Welcome to episode number one of ‘I Hate Numbers’. My podcast is for business owners, arts and social enterprises who want to improve their money mindset, make more profit, save time and tax. This is a jargon and BS free podcast, with you the listener in mind.

About Me

I’m one of nine kids. I knew I wanted to do something to be more in control of my life and myself. My first paid career was in teaching. When you’re a teacher, people think you can’t do anything impactful. Then I got a job in industry and got immersed in the business world.

26 years ago I made my second pivot and I started my own business in my bedroom. I’ve worked internationally and in a number of different sectors since then. I have a good client base here across those sectors. No matter who you are, you can’t get away from those numbers. It doesn’t matter how big your business is, numbers are important.

Why should you listen to ‘I Hate Numbers’

Numbers are your best friend in business.  Your numbers will not lie to you.  They will be there for you in the good times, as well as the bad.  Getting closer to your numbers relieves anxiety, improves your wellbeing, gives you power and control over your business future.

Do not lose sight of the fact that your business, private, social enterprise, or charities must make profit.  If making profit is not one of your objectives, you will not survive and have sustainable impact.

I Hate Numbers is your friend and companion to help you with your business past, present and future

In This Episode

• How numbers impact you
• How to have a better business
• Why people hate numbers
• Tedious aspect of numbers
• Giving energy back into your life

Links

https://www.proactiveresolutions.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/proactiveresolutions/

https://www.instagram.com/mahmoodnumbersrockstar/

https://twitter.com/mahmood_reza

https://www.facebook.com/proactiveresolutions/

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.

Hello everybody, and welcome to I Hate Numbers. The inaugural episode number one. I'm excited, ready to go. Bit of nerves there. You know those nerves that you get when you do something for the first time. You've got the adrenaline rush going, you're a bit excited, but you want to make sure you're as close to the bathroom as possible.

So, it's my first episode. The first episode of many. Obviously, I'm going to be somebody making mistakes. You know, we all do that when we try something new in our business. The thing is just to get it out there. What I advise all my clients to do, if you've got something, don't over-engineer. Just get it out the way.

Move on and it can get better. Obviously, I'd love to hear any feedback when we get to the end of show. Show notes will show you how to get in contact. Share your feedback. That's going to be a great thing. Now, a natural question you're all going to be asked yourself is, what's the show all about? You know, what is I Hate Numbers?

So, what it is about? It's not about dissing numbers. I come from a world here, and my main aim in this podcast and future podcasts is to connect you, business owners out there, get better acquainted with your numbers. You can understand what those numbers mean, and you can actually use them more powerfully in your business to make more money, keep more of it.

The second pause. Let me tell you a bit more about myself here. A bit of a bio for want of a better term. Now, I'm one of nine kids. I'm perfectly in the middle of that. You might be thinking, what's the relevance of that? So, if I take myself back where, when I was growing up here, as it’s usual with most large families, it's not a great deal of money, but I always had that idea when I was very young that one day I was going to do something for myself.

I run my own business. I had no idea, so I wasn't playing in the playground, doing airplanes, thinking one day I'm going to be an accountant and a mentor, far from it. I just knew that, like with most people, that I wanted to do something to be more in control of my life itself. Originally from London, I moved to the Midlands in Lester, did my first degree there.

Having messed up at school big time, so having known what the pain of disappointment is and getting up and just getting on with things here, did my first degree. I didn't quite know what to do with my career. Took a year out, did various bits and bobs, lots of volunteering, getting plugged in all the time.

Uh, having done some entrepreneurial activities at school, getting embedded into the world of business, getting embedded into the world of numbers. My first paid career, first paid work was in teaching. Now, for those of you who might be in teaching, know anything about it. If you're a teacher, then most people think that you can't do anything practical, anything useful.

So, after a period of three years, I jumped ship, nothing to go to, no job or anything of that nature. Some people might call it reckless. That, it is just something I felt that was necessary at the time. After a period of time, I got a job in industry, worked in industry for about five and a half years.

Great experience. Managed to get qualified as an accountant, and a few other bits of paper along the way, and in all that time, just getting lots of experience at reporting numbers at board level, at the lower end, and getting immersed in the world of business itself. After a period of time thinking, great, I love accountancy.

Nothing wrong with that, but I don't want to stay as that for the rest of my life. What do I do? So, pivot number two. And pivot, in case you may not be aware of it, is where you change direction and you do something completely different. So, I jumped ship again thinking the time is right now to take the plunge and start your own business.

So, 25 years ago, I started running my own business in my back bedroom. I've made quite a number of mistakes now, 25 years. However, having said that, I've also learnt a great deal here, and one of many things that I've managed to do in my career to date is I've worked internationally. I've worked within a number of different sectors, both in terms of charities, multinationals, smaller companies, the arts, manufacturing, retailing.

