This week, I have a dog story for you, and it started something like this, where several weeks ago, my wife and I made an overnight trip to meet my son’s fiance’s parents for the first time. And of course, we were excited.
We’d be gone for one night. We got the pet sitter that has helped us before so off we went.
When we came back, Dixie was not looking good. Dixie is a Belgian Malinois. This is like one of those ex-army dogs that have energy, are super intelligent, and Dixie loves her family.
Something was wrong! She was laid out and we came to find out that in her despair since we left, she ate part of the rug.
The moment we noticed that we took an emergency trip to the veterinarian. As the vet triaged Dixie, minute by minute the estimated cost was climbing.
I’m like, oh, my God!! I always said that I would never be the person to lay out large sums of money to save one of my pets. But I looked into Dixie’s eyes and I could see that she has the will to live. She wants to go on. So of course I did the necessary.
The vets were amazing. They literally took things out, cleaned them up, put them back in, and a couple of weeks later, Dixie was trotting around the community.
This is Financial Freedom, having resources for the expected and unexpected. I’ve come to think of financial freedom over the last couple of decades as two things. First, household income, are the bills paid and can I handle the unexpected?
So household income is the first part of financial freedom. The second part and potentially much greater is getting paid twice by building value in your business. What’s your number to be financially free?
The way to get both the household income and valuation you need, is to first determine the amount and then create the financial flight plan to get there. We use the same tool that many banks use to do this but you can use a spreadsheet.
Take your financial flight plan out for three to five years. Do the what-if scenarios to figure out the best path in the least amount of time.
As your valuation grows, you may even want to consider doing a partial liquidity event before succession. Taking money off the table allows us to diversify our risk.
Let me know if you want to discuss creating your financial flight plan and how to follow through effectively. If the time is right, please schedule a 25 Minute Discovery Call with me.
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