It seems like everyone is always doing the math on small business. There’s the basic math, that revenues must exceed expenses — a simple addition/subtraction operation. Accountants have their own addition/subtraction rules, and it can get complicated sometimes.
Sometimes businesses lean into algebra for planning purposes, trying to define expectations if certain things happen or do not happen with their business, or happen all at the same time.
When businesses get big enough to owe a lot of money or have investors, especially publicly traded companies, you get a full throw down on calculus — everyone trying to figure out the rate of change in all the important areas and which trend line might be sloping away from their investment.
Of course, one of the greatest mysteries to me is calculating the low, low monthly payment – four good key strokes on a $12 calculator and I can give you all KINDS of payment scenarios! Don’t ever ask me to get you a payment without my handy dandy calculator. I could not do it, at least not on an interest-bearing loan.
We love math and science because they appear to be finite and predictable. We believe we understand things that can be quantified, at least until someone comes up with a new theory that changes the meaning of everything we once knew. Then, we start all over again.
One of the many things I love about Small Business is that it is often wild and unpredictable. Before there were ever numbers to distill, there was some embryonic instinct in an owner that was unformed. It did not exist, other than in the hearts and imaginations of those who believed they had something to offer, or a better way of doing something, or even no other option for survival than bringing the very best of themselves to market.
There is no algebraic formula that weights variables of interests, aptitudes, insights, searing passions and will to produce a successful business enterprise. It is not math, but the spirit of one person who cared enough about something to try, facing dark forces of the unknown, what has always been, naysayers and skeptics, and apparent scarcity of resources, yet living into that inner yearning. I consider it a miracle that beautiful things grow under such pressures and uncertainty, but maybe it is the pressure and uncertainty that produce the miracle.
Then all the smart people can start studying it to see how it all came together.
