Category: Business Technology

Most entrepreneurs find a time in their business when they need to access financing. It may be in the early stages of their business when start-up costs for offices, equipment, and employees must be covered. Or it may be later on when they have to relocate, purchase more inventory or equipment, or market their business more aggressively.

Financing a business can be scary, but there are many options for entrepreneurs to consider. They each have different advantages and disadvantages, but chances are there’s a financing option that will work well.

Here are three options for financing your small business.


1. Small business loans

Business owners typically only think of small business loans that are offered by banks, and financial institutions do offer such loans. Banks may be more conservative with their small business loan offers, however. It can be difficult to secure a bank loan if you have no credit history or collateral to back the loan.

There are other ways to obtain small business loans. Many governments offer small business financing programs, which can be used for a variety of entrepreneurial expenses. Look into your government’s financing programs to determine if you can obtain money for the expenses you face. Look closely though, not all expenses are necessarily included.

Less traditional small business loan providers can also be found. Thanks to the Internet, there are even ways to obtain small business loans online, through lending companies. It may be easier to obtain a small business loan through such companies, but they may come with an important disadvantage: high interest rates.

Before you agree to any loan, no matter who offers it, make sure you understand all the terms and conditions.


2. Angel investors

Angel investors are people who invest their own money into start-up businesses with the expectation that they receive a return if the business succeeds. They are often already successful at investing and could inject experience and wisdom into your business. They also won’t require a loan payment, which can affect your cash flow.

They may take part ownership of your company and tend to invest in businesses where they can receive a high return. This means that you should be thinking about your business becoming a massive venture in the future, not staying small. You should also be okay with accepting input about your business from someone else.

3. Bootstrapping

If you have the money saved or the motivation to work extra hard to make the money you need, and the above options don’t appeal to you, you can always finance your business yourself. The advantage is that you won’t be paying interest rates, you won’t lose ownership of your business and you won’t owe any money. You also won’t feel that you have to give anyone else a say in how you run your company.

The disadvantage is that you may not be able to grow as quickly as you want, you’ll be dipping into your savings, and you may wind up working very long hours to make up the money.

Final thoughts

Most small businesses require an influx of cash in the early stages so the owner can cover the start-up costs and pay bills until regular revenue rolls in. The type of funding you access can depend heavily on your financial situation, your business goals, and your willingness to give up a portion of your company’s ownership.

It has been extremely difficult for many to keep their businesses afloat amid the COVID-19 crisis. Throwing a lifeline to small businesses, the government has overhauled bankruptcy laws to save thousands of jobs and companies on the verge of collapse.

What Are The Changes?

From the current ‘creditor-in-possession’ regime, Australia’s insolvency laws shifted to a ‘debtor-in-possession system’. Entities with liabilities below $1 million will be able to access the scheme.

The key features of this temporary insolvency law include:

• The business owner will remain in control of their company and will work with a Small Business Restructuring Practitioner (SBRP) to craft a restructuring plan in 20 business days
• The restructuring plan will be presented to creditors and they will vote if it is to be accepted in 15 business days.
• If the plan is approved, all unsecured creditors will be bound and the business will be allowed to resume trading.
• If the plan is rejected, the entity may enter into voluntary administration or access the new liquidation pathway which is simplified.

These reforms will commence on 1 January 2021.

What Does This Mean for My Business?

With these changes, the financial pressure on businesses will be significantly reduced, providing more breathing room for business owners to work out their next steps.

If your business is struggling to stay afloat and you are finding it increasingly difficult to repay ongoing debts, these temporary changes to insolvency laws may be a welcome relief.

However, it is important to note that these are only temporary. So now is the perfect time to make a realistic assessment of your business’s financial situation and its viability.

If shutting down your business is inevitable after careful assessment, it will pay to have these conversations sooner.

Need Help Assessing Your Business?

Closing your business is a huge decision to make. We understand how difficult this can be for you, so we are here to help you make the best decision for you. We’ll help you carefully assess if you have exhausted all possible solutions or work out a plan with you for your business recovery.

If you need expert advice, feel free to book a consultation with us.

Business dashboards are a valuable business intelligence tool, offering an “at-a-glance” big picture view of a company’s performance.

