Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smiffy7/
I’m reading a little Dickens right now. Hard Times. It’s one of his shorter novels, and although I’m taking my time (a few pages a night), I’m about half way through it.
I’ve already read the novel before, but it’s been a few years.
It’s funny because all day I’ve been thinking about facts, and figures (the main family patriarch character is all about facts! Imagination is a sin to him).
I love facts. I love quantifiable things. I love knowing that if I make 10 sales calls, we will get 1 sale. It’s not exact, but a big enough sample size can really help predict the future.
How does this relate to finance? I think it comes down to tracking. Now that I track every single penny I spend both personally and on my business, I also want to track the results I get from that penny spent. It’s quite fun really. It’s exactly what I didn’t do when I was day trading.
Back when I was trading heavily, I tried to keep a logbook of trades and winning/losing trades etc. It always lasted about a day. Perhaps if I had the same passion for facts and data that I do now back then things may have turned out differently. Probably not, but I know I would have felt the pain a little more if I could pull up a sweet graph in excel showing my losses per minute.
Focus on the facts in my own life has helped me turn around my thinking a bit this week. I’m still reeling a bit from the whole business bank change and sudden $3,300 payment I made (unwillingly) to Wells Fargo. But, I’m starting to calm down again, and realize that I’m going to be fine.
I know people think I’m an emotional roller coaster, and I bet if I was just someone random reading my posts, I would think that as well. But keep in mind that when I post, its usually a high or low event for me. In other words, you usually get my most extreme moments. Who wants to read that I spent 10 hours in front of a computer and then went for a run? Heck, I don’t even want to write that. This isn’t a “here’s what I did today” journal for the most part. I do occasionally write like that (and this post is a slight example of this).
Anyway, I’m in a pretty good mood (hence the post!). I talked to a girl I’ve been pining over for some time tonite, and that is making me feel pretty light. And I did it with confidence that wasn’t fake at all, which was encouraging. Plus, I have two really good articles coming out tomorrow and Thurs. on Lending Club’s blog, so I’m excited to see how those do!
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“I also want to track the results I get from that penny spent. It’s quite fun really.”
And it is amazing how the internet has changed the ability to do that. It is fun how much more you can learn about your customer’s behavior than your competition can. Especially when everyone else is so archaic! Love it.