Smith - The financially savvy entrepreneur : navigate the money maze of running a business

I cant believe there is an actual book about money that I can relate to and that makes me chuckle. Emilys book is actually easy for a money-avoider like me to understand, and I love her personality. She is relatable, the information is easy to absorb, and as far as helpful... lets just say I finally understand how I can take care of my business like a true CEO. Every entrepreneur needs to read this book, and as soon as humanly possible.

Jessica Kupferman, digital business and branding strategist and host of Lady Business Radio

Interviewing over 500 of the worlds most successful and inspiring entrepreneurs has taught me many things. One theme that continues to arise during our failure segment is how so many entrepreneurs fail to control their money while focusing on running a business. Emilys book needs to become the bible for entrepreneurs who know they will face this challenge, and I could not shower more glowing praise on how many failures will be avoided by applying the principles The Financially Savvy Entrepreneur champions.

John Lee Dumas, host of Entrepreneur on Fire

Emily Chase Smiths The Financially Savvy Entrepreneur should be required reading for anyone starting a small business. Chase Smiths years of helping entrepreneurs in financial hot water have given her excellent insight into how those of us building our businesses on the fly can avoid being a poster child for the consequences of financial ignorance. Until I read this book, I had no idea we were making such potentially dangerous mistakes, much less how to solve them. With kindness, calm, and good humor, Chase Smith offers a set of very practical tools and common-sense solutions that offer a clear, direct path out of the wilderness of small business finance.

Yolanda OBannon, co-owner, YoWangdu Tibetan Culture

I find it a little scary (okay, more than a little) that many entrepreneurs focus on the wrong things...from 495,881-page business plans to the flashiest Websites in the universe, when at the end of the day, a successful entrepreneur is a profitable one. Emily will get you on the path to profitability (without being bored) in The Financially Savvy Entrepreneur. Not only is it a must-read, its also a must-remember and a must-follow.

David Siteman Garland, creator of The Rise to the Top

Navigate the Money Maze
of Running a Business

Emily Chase Smith, Esq.

Copyright 2014 by Emily Chase Smith

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

THE FINANCIALLY SAVVY ENTREPRENEUR
EDITED AND TYPESET BY KARA KUMPEL
Cover design by Rob Johnson
Printed in the U.S.A.

To order this title, please call toll-free 1-800-CAREER-1 (NJ and Canada: 201-848-0310) to order using VISA or MasterCard, or for further information on books from Career Press.

The Career Press, Inc.
220 West Parkway, Unit 12
Pompton Plains, NJ 07444
www.careerpress.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smith, Emily Chase.

The financially savvy entrepreneur : navigate the money maze of running a business / by Emily Chase Smith, Esq.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-60163-317-0 -- ISBN 978-1-60163-469-6 (ebook) 1. New business enterprises--Finance. 2. Small business--Finance. 3. Entre- preneurship. I. Title.

HG4027.6.S644 2014
658.15--dc23
2014000409

All books start as dreams, even non-fiction financial ones, and belief is the nourishment the dream needs to become reality. Thank you to my family, Chandler, Genevieve, Constance, and Ambrose, and BFF Kristie for nourishing this dream. I love you all.

Susan had been in business two years. It had been a wild ride, but she had put in the hours of toil and was well on her way to the big prize. She had designed, focused, and then refined her product, her marketing, her social media, and her staffing, again and again. This wasnt her first rodeo. As a serial entrepreneur, she was driven and wise. She had rising sales and a strong team. So why was Susan sitting in my office holding a Summons and Complaint, looking like her dog just died?

Susans not a real person; shes many real people. Shes a composite of entrepreneur client after entrepreneur client Ive had in my law practice, looking for help, wondering if its all over just when it finally looks like its begun. These entrepreneurs need my help when, just as the product, systems, and people are in place, the hammer drops, and no amount of retooling or drive is going to pull their plane out of its tailspin.

We entrepreneursand I do count myself among themare optimists by nature. We have a solid-to-the-core belief that we can create something out of nothing. Weve decided to exit the mainstream, eschewing secure jobs, steady work hours, and the golden pocket watch of retirement to live lives that swing between the pits of despair and the heights of elation. We have a type and a set of characteristics as unifying as any in the wild kingdom. Either we are suffering from collective delusion or we are truly the visionaries we consider ourselves to be.

Whatever the mind can conceive and
believe, the mind can achieve.

Dr. Napoleon Hill

We entrepreneurs ignore conventional wisdom on every front. Were visionaries following the road less traveled. Weve concluded the mainstream world has little to offer us, and we gravitate toward others who believe the same. We have trouble holding conversations with the traditionally employed at polite dinner parties because we feel that work is something to be enjoyed, explored, and expanded, not something to be complained about. If, at that same dinner party, were introduced to a fellow entrepreneur, the night passes in a blink. Despite differences in gender, age, or industry, our entrepreneurial souls connect and there is no shortage of topics to survey.

If you and I found ourselves sitting near each other enjoying a hearty bowl of soup as a first course, I know wed get along smashingly. I dont know you, but I know youif you know what I mean. Were simpatico even though Im a 43-year-old mother of three who loves to surf and travel and couldnt tell you who played in the last Super Bowl.

Not long ago at a Las Vegas convention for bloggers and podcasters known as New Media Expo, I had a rousing round-table discussion with a group of young, single, twenty-something boys. We should have had nothing in common (see my aforementioned demographics), and yet we did. The conversation ended because, this being Vegas, they were off to party, and there our differences became apparent: Im a teetotaler who was ready to turn in for the night. But right up to that point, we were totally in sync. They are entrepreneurs, and so am I. In contrast, when I sit chatting with a group of 40-ish mothers in my neighborhood schoolyard, my eyes glaze over. We have nothing in common, even though, on paper, it looks as if we should. Really, if I have to hear about potty training one more time, Im going to stick a fork in my eye. I think what makes us entrepreneurs fast friends is that we face the same struggles and experience the same successes. We are the same animal, on the same savannah, trying to take down the same zebra.