Do You Make These 7 Deadly Cash Flow Mistakes?
May 19, 2008
Managing cash flow is every small business owner’s most important function. Avoid these seven deadly mistakes to make sure you aren’t creating cash flow problems in your business.
1. Using the "Fly By The Seat of Your Pants" Accounting Method.
When tax time rolls around do you find yourself pawing through piles of paper on your desk looking for credit card receipts from your business trip? Or are you upside down digging under the seat of your car trying to figure out where all your gas receipts are? Are you wondering if that coffee stained piece of paper is an invoice from a supplier? Do you have a vague feeling that someone, somewhere owes you money but, you just can’t remember who it is? If so, you’re probably guilty of operating with the "Fly By the Seat of Your Pants" accounting method.
Using this accounting method has a tremendous impact on your business’s cash flow. Unless you have a system to track your business finances, you’ll always be operating in the dark and in danger of imitating George of the Jungle as he slams into a tree.
2. Not Knowing What the Numbers Are All About.
Smart PR Tactics for Small Businesses
May 10, 2008
Small businesses need Public Relations, possibly more than large corporations, to put them on the map. If you consider that time is money, however, you may find that handling your own public relations is a daunting task and not necessarily worth the monetary savings. Here are some ideas of how to get the best bang for your PR buck by thoughtful outsourcing:
Use your business library. If you are savvy enough to identify the best media for your primary target audience, your local library or the nearest city library near your very small town has valuable informational tools to assist you at every turn. The librarian is a public resource that your tax dollars pay for anyway.
Having identified your target media, find a PR agency that charges by placement success instead of a standard six months or yearly contract. In that way, you can share the PR burden by supplying the media to be targeted, and pay only for premier hits. Besides, if the placement is impressive enough, you can put it on your website, and get incredible mileage from it.
Four Reasons Why Small Businesses Succeed (or Fail)
April 28, 2008
The American system of business management has been admired and emulated around the world. This system is characteristic of two traits in the American psyche: (1) enthusiasm for the future and making things better, and (2) an openness and willingness to change in order to achieve that end.
No society in the world is better or more prolific at creating new businesses than the United States capitalistic system but often we are so busy commercializing ideas and starting new ventures that we don’t take the time to learn basic, successful management principles that have been developed by our larger companies.
Many entrepreneurs are technical experts in what they do but start a business without any formal training or experience in management practices and principles. By "management" here we mean the business of successfully managing the non-technical side of the business, the "back room" activities. As a result of inadequate management, many small businesses fail in the early years. They fail not because of a weakness in the product or service concept they have, but because the business was not properly managed in the back office.
Small Business Computer Security, the Basics
April 18, 2008
Anyone in business today realizes both the natural dependency on computers in the workplace, and also the potential dangers associated with storing important data on them. Today’s business owners are constantly being reminded that their company’s data is at risk by the daily reports on various news stations, or even their favorite business-related website.
But what can a typical small business owner do to protect their network from these threats that are broadcasted in so many ways? Dangers lurk at every turn on the Internet. There are thousands of attacks or areas of security that could be discussed, but I am going to try and focus on three general nuisances associated with today’s computers: viruses, spy-ware, and traditional "hackers" that will intentionally try to exploit your computer systems for various reasons. All of these attacks, although different, serve a specific purpose for the attacker, yet basically translate into three things for a business: lost productivity, lost data, and the end result? lost money.
Here is brief descriptions of what the aforementioned attacks are, consist of, and what a typical small business can do to protect their technology investments.
Small Business Marketing - Clarify Success
April 7, 2008
When you hear the word "success" does it bring on visions of fame and fortune for your business? Have you clarified and articulated what that success will look like for your business and how you’ll know when you’ve achieved it?
What’s the definition of success for your business? Most small businesses are selling their time and expertise to deliver a service to their clients. So the question I want you to reflect upon is this? "What does success look like?"
Now before you start answering with responses like, "I’ll do $X Million in sales this year." ? STOP! That’s not what I meant. The question is? "What does success look like for your client(s)?" Remember, your clients? Isn’t it generally fair to say you’re in business to provide a service to your clients? When you do it right, what does it actually look like for the client?
Don’t get me wrong. I understand that we’re in business to make money ? to make a living for ourselves. But that’s rarely enough in life. Most of the service providers I know love working with and servicing their clients. If you focus on taking care of that, the rest will almost certainly take care of itself. So what does success look like for the client when you do it right?
