Planning, Panic & Pushing Through: What Birth Can Teach You About Business Finances
Every time one of my kiddos has a birthday, I start reflecting on their birth story and the things that happened. I like to recount it sometimes to them and tell them about it and they’ll ask me questions. You might think this is a little crazy, but as I was reflecting on my youngest birth story, I was thinking, man, there are a lot of lessons that we can learn from birth about business finances. So today I want to connect these two crazy topics together – birth and business finances – and see what lessons we can learn.
Sometimes you can ease into managing your finances with a plan. Sometimes you’re forced to handle hard things a different way than you had planned because of circumstances. Other times things just go to crap and don’t go as planned at all. There are all kinds of varieties and things that can happen. We want to take those lessons and apply them in the future.
That is what we are going to dive into.
Birth and Business Finances: Going into it without a plan
My first attempt at birth, I went into it without a plan. I didn’t really prepare for a natural birth. I just kind of thought, oh well, I’ll try it. But in the back of my mind, I was okay with getting medication. When things got really tough and hard with my son’s birth, I was induced. When I started to feel that slight “I don’t know if I can do this”, fear took over and so I opted for a different route.
Sometimes I see this with business owners when it comes to your finances. You might think ‘I’ll try a budget’ or ‘I’ll try QuickBooks’ without really planning or preparing or having support with it. Then you hit challenges or you get into a relationship and things unexpected things come up. It’s overwhelming so you just forget about it or stop using the system.
Another lesson that I want you to take from that is that sometimes, just because it doesn’t work out the first time, doesn’t mean we should try again. It also doesn’t mean that it never will work in the future. Maybe we need a different approach than how we approached it the first time.
Birth and Business Finances: When things don’t go as expected
Now jump to my third kiddo where things did not go as expected. With the first two births, I was induced and I had relatively easy births. With the third, I was induced again and fully expected to get an epidural. It didn’t work. They kept trying and trying to place it. They kept sticking me and sticking me and sticking me. I was one of those cases where it almost failed. That is another place where I was trying to not freak out because that was not what I wanted or had planned for.
Finally, they were able to get it. But then some things happened with baby and my heart rate and so they had to turn it off. So, I barely got any medication. It was unexpected. That was not what I had planned for and I was kind of forced to make a different choice. I remember vividly thinking like, I did not plan to do this naturally.
Sometimes this happens with our business finances also.
Sometimes people don’t want to face their fears with numbers and it’s just forced on them. Either your cash is tight, you unexpectedly have a huge tax bill you weren’t planning for, or an emergency happens. This uses all of the savings from your business you really need for your personal finances. So you decide to use it personally instead of investing in your business.
All of these types of things can be scary and uncomfortable and sometimes force you to do the thing you had been avoiding or hadn’t planned to do. I also see this sometimes with QuickBooks. You just don’t have a system for so long and then you’re kind of forced to when you grow and then you can’t handle the types of transactions that are coming.
Maybe you finally start selling more and you really are forced to stick to a spending plan or some type of budget. All of these are scenarios where there’s some unexpected challenge and you just have no other choice but to deal with it because it’s right in front of you.
But you know what that scenario reminds me? Like in our business finances, we can do hard things. You are capable of pressing through that fear of overcoming the frustration and the overwhelm and really shifting that into confidence and peace of mind that things are going well. If you feel unexpected stress when things have not been going like you thought they would, reach out for help and support. It can be a different scenario and you can do the hard thing.
The power of preparing
My fourth birth, in particular, I want to highlight the power of preparing. Unlike the others, with my fourth, I thought ‘If I ever have a fourth then I’m going to just plan for it to be natural because I bet if I was able to channel the be here in the panic that I had of the whole saga with epidural that I could probably just press through it and not even need it.’
So I had planned, I had done all these breathing exercises and stretches. I had done the hold an ice cube in your hand and practice breathing. It’s uncomfortable and you can practice the discomfort, all of those little tips and tricks I did. I did all of it.
I did the circuits, walking, teas, dates, I did pretty much everything. This really helped my mindset because I felt more empowered, and I felt more in control. Not to mention, having done it three times, I think that always helps too. I think the planning, the most that it really did for me was setting my mindset up to believe that I could do the hard thing. I did some research and I practiced. When the time came I was able to have a natural birth and it was wild.
I’ll give you the short version. I had a pretty normal day. I was taking my kids to school, in the car line and breathing through contractions. Basically, I got to the hospital and 45 minutes later my baby was born. It was wild, but it was so helpful because my mind was distracted most of the day.
Here’s how this relates to your business finances.
When you take the time to learn your numbers, to practice, to shift your mindset and stick with it, things change and things happen and confidence really can come from preparation, just like birth. I think I felt so much more prepared in my fourth because of all of the tiny little micro habits that I had done to prepare for that moment.
Don’t be distracted from your numbers. What I am saying is see if you can capture some of those tiny fearful thoughts or overwhelmed thoughts or frustrations about your numbers, taxes, or QuickBooks and see if you can take tiny steps to shift that. Maybe it’s even proving to yourself that you have the habits to make the changes necessary and really see what comes from that.
Understanding your business finances, the numbers, the money – it’s a skill.
It’s not just an ‘I hope it works out’. That doesn’t work with business finances and numbers.
You can handle your business finances but it’s a learned skill and something that you can practice and prepare for. The more you do, the more confident you will feel.
The more I work with clients, I see this over and over. The mindset piece is so huge. Just taking the steps to overcome some of those fears, that transformation can happen so quickly. If you’ve tried QuickBooks, budgeting, understanding your numbers, learning more about taxes, and it didn’t go well before, this is your little push and nudge to try again because that does not mean that you can’t succeed.
If you’ve ever been forced into handling your finances without being prepared, you will get through it and come out stronger. Let’s make a plan so that that doesn’t happen again. Give yourself the grace to be a learner, to understand something new, and build that confidence over time. There you have it, birth and business finances.
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