Some business owners use a dashboard to track KPIs relevant to just one aspect of their business, such as sales growth, marketing, or financial data. Others rely on an executive dashboard for an overview of data culled from various sources (e.g. their accounting software, CRM tools, and website analytics).

The great advantage of a dashboard is that it presents and compares complex data drawn from a number of sources using visual tools (i.e. tables, line graphs, and bar graphs). With access to this consolidated data – info that would take hours to compile and analyze on your own – business owners are empowered to make more informed real-time business decisions.

Find out more about business dashboards and how they can help you grow a more profitable business.

Better business intelligence

Business owners get the most value from using a business dashboard when they have specific objectives in mind. When you know your objectives, you know which data to monitor, and which type of dashboard will help you gauge progress and meet your goals.

Think about your priorities for the next six months, year, three years. Once you’re clear on your goals,
test drive a free trial to get a sense of how business dashboards work and find one that might be a good fit for your needs.

Of course, free software with limited features won’t demonstrate everything a dashboard can do. But testing one out can help you see the potential for your business, and decide whether to look into other paid options.

Customized dashboards

If you’re comfortable with coding, the free open-source dashboard may be a good solution for your small business. Open-source dashboards allow you to integrate data from different sources to create the perfect dashboard to meet your needs.

If you decide to shop for a solution, you’ll have many customizable options to choose from: analytical, operational, or information dashboards, as well as those that operate via software, web-based tools, cloud-based, and mobile-friendly dashboards.

As a tip, many business owners prefer cloud-based dashboards for their convenience, allowing real-time data to be accessed from multiple devices. A cloud dashboard solution with a drag and drop interface is simple to use, and lets you decide which data you want to view, and how you’d like it displayed.

Final thoughts

There are many benefits to working with a business dashboard, but the main advantage is that they can help you make more informed decisions that will have a positive impact on your company’s agility and competitiveness – and ultimately, your bottom line.

Using a dashboard can help you spot problem areas and negative trends quickly, so you can take steps to correct them. You’ll know what to do more of to increase sales and profits, and implement the best strategies to achieve your business goals

If you haven’t updated your business plan recently, take some time to identify your high-priority objectives. Then you can take the next step and find a dashboard that offers you the business intelligence you need to meet your current and longer-term goals.

For an online business owner, scarcity is a valuable tool that can turn a failing product into a winner. It is best implemented in a subtle way that does not draw attention to itself, but the urge to purchase remains very potent. Scarcity can be a small part of your sales process that adds some additional revenue, or it can be a major component of your marketing funnel that influences how your product is sold.

Scarcity in Action

Most major retailers have an element of scarcity, but it may not be immediately obvious. Amazon, for example, provides stock inventory information, so you are informed if they only have limited availability of the product. It may be the case that they have a whole new shipment coming soon, but if there is only one copy left at the moment, chances are high that you will buy.

Of course, sites like eBay have an end date attached to an auction. If the item is rare, there is no way of knowing when it may come up again for auction, so the temptation to purchase becomes harder to fend off. In the real world, closing down sales make all their product inventory scarce. The draw of a bargain, coupled with the fact that the item has become scarce, will encourage more customers to buy.

How to Implement It

So how can you use scarcity in your own business? There are various ways to gradually add it to an existing system you have in place, or you can create something brand new which uses it more prominently.

Adding a stock count, as mentioned above, can be a fairly simple way to get started if you run an online store. In order to check the effectiveness, use an analytics program to ensure it is not having an undesirable result. Limited discounts and deals can be very effective, and you can even run these offers sporadically throughout the year. Holiday periods are great for scarcity deals as they give a ready-made reason for you running the offer. Providing a reason for something being scarce is an important part of the process.

An example of a brand new use of scarcity is a product launch. Product launches are a regular occurrence in the internet marketing world, creating a huge buzz over a period of a couple of weeks. Regardless of your industry, there is a good chance you can create something that can recreate the product launch techniques. Create a sense of occasion and excitement, build this to a crescendo, then take the product off the market while you take care of your new customers. If your product is of great quality, word of mouth will spread and you can re-launch later in the year.

