Corporate debt!!!! What most people don’t know is that when you become a business owner, you don’t only inherit the acclaim and perks that come with the position, you also inherit your company’s present and future debts!!!
By my experience, debtors are not very nice people. They don’t care whether you had something to do with the debt incurred or not. All they want is their money! If you have ever gone through a string of angry debtors calling you at odd hours to demand payment of their money and have found yourself offering frantic apologies and weak assurances to pay back soon, you would understand my point. This nightmare was certainly not what I bargained for in deciding to be business owner!
So far, I have had to deal with debtors only through phone calls (thank God!). However, some of my colleagues have graduated to more horrendous levels where debtors actually sue their companies or call in fierce looking “debt collectors” to harass them! I pray to God I never go through such a nightmare!
Personally, anything I experience in life which brings me great stress and discomfort becomes a wake up call for me to find ways of reversing that trend in order to regain my sanity. So earlier on in my career, when I became CEO of someone’s business and “inherited” debts I had no clue about, I was deeply disturbed. What concerned me more was that since ours was a young company, the trend of incurring more debt continued as we battled amidst tight finances to market our services to our potential clients.
As you know, when a company is in its embryonic stage, it may not always have the ability to pay for a full time accountant and so the CEO has to double up as an accountant. At that time, even my EMBA financial knowledge could not help me much since I’ve always been an “anti-figures” person and somehow I seem to get a psychological block when I have to make meaning out of anything “figures” or “maths!”
However, I had to find lasting solutions to this corporate debt nightmare, so I decided to enhance my “financial intelligence” which had been stirred up after reading Robert T Kiyosaki’s book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. In spite of my phobia for figures, I could make great meaning out of Kiyosaki’s books because he has a unique way of breaking down complex financial jargons into interesting anecdotes, which I could easily grasp and apply to the real life scenarios confronting me.
Although our debt situation gradually improved, now, several years on, I’m still learning. My financial intelligence has been sharpened more by another of Kiyosaki’s best sellers, “Guide to Investing – What the rich invest in that the poor and middle class do not”. I’m gaining immense insight about how to rebuild a start up into a valuable business asset instead of a debt ridden one! Now, I am able to contribute strategic financial direction to my accountants in order to enhance the cash flow of my businesses.
How about you? Are you going to continue dodging your corporate debtors by always pushing your accountants to face them instead of you or you are going to take full responsibility and take some decisive steps to redeem your company from its corporate debt nightmare?
Coming up next week: WHAT challenges DID I encounter WHEN I startED MY business?
