints. Living within your means allows you to expand the length and smoothness of your inhalation and exhalation. Identifying and building the skills and knowledge needed for a source of income. Overcoming the barriers and securing your container. 

Calm is not the size of the ins and outs. 

Calm is the space between the ins and outs.

Up-Down, Left-Right, Forward-Back

Creating Calm

“Past performance is used as a guide only. It is no guarantee of future returns. Your investment can go up and down and you may not get back the full amount invested.” This is the standard disclaimer that all asset managers are obliged to make part of the conversation. Investments can, and do, double, triple, quadruple, or go to zero. There is so much noise, and difference between daily, monthly, and annual returns that it bears little resemblance to a salary. Even though your money is working. A salary is more analogous to a dividend. A dividend gets declared. Management aim to smoothly pay for the use of Capital. Aim to increase it each year. To pay it sustainably. They consider the strength of the capital to endure, and the ability of the business to adjust. The challenge is looking for the signal in the noise. Creating the ability to cope with the noise. Creating calm in a continuous storm.

Deafening Silence

For any business, but particularly a small business, a hiring decision is a big decision. Meeting Payroll is the primary stress of most owners I know. The caricature of fat cats is not one that resonates with my experience. Rational people will work at big Institutions where their contribution is amplified by the success of those who have come before. Most small businesses are in the survival period before significant growth kicks in. It is long term belief in potential growth that keeps the owner going. The most successful entrepreneur I have met said it took him 7 years post pulling the trigger to earn what he was getting as a salary man. And he was the definition of an outlier jumping over aligned stars. The rational approach is to be an underconfident overachiever and let someone else stress over payroll. A salary is like a bond. You are lending your labour to the owner in exchange for a predictable, consistent, income. But that income is normally pass-the-parcel. The owner has to get the money to pay you from the customer. To commit to the risk that the customer will be there. Even Big Institutions can over commit to how many parcels they can pass. Going to zero is a reality when the music stops. Silence is deafening.

Forced Seller

A Stock is a slice of ownership in an underlying business. The Stock Price is not it’s value. It is the amount agreed between the last buyer and seller to swap money and ownership. Very different from if the entire business was sold, but a reasonable guess if you wanted to sell now. If someone offered you a fraction of the value of your home, you’d laugh them off. You prefer to remain an owner. Same deal here, except homes aren’t sold by the brick. The main aim is not to be a Forced Seller. When someone offers you a ridiculous price, and you have to take it because of external demands. Because you need the cash. Being a long-term owner means you need to have a buffer for short term shocks. Shocks that have nothing to do with the business and everything to do with immediate needs. You need to be able to cover the Basics. Markets function best when everyone is calm, informed, empowered, and making decisions based on all the information available. Willing buyer. Willing seller. There is seldom a reason to rush, even in the centre of chaos. Breathe. Don’t force it. This too will pass.

pic by: Ben Molyneux