The fourth 6 months at Flux from a money perspective 🤑

It’s that time again. Opening up our finances to look at where we’ve been, where we are now, and where we’re going.

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flux

6 min readJan 14, 2019

This biannual ritual is becoming an essential element in running this business. We’ve decided to take the time, every 6-ish months, to think and write about the money we make and how it makes us feel.

True to our name, the way we work and conceive of our organisation is constantly in flux. This 4th half-year has been one of balance and imbalance, of change and stasis. At one point I was going to get a Flux tattoo, then a few months later we were toying with the idea of closing the whole thing down!

The big realisation we had in September was that we’re not running a normal company here. Sometimes we’re like an agency, with clients who want ‘Flux’ to work for them. Mostly we’re Jon and Jim, with clients who want to pay for our specific and individual skills. We fill gaps and niches in other organisations, and that’s an awesome thing to be able to do.

I guess we’ve evolved into this way of working largely due to being geographically separate: me in the UK and Jon in Portugal.

We’ve always called Flux our “freedom machine”. It’s the vehicle that supports us and our families to have great lives. It’s only useful if it serves that goal, but this year it’s often felt more like a burden. We agonised over our purpose, struggled to define our culture, and spent lots of money building a new biz marketing strategy. We miss being pals and doing little side projects. The idea of Flux was becoming annoying.

So in September, we decided to chill out. To let Flux remain as a useful administrative and bureaucratic tool with a decent amount of credibility, but to largely follow our individual noses. We would still commit to bringing in enough money to cover our salaries and running costs, and if ‘Flux’ work came along then we’d do that and relish working together.

There was also the matter of a big imbalance in the amount of money that we both brought in. It was such an awesome experience discussing and eventually resolving this imbalance that I’ve written a separate article about it:

A COOPERATIVE APPROACH TO CAPITALISM

Here are our numbers for the 4th six months at Flux.

Profit / Loss (what came in and went out)

~ between April 24th 2018 and October 23rd 2018~

It’s been a decent year financially, due to plenty of hard work and some good day rates. I definitely felt it by September though and was more than ready for a long holiday away from screens.

We didn’t quite get as much work as we’d anticipated, but our direct costs were way down (one of the goals from the previous 6 months) which meant that the bulk of our earnings went on salaries and dividends.

Comedy4Companies broke even, which is fantastic validation for this little spinoff idea that I wasn’t sure about. We’re gearing up for more work this year and have an ambition of 20 projects / €50.000 revenue by July.

Our clients are still varied and come to us with interesting organisational or team challenges. This year I’d love to get charities/NGOs onto that list, or at least some more organisations who are motivated primarily by purpose rather than profit.

Balance Sheet (what we’ve got right now)

~ on Oct 23rd 2018 ~

Pretty much the same as it’s been for the last couple of years. We’ve got some money. We’re owed some money. We don’t owe much money.

We’ve got a decent enough buffer now that it means we can focus on getting good projects with great people, instead of scrabbling around for any work we can find.

Cashflow Forecast (what the next 4 months look like)

~ from Nov 2018 to Feb 2019~

As I mentioned above, we didn’t make as much money as we’d hoped to this year. We also spent slightly more than we anticipated on developing a marketing strategy for new biz (which we decided not to go ahead with), corporation tax, and VAT. This all means that the projections this time are a little more realistic. We’ve adjusted the way we calculate our cash flow forecast to take things like that into account.

For Flux in its current state, this is great. We’re focusing on growing ourselves and our families, instead of our company. What the next 6 months will bring, who knows.

A note from me (Jim)

I’m in a pretty good spot right now. With over a year of a regular salary and therefore the ability to do proper financial planning, I’ve now got £4,000 in a Lifetime ISA, £5,500 in a savings pot, and money put aside for next year’s tax bill already (which I’ve never bothered to do before!). I’m also waiting on the 2nd part of my Flux Christmas Bonus which should be around £6,000.

If all goes to plan (HAHA) I should have around £20,000 saved by the end of the year. Which is completely mad! And definitely a validation of this whole Flux experiment. If I can achieve that, then it could lead to all kinds of things: the flexibility to take time off, to invest in some learning, to get a mortgage. Loads of stuff.

Let’s see how the year goes, though. If the last 2 years of writing these articles have taught me anything, it’s that Flux remains utterly unpredictable.

As of right now (Jan 14th) we’ve got enough coming in to pay ourselves until May. Which makes me feel pretty safe and secure. And that’s a lovely feeling to feel.

A note from Jon

For me, this has been interesting. The early part of this year I was travelling in Central America with my family exploring alternative education (TEDx Talk about it here). I did some work writing Tales of Cool Companies for a client and working with MiVote remotely, but not much. The result is that I didn’t earn much as Jim & I agreed I’d only get paid a small salary (about £900 per month) whilst away unless I brought money in.

When I got back, things went pretty well with some great change management and leader mentoring work for a corporate client and a few talks, but still, it was less than normal. What I learned from that is that taking time off costs money in a delayed manner because I assume we disappear from people’s minds.

So when Jim & I looked at the money, we realised I’d been overpaid this year compared to what I’d contributed, by quite some amount actually. Former me would have been really scared by this, but not this time. I really felt like it was an opportunity to understand which feelings and needs of mine are most triggered by money and I really felt like it was an opportunity for Jim and me to understand each other better. I can’t stress how stressful this situation would be for many people and how it could destroy a friendship but no, it was kind of beautiful actually. I recommend reading this post for the insights that come from this process.

I’ve since got some great clients and work going and work that I really enjoy coming through my podcast, talks and new book. So it’s all really exciting stuff and I think 2019 promises to be a great one both at work and home. One thing is sure, I’m incredibly grateful for 2018. I travelled, I learned, I got married, I surfed, I worked, I wrote, I created… my work life balance has been great and something to learn from and bring into life back in Europe. I feel strong, honest, humble, optimistic and grateful 🙏🏼