Are you teachable and willing to learn new things?  Are you interested in making better financial decisions? Are you interested in making more money? Then you may just be ready for Business Street Smarts.  What is Business Street Smarts?  According to the marketing copy, it is a program which will allow us to 1) Know our Finances, 2) be Efficient, 3) Control our taxes, and 4) Prevent Fraud.  What business owner wouldn’t be interested in these skills?

Best of all, it is a fireside chat with a former colleague or ours, none other than Mike Field, CPA, JD.  For those who don’t do acronyms, he is an accountant and a lawyer.

We have just completed the first audio portion of the downloadable MP3 series, which is a lesson in establishing “hooks” for memory retrieval.  In this section, Field shows you how to organize Information in your mind so that you can instantly retrieve it.  He employs a unique teaching technique to achieve this goal.  The technique seems basic, and it is.  The jest of it is to use the familiar and join it, mentally, with the unfamiliar.

At the end of the first day, we are aware that we will do the following over the course of the next 15 days in terms of sections:

Section 1) Building a Foundation of Primary Financial Statements, Balance Sheets, Income Statements

Section 2) How to analyze these statements

Section 3) Business Taxes and the interplay with one’s personal taxes

Section 4) Fraud, how to detect it and prevent it, basics in bookkeeping

However, all we know at this point is our way around an unfamiliar house with some incredibly strange things involving Olympic gymnasts, Count Dracula, and a cat happening in the front yard, on the porch, and in the living room.  Yet somehow, it all makes sense.  Will it translate into better financial and business decisions for The Mint?  Stay tuned.

If you are as intrigued as we are and want to learn more, visit: http://www.businessstreetsmarts.com/ for more information on this unique and entertaining program.