It's no secret that I know that financial planning is wonderful.  Successful businesses require effective financial planning. But did you know that there are several other benefits to financial planning as well? In this podcast I'll look at some of the key advantages of financial planning for your business.

Whether you're just starting out or you've been in business for a while, it's never too late to get started on sound financial planning!

The benefits of financial planning are vast, and they touch every aspect of your life.  This includes

• Firstly, clarity of purpose, decision making and focus, a clear path to success
• Secondly, reducing your stress and anxiety, why wouldn't you want that ?
• Thirdly, seeing where the risks and pitfalls.  Furthermore, managing and swerving those risks
• Lastly, avoiding a time consuming and expensive hobby, and making profits.

Being your own boss is a great feeling. But it's important to remember that, as with any other type of organisation, a business needs careful financial planning if it's going to be successful in the long term.

Listen to find out more

Conclusion and good to know

From reducing stress to making more money, financial planning is wonderful and essential for you and your business. Watch our video to learn more about how we can help you achieve your Northern Star. Are you ready to take the next step?So what are you waiting for? Listen to find out more.

Join my financial planning and story telling community at Numbers Know How If you want 1-2-1 support then I would be happy to help you create a sound financial plan for your company.

Are you ready to have an easier and more rewarding relationship with your numbers?  My book, I Hate Numbers helps you get there.

This book is based on my 27 + years in business, helping thousands of businesses survive and prosper.  Furthermore, it is an easy, humorous but serious read about running a business, having a financially rewarding relationship with your numbers, Furthermore, my book will help with that battle between the ears, that all business owners experience.

Get in touch with us to help make your life easier and stress-free. Contact us if you need help figuring out and sorting your numbers, creating your future financial story plans, your tax, payroll and other accounting and business matters.

Getting your Finances in Order is key to a successful business.  Find out more by checking out Numbers Know How 

The benefits of financial planning to me are a no-brainer. In this week's I Hate Numbers Podcast, I'm going to outline three key reasons, three key benefits of undertaking financial planning in your business.

You are listening to the I Hate Numbers Podcast with Mahmood Reza. The I Hate Numbers Podcast mission is to help your business survive and thrive by you better understanding and connecting with your numbers. Number love and care is what it's about. Tune in every week. Now, here's your host, Mahmood Reza.

Hi folks. My name is Mahmood. I'm an accountant finance coach who's been in business for 27 plus years. I'm the founder, director of the accounting firm I Hate Numbers, author of that same book and also founder director of the Financial Storytelling Platform Numbers knowhow. My mission over the last 27 plus years has been helping businesses, thousands of businesses

if you ask me, make money, increase their financial understanding and awareness and help them win those battles that goes on between their ears and also make money, save time, and save tax. What a wonderful set of objectives if I do say so myself. Let's crack on with this week's podcast. What I'd like you to do, first of all folks, before we carry on and go into the detail, the benefits of financial planning.

Imagine this situation. You decide to go on a journey, you decide to go on a walkabout, and before you leave on your journey, you wrap a blindfold around your head. Don't tighten it too much. You don't want the blood lost to be too dramatic. Now imagine what that must feel like. You've now blocked out the lights and you decide to go on that walk here.

How do you think it's gonna make you feel? You're gonna feel slightly hesitant. You are gonna be putting your arms out there to grab to make sure you don't bump into anything. As you venture each step tentatively here, you're not quite sure where you're going. You're not quite sure if you're going in the right direction.

It's likely you might trip up, you might go in the wrong direction. You may not go very far at all. That folks is like having no plan in your business and deciding to embark on your business journey. Now, once you take that blindfold off, the light streams back in, obviously rub those weary eyes and then you'll be able to see what's in front of you.

You'll be able to avoid the obstacles. You can make plans to divert from any path that's gonna lead you to nowhere, and you're likely to get your destination at a much faster rate unscathed and undamaged. And that is what it's like having a financial plan in your business. Let's focus now on the three tangible benefits they are.

Now, it has been said that a goal without a plan is just a wish, and I'm a firm believer in that quotation. If you have objectives in your business, and my question would be, why don't you? Those objectives could be varied. You will have, or you need to have financial objectives. Those objectives are what you set yourself, not what you set for other businesses.

So you will set yourselves a financial target. That financial target could be generating a level of profitability, let's call it a cool 50,000 pounds. Now that 50,000 pounds due may represent a fortune if you're a different size business, that may represent a modest increase or maybe a decline. But whatever that figure is, set yourself that financial Northern Star, measure it in terms of profitability and make sure it meets that mnemonic of being smart.

It's gonna be specific to you. It's gonna be measurable. You've gotta be able to quantify that and measure that. Something that is unquantifiable, for example, just making money is no good to anybody. You don't actually know when you've achieved that and forever you'll be going round and round in circles saying, when is that point

when I've achieved what I set out to achieve? Make sure it's realistic for you in the capacity and the timeframe that you've got, and make sure. That if you are setting your targets ahead for at least 12 months, I would suggest that within that timeframe, your ability, your skills, your capacity, what else is going on in your life, that that seems timely and achievable within that timeframe.

If your objective is to conquer the world, then conquer the world might not be something that you can achieve in 12 months. Maybe two or three years might be a slightly different proposition. So effectively our first key point about planning in your business, it helps you get to your Northern Star, relatively speaking unscathed.

