“Numbers are scary!,” he said. I was talking to a local business owner who has been through some scary stuff in the last couple of years. Almost losing his business during the pandemic, a tornado that destroyed his home, rebuilding everything from scratch. And yet, the numbers are what’s scary to him?... What I heard didn’t surprise me. Numbers often get a pretty bad rap. They’re often either scary or mysterious or boring or…. Here was my answer to him in that moment. “It’s actually not the numbers that scare you,” I said. You feel “scared” because you don’t like the uncertainty of what they may tell you. They may tell you that you have a gap between where you want to be and the reality of where you are. Or, maybe they’ll say that you have more than enough, but that you haven’t begun to use your resources to get there. Here’s the key - regardless of what they tell you, good or bad, the clarity of actually knowing infuses you with a tangible feeling of power. The “knowing” is always empowering; it is the last thing you should allow yourself to be afraid of. The clients I work with get to know more than just their numbers. They get to know the story the numbers are telling them. They get to take control of where they’re headed and actually end up somewhere they want to be. That’s how my clients and I work together. We write stories. We use the numbers, of course, but knowing the stories is how we move the needle and actually arrive at our happy ending. If you can make this small shift in paradigm, not only will you no longer feel scared or uncertain, you will be a powerful leader for your business. Knowing is power. The stories are important. Clarity is NEVER bad. Clarity is your path to success.

Is there or isn’t there a pie? Before action steps related to money can even be discussed or executed, we need to recognize and choose between two distinct ways of viewing everything we care about…philosophically speaking.