Ebb and Flow

I hate being a businessman in September.  Most of our liquid wealth is either sitting out in the Lincolnshire fields or stood on pallets in Dutch daffodil warehouses.  What little remains is waiting in the bank accounts of our customers until their payment terms have elapsed (some are on 3 month payment terms). 

I'm sure that I write something similar every year, I always feel like this at this time of year. It certainly highlights how you have performed at your job.  Although it flies in the face of anything that a financier would tell you, in a small business the low water mark in your current account can be a much more effective measure of success than the bottom line of a profit and loss account.

The principle of business is much simpler than most people would have you believe.  It's only about a bit of profit in reward for good performance or service.  Anyone who makes it more complicated than that is a fraud or a crook.  This is why finance is so unneccessarily (I wasn't sure how to spell that so I put in two of everything) complex, in order to purposefully mislead people.

I've said many times that no one should be allowed to hold a public office unless they have run a fruit and veg stall profitably for three months using their own money.  There is no greater lesson in the value of trade, management and customer service than that.  Our public finances were never in better shape than when we had a grocer's daughter in charge (please don't read that as an unequivocal endorsement of all of her policies) 

I had promised myself a weekend away before we start potato harvesting but I can't bring myself to do it.  I'm like a ill-sitting hen until the money starts flowing back in and I am itching to get underway.

There is less at stake than usual, I guess.  Interest rates are low and there's not a lot of merit in having money on deposit at the moment.  There is a world of difference, however, between holding your assets in property or gold and holding it in potatoes or grain.  To deal in super-perishables like flowers/soft fruit is particularly nerve-wracking and you need either nerves (or ignorance) of steel.

I was once told by a wealthy old boy that "You're money won't go rotten in the bank, boy."  That old boy wasn't uber-a$&£hole Sir Fred Goodwin by the way.