If you’re like many other business owners, the mere thought of managing your finances makes you want to bury your head in the sand. You may find yourself asking, “How can I create a cash plan? Wait—what is a cash plan?” And that’s a great place to start: What exactly is a cash plan? Think about it like this: If yo...
Pretend you’re seeing your business for the first time. Now ask yourself what you’d be willing to pay for it if you were in the market to buy a company. What gives it value, and what’s missing that, if present, would convince you to pay more?
Some small business problems lurk beneath the surface; others wave a red flag that’s impossible to miss. Cash flow problems can be the hardest to ignore. They feel big because they are. In the earliest stages of a new business, people are often heavily focused on cash. Much like living paycheck to paycheck, new bu...
In small businesses, it’s not uncommon to accrue millions of dollars in revenue each year without actually producing any meaningful cash flow. You may very well know how frustrating it can be to show profit on your income statement, but not have money in the bank. One part of this issue is a fundamental misunderst...
From pandemics to national disasters, recessions, and inflation, business cycles are a reality. No one has a crystal ball, but even if you can’t predict the future, being prepared to respond to disruptions is better than being forced to react to them when they’re already underway. What can you do to make your busi...
When facing the challenge of understanding—and eventually mastering—your business finances, where do you even begin? That's the question we hear from business owners everywhere, and we try to help answer it with the articles we share on our blog. Our five most popular financial blogs will give you an idea of how t...
When it comes to pricing products or services, most small business owners don’t know where to start. Perhaps you’ve had the experience of basing your prices off competitive offerings in your market or by adding “x” percent to cost of production—and then not looking back to evaluate or consider the systemic or holi...
Most business owners don’t start off with expert knowledge in business finance. In fact, many owners we speak with still manage their books out of a checkbook register. (If this sounds like you, don’t worry—you’re in good company.) There are plenty of things that hold people back from diving into finance—fear, dis...
Business owners aren’t finance experts. It’s a sweeping statement, but as a business coach and business owner myself, I know the truth of it. One of the beautiful things about owning a business is that you don’t have to be an expert in everything—you just need to have the right experts at your fingertips. This is ...
Business owners aren’t finance experts. It’s a sweeping statement, but as a business coach and business owner myself, I know the truth of it. One of the beautiful things about owning a business is that you don’t have to be an expert in everything—you just need to have the right experts at your fingertips. This is ...
Last April, like many of you, I applied for the first round of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds. My company had taken an immediate hit in revenue from the shock of the pandemic, and there was no certainty that it would rebound anytime soon. The only point of comparison I had was the 2009 financial crisis, a...
In my last five years as a business coach, only two of my clients have had an operational budget in place when I started working with them. Let that sit for a moment. Of my dozens of clients, most of whom run successful businesses that are turning profits, only a fraction of them had any idea how that profit was h...
In the current economic downturn, small businesses everywhere are suffering and too many will tragically close their doors permanently. For many business owners, it’s been a sobering lesson: Ignoring the practice of reviewing your company’s financial metrics is a high-risk decision with serious consequences. Numbe...