Things to Avoid

While the effect can be extremely powerful, there are some potential pitfalls to using scarcity, particularly when you draw too much attention to it. Faking scarcity is a tactic that can destroy any credibility you have earned, but there are many business owners who still try it. They may use automated countdowns which continually reset based on your cookies or suggest they have a limited bonus for early buyers, but don’t remove this when the allocation has been taken.

Always keep your integrity, even when the option of scarcity can benefit you in the short term. If you promise that a product will never return to the sale, don’t start selling it again a few months later. Remember the promises you have made to your customers, and be sure to keep them at all costs.

Get Started Today

Having looked at scarcity in action, the best ways to implement it, and the things to avoid, try to think of a way to add it to your business as soon as possible. There is probably an instance that could really benefit sales, even if it is subtle and goes unnoticed by most of your audience. The scarcity model is tried-and-tested in business, both on and offline, so make sure it is a tool in your arsenal.

Domain names play a key role in how visitors to your website identify your business. This is precisely why you should spend sufficient time finding the domain name that best suits your brand. But finding a suitable name for your website is not always as simple as it looks: the name you want is already taken, the catchy four-letter domain is too costly, or you may just lack inspiration. Let’s look at how you can mount a successful search for the ideal domain.

Buying existing domain names

If you know the exact domain name you want, but someone else already owns it, you should begin by visiting their site to see what’s there. There is a chance that the current owner runs a similar business to yours and is fully utilizing the domain; in this case, there is little chance of them selling it to you.

However, there are also many people who invest in domain names as others do in stocks and shares. They buy good names and either leave them idle or set up a generic landing page, often with a link for those interested in buying the name. In this case, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to get your ideal name, though you may have to pay a premium price for it.

A third possibility is that the current owner hasn’t updated the site for a long time. They may have lost interest or their business may have closed, for example, but the site is still online. It’s definitely worth contacting the owner of a lapsed site to see if they will sell the name. You can find their details by checking the WHOIS information for the domain name: every domain must have a contact name and email address to retain registration.

It is important to understand that shorter names which can be easily pronounced are worth a lot more than long ones. Virtually all common English words have already been registered and demand extortionate prices as well, so you’ll need to be inventive – or willing to spend!

Generator tools

If your ideal domain name is unavailable or the price is too much for your budget, you can try looking for variations on the same name. This can be a long, arduous task, requiring hours of sitting in front of your computer, trying to come up with new ideas based on your business, then searching for them to see if they’re available. Thankfully, there’s a quicker alternative!

Online domain name generators, such as NameBoy or BustAName, create a large number of variants based around your chosen keywords, and they typically check availability as well. The advantages of using these tools are many:

• They help you find good names for your brand by using prefixes, suffixes and other keyword options
• They check domain name availability quickly, for all extensions
• They help you find ideas for names that you may not have considered

Remember, once you choose a domain name for your brand, it’s very difficult to move to a new one, so choose carefully. You should also be aware of wandering too far from your original idea: generators create so many different names that it’s easy to get distracted!

Exact match domains and slogans

The search engines used to give a significant ranking bonus to “exact match domains”. If your domain name matched your site’s keywords, the site ranked higher in search listings for those keywords. In other words, a site called “MakeMoneyOnline” (with any extension) which was built around the key phrase “make money online” ranked a lot better than a similar site with a different name. Recent changes have negated this ranking bonus.

If your business has a short tagline, you can also consider a longer domain name that still works well with your brand. Great examples are Nike’s “Just Do It” and Apple’s “Think Different”, both of which have been used as domain names to send more visitors to their main sites.

Whether you’re lucky enough to get the ideal domain name for your business or have to settle for a snappy alternative, always remember that your web address is an integral part of your business and brand. Treat it as an important investment in your future success.

Increasing efficiency and minimizing costs is essential to running a profitable business. Yet many small business owners waste countless hours on meetings that lack focus, run on too long, and pull staff away from more productive tasks.

Follow these seven tips to make your meetings more efficient and cost-effective.

What’s your goal?

Every meeting should have a clear objective, and a reason the meeting is needed (versus an email or informal conversation). Your meeting goal should be focused – see if you can state its purpose in five words or less. One study showed that a simple, brief statement outlining a meeting’s objective can reduce meeting length by 17 minutes.

