In chaotic times, it’s easy for business owners to be swayed by outside forces — good or bad. But how you respond reveals your core values. Are you building a business like Enron, driven by greed and deception, or like Warren Buffett, grounded in long-term integrity? Stoic philosophy teaches that to live by virtue is the highest of all goods. In business, as in life, there are countless opportunities to compromise yourself — but you always have to live with the consequences. One story I always come back to is about Benjamin Franklin. He was once offered a large sum of money to publish a slanderous, false story in his newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette. Rather than take the money, Franklin reminded himself that he could live simply — he bought a penny loaf, wore his oldest clothes, and slept on the floor. The next morning, he realized he didn’t need the money badly enough to sell out his values. That kind of character is what we should strive for in business. To stay grounded, every business needs guiding principles: a vision statement, a mission statement, and a set of core values. Your vision is what your business aspires to become. For example, Nike’s vision statement is:
“We see a world where everybody is an athlete — united in the joy of movement. Driven by our passion for sport and our instinct for innovation, we aim to bring inspiration to every athlete in the world and to make sport a daily habit.”
Your mission is how you plan to achieve that vision. Nike’s mission is:
“To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”
*If you have a body, you are an athlete.”
Your core values are the beliefs that shape your team’s behavior and decision-making. Nike’s values include:
Do the Right Thing
Create the Future of Sport
Be on the Offense Always
Win as a Team
Serve Athletes
Even though Nike is a global brand, these principles apply just as much — if not more — to small businesses. When your business has clearly defined values, hiring becomes easier. You’re not just looking for skills — you’re looking for alignment. People who reflect your values will help you build something strong. People who don’t? They’ll eventually pull in the wrong direction.
For Home Service Businesses: 10 Values That Build Trust
In service industries, values aren’t just for culture decks — they’re your compass. Here are ten you can consider:
Integrity – Do the right thing, even when no one is watching.
Reliability – Show up on time and follow through on commitments.
Customer First – Respect the customer’s time, money, and property.
Quality Workmanship – Take pride in your craft; don’t cut corners.
Transparency – Be upfront about pricing, timelines, and expectations.
Accountability – Own mistakes and fix them quickly.
Respect – Treat customers and teammates with professionalism.
Safety – Keep your crew and customers safe, always.
Teamwork – Support one another to get the job done right.
Continuous Improvement – Learn, adapt, and keep getting better.
You don’t need to adopt all of them — but you do need to know which ones matter most, and make sure your team lives them daily. When everyone shares the same values, it’s like riding the same bus to the same destination. If someone wants to go in a different direction, it might be time for them to get off the bus.
Values Give You Clarity in Uncertain Times
Strong values provide a foundation for decision-making, especially in uncertain or difficult times. They help you stay grounded, avoid costly missteps, and lead with confidence instead of second-guessing yourself. They also help you recognize when you’re drifting off course — and guide you back toward your mission.If your team is aligned, your mission can be fulfilled. When your vision is clear, you can weather economic storms, market shifts, and leadership challenges with resilience and focus. Because in the end, living by virtue — in business and in life — is what helps you avoid the kind of consequences that can sink a company. When you know who you are and what you stand for, you don’t need to hesitate.
Want to learn more?If you’re interested in mindsets and strategies that help business owners navigate uncertainty and build resilience, join me for my live webinar on April 24th @ 11am CST: “How Business Owners Can Navigate Uncertainty & Build a Resilient Company.” 👉 Register here
🎥 Watch the Replay: How to Grow Your Business When the Market Is Unpredictable
Discover how to forecast clearly, make confident decisions, and grow your business — even in economic chaos.
What You’ll Learn in This Replay:
✅ How to structure your business to bend, not break during economic stress
✅ What Dwight Eisenhower and Thomas Edison can teach us about resilience and mindset
✅ How to align marketing, operations, and finance to withstand downturns
✅ 10 Stoic strategies to stay calm, think clearly, and lead decisively
✅ A practical framework for turning uncertainty into opportunity — without burning out
🧭 This Is for You If You’re Wondering:
•Should I raise prices right now?
•How do I forecast demand when everything’s up in the air?
•Where is my business leaking profit — and how do I fix it?
•How can I prepare for the next disruption (without freezing up)?
🧠 Presented by Joe Bautista
Organizational Management Consultant | USMC Vet | Financial Planner
MBA – Syracuse | Data Analytics + Python Automation Expert
Joe blends real-world financial expertise with Stoic philosophy to help small business owners weather any storm — and grow stronger in the process.
📈 Bonus: Get a Free Profit Audit Report
After watching the replay, you’ll get access to a free Profit Leak Report that identifies inefficiencies, cost-saving opportunities, and margin improvements inside your business.
🎥 Watch the Replay Now
👋 Ready to apply this to your business?
👋 Ready to apply this to your business?
If you watched the webinar and you’re thinking,
“Okay… this all makes sense, but how do I actually do this for my business?” —
Let’s talk it through.
🗓️ Schedule a free 15-minute discovery call and we’ll:
•Identify your biggest opportunity or bottleneck
•Review what’s working (and what’s not) in your current setup
•See if a Profit Audit or ongoing support makes sense
Tariffs are rising. Prices are unpredictable. Cash is tighter than ever.
So how do you plan for growth when everything feels uncertain? With new tariffs creating fresh economic anxiety, many business owners are on edge. But this won’t be the last disruption we face. Whether it’s inflation, supply chain shocks, or political unrest — uncertainty is the norm, not the exception. The key isn’t to resist the storm — it’s to bend like a reed, not break like an oak. Right now, you’re probably wondering how tariffs will affect demand. But this is classic economics:• When uncertainty rises, demand shifts left — people hesitate.• When costs go up, supply shifts left — fewer goods, higher prices.Tariffs do both. So what do you do? The answer depends on your industry and business model. Not every company will be impacted the same way. Some will even grow stronger. In Stoic philosophy, this is called the reserve clause — knowing your plan might get flipped, and turning obstacles into opportunities instead of excuses.
