Posts

How to Simplify Your Business’s Finances

/in , /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship ArticleIt might sometimes feel as if your business needs to choose between keeping its customers happy or enjoying healthier finances. If you feel forced to pick between the two, your business might never be able to reach its potential, which is why you must find ways to lower your expenditure without compromising on consumer satisfaction.

A few new tactics and tools could provide the solution you have been looking for, so keep reading to find out how to simplify your business’s finances.

Set Financial Goals to Increase Your Revenue

If you want to enjoy a greater annual revenue, you must set financial goals. Doing so will provide both you and your team with targets to hit each day, week or month, which will help to keep your business firmly in the black.

If you fail to meet a target, you can then identify the tweaks and changes you will need to make to your processes. It will help you to stay focused on your income and outgoings, so your business never takes a step backward.

Open a Separate Business Account

Never confuse your personal and business finances again by opening a company bank account. Many banks are happy to provide entrepreneurs with a specific account for a business. It will make it easier to separate your personal and professional income, which will make it much more straightforward to organize your taxes, pay your business expenses, and monitor your revenue.

Dedicate One Day a Month to Reviewing Your Finances

It doesn’t matter if you have the best accounting software or accountant, you must take the time to review your finances. Every business owner must have a firm grip on their income and expenditure, which can prevent costs from spiraling out of control.

A monthly financial review is a must, so set one day aside to review your statements, invoices, and bills. You also should use this day to negotiate with vendors, change suppliers, and find ways to reduce your outgoings.

Setup Payment Reminders and Alerts

With so many tasks to complete and projects to manage, it can be easy to forget to pay an important bill. However, you will soon realize your mistake when your electricity isn’t working, or your water has been switched off.

Never miss an important payment again by setting up an alert in a Google calendar. You will then receive a notification to pay a bill to help keep track of your finances.

Streamline Your Amazon Listings

Do you sell products through Amazon? If so, you can increase both your presence and selling power with Amazon market integration software. It allows you to manage both domestic and international accounts, so you can easily fulfill your customers’ orders to their exact specifications. You can also manage both your availability and pricing to maximize your cash flow. Visit sellercloud.com to learn more about the powerful platform that can increase your finances.

Go Paperless

Companies can often be guilty of holding onto unnecessary paperwork. By doing so, they can over complicate their filing systems. Organize your finances by keeping only the documents and statements you need and then shred the rest. You also should keep transactions and contracts in the cloud if possible and go paperless so that you can access them at any point and on any device.

Do You Have The Right Leadership Qualities?

/in , /by

Are you planning to start a new business during the next few months? Would you like to make sure you have what it takes to succeed? Then take a minute or two to consider some of the information on this page and make sure you understand the most crucial leadership qualities you will require. If you don’t have them at the moment; now is the best time to improve your skills.

Communication skills

If you struggle to communicate with your employees or clients; you will never reach your full potential in the business world. Communication is vital, and you need to make sure you can explain your ideas and highlight concepts in a way that others grasp quickly.

Problem-solving skills

You are going to encounter many problems and stumbling blocks in the business world. Success lies in your ability to solve those issues and overcome anything that blocks your path. If you aren’t the best problem-solver right now; you need to work on that ability.

Project management skills

As an entrepreneur; it is vital that you plan working practices that ensure your employees become as productive as possible. Maybe you would benefit from taking a project management course or something similar before you push ahead?

Now you know about some of the most critical leadership qualifies for entrepreneurs; you can begin to improve your skills and make sure you get everything right with your new venture. Regardless of the nature of your business idea, the same rules will apply. Take a look at the infographic for more tips.


Design created by USC Online

The Big Picture of Business – Entrepreneurs’ Guideposts to Real Business Success

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship ArticleThere are many romantic notions about entrepreneurship. There are many misconceptions.

People hear about entrepreneurism and think it is for them. They may not do much research or may think there are pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. They talk to other entrepreneurs and learn that it all about perseverance and building sweat-equity in companies.

The wise entrepreneurs have mentors, compensated for their advice, tenured in consulting and wise beyond reproach. Advisers are important to fitting the entrepreneurs to the right niche. Mentors draw out transferrable talents to apply to the appropriate entrepreneurial situation.

The corporate mindset does not necessarily transfer to small business. Just because someone took early retirement is not a reason to go into a startup business. People who worked for other people do not necessarily transfer to the entrepreneurial mode.

Those who have captained teams tend to make better collaborators and members of others’ teams. Entrepreneur is as entrepreneur does

Make an equitable blend of ambition and desire: Fine-tuning one’s career is an admirable and necessary process. It is quite illuminating. Imagine going back to reflect upon all you were taught. Along the way, you reapply old knowledge, find some new nuggets and create your own philosophies.

We were taught to be our best and have strong ambition to succeed. Unfortunately, we were not taught the best methods of working with others in achieving desired goals. We became a society of highly ambitious achievers without the full roster of resources to facilitate steady success.

