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Why Every Business Owner Should Learn to Read Their Profit and Loss

Learning to read your profit and loss and balance sheet helps you understand your business and make informed decisions.

By Anthea Horvat

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Get into your P&L, my friend. Those numbers are trying to tell you something genuinely useful.

This is the month we lovingly freak our clients out. It's the moment of truth. We pull out the profit and loss and the balance sheet and look at how the business is really doing.

The core idea

One skill that isn't especially glamorous, but will serve you for the rest of your business life, is learning to read and interpret your profit and loss and your balance sheet.

There is so much gold in there. It helps you make better decisions, know exactly where you stand, plan your cash flow, and check that things are genuinely moving in the right direction.

But so many business owners don't look often enough.

They almost hand that responsibility over to their tax accountant. And unless you've specifically engaged them for it, that was never their job.

Becoming financially literate is one of the best things you will ever do for yourself.

Financial outcomes are one of the three most important outcomes of any business: you've got to enjoy your business, you've got to get paid well, and you've got to leave a legacy.

Check out my short video on the topic below.

Take the next step

Like this? Anthea writes The Roadmap. Once a month, one of the twelve systems that build a profitable, scalable, saleable business, and one thing to do about it.
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Based in Perth? The Scale Smart Mastermind is a room of established business owners implementing the Million Dollar Business Roadmap together, with a monthly Scale Smart Lab in person. Places are limited to 24. To ask about availability, call Anthea on 0401 136 370 or email anthea@antheahorvat.com.au.
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Anthea Horvat

About the author

Anthea Horvat

Business strategist and mentor

Anthea helps service-based business owners build highly profitable, scalable and saleable businesses. She started her career as a Chartered Accountant, holds an advanced MBA majoring in marketing, and has worked with more than 6,000 service-based businesses.

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