Small business owners go into business for many reasons. This may be to do something they are passionate about, pursue a dream, because they have been made redundant, or they are tired of being told what to do by someone else, to name a few.
Unfortunately my experience has shown that many of them do not have some basic business understanding of things like cashflow, terms and conditions for customers, administration time required, how to do the administration, and having sufficient working capital to get them through the startup phase and indeed to operate effectively throughout the business cycle.
As a direct result of having insufficient working capital business owners are often reluctant to ask for the advice that they really need to make their businesses hum as they see doing so as being expensive and therefore can put it off. To state the obvious recent times as a result of the Covid 19 pandemic have made the existence for many businesses even more challenging.
What I say to these business owners is, in order to relieve some of your stress as well as improve your future business operations, now is precisely the time when you should be getting the advice that you need from someone like myself to advise and guide you for an investment price that you can afford.
This advice can be in small bites to fit in with actually being able to operate your business and spread the investment needed over a period of time by buying a block of hours each month. The quantity of hours can be as small as 1 hour and up to as many as the business owner may think necessary. The advice provided can be wide ranging but covering such topics as below to name a few:
- Basic Financial report understanding
- Cashflow management and populating some simple spreadsheets to keep a strong overview of this.
- Business planning and goal setting, what do you want your business to look like by when, then putting in place a plan to achieve that.
- Customer Management and communication, sometimes this involves debt collection.
- Supplier Management and communication, this can be around getting better deals, better trading terms, or having difficult conversations with them.
- Systems implementation and improvements
- Evaluation of whether to outsource some functions or not.
- Evaluation of asset investment options.
After 30 years of financial and management experience I can deliver some practical guidance and solutions in a time efficient manner.
Don’t put off giving me a free no obligation call as there is never a better time than now.