When it comes time to pitching to investors, most business owners play it safe. They have their traditional PowerPoint presentation that includes the Mission, Vision, Product description, management team experience, sales strategy, financial projections and competitive advantages. That’s fine, but it isn’t enough to convince investors to write you a check. Experienced angel investors and venture capitalists evaluate dozens or hundreds of potential investments each year. Most of them have the … [Read more...]
Getting Finance and Sales departments to Collaborate
Many companies – even small companies – have communications problems between their finance and sales departments. How to get the finance and sales departments to collaborate Even if each “department” consists of only one person, they still have a hard time talking to each other. The problem can be even worse at smaller companies that don’t have sophisticated feedback or evaluation mechanisms and can’t afford expensive consultants to help them work through the problem. Stereotypes The … [Read more...]
When You Start Thinking Small, It’s Over
As a business owner, you know that life is full of contradictions. A bank will lend your company obscene amounts of money…exactly when you don’t need it. But what happens when your business desperately needs financing? It’s the hardest thing in the world to get. Suppliers tell us they “value our business” and in the same breath tell us they don’t deliver after 5:00 p.m. on Friday when you ask them if they'll be there at 5:15 p.m. Another example of a contradiction: You reading this article. Let … [Read more...]
Should You Cut Costs Like Barack Obama or David Cameron?
Cut Costs and slashing spending has become all the rage lately. State governments, the federal government, even foreign governments have come to the realization that you can’t keep spending money you don’t have forever. Deficit spending requires a number of willing partners. Trading partners, foreign central banks, and institutional investors will very soon reach a point where they no longer want to keep financing this type of activity. Two countries that are facing this situation are the … [Read more...]
The United States Postal Service is Going Broke – Should You Worry?
The United States Postal Service (USPS) operates on a scale unimaginable to most business owners. The USPS is the second largest civilian employer in the country. On a given day, USPS delivers 584 million mail pieces and generates $224 million in revenues. Yes per day. Last year, revenues exceeded $67 billion. Unfortunately, the USPS has one metric that stands out from the rest: in fiscal year 2010, it lost over $8 billion. This year it expects to lose $7 billion. While the scale of the … [Read more...]
Protect Your Business and Your Family from Yourself
Most owners don’t even consider what would happen to their business if they were to die or become suddenly and permanently incapacitated. Protect your business and your family. According to the latest data from the Bureau of the Census, there are roughly 5.9 million businesses in the U.S. Virtually all of these can be considered “small.” Only 18,469 (or less than one-third of one percent) have more than 500 employees. Even getting to several dozen employees is a feat worth of recognition: … [Read more...]
The problem with employees is that they think like employees and not like owners
What is the Problem with employees? and Why You Should Teach the Janitor About Finance. Is it realistic to expect employees to act like owners? As an owner, the personal stakes for you are very high. A successful business can make you a millionaire many times over. "The problem with employees is that they think like employees and not like owners" Your personal reputation is on the line. Nothing less than the very sense of who you are is at play when you are the owner. For employees, it … [Read more...]
Does the AOL-Huffington Post Deal Make Sense?
The AOL-Huffington Post Deal has generated hundreds of expert views on the matter. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions, in general, show mixed results. Despite making sense on an Excel spreadsheet, many M&A transactions are plagued by problems: systems integration issues, differences in cultural communications, lack of post-merger direction, and a failure by management to articulate the benefits to the market cause the downfall of many transactions. According to Thomson … [Read more...]
Alternative Ways to Pay Foreign Vendors
The other morning I had a project team meeting over chat with participants in New Jersey, New York, Nicaragua and Peru. In the past I’ve had teams with people from Brazil, Argentina, Thailand and even Belarus working together. Twenty years ago, this may have seemed completely out of the ordinary. Today, it’s typical. According to the Bureau of the Census, U.S. companies bought over $394 billion of services from foreign companies last year, an increase of over $29 billion from 2009. The … [Read more...]
How 3 Simple Changes Saved My Business $44,000
At the end of 2009, my company -- like many others -- was faced with the prospect of a very challenging 2010. We had taken measures to align our investment and operating expenditures with our expected sales, but I felt it wasn’t enough. It was important to squeeze out as much waste while we still had the freedom to do so. From this process emerged three simple and effective ideas that saved money without disrupting how we work. Savings one: I started using BestParking.com (Savings: … [Read more...]
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