Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Lets do business

Top line: for a business it is the revenue earned through selling a product. If we observe our body closely we may call our brain as our top line. The areas in which our brain ventures may be called the revenue which it earns from the external environment. This is the cumulative exposure we get by keeping our senses operational. Though most of the times it is not by choice but we somehow gain exposure to different areas.

Bottom line: for a business it is the amount of profit it earned after paying all its dues. All the dues include operational cost, selling and general expenses, cost of investment (interest), tax and income through other resources, if any. For human bottom line can be the legs. More elaborately it can be the actual feet you achieve in different walks of life. The actual learning we inculcate in our behaviour, thinking, habits can be more accurate representative of whatever we have learned.

Cost incurred to achieve the bottom line: in case of a business one has to incur some
cost to get the revenue and hence profits. This is basically the energy (in form of money) which runs the business. As expressed in the paragraph above operational, general expenses, overheads and cost of raw material can be different cost to a business. In case of our body it could simply be the energy to run our body. Energy gained from breathing, eating, sleeping (resting); all contributes towards safe running of our body. Our body processes these form (air, food, water etc) so that we can earn some profit i.e. learn things in life. And inefficient process may lead to a disease, fat accumulation, inefficiencies, unrest, anxiety etc.

So now if we closely observe ourselves then our existence has a purpose like all business and that is to earn maximum profits means maximize our learning as we move ahead in life. The average age of this company is around 65 years and in these 65 years whatever we learn will be more or less whatever we have earned as profits. But as it happens with most of the companies we can not control our processes and costs and end up being a bad company. Though we still survive but not in a way in which we should be surviving. May be we do not set sufficient process for ourselves so that we can control the whole growth. And when we intentionally do not set these systems a default system is being set in place which finally runs our company without our control. So lets not let this default system of chasing money rather than learning stuff, accumulating fat rather than being controlled, putting too much on stakes than to be content (for a change) control our self.