I've got a very good client base here that crosses that. You know, the one thing that I know there, whether you are a humble market trader or you're a multinational company, you can't get away from those numbers, and what I've found is that a lot of people have that disconnect with those numbers. I've worked in some fantastic places in Africa, I've worked in Russia, worked in Cuba,

but again, it doesn't matter how big your business is, how big your company is, numbers, you can't get away from that. Now, you might be thinking, okay, that's very interesting, Mahmood, but what about the actual show? What's that? Why should we listen each week to your show? What are we going to get from that? Well, fundamentally, there's a few things that you'll get, hopefully as takeaways from the business, from this podcast itself.

Now, for me, it's not just connecting businesses to the numbers for the sake of it, but what it does, it gives you that superpower. It enables you to know what you're spending. So again, a lot of business owners that I meet, fantastic what they do. They've got a great skill, great craft. They're great at creating things.

They're great at giving service to customers. The marketing they've got a handle on, but they're not necessarily aware of what the financial impact on that actually is. And we know, you know, when that money gets tight, then you know business is going to suffer as a result. So, it's about tracking what those numbers are.

It's about knowing, you know, what profits you're likely to be making. Again, fundamentally, if you're not in business to make money, then you've got nothing but an expensive hobby on your hands. Fundamentally, business is there to make money. How you make it, how much you make it, it values. That's a different part of that conversation, but you need to make money to survive and have impact itself.

So, it's about making decisions. It's about knowing how your future's going to pan out. And here's a radical thing to think about. For me, numbers, business numbers aren't just figures. They aren't just pound signs or dollar signs, whatever your currency of choice is, they are the words to your business story.

So, your business path, however that business path develops, you know, has a financial impact. And that impact is measured typically in financial terms. So, the numbers are a part of that story that helps you guide your path. Now, going forward in future shows, we are going to be predominantly answering questions that people have actually submitted to me over the years.

I'm going to share some of those thoughts with you, those stories. We're going to talk to you about how numbers are going to help you have a better impact on your business. Now, before I sort of share more about what the future podcasts are going to be, effectively, one thing I'd like to share is why people, in my opinion, probably hate numbers.

First of all, it's probably not the thing of choice for most people. For a lot of people, who don't actually see the delight it has here, it can be quite a boring, quite a dry subject. If you've had bad experiences at school, you know, whether it's in maths or whatever, you know, that could actually scar you for life here and lots of people quite naturally from those previous experiences

get that very bad phobia, a very bad reaction. A lot of people know and they just look at their numbers when it comes to that wonderful tax-return filing season, when it comes to doing what they call compliance. You know, things that the government might ask of you, things that people ask of you. That's the bit where we drag ourselves off the settee or whatever, and actually get those numbers.

The other part is some aspects of numbers can be quite tedious. So, actually collecting the numbers, recording the numbers, that's not where the joy and the delight is. Some people do get that delight, you know, whether they're doing spreadsheets, whatever, but that's not what the whole story is about. That collecting those numbers,

I'm going to talk to you as the podcasts go on about nice ways to give a bit of energy back in your life and actually take the tedium out of recording those numbers. Coming back to the podcast, what we're going to be doing as time goes on, and I'm not using we in the royal sense of we, bit of nerves kicking now I should say I, and as time goes on, we are going to be talking about how you can actually store the words to your story.

Why you should share these words to your story, so it will give you better visibility? Numbers are great for me. Not only do they bring your business to life, but they give you some degree of accountability. So, if you are going to, for example, develop your audiences, if you are going to launch a new product, if you want to get new clients, you know effectively saying to yourself, okay, this is what my aspirations are, this is what my target is,

overlay that with a number, you've got some degree of accountability. Controlling in terms of when you have no control over what you're planning to do there, you can be like that ruderless ship that goes all over the place. I'm going to share with you in terms of those wonderful things that we know, we have no choice in our life, and tax.

How does that work? This is not a technical podcast. This is not aimed at accountants or finance people, love them to bits, but this is aimed at business owners. This is aimed at charities. This is aimed at anybody who operates in that world of business and just wants to get a bit more acquainted with what their numbers are actually about.

How much profits we're making on a particular client? We've all had that situation where some clients suck up a lot of energy, suck up a lot of time. We might lose the will to live with some of those clients here, and it'd be great to see what the financial impact on those clients actually are. We look at different measures that we can adopt here.

And remember, this is not a podcast that's aimed to actually make you lose the will to live. This is a podcast that's going to be answering real-life questions, and it's going to be very practical. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you very much for all your time here. I'm going to just draw things. My name is Mahmood. I've enjoyed sharing the airway with you, and thank you very much for lending me your ears today.

If you'd like to hear more, have a look at the podcast notes. If you'd like to share some feedback and reviews, if you want to throw some rotten tomatoes at the radio, the wireless, whatever you're listening to, feel free to. I've operated in the years of feedback and comments and worked on those for the last 40 odd years, so I welcome all your comments and your questions.

I look forward to speaking to you over the airways next week. Take care. 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.