🟢 A Real Example: Starbucks
In the early 2000s, Starbucks was booming — opening six stores a day with a soaring stock price. But by 2007, they’d lost their way. The original vision — a premium, personalized coffee experience inspired by Howard Schultz’s Milan trip in 1983 — gave way to scale-at-all-costs expansion. When the 2008 recession hit, the cracks were obvious. Starbucks had become a $4-a-day luxury with a poor experience. Sales dropped. Stock fell 50%. The brand was floundering. Then Howard Schultz came back as CEO after leaving the company in 2000. He realized the problem wasn’t external — it was internal. The customer experience had been commoditized. The operations had lost their soul. Here’s what he did:• Shut down 900 underperforming stores• Closed all stores temporarily to retrain staff• Launched a customer feedback loop• Rebuilt internal systems to prioritize forecasting clarity and experience metrics like:• Same-store sales• Customer satisfaction• Employee retention• Local economic signals In short: they stopped chasing growth and built a business that could bend, not break. The result? Starbucks doubled its stock price and came out stronger.
🔧 What About Your Business?
Most companies rely on three core engines:• Sales/Marketing – drive demand• Operations – deliver product/service• Finance/HR – maintain clarity, guide decisions During chaos, you don’t just “ride it out.” You adjust operations to drive demand, or you double down on marketing. Either way, the answer lies in the data. Without it? You’re just guessing in the dark. A strong Finance/HR function gives you the tools to turn messy problems into 5-minute decisions. So the real question is:
Are you making your problems 5-minute ones — or letting them spiral for months?
With tariffs, expect higher prices. But what happens next?• A short dip followed by recovery?• A long recession?• Business as usual? You can’t control the economy. But you can know your numbers. You can know where the leaks are. And you can position yourself to grow while others are retreating. If you’ve got a 2-year war chest — this might be your moment to tighten operations while competitors chase clients.If marketing is your bottleneck — it’s time to rethink your offer. Either way, your vision and your data will show you the path forward.
🧭 Want help bulletproofing your business?
Join me Thursday at 11am CST for a free live session:“How Small Businesses Can Survive Uncertainty and Grow Anyway”👉 https://forms.gle/tcSTe74A78wsBiULA
Business is the most competitive sport out there. Your rivals want to take revenue from you, and your employees will ditch you for the next best opportunity. However, to stay ahead of competitors, ensure that your good employees don’t leave, and that your operations continue to drive profits; all you really need to do is be a better business than you were six months ago. It doesn’t take much to be better if the focus is growing revenue by 2%- 3% every month, which should result in doubling revenue every 24-36 months. A more profitable business will allow you to pay yourself more, hire more staff, invest in R&D projects with tax credits, and give yourself a moat against your competitors. Owners and managers can best achieve this growth by having strategies and processes to help them increase revenue, control expenses, and deal with change. However, once a company hits a 40% growth rate, the old controls that kept the business going will start to break or create bottlenecks that harm the business, so how it operates will need to change. What worked operationally at $200k revenue will not work at $400k in most cases but definitely won’t at $1 million. So, the strategies can be the same, but the tactics must differ depending on the end goal.
Getting Business Operations Ready For Data Analytics
When a company grows, it must constantly review its operations to see what needs to be changed because what got it to $200k won’t get it to $1 million. Owners and managers can use descriptive data analytics to see how operations are performing and whether the performance will be enough to reach the revenue goal. This monitoring can help owners and managers see what needs to be removed or added to make things flow. With enough data, a business can use predictive analytics to see what is required to prepare for an increase or decrease in sales if it has seasonality. Business is dynamic, so you have to be ready for change, and it will be hard to manage that change if you don’t have data to understand what’s happening. Before any business can use data analytics properly, it needs to create a system for its operations. Conducting a Porter’s Value Chain analysis is an excellent framework for assessing how operations should perform, which shows what is needed to help a business sell a product or service from point A to point Z.
Marketing and Sales are the first step of the chain analysis. This includes things like ads for marketing and sales when a restaurant server takes the order from the customer. The second step is inbound logistics, such as how to store and acquire materials to sell to your clients. This step typically involves a restaurant’s freezer and storage room and how to bring materials from Restaurant Depot to the restaurant. The third step is operations, turning those raw materials into the product or service you need to sell. In a restaurant, this is the kitchen that is preparing the meal that the customer ordered. The fourth step is outbound logistics, where the product or service is delivered to the customer. In a restaurant, the server provides the meal to the customer from the kitchen. Service is the fifth and final step. For a restaurant, this can mean following up with a customer to ensure everything is up to par and fixing anything wrong with the order. These steps are the primary activities of delivering a product or service to the customer, and the final result is the gross profit margin. If you sell a hamburger for $15 in a sit-down restaurant but spend $6 on primary activities, then the gross profit margin is $9. Descriptive data analytics lets you see where the costs are and the revenue numbers so managers and owners can see if anything needs to be changed. For example, in Applebees, the COO removed the baskets for serving fries and placed the fries next to the entree. This decision saved the company $15 million a year, and orders didn’t decline. If you remove something and the order volume stays the same, you can use that $15 million for something better. With data and a system, you can experiment with your operations to see if a change improves or worsens things. This gross profit margin then funds all the company’s other operating expenses, which creates the operating profit margin. The secondary activities in a Porter’s Chain Analysis can be considered operating expenses and can incorporate: ProcurementThis activity is how the company acquires raw materials. This is heavily related to inbound logistics, and if a business can negotiate and find the needed materials, it can help it stay more competitive. Human resource managementThis activity involves hiring and retaining employees who will fulfill the business strategy. Overall, managing employees is helpful for all primary activities, where employees and effective hiring are needed for marketing, logistics, and operations. InfrastructureThis activity covers a company’s support systems and the functions that allow it to maintain operations. This includes all accounting, legal, and administrative functions. A solid infrastructure is necessary for all primary functions. Technological developmentThis activity is used during research and development, including designing and developing manufacturing techniques and automating processes. This includes equipment, hardware, software, procedures, and technical knowledge. Technological development is a business working to reduce technology costs, such as shifting from a hardware storage system to the cloud. Interest payments and taxes must be deducted after calculating the cost of goods sold and operating expenses. This final accounting step creates the net profit margin, which should be around 5% in a restaurant.
