Style Switcher

Predefined Colors

Posted on

Do You Have A Doctor On Board?

BY: Andrew0 COMMENTS CATEGORY: Business Planning
According to the USA Today, 4 in 5 US businesses will not be around to celebrate their first-year anniversary. As you can imagine, businesses go under for a variety of reasons; lost orders, poor forecasts, bad or no controls, no cash, litigation, the list is endless. Where there’s a business activity, there’s a potential reason for failure. No business performs according to plan each and every day so why doesn’t the owner see the warning signs? They usually do, but in the case of the businesses that I have been advising, they either ignore them, hoping that they would go away, or they simply see them far too late. Addressing The Cause And acting isn’t good enough if you don’t address the cause of the problem. Ploughing more of your own personal funds into the pot to sure-up the cashflow won’t help. You must reduce your outflows because the problem will return to haunt you in weeks or months to come! Is cash the first of the alarm bells? I would argue that it isn’t. Your staff should alert you where there’s a problem, for example credit control may alert you that a customer is not paying, or your accountant may notify you that profit margins have fallen. Not Getting Paid How can you remain cash positive if you are not receiving the money you are owned, or making enough profits in the first place? OK, so you have a problem and several months later it’s still there, you take your head out of the sand and decide to do something about it. You ask yourself “have I got the necessary skills or experience to resolve the issue?” The clock is ticking, you can’t delay paying your suppliers, you’ve had final notices and more importantly pay-day for your staff is just around the corner, so what do you do? I would suggest you turn to a professional, a specialist like a company doctor, who has the experience to help you turn the ship around before it runs aground. There will be some of you out there thinking, I have managed this business for years; it has grown from nothing to where it is today, why do I need help? Outside Help The simple answer is that at certain stages of any business’s life it will need outside help, whether it is a loan to purchase new equipment, legal advice, who knows… No-one will question what you have done, the past does not matter, what is important is that your business has a future. Imagine on the football pitch, a player gets injured, he doesn’t treat himself, he calls on his medical team to ensure that his career and future is not jeopardised and that is what you may need to do. There are many reasons why each of us decided to run our own businesses, don’t let pride get in the way of seeing it flourish and grow.Posted in Business Planning