If you want your business to be a model for healthy, non-toxic capitalism, you need to pay MORE attention to your numbers, not less

Picasso developed cubism because he was a classically trained artist.

He broke all the rules because he knew them so well. He knew their weak points and their strengths. He knew how the rules cast a spell on the viewer. By being so intimate with the existing paradigm, Picasso was able to create a new one.

And he blew the whole thing up without creating chaos and anarchy in the process. Once the shock wore off from seeing something completely new, people could connect to Picasso’s art because it, too, had logic and a set of rules.

It’s the same in business.

If you want to blow up the existing capitalistic paradigm first, understand its gearing and levers.

You need to understand its weak points and its strengths. You need to know how it creates its results in order to generate different results.

Learn conventional business models work so that you can dream up new ones.

If you reject your numbers while trying to do business in a new way, you’re making your business – and yourself – work a lot harder than you need to.

Your business’s story and its numbers – its qualitative and quantitative data – are like yin and yang. Both are needed to complete the energetic circle at the heart of your business ecosystem, and each contains the essence of the other within.

So, when I say, “Pay more attention to your numbers,” I’m not saying, "Only make decisions using quantitative data." Rather,

I urge you to make reality-based, soul-aligned, and contextualized decisions.

Why? Your outcomes will be better, and the world needs more businesses that are putting humanity back into capitalism.

You have to engage both soul and body.

After all, we are souls wearing meat suits. A soul without a body can’t operate in our 3D world, and a body without a soul is a zombie.

This is what’s missing for the finance bros who make business decisions based solely on bottom-line impact. Your business is part of an ecosystem.

You can’t separate business from society or ethics.

In order to run a sustainable, generative business without that exploitative, scarcity mindset, you’ll need to come up with creative and innovative ways to do business.

That’s the kind of creativity that financial intimacy opens you up to.

Because every qualitative decision you make is going to have a numerical impact.

Big companies run by bean counters screw up all the time. They make decisions that look great on paper but piss off customers, throw sand in the gears, or otherwise send their business southwards.

It’s hard to quantify the non-financial impact of decisions, but the costs are real.

Modern-day capitalism lacks a soul-centered feedback loop. But soul-centered business decisions are always available to us.

Your numbers won’t ever preclude you from a soul-centered business decision.

They will enable you to make decisions confident that you won’t put your business’ viability at risk. They’ll also challenge you to come up with new solutions to old business problems.

You’ll SEE the choices available to you, and instead of feeling trapped or boxed into traditional ways of doing business, you’ll create your own heart- and soul-led solutions.

If you’re curious about how to do business with soul, learn more about my upcoming class Financial Intimacy for Business Owners.