Getting the Organization Chart Ready for Data Analytics
Creating a successful business requires many operational steps that work in harmony with each other. This is why organizational management is also needed before implementing a data analytic strategy. Data analytics is ineffective if the organization is full of holes or doesn’t have the capabilities to utilize the recommendations or insights. However, owners and managers can start using descriptive data analytics to see how profits and expenses are doing, building awareness of what needs to be done to grow the business. This is why hiring a bookkeeper is one of the first things a business owner should do. It can also help with tax planning and see where a company can invest to grow revenue faster. Once you know how operations will go in the current phase of your business, you can start looking at organizational management. Any standard business selling a product or service can break down its organization in the following way. At the top of the organization is the leader. The leader is responsible for the company’s strategy and vision. They are the ultimate decision-makers and must maintain relationships with other entities to survive. They are also responsible for the business’s culture and standards so that the company will continue progressing. Below the leader is the manager The managers are responsible for managing day-to-day. They have numbers they know they should be hitting and know the staff’s roles and responsibilities. Then, below the manager are three divisions. Operations, which is responsible for making and delivering the product or service Sales/Marketing is responsible for gaining and closing leads. HR/Support/Finance is responsible for financial statements, reporting, data analytics, and onboarding/offboarding employees. In the beginning, the owner will probably have to take on all the roles, but the goal is to start delegating the lowest-value tasks to an employee or a vendor that can do the work for less than what the owner can get paid selling the product or service. If the owner can spend one hour selling 250 dollars worth of coffee, but it takes them one hour to do payroll and bookkeeping, but this can be done at $50/hr, then they should find a bookkeeper to do this work so they can focus on selling more coffee. Eventually, the owner must step away from the operation role and move more into the leader’s role if they want to grow the company.
Having a Vision Helps With Data Analytics
Business is simple, but it won’t be easy to double revenue every 2 to 3 years. Growing a business will require a lot of endurance and courage to go after it every day. But if you have a vision, it will make things much more manageable. If you want to be a 1 million dollar company with 15% profit margins and a salary of $150k, you could bring in $300k a year as an owner. From here, you can see if that is enough or if you want to challenge yourself to grow even more. If we look at a $200k company that doubles revenue every three years from 2021, this is how things will look.
2024: $400k
2027: $800k
2030: $1.6 million
2033: $3.2 million
2036: $6.4 million
2039: $12.8 million
2042: $25.6 million
2045: $51.2 million
What it takes to make $200k a year will be very different from what it takes to make $51 million 20 years later. So, it’s important to start figuring out how things must change once a company hits a 15% growth rate and start asking questions like:
What needs to be eliminated?
What should be added?
What roles are required, and who needs to fill those roles?
What new technologies will need to be utilized?
When should I exit this business, and what is enough for me?
Having your company vision and mission statement can help you understand what the future needs to look like and what is required to make the journey successful. One of the easiest things to do as a person is to get distracted and focus on the wrong things. It’s also important to know that it is simple to enter something, but exiting that position will be more complex. So, know what is essential and where you need to be in this present moment.
What Charts To Include In a Business Dashboard
To get even more clarity, owners and managers can use a data analytics dashboard to gauge what decisions need to be made to achieve an average 2-3% growth rate. What an owner needs for their business dashboard will depend on the business’s current situation. To build your business dashboard, you can create charts using Tableau, PowerBI, R, Excel, or Google Sheets and include the following charts:
Bar Chart:
Pros: Ideal for comparing categorical data or showing trends over time. Easy to understand and widely used.
The cons are that it can become cluttered with too many categories and is only suitable for displaying continuous data kiwi thinning.
Line Chart:
Pros: Great for showing trends and patterns over time, especially for continuous data.
Cons: We may need to find individual data points, making it difficult to discern specific values.
Pie Chart:
Pros: It helps show parts of a whole and makes the proportion of different categories easy to understand.
Cons: It can be misleading if there are too many categories or if the differences in proportions are subtle. It is not practical to compare values.
Area Chart:
Pros: It is similar to line charts but with the area filled below the line, making it easier to visualize cumulative totals or proportions.
Cons: It can be challenging to interpret accurately when multiple areas overlap.
Scatter Plot:
Pros: Excellent for visualizing the relationship between two continuous variables. It helps identify correlations or clusters.
Cons: With many data points, it may need to be more precise. It requires careful interpretation to derive meaningful insights.
Histogram:
Pros: Ideal for visualizing the distribution of continuous data, helping identify patterns such as central tendency and variability.
Cons: Histograms can be less intuitive for some users than other chart types, and binning choices can affect interpretation.
Heat Map:
Pros: Effective for visualizing patterns in large datasets, mainly when dealing with geographical or matrix-like data.
The cons are that it can be overwhelming if the data is too dense. Interpretation might be more straightforward with proper color coding or a legend.
Box Plot (Box-and-Whisker Plot):
Pros: Provides a comprehensive summary of the data distribution, including outliers, quartiles, and median.
Cons: Interpreting this may require some understanding of statistical concepts. It could be better for displaying individual data points.
Gantt Chart:
Pros: Great for project management, displaying tasks, and their durations over time.
Cons: It may need to be more transparent and accessible to read with complex projects or many tasks.
Bullet Graph:
Pros: Efficient for comparing actual values against target values while displaying qualitative ranges.
Cons: This may require an explanation for users unfamiliar with the chart type. It is not suitable for displaying complex relationships.
How Managers and Owners Can Be Effective With Data
A business dashboard must change as the business grows to focus on what will achieve that 2-3% growth rate. To deal with the eventual change to the organization, owners and managers should know the data analysis process and the life cycle of data to determine which graphs should be included in a business dashboard and how to ask the right questions. For the Data Analysis Process, here are six steps which involve:
Ask:
This stage involves defining the problem or the question you want to answer through data analysis. It’s essential to understand the objectives and information you seek clearly.
Prepare:
In the preparation stage, you gather and organize the data required for analysis. This may involve collecting data from various sources, cleaning and formatting it, and ensuring it’s ready for analysis. Data preparation also includes handling missing values, outliers, and any inconsistencies in the dataset.
Process:
Once the data is prepared, it’s processed to transform into a format suitable for analysis. This may involve data transformation, aggregation, or statistical techniques to derive new variables or metrics.
