Apex joins Women In Leadership

I recently attended a Tech Seminar that Women In Leadership hosted. WIL of La Porte County is an established group of women who created a Board of like-mined, powerful business owners/CEO’s, etc., and have successfully empowered more and more woman, alike. This group of women invites any and all to attend to gain insight to better succeed in all aspects. Anyone looking to be a leader is welcome!

I was invited to attend my 1^st WIL event, “Turning Profits into Cash Flow”.  Alicia Cannon, our CEO here at Apex Filling Systems gave this highly informative, super user-friendly presentation and would you know I was literally feeling the ability to process and breathe through these weekly/bi-weekly/monthly reports almost instantly. Most of us don’t have a background in finances, thus, automatically putting us in a vulnerable statistic of failure.

Alicia was really hitting on how important it is to take control. She stated ‘At Apex Filling Systems, we make it our mission to do more than sell equipment, we create a partnership with customers, past the point of sale in order to support their success.’  How profound! I say this because in truth, we don’t always have the forethought to bond…beyond. Beyond what I can do for you or vice versa. What a philosophy to have when owning and operating a successful business.

Strategy

The initial key is strategy. And as Alicia so eloquently reminded us, the strategies for success requires much more than writing out a mission statement, working a plethora of hours, continually throwing money toward it or just a will to succeed. It requires an actual business map. One that will take you places. She said ‘No one ever climbed to the top of Mount Everest and wondered how they got there; they had a plan that they mapped out meticulously.’

Our Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Cash Flow Statement all must display multiple time periods, side by side, to be meaningful. Generating a good strategy and using it to find real solutions depends on knowing where you want to end up, what direction you are actually going in, and what steps you need to take to bring the two together. This is known as trend analysis and it’s very important to planning. These three statements work together in unison to give you a clear picture of what is happening in your business.

• You want balance sheets at the beginning and end of a time period
• With the income statement and cash flow statements in between
• Showing you the movement of your finances between the first statement and the second
• The balance sheets show you the before and after of a specific time period
• The income statement and cash flow statement tell the story of what happened in between

Not only did Alicia leave us with a more common understanding of the platform toward success, she really showed the room how to implement the strategies.

In short, look into Women In Leadership of La Porte County. Follow them on Facebook. Sign up for future workshops. It was such an enjoyable and informative experience. I personally left there with a mindset of dedication.  Have a strategy. Not a once a year, not for a special project, a daily part of your daily business operation. Steven Covey refers to this as “beginning with the end in mind”. Change will come and we need to respond to it!

Darren Allie

With 15 years experience in the packaging industry, Darren has traveled the world on jobs of all sizes. He has been working in everything from project management, to sales, to production and has the experience to see the entire process from start to end. Darren steps in for projects to review difficult applications to help come up with solutions that work for every customer. Difficult details are where he excels. Creating a solution built for each customer! Outside of Apex Filling, Darren likes to work on motorcycles, play with fabrication, and spend time working on cars. If you stop by you might even get to see his bike