As small-business owners in America, the best time to get some tedious-but-necessary work done, for which we just don’t have the time during the rest of the year, is between Christmas and the New Year.
In recent years, I have been noticing two things about our file drawers. First, they were so packed that it was getting increasingly difficult to file new items into where they belonged. Second, there were many files that were no longer relevant to our current business and/or investments.
Starting out the New Year with plenty of space in our file drawers was important to me because physical clutter in my office (or anywhere else) bothers me a lot and, therefore, represents clutter in my mind. Put another way, when our office is well organized, it helps create no distraction and, as a result, I can think more clearly. This leads to my ability to focus on a few of the most important tasks as a business owner – generating revenues and retaining net profit.
I started the cleaning project the morning of the last day of 2014, thinking that it should be done plenty early before we need to get ready to go and visit with our friends from my Chrysler days, Diane and Doug.
To tackle the project, we created four separate piles:
- Recycle
- Shred
- Store (in a box in the basement)
- Keep (in a file drawer)
We kept going all day, sorting and determining what documents belong in which pile. I completely under-estimated the time it would take to get the job done. By 6 p.m., we had to stop. Our home office looked as if it were hit by a tornado. Since 2009 when we moved back into our newly re-built house, this was the first time that I ever allowed myself to leave home with a complete mess intact in one of the rooms. For some odd reason, it did not bother me. It was probably because I knew that the rest of the world was not going back to work until after the New Year’s Day.
David and I thoroughly enjoyed a quiet New Year’s Eve party at Diane and Doug’s place, which is about a 10-minute drive from our house. Delicious dinner, a wonderful movie that both David and I always wanted to watch but never did until that evening (“The Hundred-Foot Journey”) and, best of all, the company of dear friends that we’ve known for three decades. Doug made a special champagne concoction just in time for the countdown, and we all welcomed the New Year together. It was a wonderful moment to cherish.
We finished watching the rest of the movie and came home around 1 a.m. Several hours later, I woke up feeling completely rejuvenated by the experience from the night before and began tackling the rest of the filing project.
The file drawers are now much better organized and have plenty of space for relevant materials to be added. I am also proud of the fact that we have salvaged about a box full of manila folders to be re-used.
During this cleaning project, I realized that the years 2013-2014 were a pivotal period in our business in that the majority of our key business projects began to be organized electronically in a system called the iFlip. I thank Cameron Dunlap, who is responsible for this fantastic system, which makes following up on leads very easy. As they say in our business, the money is in the follow up. How true! The majority of the hard-copy documents that I found outside of where they should have been filed are those that I need to make sure to either follow up and/or input into the iFlip system. Among them, I believe, are at least a half-dozen leads which will probably result in additional revenues in 2015.
David also made an interesting discovery during this cleaning project. He was reviewing our life-insurance policies (essentially for each other), toward which we have been paying substantial premiums (thousands of dollars) each year. The policies indicate that, at age 70, the annual premiums jump ten-fold (to tens of thousands of dollars). The amount of increase is such that, upon reaching age 70, it makes no sense for us to keep paying for them. Given that, it would be a much better idea to invest the equivalent amount of the annual premium into our own real-estate deals, using our self-directed Roth IRAs, and grow every single dollar in those accounts tax free. I have known all along WHY we have been learning to make our own investment decisions for the last decade. The cost of annual life-insurance premiums was never a part of my thought process, however. Until now. I suppose it is better to realize this harsh reality now than, suddenly, at age 70 – so that we can better prepare ourselves for the inevitability of life. This is the year to put a sharp focus on accelerating revenue generation through our investments.
Thank goodness I have become as passionate about investing during the last decade as learning English was in my youth – each as a means to remain free and independent.
After what had happened to my retirement accounts on Wall Street in 2000, I resolved that I would trust no one but myself to manage my hard-earned money. Back then, I had no clue where to start. Today, my minimum goal for the next four years is to replenish the equivalent amount of what was lost 15 years ago – so that, when achieved, there should be no need for either of us to rely on each other’s life-insurance payout upon death of the other.
David’s discovery was the most important of all during our rather tedious file-drawer-cleaning project.
Happy New Year and Happy Investing!