Draft an agenda

Outlining a meeting’s discussion points in advance can keep everyone on track at the meeting. If it seems the discussion is veering off course, any attendee can point to the agenda as a reminder of your objectives. Distributing an agenda a few days in advance with supporting paperwork can help everyone arrive prepared.

Invite the right people

The cost of including staff in meetings for which they have no stake in the outcome is costly. This infographic suggests the annual cost of wasted time in work meetings is approximately $37 billion in the US alone. Consider including only those directly responsible for carrying out the tasks required in your discussion. You can ask your managers to pass on information to staff later.

Start on time

Begin every meeting promptly, no matter what. Those who arrive on time will immediately start to feel restless if they have to wait for others. Schedule meetings for mid-afternoons on Tuesdays rather than 9:00 am on Monday. People need time to get back into gear after the weekend, and by Tuesday afternoon, they’ll have had time to prepare for your meeting.

Keep it short

Perhaps business owners set meetings for 30 minutes or an hour out of habit, but the ideal meeting length is somewhere between 15 and 18 minutes. Any longer attention spans wane and productivity drops. Follow your agenda and invite a timekeeper to help everyone stay focused. Your timekeeper can signal when the discussion is running too long, or time is nearly up. When the timer rings, make it clear the meeting is over.

Ban devices

Ask meeting attendees to turn their cell phones off, or better yet, leave them at their desks. Devices are an annoying distraction in meetings, and some people find it difficult to stop checking their phones for incoming texts and calls, even when set to silent. Ask staff to leave their laptops at their desks, too. Research shows that conceptual recall improves when we handwrite notes rather than type them. If a record of your meeting discussion is needed, appoint someone to take minutes.

Facilitate the discussion

If you’ve invited more than one or two people to a meeting, act as a facilitator, ensuring everyone gets a chance to contribute. Often one or two people do much of the talking in a meeting, but a meeting is most productive when shier personalities share in the discussion, too. Often introverts are highly creative thinkers, but they need encouragement to jump into a discussion.

Final thoughts

A final point to consider when scheduling meetings is how long it takes staff to re-adjust to the day’s workflow when they’ve been pulled away from their desks – additional support for the notion that meetings should be brief whenever possible, and only include those that absolutely need to be there.

The same advice for building a healthy investment portfolio applies to your business: diversifying will lower risk and increase growth.

Adding a recurring revenue stream (or two, or three!) can provide a predictable, ongoing source of income which will improve the accuracy of your projections, increase profits, and provide a buffer for any unexpected sales dips.

Here are four simple ways to start earning recurring revenue for your small business.

Auto-renew subscriptions

The most tried and true recurring revenue model? The subscription automatically rolls over each month unless canceled.

Think newspapers, magazines, Netflix, and those delightful subscription boxes that arrive each month featuring food items, craft kits, cosmetics, specialty teas, books, or clothing. Some B2B examples are cloud-based accounting software, document storage, anti-virus protection, and web hosting.

Customers depend on their evergreen subscription services because they make their lives easier or more pleasant. As long as they feel they’re getting value for their money, your customers won’t give the small monthly fee charged to their credit card a second thought.

Tips for getting started: Research what your competitors are offering, and talk to your customers about the kinds of products and services they’d be happy to pay for on a monthly basis.

Membership sites

If you’re an expert in your field, a membership site can provide a lucrative opportunity to serve more clients on the web—and earn more income.

In addition to paid, password-protected content, your membership site can offer your clients an online community portal, where they can socialize and connect with you for group mentoring outside your office hours.

Ideal for location-independent-minded entrepreneurs, coaches, and consultants, a membership site allows the freedom to serve clients all over the world.

Tips for getting started: If your website is built on WordPress there are a number of membership site plugins available to let you accept secure credit card payments and provide member-only access to certain content.

Affiliate subscriptions

Unlike set monthly subscriptions, being an affiliate may offer a less predictable income stream, but, nonetheless, an opportunity to earn some passive income.

With the affiliate model, brand ambassadors are paid a set fee or percentage of each total sale for each successful referral. If you’ve built credibility and trust in your brand, some of your customers will likely be willing to pay for the products and services you recommend.