Analyze:
In the analysis stage, you apply statistical methods, data mining techniques, or machine learning algorithms to extract insights from the data. This could involve exploratory data analysis, hypothesis testing, regression analysis, clustering, classification, etc.
Share:
After deriving insights from the data, it’s essential to communicate the findings effectively. This stage involves creating visualizations, reports, or presentations to convey the results to stakeholders clearly and understandably.
Act:
The final stage of the data analysis process is to take action based on the insights gained. This could involve making strategic decisions, implementing changes, or further investigation based on the findings to drive business outcomes or solve the problem initially identified.
Following this framework can help a business decide how to grow using data analytics. A company will likely need to focus on getting customers in its first five years. So, having a dashboard focusing primarily on marketing could make sense until there is enough revenue to cover operations. A company must understand how to manage its data to build the right business dashboard to be effective. Following the life cycle of the data framework can let owners and managers know what is needed to ensure they get the correct information and involves doing the following:
Plan:
The planning stage involves defining the data requirements, including what data needs to be collected, how it will be collected, and for what purpose. Establishing data governance policies, privacy considerations, and compliance requirements is crucial at this stage.
Capture:
Once the data collection plan is in place, data is captured from various sources, such as databases, sensors, websites, or external APIs. This could involve manual data entry, automated data collection processes, or real-time data streaming.
Manage:
The collected data is stored, organized, and maintained in the management stage. This includes data storage infrastructure, database management, security, access control, and quality assurance measures.
Analyze:
Like the Data Analysis Process, this stage involves analyzing the data to extract insights and derive value from it. Depending on the objectives, various analytical techniques and tools may be applied to the data.
Archive:
After the data has served its primary purpose, it’s archived for long-term storage. Archived data may still hold value for historical analysis, compliance, or regulatory purposes. Proper archival procedures ensure data integrity and accessibility when needed.
Destroy:
Eventually, data reaches the end of its useful life or becomes obsolete. In this stage, data that is no longer needed or has surpassed its retention period is securely destroyed. This could involve data deletion, shredding physical records, or other methods to ensure data privacy and compliance with regulations.
As a leader, you must know how to be an analytical thinker to make sense of all the data, which involves breaking down complex problems or situations into smaller components, analyzing those components, and deriving insights to make informed decisions or solve problems effectively. And here’s a more detailed explanation of the five aspects of analytical thinking so you can make better sense of your data:
Visualization:
Visualization involves mentally representing information in various forms, such as charts, graphs, diagrams, or mental models. It allows individuals to comprehend and manipulate data more effectively by converting abstract concepts or numerical data into visual representations. Effective visualization aids in pattern recognition, trend identification, and communicating complex ideas to others.
Strategy:
Strategic thinking involves considering long-term goals, assessing available resources, and developing plans or approaches to achieve desired outcomes. It requires foresight, creativity, and anticipating potential obstacles or opportunities. Strategic thinkers analyze the current state, envision possibilities, and formulate action plans aligning with organizational objectives or personal goals.
Problem-Orientation:
Being problem-oriented means understanding the root causes of issues or challenges rather than simply addressing symptoms. Analytical thinkers approach problems systematically, breaking them into smaller, more manageable components and identifying underlying patterns or relationships. They ask probing questions, gather relevant data, and explore alternative solutions to arrive at effective problem-solving strategies.
Correlation:
Correlation refers to the relationship between two or more variables or factors and how much they change. Analytical thinkers are adept at identifying correlations within datasets or complex systems, enabling them to uncover meaningful insights or predict future outcomes. They use statistical techniques, data analysis tools, or logical reasoning to discern patterns and causal relationships between variables.
Big-Picture and Detail-Oriented Thinking:
Analytical thinkers balance the ability to see the broader context or overarching goals (big-picture thinking) with attention to detail and precision in analyzing specific aspects or components (detail-oriented thinking). They understand how individual elements fit into larger systems or processes while recognizing the importance of accuracy and thoroughness in data analysis or problem-solving. This dual perspective allows them to grasp complex macroscopic and microscopic aspects, facilitating holistic understanding and informed decision-making.
How Setting Goals Helps With Data Analytics
In business, you will never find the final answer, so it’s best to think about the next best question you should ask and then start solving it. This process will be like Sisyphus rolling the boulder on the hill to watch it roll down with the following problem to solve. But instead of being for eternity, having a system for growth and an exit plan can help an owner avoid the fate of being stuck or in a purposeless position. To avoid the wasted effort that can lead to bankruptcy or unfulfillment, it’s important to set business goals with benchmarks to be hit. This should be reviewed every week. When we have a number to achieve, it can motivate us much more than wondering mindlessly. The data analytics should reflect the quarter’s goals, which should help with the yearly goals. It’s always best to break things down from an annual perspective and see if the company’s strategies and tactics can get them there. To make $1.2 million in revenue for a restaurant, $100k/mo in revenue is needed annually. If the average meal order is $22, 4556 orders are needed monthly. So, about 152 orders are required a day to reach the annual goal. With data analytics, you should see your busiest hours, what is selling the best, and what isn’t selling. The business’s busiest hours should focus on getting those orders in. Concentrating on prep and maintenance should be the priority for slower times. Then, you should also make sure that marketing efforts are bringing in those 152 orders a day. Tracking this information in a spreadsheet or a database can help a business owner see if they’re on track. Many restaurant owners experienced a boom in online deliveries during the pandemic, but online orders have slowed down with increasing inflation and folks using up the last of their pandemic assistance. This may have caused many business owners to be complacent, thinking that online orders were the norm, but eventually, businesses will become competitive again. So, it’s best to stay ahead of the change by investing in people, upgrades, technology, and operations and knowing what to stop or eliminate. As with many things, you don’t have to be great to get started; you just have to get started to become great. For most businesses, implementing a system to double revenue every two to three years will take two to three years and will require constant upkeep to ensure the growth continues. So, it is important to be patient and have faith that your process can help you achieve your dreams. And if you can grow a business to $10 million in revenue, you can sell that business for 2-10 times revenue. For restaurants, a rule of thumb is 2.3 times revenue, but a higher multiplier can be used if there is a system for growth. A chain with ten restaurants with $1 million in revenue each might fetch someone 23 million dollars or more. Proper tax planning using small business-qualified stock with a C-Corp can make that $23 million payout tax-free.