That Northern Star will be made up of your personal milestones as well as your business expectations, your business milestones as well. Now, I've mentioned financial objectives. It could be measured as a profitability, make sure it's tangible. It could be also that you might want to establish a certain level of market penetration.

You might want to build up a team. You might have personal milestones, which is maybe spending less time in your business, maybe recruiting additional staff and personnel. But make sure you boil those in and your financial plan, which represents your business journey, will tell you what the financial impact will be, what you need to do to go from 0.0 to get to that end point in 12 months time.

By the very nature of working backwards to figure out what you need to do, it's gonna make that a much more realistic outcome. Having established that the next thing it will do is it definitely will improve your mental wellbeing. One of the biggest causes of stress for business owners, one of the biggest causes of anxiety is that element of uncertainty.

That element of uncertainty that says, can I afford to do this? Can I afford to take on new staff? Is the recessionary pressures that I'm facing is the economic downturn or upturn, depending on what your business is in such, that I can afford to continue, I can maintain my current staff team. Can I build to that?

Can I add to that? Can I afford to pivot? Can I afford to slow down the amount of time that I'm spending and have more personal time? Whatever it is, that uncertainty is not gonna be addressed unless you've got a financial plan in your business. Looking ahead through the rear view mirror is not a good look.

You need to be looking through the windscreen. You need to be looking ahead. By all means, be familiar with what's going on around you, what historically has happened, but it's a forward direction that you need. Now at the time of listening to this week's podcast, we are in a recession. It may not be officially called one, and I flagged that up in podcasts gone by, that we are facing recessionary times.

Now, financial plan, by the way, is not just for a recession. It's also gonna serve you well when things become more prosperous. Now that level of anxiety, that level of uncertainty will be dissipated, will be kicked into the touch. If you have a financial plan in front of you. That financial plan tells you what is likely to happen.

That financial plan is likely to tell you where the risks are. That financial plan will tell you at which times of the year financial pressures become stronger. You can do things to try and mitigate that, and when things become more prosperous, you have more certainty. And once you've got certainty in your business, then you are more relaxed.

Don't become a complacent by any stretch of the imagination, but you'll have more confidence in the decisions you're making now and the impact that will have in the future. Remember our financial plan mustn't be a static document. It's not a straight jacket. It's not something that binds us. We monitor, we update, and we refine it as we go along.

But certainly wellbeing is a definite plus point. All the clients that I've worked with on a one-to-one and a group basis over the last 27 plus years. Where I've helped them formulate a financial story plan to express their future in numbers. In money terms, they've always found a massive sigh of relief.

They felt much better, much more content, and they can make decisions knowing what they've thought about. As far as the future, if you cannot think about your business in the future terms, by the way, there's a question mark whether you've got a business in the first place. I know that sounds quite harsh, but effectively from me, if you can think ahead

beyond the next few weeks, then effectively you've got a business that you're living on a hand to mouth basis, and I don't want that for you. Being able to look beyond the current is a definite plus point. Now, we've talked about objectives being achieved by having a financial plan. We've talked about the elements of stress relief, anxiety reduction.

Well, the third thing that a financial plan will do for you by its very process is reducing risks. Risks are the future. Where events may or may not occur. And what we wanna do is not to eliminate risk, cause that's impossible. You cannot eliminate risk completely. But a financial plan will flag up where the risks are, where those boulders are, where those trip hazards are, and identify what they are.

Depending on what your risk appetite actually is, it will help you navigate and avoid those obstacles. We can do things in advance of the action being taken to try and minimise those trip-ups, those costs that may come are unexpected. Those events that occur, for example, introducing new products, new services, we can do things to identify what might happen.

There may be a skill shortage, there may be something we don't have that we can put right. So risk mitigation, risk management is made much more effective when we have a financial plan in place. Now let's wrap up folks, and let's summarize what we've got. We've got this idea of achieving our Northern Star, our objectives. It's much more likely when we have a financial plan in place.

We're talking about relieving that pressure on our brains for mental stress, anxiety. It's unlikely to be ever eliminated completely. Maybe we don't want that. We want a little bit of stress to keep ourselves on our toes, and we've talked about risk reduction and risk reduction, again, risk will never be eliminated, but we can certainly do things to mitigate and reduce itself.

If we look at all those in here, all those will be directed for you to do what you need to do in your business in terms of making a profit, achieving your goals, understanding the risks that you're taking and the resources that you need to make it happen. What do you think? Do you agree with that summary? Can you think of any other benefits of financial planning that I've not touched upon?

If so, I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you need some support and assistance on financial planning for your business, by all means drop me a line. Check out the Numbers Knowhow platform. Check out the show notes for links to further resources and direct support if you feel that you need that for your business.

Our Numbers Knowhow platform is designed for business owners to help them move ahead in the area of financial planning, make them more prosperous. We've got a fantastic online product that we're developing as well as the resources there to help you on your business journey. Until next week, folks, financial plan away.

We hope you enjoyed this episode and appreciate you taking the time to listen to the show. We hope you got some value. If you did, then we'd love it if you shared the episode. We look forward to you joining us next week for another I Hate Numbers episode.