How to get started: Make a list of the businesses that you regularly buy from. Check each company’s website to learn how to become an affiliate. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be sent a unique link to share with your customers. Every time a purchase is made using the link, you’ll earn a referral fee.

Final thoughts

To learn more about the benefits of setting up recurring revenue streams, take a look at John Warrillow’s, The Automatic Customer: Creating A Subscription Business in Any Industry.

In addition to increasing sales and profit margins, recurring revenue can lead to better customer retention as well as greater growth for your business.

Now that you know a bit about recurring revenue streams, which model is right for you?

Value investing is the stock selection strategy famously used by business magnates and the third wealthiest person in the world, Warren Buffett, whose total net worth exceeds $91.5 billion.

Developed in the 1930s by Columbia University professor and economist, Ben Graham, value investing involves screening securities to find stocks undervalued relative to peers and the market. Stocks are then assessed for their intrinsic value, determined by a fundamental metric—such as the price-earnings ratio—and purchased only if the stock price is less than its intrinsic value.

With value investing, dividends, cash flow, and earnings growth matter more than market factors on the stock’s price. The idea is that the market will eventually correct—and when that happens, the undervalued stock will rise in price and the investor will make money.

Buffett’s investments have consistently outperformed the market, decade after decade, which is why he’s become known as the “godfather” of value investing.

Warren Buffett’s story

In the early 1950s Buffett enjoyed success following Ben Graham’s investing guidelines but began to assess potential stocks differently than his mentor. While Graham kept his focus on the bottom line numbers—the balance sheet and income statement—Buffett looked at a company’s corporate leadership and overall potential to generate earnings long term.

In 1962 Buffett bought Berkshire Hathaway, a failing textile company whose shares were valued at $7.50 each. He phased out its textile manufacturing division and transformed the business into a holding company for investments. By choosing to invest in a number of assets that proved lucrative in insurance, oil, and the media, Buffett was able to build Berkshire Hathaway into the incredibly profitable company it is today.

Value investing tips

These tips from a Business Insiders article on Warren Buffett’s winning investment strategies can help you become a more successful investor.

Re-think your diversification strategy

Buffett recommends selecting stocks carefully, with an eye on the long-term future, maintaining focus on individual investments rather than hedging bets with a varied portfolio designed to minimize volatility.

Follow the 99-1 rule

Buffett warns investors not to sell as soon as it appears that a stocks’ value is declining—like the 99% do, overreacting as they take in just 1% of the daily financial news.

Play the long game

Buffett’s approach to investing requires patience and commitment. He advises investors to select stocks with potential and hang onto them for decades. Investors who constantly buy and sell may lose out on higher returns—and end up paying more trading commissions and taxes.

Get started with a formula for value investing
For more detailed information on value investing strategies—including guidelines for how to choose undervalued securities with excellent profitability potential—check out this article on Investopedia.

You might also be interested in taking a look at The Essays of Warren Buffett: Letters to Corporate America—a collection of letters Warren Buffett wrote to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders—or Ben Graham’s classic book on value investing, The Intelligent Investor.

Most small businesses experience cash flow problems from time to time and urgently need working capital. Many business owners immediately think of the bank or loans when they’re short of money. But there are other resources you can tap before you ask for that expensive overdraft or overdraft extension. The money you need might already be there—locked up in inventory, assets or your debtors’ book.

You can often free up funds from within your business by re-examining your business systems, and these funds might in themselves be sufficient for your immediate needs.

Good management

Even if the funds you free up from within your business are not sufficient, there is another payoff: the effort you make in searching for them helps to ensure that you are running your business in an efficient manner.

To free up funds from within your business, look closely at:

• assets
• customers
• suppliers

Assets

Your assets include debtors, stock, pre-paid expenses, vehicles, plant and equipment, fittings and property. Each of these is a possible source of funds.

Debtors

Are you letting some customers have the free use of your money for months? This is a common occurrence in small businesses where the owner(s) are so busy getting the business off the ground, products out the door, or services completed, that they don’t pay enough attention to basic business procedures. Many customers will take advantage of this ‘free money’. But your business is not to serve as a free bank.