Know How To End Things And Adapt
What gets measured and managed grows exponentially, and things don’t happen by accident. You have to be intentional with everything. This is why a business owner should use data analytics and organizational management to double their revenue for their exit plan. As a business owner, they get to decide what is enough and what their life should be. This is the beauty of a business because it gives you control and flexibility over your life if done correctly. There are a lot of opportunities and tax benefits to enter entrepreneurship, but you have to know how to manage things to get the outcome you want. What a business owner wants to avoid if they want to scale is the paradox of the baker. The baker can’t grow their business since all their time is dedicated to making pies and can’t work on other parts of the business. The baker ultimately wants 100% control over the business to prevent uncertainty so they can’t trust their business to someone else. This mindset will cause the business to reach a limit and will never be able to scale beyond one shop. To reach the next level, a business owner must learn to accept chaos and uncertainty to grow. By discarding the idea that you can never fail and need complete control, you can learn to stop being the baker. In 33 Strategies of War, Robert Green discusses one reason the Spartans failed: they only focused on War. When they took over Greece, they didn’t fully understand economics and politics, and the Greeks’ leisure lifestyle and political culture started to eat away at the Spartans’ culture. A great thing can work, but it won’t work forever, and you need to learn how to be flexible with how you operate and manage things to reach the success you’re looking for. Having data analytics and organizational management in place can ensure that you stay successful.
With just over one week until the Federal Reserve’s last meeting of the year, CD and savings rates are still rising across the board.
As the Fed’s next decision looms, not only are experts predicting another rate hike, but the Fed Chairman himself has signaled that rates will need to go higher to tame inflation.
“We will stay the course until the job is done,” Chairman Jerome Powell said in a speech last week.
But the results of this year’s high interest rates, designed to tame runaway inflation, so far lag behind the Fed’s rate decisions. Despite a lower Consumer Price Index last month, “It will take substantially more evidence to give comfort that inflation is actually declining,” Powell said. “By any standard, inflation remains much too high.”
Perfectionism is usually the enemy of done and how we can defeat this monster. We all probably know that one person won’t do something because things are not perfect. The weather isn’t right, they don’t have the right gear, they don’t have the right connections, or they don’t have the energy to get started. Things have to be perfect before they take the next step. However, certainty is a disease of the mind and keeps people in the same spot. Then, the need for certainty will cause them to regress because they can’t grow since all their focus is on not losing.
Focus on doing important things
To be perfect is to be inhuman, so we need to embrace looking at the flaws and gaps, then figure out a way to fix them or get past them. Not every problem needs to be fixed, and using analytics can help someone figure out what they should do. Analytics can help someone solve a problem in six ways.
Make Predictions
Categorizing
Spotting Something Unusual
Identifying Themes
Discovering Connections
Finding Patterns
The goal of life isn’t to obtain perfection but to make progress that leads to many perfect moments. So if someone has a vision for their future and the right strategies, they can use analytics to help them progress by making better decisions on what to do. I use financial planning software to make predictions so I can help my clients reach their financial goals. If someone is not saving enough, the software can show them they’re on track to spend $3000/mo at age 65 instead of $7000/mo. This gap might motivate them to start saving more. If they can’t save the right amount now because 5-15% is too much for them right now, I can advise them to save 1% of their paycheck now and, with any pay raises in the future, save 50% of that and spend the other 50% on their standard of living until they reach the target savings rate. I might need to offer different advice, but having the prediction can help me give the right solution to solve the retirement shortfall. People don’t need to be perfect to reach their goals. They need to make progress, and daily progress can help them predict their future. I also have clients that were saving too much and were told they could start spending more money now on things they want to do, like a sabbatical or vacation, and still be OK with retirement goals. Having the prediction can give someone more peace of mind about what they’re doing without worrying about being perfect with their savings. Trying to be perfect with savings creates a life where someone can’t enjoy other things besides saving. The future is not guaranteed, but we can get a good idea of what will happen and be close to it with a high degree of confidence based on someone’s current circumstances and the path they’re choosing to go down. Ultimately, the goal is to be satisfied with the path when it’s all said and done.
How you do anything is how you do everything
If you were to see how you spend your money and time, you could start categorizing them. With these categories, you can begin to pinpoint why your life is the way it is. If you see that most of your time is spent traveling to work, which gives you 20 fewer hours to do something else, then it might make sense to figure out a way to start telecommuting more so you can have 20 more hours to work on yourself or spend it with family. The same thing can be with your spending. I use a highlight chart for someone’s budget to see how they spend on different categories.
Once you visualize all these categories, you can start to see if you can spot anything unusual. Data visualization can show someone that they spend too much on clothes or eat out too much. The idea is not to have all-or-nothing thinking but to figure out the perfect economy, where you don’t do too much but don’t do too little. It’s hard to make the right decision in your head, and humans are good at spotting patterns. And with the right analytics that shows a picture and story, someone can make better decisions to help them live their best lives. With all the categorization, then someone can start to see what the themes of their life are. If you were to look at my life, you would know I’m an entrepreneur trying to build. Most of my time and money spent is trying to grow my business. This is why I hired an assistant to help with marketing so it can allow me to focus more on strategy for my clients. When looking at how I spend my time and money and the themes they display, I’m better suited to make adjustments to help me reach my vision. Seeing the categories of my life will tell me that I’m not perfect, but then I can empower myself to make changes that will lead me to the theme that I need to have. This is why it’s important to know what type of future you want because a theme will tell you if you’re on track for it or not. This is another issue with perfectionism. It just focuses on the present with no defined future or is very unrealistic because so many things out of your control have to be correct. When there is a defined future based on the variables you can control, you can create an action plan to help you reach this future. For myself, I need 50 tax planning clients to help me do my other goals that revolve around family, social causes, and personal achievement. So when I review my own business analytics, I’m looking to see what I need to double down on and what I should change.
How can your progress move you closer to getting more perfect moments in your life?