Every company must and should put its best face forward for the public. Public perceptions are called “credence goods” by economists. Every organization must educate outside publics about what they do and how they do it. This premise also holds true for each corporate operating unit and department. The whole of the business and each sub-set must always educate corporate opinion makers on how it functions and the skill with which the company operates.

Gaining confidence among stakeholders is crucial. Business relationships with customers, collaborators and other professionals are established to be long-term in duration. Each organization or should determine and craft its own corporate culture, character and personality, seeking to differentiate itself from others.

Every business, company or organization goes through cycles in its life. At any point, each program or business unit is in a different phase from others. The astute organization assesses the status of each program and orients its team members to meet constant changes and fluctuations.

I’ve talked with many entrepreneurs and founders of companies which rapidly grew from the seed of an idea they had. Most admitted enjoying the founding phase but lost interest shortly after giving birth. Over and over, they said, “When it stops being fun, I move on.”

After the initial honeymoon, you speak with them and hear rumblings like, “It isn’t supposed to be this hard. Whatever happened to the old days? I’m ready to move on. This seems too much like running a business. I’m an idea person, and all this administrative stuff is a waste of my time. I should move on to other new projects.”

When they come to me, they want the business to transition smoothly and still make the founders some money. They ask, “Are you the one who comes in here and makes this into a real business?” I reply, “No. After the caretakers come in and apply the wrong approaches to making something of your business, I’m the one who cleans up after them and starts the business over again.” The reality is that I’m even better on the front end, helping business owners avoid the costly pitfalls attached to their losing interest and abdicating to the wrong people.

Entrepreneurial companies enjoy the early stage of success…and wish things would stay as in the beginning. When “the fun ends,” the hard work begins. There are no fast-forward buttons or skipping steps inn developing an effective organization, just as there are no shortcuts in formulating a career and Body of Work.

Questions to ask entrepreneurs:

  1. Do you have goals for the next year in writing?
  2. Are the long-range strategic planning and budgeting processes integrated?
  3. Are planning activities consolidated into a written organizational plan?
  4. Do you have a written analysis of organizational strengths and weaknesses?
  5. Do you have a detailed, written analysis of your market area?
  6. Do detailed action plans support each major strategy?
  7. Is there a Big Picture?

About the Author

Hank MoorePower Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.

Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.

Power Stars to Light the Business Flame is now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.

How startups can use reverse mergers to go public

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship ArticleThere are a number of compelling reasons that a new startup might seek to take itself public. Pubic companies, on the whole, usually have much higher valuations than private firms. They also have a patina of legitimacy and transparency that private companies lack. As a consequence, public firms often have access to many different credit facilities and financing options that private companies do not enjoy.

But the single largest reason for a private firm to seek to become publicly listed is in order to raise capital. When it comes to fulfilling this end, the usual route to going public involves an initial public offering, also known as an IPO. IPOs can confer great benefits on companies that are able to go through them. They are usually able to raise large amounts of capital that otherwise would never have been available to the firm that is going public. But IPOs also come with some steep costs and excessive risks. In this article, we’ll look at why a startup might not want to go with an IPO and how a company that still desires to become publicly traded can use what’s referred to as a reverse merger to get nearly all of the benefits of an IPO with almost none of the costs or risks.

Buying versus selling

One of the chief concerns that any entrepreneur may have when considering an IPO is that they are effectively selling their company. In this case, rather than the buyer being another individual or a company, it is instead the total investors who buy into the initial public offering. While this may sound a bit abstract, the consequences are very real in terms of ownership and retention of control. There are many instances where entrepreneurs take their companies public only to later end up being thrown off the board of directors or fired from other executive roles. In fact, this is precisely what happened to Steve Jobs at Apple, the company he founded.

On the other hand, a reverse merger doesn’t suffer from this drawback. A reverse merger involves the startup acquiring an already-existing firm that is already publicly traded. In most cases, this firm will be some form of shell company. At the most fundamental level, the difference between an IPO and a reverse merger is that an IPO is selling the company being taken public while the reverse merger is simply buying the shell company that is already public.

This has a number of major advantages, many of which may not at first be obvious. The clearest advantage of taking a company public by acquiring another already-public company is that the principals of the startup get to retain nearly the same level of control that they enjoyed before the merger. At the same time, they can save tremendous amounts of money and avoid the huge inherent risks in attempting to take their company public through an IPO.

IPOs have huge costs and risks

Another one of the most compelling reasons that smaller startups may choose to go with a reverse merger rather than an IPO is because of the enormous costs and risks associated with initial public offerings. A typical IPO can take a year or more to complete. And going public always requires hiring a team of highly specialized mergers-and-acquisitions lawyers. The company will also need to hire an investment bank to handle the underwriting of the deal. Both lawyers and bankers are required on every IPO deal due to the sheer complexity that often arises. Because IPOs involve the complete restructuring of the company’s ownership, there are many details that need to be ironed out. Old debt holders need to be paid off and new debt is almost always issued, usually with complex seniority hierarchies and special debt instruments such as convertible bonds. The issuance of stock options, warrants and other special equity instruments are also common. In general, these are deals that only highly competent professional lawyers and bankers are qualified to handle.

