redactedIn business and in life When we started Chenmark, we lived off our savings. Since there was a zero-sum relationship between the money we paid ourselves and money available for new acquisitions, we favored keeping as much cash as possible in the company. Our goal was to get to "flywheel" status, meaning we could fund our growth entirely with our own cash flow and/or debt financing (i.e., the anti-venture capital model). Understanding this relationship has been a critical aspect of our progress to date. More broadly, success in small business requires a lot of attention to detail, financial or otherwise. From a budget perspective, small dollars add up quickly, and having an instinct for frugality is helpful. Avoiding cost creep and corporate bloat is part of the game. But sometimes, we have erred too much on the side of frugality. In acquisitions, we have been lured by the siren song of a low multiple, telling ourselves we were buying cash flow "cheap." Turns out, we were buying years of operational and financial headaches. In hiring, we have learned that the job market is generally efficient. Turns out, trying to save money on talent can be an expensive mistake. Operationally, we have sometimes prioritized short-term cash flow over delivering value to customers and being good partners to vendors. This might help the numbers for a little while, but it also hollows out a business. Over time, understanding where we can find and add value has become more important to our success than a frugality-trumps-all mindset. We still believe in being disciplined with money. We've just learned that spending less and creating more value aren't always the same thing. As we've gotten older, we've come to appreciate that the same principle applies to our personal lives. We believe in delayed gratification and try to maintain pretty simple tastes. But we also recognize that life is happening right now, and the future holds no guarantees. Sometimes, it's worth spending more for the right opportunity, experience, or meaningful item. Overall, whether it's professional or personal, the key for us has been understanding what we value, being thoughtful about how we allocate our resources, and recognizing that money is just a tool, not the ultimate objective. Sometimes, the best use of money is to save it. Sometimes, it's to invest it. Sometimes, it's to give it away. And sometimes, it's to spend it on something that makes life better. The trick is knowing the difference.