Then after seeing your themes, you can start to make connections. If you know that you need to talk to 100 people to get a new customer, that can be freeing. Instead of dreading every “no” you receive, you can say that you’re 99 people closer to getting that new customer. If you’re noticing that you’re not sleeping well, then you can do things to fix that. By tracking your sleep and applying analytics, you might see that losing one hour of sleep makes you 14% less productive. Then after reviewing the data, you can start focusing on ways to improve your sleep and get productivity gains in your work and personal life. 80% of your gains will come from 20% of your efforts, so the idea is to double down on the connections that will give you the most return on your time and money. Then you should delete, delegate, or defer the other 80% from your life. When you’re going after your perfect moments, it requires you to embrace chaos in other parts of your life. You can’t fix everything, so focus on what is essential. Making progress is about having the right behaviors. In public health, I learned about The Transtheoretical Model. Someone might need to undergo these six stages to get a behavior change.
Precontemplation – People are unaware that behavior is problematic or produces negative consequences
Contemplation – People are aware of their behavior but might not be ready for the change
Preparation – People are starting to take small steps to begin adopting the new behavior that is healthier or more productive
Action – People are embracing the new behavior and intend to keep it in their life
Maintenance – People have done the behavior for more than six months, and it is about preventing a relapse
Termination – People quit the behavior and have regressed into their negative behavior.
If someone sees the connection to what stage they’re in, moving towards or staying in the maintenance stage can be more manageable. Analytics can bring self-awareness to your actions and hopefully cause less self-sabotaging.
Do your best
I’m a big fan of all you can do is all you can do. Just make sure you’re doing all you can do. Life can be hard at times, and it’s OK to terminate an effective behavior, but the goal is to get back into preparation and then into action if it’s essential. However, sometimes you need that break to give you a different perception and appreciation of doing that behavior. Gaining awareness can be uncomfortable, and people can use perfectionism as a scapegoat to rationalize a false sense of certainty in their lives. And complete certainty slows things down too much. Most of the time, good enough is good enough. Things should be fine if people are satisfied and getting the desired results. There is not enough time to make everything perfect, and it’s best to embrace the uncertainty of events and know how to work with them. Treat pursuing the theme like a game that takes multiple attempts to get the desired result. Where you don’t focus on what’s missing, you focus on what has been gained or will be. If you can say you are a better person than you were six months ago, and you’re on track to be a better person in six months, then you’re probably doing the right things. Focusing on the gains is much more important than removing gaps or flaws because removing them would require the impossible of being perfect. One of my favorite quotes from the stoics is, “The Impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” This quote was written 2000 years ago by Marcus Aurelius, the last great emperor of Rome. Out of the 60 rulers, he is known as one of the five great philosopher rulers. Many rulers were not that great, but Marcus Aurelius knew how to work with problems by objectively looking at them and not allowing his ego to ruin his perception. This is what data analytics can do. It gives you an accurate answer on what you should do to remove obstacles objectively and not irrationally.
Looks towards others for inspiration
If perfectionism is holding you back, modeling your behavior after someone’s success can help you make changes to have success. In the Redeem Team Documentary about US Men’s Basketball team, the team in the early 2000s thought they were perfect against their competition because they were 63-1 in the Olympics. However, losses to Argentina, Yugoslavia, Spain, Italy, Greece, Australia, and Puerto Rico showed them that something had to change. So the US Men’s Basketball committee convinced Kobe Bryant to join the team in 2006. The team’s training facility was in Las Vegas, with many highly talented but young players like Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, and Lebron James. They would go out and have fun and return to their hotels around 4 am, the same time that Kobe Bryant would be heading to the gym. This act showed the team what fundamental professionalism looks like and how it can lead to being a better basketball team that can compete against the world. The team started being more serious about their training, leading to the perfect outcome: winning the gold against Spain in 2008 and another in 2012 with Kobe leading the way. Figure out what is holding you back, and then find solutions to help solve your problem. And with problems, you can’t go around them. You have to go through them. What stands in the way becomes the way. You can do it intelligently or foolishly, but an analytical approach can prevent the latter.
Final Takeaway
The more problems you can solve for yourself, the better your life will get, and you will realize that things won’t be perfect and there will be setbacks. However, failure is rarely fatal if you act honestly. And this honesty will help you see that having a perfect process won’t help you grow.
By Black and Brown Make Green podcast | Septembe 7, 2022
Joe Bautista is a Certified Financial Planner with Bautista Planning and Analytics. He is all about self-motivation, growth, and development. He is the author of The More You Know, The More You Grow and Your Daily Cup of Joe, a book with daily micro lessons to fuel your personal development. Joe joins us as the final CFP in our Money Tips from a CFP series. We talk about earning, keeping, and growing your money, living abroad, how he is prioritizing his spending now, and more. Joe started his career in the marines, has worked in D.C., and currently lives abroad in Columbia. Joe has such a varied background. He is the son of a Mexican immigrant who had a 3rd grade education. His parents declared bankruptcy when he was in high school, but none of those obstacles have slowed him down! Listen in to learn all about Joe and his tips and strategies for growth.
When President Biden announced his administration would forgive $10,000 for borrowers making less than $125,000 annually, he effectively eliminated the student loans of 32% of all borrowers.
He also announced $20,000 in relief for those who received federal Pell grants, which are earmarked for low-income scholars, and extended the pause on student loan repayments until Dec. 31, 2022.
According to the Federal Reserve, the total student debt is estimated to be $1.75 trillion. Black students have to rely more on loans, and the average Black borrower still owes 95% of their balance 20 years later, according to the NAACP. While many borrowers are celebrating having their student loan debt forgiven, systemic inequality for Black borrowers still exists.
When I was studying to take my CFP® exam, I came across a stat from Dalton Education where they said that 90% of investing wealth comes from long-term investing.
Some strategies that help with being a long term investor come from the following:
Dollar-Cost Averaging
Picking a diversified asset allocation
Have your financial goals written down, so you don’t get distracted from the noise and make too many changes to your portfolio that result in losses
These are not sexy things to do because they take a long time to implement. Suppose you ask someone if they would rather have $100 today or in one year $110. Most people will choose the $100 today because they get to benefit from using the money now. $10 is not life-changing to wait for, but it is still a ten percent return. If someone could maintain a 10% return in their retirement account for 40 years and contribute $100/mo, they would have $632,407 and invested $48,000. After staying the course for four decades, this is $584,407 worth of growth from the market.