Cash Flow: Why Chaos Equals Poor Cash Flow
March 26, 2008
Recently one of my customers told me the chaos swirling through his company was the result of poor cash flow. If only he had more money, his company would run better.
I must respectfully disagree.
Poor business processes produce chaos. Chaos leads to poor cash flow. Fix the poor business processes and the cash flow problems disappear.
What business processes am I talking about?
1. Having a clear picture of who your customer is.
Here’s what my customer looks like: My customer is a small business owner looking for ways to make his or her business run better. He or she is often overwhelmed by all the tasks that must be completed and often does not have time for the really important business functions of strategic planning and forecasting and may not have a great deal of experience in those areas.
What does your customer look like? What challenges are they facing? What do they struggle with everyday?
2. Using that picture to develop services and products that provide value to your customer.
Based on my picture of my customer I can provide my customer with time saving services and products that teach them skills or provide knowledge they can use to solve the challenges they face everyday.
Small Business Savvy: Reaching Key Big Business Decision Makers
March 15, 2008
As a solo entrepreneur or small business owner, one of our key challenges can be reaching key decision makers in larger companies. Getting to the right person who can seal the deal can be a frustrating experience, especially if you don’t have a game plan. Here are three ways to connect with the right people.
Cold Calling
In this age of voice mail, reaching prospects by phone has become more difficult. Cold calling will most likely reap stronger results if you’re trying to reach small business owners, where connecting with the owner by phone is more likely, but with persistence you can reach corporate managers as well. There are several important steps you need to take to get results from cold calling-
- Make sure you write a phone script that, in 30 seconds, will convey what you do and what benefit similar customers have gained from your service. This is essential. You’re phone script must answer the prospect’s question, "what’s in it for me"?
- Practice your phone script until it feels natural and fits your communication style.
- Make sure it conveys your excitement about your offering.
Small Business Spoiler - Procrastination
March 4, 2008
One of the most common issues that comes up for business owners is procrastination -wasting time, putting obstacles in the way of taking action towards goals, making excuses for delays, creating confusion/busyness etc. Procrastination is a self-defeating behavior.
I believe that as human beings, we are adept in creating convincing language that allows us to rationalize an action or non-action to ourselves and others. We become masterful in presenting a logical sounding viewpoint that successfully defends our position to procrastinate. In this way, we give ourselves permission to step into avoidance, despite the results we say we want!
Having a game plan with action steps can foster procrastination. Over time we develop an automatic patterned response to change, convinced that what we are doing is moving us forward. In reality, we’re just playing the same old game, creating the illusion of moving forward. Bottom line ? get real, get honest with yourself.
As a small business owner do you:
1. Keep saying you’re going to do something and don’t follow through? Saying one thing and doing something else? The intended action continues to exist in the future as a goal, always out of reach without being fully actualized. The dangling carrot.
Small Business Mistakes: Are You Making Enough of Them?
February 23, 2008
That’s right are you making enough mistakes in your business? Some of you are probably annoyed at my question; others are thinking “Geez, Rose! If I made any more mistakes I’d have to run screaming back to a day job!”
If you went to school in the public school system in America, you were culturally trained to avoid and hide mistakes, after all; your teachers and professors didn’t give you a great grade for your efforts unless those efforts produced great results. So, too, if you were an employee in corporate America you were rewarded for chasing perfection and penalized for making mistakes.
But now you’re self-employed.
And it’s a necessity that you rethink the whole issue of mistakes. One of the most important mental shifts we all need to make as self-employed business owners is from hiding and avoiding our mistakes to embracing them! And to making lots of little ones frequently! (It’s those big mistakes that happen “once in a while” that will kill your business not the little mistakes you make daily.)
Here’s an example of one of those business-killing mistakes:
Business Checks are an Added Cost to Your Small Business - Try Making Them Yourself!
February 13, 2008
Starting and managing a small business is no fun chore, especially when it comes to the accounting. There are a few common sense ways that you can help that bottom line.
Business checks can be quite expensive when you use a third party to manage your payroll and payments. Your small business can save money by printing your payments from your desktop.
This option may not be best for all businesses. But if you have the time to manage it yourself, it may be very beneficial. The check blanks can be found at many office stores, and there are some good ones online. Many of them don’t need a special software program to manage the process.
There are some pretty high tech programs out there as well. You may decide to check them out as they are needed. Usually, you can download a sample of the program to use for a while, testing it out to see if it is good for your applications.
Printing your own checks will also allow you to create your own design or place your logo on the checks which can serve as a reminder to potential customers.