Here’s how you fix the problem:

• Get invoices out promptly. Whatever else you do, become efficient at getting invoices out early. This is your future cash flow—the lifeblood of your business! You want to receive it as soon as possible. Start this new system NOW. Depending on your business, you can often cut out statements simply by printing at the bottom of the invoice: ‘Please pay on this invoice as no statement will be sent.’
• Send the invoice with the goods or immediately the service is completed. Date the invoice from no later than the day it is sent rather than following the standard ‘last day of the month’ date for invoices. The earlier the invoice date, the better your chances of getting paid earlier.
• Change the terms for some of your customers, or for new customers. For example, can you reduce ask for immediate settlement or set reduced payment terms such as 7 days or 14 days from the date of invoice?
• Follow up promptly when invoices aren’t paid by the due date. This is critical. Be polite but firm. If you haven’t the time to do this yourself, then appoint someone to do it for you.

Monitor your debtor collection days and set an improvement target each quarter. For example, can you find out the benchmark standard for your industry? IF the average in your industry is 30 days, but you are taking an average of 45 days to collect outstanding debts, then there’s clearly room for improvement. If your customers or clients have been taking advantage of you because of your previous laxity in invoicing, then you may need to re-educate them. Do this politely so you don’t offend customers:

“Have you received our invoice, Peter? I’m just checking that you’re happy with the goods/services we provided? “We’ve got a new invoicing system going here because we’ve been a bit lax in the past. My accountant has set some tough goals for me to meet in reducing our average debt collection cycle, so if you could settle that invoice promptly I’d be most obliged.”

Consider factoring. This simply means selling your outstanding invoices to a finance company. So instead of having to wait 30 days or more until an invoice is paid, you receive most of your money upfront from the finance company that then, in turn, collects the money from your customer. The finance company will of course charge you a commission for this service. Be aware, though, that there are pros and cons to factoring. For example, check that the finance company will not antagonize your customers with a heavy-handed approach. Talk to them first about their collection methods.

Consider offering a discount for prompt payment. If you’re going to pay a fee for factoring, why not try offering a discount to your customers instead? Discounts are not a good option for low-margin businesses but can be an option for high-margin operations. You have to work out whether the use of money gained earlier is worth the discount you’re offering. NEVER give the discount if the person has missed the due date for the discount offer. (Yes, some will try this on.)

Inventory

Do you have excessive capital tied up in stock? This can occur in two ways:

• carrying high levels of items that you could obtain from suppliers at short notice
• having too many slow-moving items (and too few fast-moving items).

A quick sale?

Review regularly your stock levels, your stock turnover rates, and your purchasing policies. Can you free up money by reducing stock? What about moving out of the slower-moving lines or having a quick sale of dust-collecting stock? It might pay you to reduce some items quite heavily to get some money in quickly.

Can you approach suppliers to take back any excessive stock you may have ordered? They might help you out of a temporary tight corner as a goodwill gesture if you explain you have a temporary cash-flow crisis, but that you do wish to build a long-term relationship with them.

If you need additional funds to purchase more stock, make sure that you’re replacing the slow-moving stock with faster-selling lines.

Pre-paid expenses

This is another area you could look at. These pre-paid expenses often relate to services. For example, you might pay your insurance bill for the year all in one hit, but you could arrange to pay small monthly amounts. There might be an additional cost for doing this, but you must weigh the extra cost against the advantages of 12 small payments which your cash flow can comfortably handle versus one large annual payment. Try a similar approach with your accountant. Instead of facing a substantial bill once a year, ask if you can pay a set amount monthly.

Assets

Assets can drain significant amounts of cash out of a business. Do you really put all your assets to full use? You might be able to:

• Sell off little-used assets and hire suitable replacements when you require them.
• Lease or rent assets and equipment that depreciates rapidly such as computers and or vehicles

Customers

Don’t forget your customers can be a source of business funds. Apart from debt collection improvements already discussed, try these tactics:

Here’s a ‘thinking outside the square’ tactic. Ask some of your credit customers (start with the ones you know best) if they would be willing to use their bank credit cards for purchases from you, instead of using the account facility they have with you. For example, if they purchase say $2,500 worth of goods or services from you, they would pay for this by means of a business credit card. They still get 30 to 55 days credit before having to pay the credit card company, but you get your cash as soon as you sent in the voucher to the bank. You have to pay the (around) 5% commission, but otherwise, it’s almost as good as a cash transaction.