Sticking with an asset with a lot of growth potential to invest in (Think buying Tesla or Bitcoin ten years ago)
Become a day trader
For the first two options, there is a saying that you want to buy the rumor and sell the news. Once something becomes the news and is going to be a success, then a lot of the gains will already be realized. Buying the rumor requires you to have a lot of information about that industry and know its growth potential, but having this information doesn’t guarantee success.
To buy Bitcoin in 2011 was very hard because the technology wasn’t there to easily buy it and required someone to go through a lot of volatility to benefit from buying at $1 and selling at $60k a coin ten years later. All while not being distracted by all the other cryptocurrencies out there.
Doing day trading or speculative trades requires someone to guess how valuable something will be in the future and how much financial risk they want to accept when they make trades. So understanding systematic and unsystematic risks will be vital to someone’s success but doesn’t guarantee success as well.
One of the concepts about taking on financial risk is that you need to be compensated for taking that risk. So if someone decides to buy a cryptocurrency or stock that had a lot of growth potential and didn’t work, they have to be okay with losing that money. When it comes to picking individual securities, there are no good trades without bad trades, and it’s part of the system.
So the route to get that 139.58% return would mainly require someone to become a day trader. The main goal of a day trader is to buy a security and then sell it for more than they bought it for and still make a profit after fees and taxes are subtracted.
A candlestick chart is a tool that day traders would use to determine what trades they should make. This strategy requires more financial risks than a buy and hold strategies.
I talked to someone last year, and he mentioned that he was a day trader and did well, but he also mentioned that day trading took up so much time because he had to research everything and was exhausted from it.
How Small Players In The Market Are At A Disadvantage
If you haven’t read the book Flash Boys by Michael Lewis, check out this 60-minute video to show how day traders are at a disadvantage against more technical operations. In the video, hedge funds and other institutional investors can see that you put in a market buy order for a block of shares for 50.01, but the other traders will see that trade and buy the block of shares before you and then sell them to you 50.03 since they got the price of 50.01 first.
The margins can be slim in day trading, but you can make up for this by going after volume with many trades. This front running of other investors is done in less than a second and can be replicated all day, but operational costs and taxes must be accounted for to ensure profit.
The safer investment strategy is to buy and hold for the long term, but the stock market needs day traders to create variation in the stock market. If everybody invested in a passive index fund, the stock market would go up and down based on the cash flow direction. With more dollars going into the stock market, the market goes up. When more money leaves than enters the stock market, the price of funds goes down.
When day traders make trades on individual stocks, you can see more defined valuations of respective companies, which will be reflected in the price of passive mutual funds and ETFs. It also allows underperforming companies to leave the market, be bought out by a competitor, or change their corporate strategy to create more value for shareholders.
Prices can be manipulated in the short run by day traders and not reflect the company’s actual valuation because speculation is baked into the price. Still, the speculation value can be realized, or it can evaporate. Eventually, time will tell folks what the proper valuation of the company was.
If you see somebody who made money from day trading, ask what the work and luck that happened to make this happen. Then ask yourself does it make sense for you to follow the same path. As always, just know the deal in fully before you accept the deal.
How Not To Be Taken Advantage Of
If someone is selling their trade secrets on how to make money in the stock market, then either it’s going to require a lot of work and research, or it is a trick that worked in the past but won’t work anymore or will soon be useless after enough people learn about the trick. Day trading is a challenging journey to take, and requires someone to have an advantage against all the other traders.
Take this story from a data scientist who decided to focus on horse races after leaving his job in investment banking. After first focusing on the size of horse nostrils to see if it led horses to win races, Jeff Seder eventually found out that horses with a large left ventricle had higher odds of winning. He could have kept this information to himself, but he gave that information away. Now horse betters have to look at other sources to see which horses will win. Breeders will probably start breeding for larger left ventricles in their horse’s hearts, and the betting odds for horses with larger left ventricles will be lower. So bettors will make less money on these horses because the bookkeepers are aware of this information and now can issue more beneficial odds for themselves. So if you have an advantage now in a competitive field, then it’s best to keep it a secret.
In economics, I learned that all profits go to zero in the long run, and it’s because of competition. There is competition in everything we do, and there are good things and bad things that come from the competition. With competition, we can get a lot of value creation which can help boost economic growth, which can help can benefit society and boost returns in the market. Someone that chooses to be a long term investor can benefit from this economic growth while not having to worry about competition from other traders.
With a lot of risks, there needs to be a potential reward for that risk, but make sure it is a calculated risk, and if someone decides to take that calculated risk, hopefully they can follow through on what they said they were going to do and were prepared for the setback that will come. Only 1.6% of day traders are profitable, and they make up 12% of the trading, so they’re making moves and spending most of their time on this skill. And if someone is not getting the results they want, it’s probably because they’re not following process or is proving more difficult than planned and should change their strategy.
The Choice Is Still Yours
Whatever choice someone makes with investing, it is best to know the deal before accepting the deal. There is no bad or good. It is just what it is. Life is risky, but you also want to manage that risk by ensuring you have a safety net and that one mistake will not wipe you out. If someone borrows $1 million to make a trade and earns 2%, they make $20k minus the interest. If they lost 2% off that $1 million borrowed money, they’re down $20k and still owe the lender $1 million-plus interest. If someone has $1 million in reserves, losing $20k might be one trade out of a 100, then the trader could still be ahead overall. If someone has a negative net worth, a $20k loss can cause pain.
Since 90% of investing wealth has come from long term investing, the more solid strategy is to buy and hold. Though, if you see someone make a lot of money on a meme stock or a cryptocurrency, then don’t let greed take over and make you think it is easy to do. It’s possible, but the probability of getting a 100% return in a year is extremely low. Most sustainable success comes from being a master in the domain, understanding the field you’re operating in, and knowing how to deal with competitors.