Because there is always a significant risk of the deal not being completed, the majority of these fees cannot be structured on a contingency basis. This means that the company going public will have to foot the bill out of its cash flow and reserves. With such costs running into the tens of millions of dollars, it becomes impossible for the majority of small firms to foot the bill for these requirements. And worst of all, many IPOs never get completed due to market downturns. When this catastrophic result happens, it usually means that all of the time and money spent preparing for the IPO have been wasted.

On the other hand, reverse mergers can avoid all of these problems. Although it sounds somewhat exotic, a reverse merger is really a very simple transaction. It is simply one company acquiring another, usually paying in company stock. Another feature of reverse mergers, which is usually but not always the case, is typically that the acquiring company is worth vastly more than the target of acquisition. This means that a simple tender offer usually suffices to complete the deal.

Such transactions can be completed in as little as 30 days and for as little as $200,000 or less. Compare that with the more than a year and up to tens of millions of dollars that a typical IPO requires. Clearly the reverse merger is the superior option for the small startup on a cost-comparison basis alone. But there is an even more compelling reason why a startup might want to consider the reverse merger option.

Public companies are worth a lot more

A quick glance at a site like Empire Flippers will show that many solid internet businesses are only being valued at around the three-times-earnings mark. By contrast, many of the largest publicly traded tech companies that operate in the same industry as the private businesses for sale on Empire Flippers are valued at up to 40 times earnings. Such vast disparities in valuation may not be typical across all businesses and industries, but it illustrates the principle that public companies are often worth far more than private companies by virtue of the very fact that they are publicly traded.

This can become a powerful advantage for reverse mergers. Once a private company goes public, it may find that a few years down the road it is valued at three or even four times what it was as a private company. At that point, it becomes possible to raise massive amounts of capital without having to seriously dilute ownership. This is the real power of reverse mergers. And if the reverse merger has been carried out right, this is a result that can reliably be attained.

About the Author

This article was written by Delancey Street, a nationwide real estate lender that provides private money loans to real estate developers. We use artificial intelligence to reduce the time it takes to provide borrowers with an answer by almost 200%.

How to Grow Your Startup Business in 2018

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship ArticleNothing can be more exciting for an entrepreneur than watching their business attract many customers, increase its profit margin, and develop a positive reputation. However, business growth can prove a challenge if you do not have the knowledge, tools, and experience to scale your startup.

While enjoying fast and substantial growth can be overwhelming, there are some tactics you can undertake to help you turn your small company into a big brand. Learn how to grow your startup business in 2018.

Maintain Your Core Vision

It can be easy to lose your company’s message when scaling your business. However, you must stay true to your core vision when promoting your brand to a larger audience. Ensure your employees have a thorough understanding of what your brand stands for and its goals, which will help them to retain the same company image in every sales and marketing strategy they undertake.

Be Selective with New Opportunities

There will be many opportunities coming your company’s way as it starts to grow, and you must choose from them wisely to avoid making a big mistake. Your sole goal must be to attract and satisfy your customers. Focusing on too many opportunities and projects could result in your business neglecting its customers, which could reduce consumer satisfaction and your profit margin. Never embark on an opportunity that fails to align with your current and potential customers’ needs.

Scale Your Business with the Right Technologies

Technology can help to quickly and easily scale your startup business. Don’t hold your business back by sticking with entry-level systems. Instead, you must invest in the right technologies to streamline your operations. For example, a reputable Netsuite Partner Provider can offer an Oracle NetSuite solution that can help your business say goodbye to manual processes, limited software, and expensive IT costs.

Hire Candidates That Complement Your Vision

Your employees will help to shape your company culture. While hiring employees based on their knowledge and experience is essential, you must also ensure they have the right personality for your business.

Look for candidates who are not only friendly and intelligent but who are passionate about both your brand and industry. As a result, you can develop one unified team who will work hard to meet your vision and goals.

Review Your Company Priorities

As stated, enjoying rapid startup growth can be a little overwhelming. During this time, you must take a step back to assess your company’s priorities. Review whether your performance aligns with your company’s ultimate purpose.

For example, your current company goal might be to retain your customers, but you may be focusing too much of your time on attracting new ones. If your performance and processes don’t match your core mission, you might need to make some big adjustments to your business.

Don’t Focus on Too Many Acquisition Channels

It is common for many startup owners to try to do a bit of everything to attract customers, rather than focusing on one main channel. However, doing so will result in multiple marketing experiments and can detract from a primary sales channel. It’s better to master one channel at a time, such as SEO, before moving onto the likes of social media, email marketing, app stores, and affiliate marketing.