If you’re starting a new business, consider establishing it on a cash-only basis to keep the funds inside your business rather than locked up in Accounts Receivable.

Ask for progress payments

If you supply goods over a period of time, or if you’re a service business, ask if you can invoice for progress payments. This is quite a common method of ensuring you get some cash flow during a project instead of waiting until the end of a project or delivery period to invoice—and then still waiting at least another 30 days for payment.

There’s another benefit here too. If the customer turns out to be dodgy, you’ll discover this quite early on instead of at the end and you can cut your losses before they mount up and perhaps drag your business down. This tactic is therefore very suitable for tradespeople subcontracting to a developer.

Suppliers

Finally, consider your suppliers as a possible source of funds. Ask for extended payment terms to give you the opportunity to sell the goods first before you have to pay. If the supplier won’t budge, try this tactic: split the order in two and offer to pay normal credit terms (30 days) on the one half of the order and 90 days on the other half. Your suppliers will be more likely to agree to this kind of arrangement if you’ve paid them promptly in the past. After all, they have a vested interest in helping you succeed.

• Quantity breaks – incentivize customers to order more through quantity discounts.
• Re-order levels – Set up minimum stock levels to avoid stock outages on important lines.
• Default reorder quantity – Setup re-order quantities so the most economic order quantity is placed.
• Receive Stock – Receive items into stock so you can sell them before receiving the final bill

Take advantage of discounts

Pay accounts that give discounts on time. This is an easy one. If any suppliers offer a discount for early payment, then take it (and there is no harm in asking for a discount).

These are just suggestions and may not be suitable for your business. Feel free to contact us about ways to find money in your business.

“Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.” — John Crosby

The opportunity to learn from a mentor can do more for a small business owner than any course, educational program, or degree. Being a mentee means you get the benefit of first-hand experience, without having to make all the mistakes yourself.

There are, in fact, a host of reasons why a well-matched mentor is an invaluable asset for an entrepreneur. You’ll have someone you can trust and confide in, lean on for advice, bounce new ideas off of, and get help refining your business plans.

Read on to learn how to connect with a mentor and get the most out of a mentor-mentee relationship.

Finding the right fit

The first step to seeking out a mentor is to know the kind of guidance you and your business would most benefit from, right now.

For business owners in the early start-up stage, someone who can provide advice for surviving the first few lean years—and someone you can touch base with more often—may be the perfect fit.

In this scenario finding a mentor with experience in your industry is a plus, but not absolutely necessary (which can make your search for a mentor a bit easier).

If you’re in a highly specialized field (like IT), if you’re running a business in a niche market, or if you’re at the point where you’re ready to scale, you’ll likely want to narrow your search to a more selective pool of mentors with pertinent experience.

Where to look for a mentor

Start your search for a mentor in your current network. Think about who you know through your previous jobs, educational history, professional associations, and the local business community.

Your social media networks can be a great place to find a mentor, too. Be sure to get the word out via your LinkedIn groups, Twitterverse, and Facebook. You never know who might be out there, just on the periphery of your social network, by one or two degrees of separation.

Another option is to search for organizations in your area—like Australia’s International Business Mentors—that help match up to business owners with trained mentors.

Alternatives mentoring opportunities

Let’s face it: all business owners are busy people. And although it’s most beneficial to meet with a mentor consistently, doing so in person on a regular basis can be a challenge for both parties.

For some mentors and mentees what works best are facetime chats. Other options to consider are “flash mentoring” via quick lunch-hour sessions, or connecting with a mentoring group that meets online. If you’re willing to pay to work with a mentor, a group scenario can also help reduce costs. 

Final thoughts
To get the most out of mentoring—and to demonstrate how valuable your mentor’s help has been—be sure to follow up on your progress. A mentor will appreciate hearing how you’ve put their advice to work, your milestones and successes, and the goals you’d like to work on in the future. Acknowledging your progress will help you stay motivated, too, by seeing how far you’ve come.