How to improve the revenue & profit in your business. Free webinar June 25th. Click here to register.
Imagine spending two weeks in Europe. Now imagine being at ease, knowing that your business is running smoothly in your absence.
A business legacy is the lasting influence or impact a business and its leaders leave on their industry, employees, customers, and the community after the business has been handed down to new leadership or has ceased operations. It encompasses the relationships built with all stakeholders, including employees, third parties, and the community, an unwavering commitment to excellence, and a strong vision, mission, and values. It’s about the values, principles, reputation, contributions, and culture that continue to exist even after the founders are no longer in the business.
If you own a business, you probably agree that driving cash flow is essential. Who wouldn’t want to enhance cash flow? Like any machine, many different parts contribute to making it run seamlessly and efficiently. For your business, this means having the components that generate revenue, the elements that boost profit, and the strategies that drive cash flow. To operate successfully, you need to focus on driving cash flow along with increasing revenue and profit.
You’re a business owner. You naturally want to have a growing and successful venture. To do so, you need to transform it into a money-making machine. Just like all machines, your business has a primary purpose—to make money. After all, that’s really what it all comes down to. We can have all the passion in the world; we can have a great product or service, but if the business is not making money, it will not survive. But the opposite is also true—if it can make money, you’ll have a financially successful business that you own, instead of owning a high-demanding, low-paying job.
You’re a business owner. You naturally want to have a growing and successful venture. To do so, you need to transform it into a money-making machine. Just like all machines, your business has a primary purpose—to make money. After all, that’s really what it all comes down to. We can have all the passion in the world; we can have a great product or service, but if the business is not making money, it will not survive. But the opposite is also true—if it can make money, you’ll have a financially successful business that you own, instead of owning a high-demanding, low-paying job.
With all the turbulence in the economy over the past several years, there have been increasing discussions about our impending down economy. Experts are seeing us head toward (or already in) a period of economic contraction or decline. After all, down economies are typically marked by various negative indicators, including reduced economic growth, decreased consumer spending, rising unemployment rates, a decline in business activity, and rapidly declining stock markets, and aren’t we seeing much of that already? The end result, unfortunately, is often associated with an economic recession.
It’s fairly apparent to most business owners that we are no longer in an economy where we can fly by the seat of our pants. The days of coasting are over (but really, never should have begun in the first place). There is simply too much volatility in the economy today, forcing business owners to take a new approach. Yet, financial uncertainty and doubt plague many of them.
We talked last month about the traditional functions of a Chief Financial Officer (CFO); namely, tracking revenue, profit, and cash flow, analyzing financial strengths and weaknesses, and proposing corrective actions. These functions allow the CEO to better understand how to increase revenue, decrease costs, and become more profitable overall.
We talked last month about the traditional functions of a Chief Financial Officer (CFO); namely, tracking revenue, profit, and cash flow, analyzing financial strengths and weaknesses, and proposing corrective actions. These functions allow the CEO to better understand how to increase revenue, decrease costs, and become more profitable overall.
Many people have a fairly good understanding of the traditional functions of a CFO. And those valuable functions remain the same whether we’re talking about the CFO of a Fortune 500 company or the CFO of a small business. Essentially, CFOs (1) track revenue, profit, and cash flow, (2) analyze financial strengths and weaknesses, and (3) propose corrective actions.
