Finance Essentials for Small Business and a Personal Experience

 

I enjoy volunteering for a variety of organizations. In the past, I've volunteered time to the East Troy Railroad Museum, Helenville Fire Department, Milwaukee Astronomical Society, Milwaukee Makerspace, Beer Baron's of Milwaukee, and other related organizations. Often times, there is a call for people to volunteer as treasurer at these organizations. I've wanted to step up and fill this need, but I'm apprehensive about my accounting skills.

In the past, I attempted to start my own business. It was a failure. It's demise was a combination of poor planning and a total lack of bookkeeping. With this failure always in the back of my mind, how can I step forward and volunteer to be a treasurer? Although I'm good at math, I suck at accounting.  It's time to do something about this gap in my skills. I'm taking the Become a Bookkeeper series on LinkedIn Learning. I just completed the course on "Finance Essentials for Small Business" and passed the test earning me a certification from the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy  How valuable this certification is, I don't know. But I do know that I learned a lot from this course and I'm looking forward to the next one entitled "Running a Profitable Business: Understanding Cash Flow."  

On a personal note, this course has made me feel a lot better about my previous failure as a roofing contractor. The mistakes I made, are quite common to new businesses.