If someone wants to be speculative, then a barbell strategy could be useful. This technique involves having a portfolio where 90% is invested in financially stable securities, and 10% of the portfolio is invested in very speculative securities. I would tell people to read this Malcolm Gladwell article about Nassim Taleb to learn more about the barbell strategy. The biggest takeaway I got from Nassim Taleb was that you have to know how to bleed slowly to wait for that ample opportunity by minimizing your losses but exposing yourself to a huge upside.
Life is about choices, and we are the sum of those choices, so make sure you’re making the best choices with your life. Realize there will be losses in the short term, but to not make them permanent by learning from the failures and make different choices to get the outcome you want. Then ask yourself if you’re willing to make those choices.
It’s best not to compare your situation with someone else. Just focus on your effort and see if it will give you the life you want. If it’s not, then learn to change your choices when the cost is too great to bear. Chasing things can lead to a poor outcome if you think it will give you happiness and didn’t know the cost.
Disclaimer
This blog post is for educational purposes only. Please do your research or contact a professional before you make any changes to your financial situation.
Any links to third parties are not recommendations or endorsements and are for educational purposes.
I turned 36 earlier this month and based on my life experiences, I’m starting to see the world through a different lens of uncertainty and order. I’ve noticed that embracing uncertainty can provide me with many new opportunities, but it can also offer disappointment and regret if things don’t work out.
A cognitive bias that we have is that we don’t like to feel pain and will seek to avoid it. People prefer order in their lives because the likelihood of pain associated with disappointment and regret is less likely to happen. However, the perceived order that comes from avoiding uncertainty can give people a false sense of security in the short term if they don’t learn to embrace the future and all of its unknowns.
Now I’m starting to see that the person who can handle and face the world’s uncertainty will be the one that will most benefit from the opportunities that life can provide. Embracing uncertainty can knock someone down, but they can avoid the misery of staying down if they know how to pick themselves up and go after another opportunity.
Reaching higher levels requires letting go of certainty and going through the motions of the current events. For the past couple of months, I have had difficulty finding the right place in Mexico to live, which has affected my business. Then I was having problems with my computer and the type of video editing I wanted to do, so I decided to pivot and move back to Colombia, where I know I can be productive and still practice my Spanish.
I love my time in Colombia, and I wouldn’t know about this feeling if it wasn’t for a week-long trip to Colombia in 2019 after quitting my old job to start my financial planning firm. Being a digital nomad has had its ups and downs, but the idea is that I’m going to keep picking myself up until I get the life that I want. And because I have done a lot of different things, I know what I want for my future, and embracing more uncertainty will be part of the formula. Only seeking order would have limited my options and caused me to make choices that restrict my liberty. If you look at a ship, it’s the safest when it’s in the harbor, but that’s not what it was meant to do.
When it comes to obstacles, you can’t go around them. You have to go through them. To handle the uncertainty of going through my obstacles, I have to thank the stoic philosophy for giving me the principles to live life, which are:
Live In Agreement With Nature – The stoic goal of life
The world is chaotic and can only have order within you
Live By Virtue – The highest of all goods
We have many opportunities to compromise ourselves, and we will have to live with the consequences
Focus On What You Can Control, Accept What You Can’t – Quickest way to move on
You can control what’s internal. Everything external can’t be controlled
Distinguish Between Good, Bad, and Indifferent Things – Know where to focus
There are a lot of distractions, and to know what is important and essential to spend your time and energy on
Take Action – Be a warrior of the mind
The distance between your dreams and reality is called action, and you can’t solely manifest your way to success
Practice Misfortune – Ask, “What could go wrong?”
Realize that on average, every 90 days, something will go wrong in your life
Add A Reserve Clause To Your Planned Actions – You will have to make pivots in life to get past obstacles
Create a life where your problems only last five minutes
Amor Fati – Love everything that happens
Going through tough situations gives you the power that external events can’t defeat you
Turn Obstacles Into Opportunities – Perception is key
You can’t go around obstacles. You go through them. What stands in the way becomes the way
Be Mindful – Mindfulness is where it all begins
What matters is what you see and looking at something doesn’t mean you see it
These 11 principles have helped me tremendously over the past seven years because they allowed me to embrace the world’s uncertainty and live life on my terms. And the way things have been over the last two years globally, these principles have helped me out more than ever.
More importantly, these principles allowed me to go after new opportunities and experiences in this world. Life is short, and I recommend that people read “The Tail End” by Tim Urban to see how short life is. But also realize all you can do, is all you can do, make you’re doing all that you need to be doing with the time you have.
Two thousand years ago, Seneca wrote that we tend to suffer more in imagination than in reality. It comes from a lack of not wanting to face uncertainty because we believe a negative outcome will be unbearable to deal with. But if things do get bad, we can learn to live with those setbacks and get stronger from them because now failure is rarely fatal. Journaling my thoughts helps me get false narratives out of my head to get the correct perception of what I should do, leading to less anxiety and depression.
There are limits on how much uncertainty we can handle, but the more we train our minds using the 11 stoic principles, the more uncertainty we can take and the more liberty we can enjoy. I loved reading in the book Sapiens how wheat domesticated people who were seeking order. A wheat farmer back in the day had to spend all day in the fields, seven days a week, to grow their corp. In comparison, a hunter who knew how to embrace uncertainty and had the proper skill set could hunt for one day and then spend the next three days socializing and spending it with family. Embracing only order typically requires someone to trade their time and free will to get that order.
Also, realize that you can be the perfect person, and bad things can still happen to you. This can cause resentment, a natural feeling since it’s a cognitive bias ingrained in our DNA to seek fairness when things are not perceived to be fair. This feeling of resentment can be good if you know how to have the right perception in the event, but it can create a more toxic environment because we seek justice in a chaotic world where many things are out of our control. However, the toxicity comes from striving to be an important person and not focusing on doing important things.
And this is one of the factors that come with dealing with uncertainty. Are your actions based on trying to be an important person, or are they for doing important things? And if you focus on doing important things, the uncertainty will be easier to handle. There will still be struggles because something unpleasant will happen. Still, you know to continue with the uncertainty because on the other side of it is where all your dreams are.
As the author Robert Greene has said, the need for certainty is a disease of the mind, so don’t be fooled into making an irrational decision based on the need for complete order. There is a lot of untapped potential in this world and dealing with uncertainty is a good way to unlock it.
