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Wednesday, August 27, 2014

The BALD TRUTH: Are you using protection?

Are you using protection?

Every day businesses and business owners are susceptible to many attacks and challenges that could devastate their hard work and livelihood.  Are you one of those businesses or owners? A survey by Forbes Magazine showed some interesting facts:  Over 500,000 new businesses are started each month. Almost 40% of these small businesses never make it to their second anniversary. Yet another 55% never make it past 5 years. Only about 1/3rd make it to 10 years. Why?

Three main killers of a businesses
1.    Lack of cash flow
2.    Poor leadership and customer service
3.    Lack of a strategic plan

Over the next few posts I will address each of these three major challenges that business leaders fail to protect themselves from and will kill a business.

Lack of Cash flow.
Starting a new venture takes a bunch of things, one of which is a basic knowledge of business and how to sell your product or service.  Over the past 11 years I have been working with clients to create sustainable and profitable businesses I have found that this is the thing that will kill a business.  So you are probably asking yourself, how this relates to the 3 killers of a business.

Bottom line, no sales, no cash flow, no cash flow, no business. Simple but true.  So often a client has made the decision to step out, start a business based on their technical expertise and has yet to learn how to sell what they do. They also start without enough capital in reserve.  Result.  FAIL!  It has been said and I believe that nothing happens until a sale is made.  If no one is selling, I can guarantee tis, no one is buying. 
 
Ok how does lack of cash flow kill a business?  I have learned that cash flow is king and with a consistent flow of cash into a business there is hope. Now if it is a negative cash flow, there is a challenge for sure. When I opened my first restaurant in 1981 we did everything on a shoestring and were literally taking from Peter to pay Paul. What does that mean? What it means is we used cash flow to pay immediate critical bills (electric and staff) while others  (beer and food vendors) we used float time to let our cash reserves replenish to take care of other these less critical expenses. My partner and I became known as the kings of the float.

We would pack the bar out on Thursday Friday and Saturday with happy hour and late night biz.   What that means is we would always write checks late on Friday to the beer and food vendors knowing they would wait until Monday to deposit, giving us three days to use the cash flow and float to keep us going.  Now this just was used as a strategy as we started, once we established the business and we began to see positive cash flow, things smoothed out.  Still I learned that cash flow is king.

So to protect your business, focus first on your cash flow and protect it like a chastity belt protects a virgin. But that's something for another time.  Until next month protect your business and remember cash flow is king.

Coach Rick Kolster, CBC is a certified business/life coach, the author of Selling for Geniuses and Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get To Work as well as a motivational speaker on personal growth. He can be contacted at 817-748-7425 or Rick@CoachRickKolster.com www.CoachRickKolster.com