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Safeguarding Your Business Profits

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship ArticleAfter all the work and investment that goes into building a successful business, the day you start to realize a decent profit makes you feel on top of the world! The primary objective in running a business is to make money from it – even if that’s not the most important aspect to you personally and you love the challenge and the nature of the work first and foremost, you still need to make a profit to stay in business. Having gotten to the stage where the books are in the black and the profits are starting to roll in, how do you make sure that your hard-earned cash is put to best use?

The urge to splurge

Unless you have a superhuman level of self-control, you’ll probably want to buy yourself and your loved ones a few treats. A special night out or a weekend away, new clothes or hobby equipment, or maybe a luxury purchase for your home are all likely ways that you’ll want to give yourself something back from your business. There’s nothing wrong with that idea, after all, you should be able to enjoy the fruits of your labors. However, there are several considerations you need to make before getting too carried away with your spending spree.

Where is the money coming from?

You obviously know how the profit has been generated, but you need to consider how your business is set up and how you are paid out of the profits. For instance, do you get a salary and a percentage of profits, or dividends? You should discuss the structure of your business with your accountant to make sure it is positioning you in the most advantageous place regarding tax and debt liabilities. If you would have to take responsibility for the costs of the business taking a downturn and be liable for its debts, you need to take account of this, and make sure you are covered for such an eventuality.

Where is the money going to?

Whenever you pay out for anything, it’s worth checking whether your purchase could be legitimately set against your tax return as an expense. That doesn’t mean trying to pass off personal purchases that have nothing to do with your business, but you might be better off leasing a car through your company than buying one privately for example. It’s always worth checking how to gain the best advantage, as long as you stay within the law – if there’s one agency renowned for its tenacity, it’s the IRS!

Clearing debts

When you start to make a profit, your first step before deciding how to spend the money you’re making is to clear any debt that may be outstanding. Depending on how you have structured your finances, your business may be showing a profit on paper, but still be liable for repayments to investors for instance. If this is structured as a repayment plan over a defined period of time, you can still take any surplus profits for your personal use. Or your cash flow may require you to have a reserve fund to cover any shortfall caused by slow-paying customers or other short-term drains on resources. Once your business liabilities are confirmed, look at your personal finances. If you have loans, credit card debts, or lease and rental agreements, make paying these off a priority. It will save you money, in the long run, to focus on clearing debt and avoid paying interest on what’s due. You probably want to make an exception for your mortgage, which is more of a high-value long-term investment; unless your profits are so impressive you can afford to clear it now!

Putting money back into the company

Many business owners choose to reinvest their profits back into the business, and this should be your next consideration. If you want to expand or improve your operations, then reinvesting some of your profits is a sound way to grow your business. The money you reinvest needs to be detailed precisely on your accounts to ensure your tax liabilities are accurate, or you will lose out; so don’t splash out on new tablets for all your staff without the expense being recorded and legitimized.

Investing

Once you’ve checked whether you need a reserve fund, cleared any outstanding debts, and decided how much to reinvest in your business, you can then relax and start choosing how to spend your money. Treating yourself is important, as it will give you a thrill to know that you are splashing out on something you truly desire as a result of your hard work and business acuity. However, if you want your money to work for you, you should consider investments. There is an extensive choice of different types of investment available, from high-risk shares to low-risk long-term assets, property investment, bonds, foreign exchange, cryptocurrencies, and many more. The most reliable returns will be in low-risk stocks, but these can take many years to achieve their full potential. High-risk strategies by definition increase the odds that you could lose your money, but you could try a middle road with swing trading strategies. These are specially selected shares that experts calculate are just about to make a significant swing to profitability, which could gain you better returns over a shorter time frame.

The complexity and intricacies of the financial world need experts to exploit them to their full advantage, and if you try and go it alone without seeking their advice, you’ll lose a lot of time on research, and you could well make the wrong choices. A financial adviser can guide you through your investments and make recommendations to suit your needs and aversion to risk, which is preferable to trying to learn enough to make sound decisions by yourself. Most importantly, your CPA should be more than just a number cruncher. They should be able to advise you as to the most efficient way to structure your business and how to get the best from your financial arrangements.

How to Simplify Your Business’s Finances

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship ArticleIt might sometimes feel as if your business needs to choose between keeping its customers happy or enjoying healthier finances. If you feel forced to pick between the two, your business might never be able to reach its potential, which is why you must find ways to lower your expenditure without compromising on consumer satisfaction.

A few new tactics and tools could provide the solution you have been looking for, so keep reading to find out how to simplify your business’s finances.

Set Financial Goals to Increase Your Revenue

If you want to enjoy a greater annual revenue, you must set financial goals. Doing so will provide both you and your team with targets to hit each day, week or month, which will help to keep your business firmly in the black.

If you fail to meet a target, you can then identify the tweaks and changes you will need to make to your processes. It will help you to stay focused on your income and outgoings, so your business never takes a step backward.

Open a Separate Business Account

Never confuse your personal and business finances again by opening a company bank account. Many banks are happy to provide entrepreneurs with a specific account for a business. It will make it easier to separate your personal and professional income, which will make it much more straightforward to organize your taxes, pay your business expenses, and monitor your revenue.

Dedicate One Day a Month to Reviewing Your Finances

It doesn’t matter if you have the best accounting software or accountant, you must take the time to review your finances. Every business owner must have a firm grip on their income and expenditure, which can prevent costs from spiraling out of control.

A monthly financial review is a must, so set one day aside to review your statements, invoices, and bills. You also should use this day to negotiate with vendors, change suppliers, and find ways to reduce your outgoings.

Setup Payment Reminders and Alerts

With so many tasks to complete and projects to manage, it can be easy to forget to pay an important bill. However, you will soon realize your mistake when your electricity isn’t working, or your water has been switched off.

Never miss an important payment again by setting up an alert in a Google calendar. You will then receive a notification to pay a bill to help keep track of your finances.

Streamline Your Amazon Listings

Do you sell products through Amazon? If so, you can increase both your presence and selling power with Amazon market integration software. It allows you to manage both domestic and international accounts, so you can easily fulfill your customers’ orders to their exact specifications. You can also manage both your availability and pricing to maximize your cash flow. Visit sellercloud.com to learn more about the powerful platform that can increase your finances.

Go Paperless

Companies can often be guilty of holding onto unnecessary paperwork. By doing so, they can over complicate their filing systems. Organize your finances by keeping only the documents and statements you need and then shred the rest. You also should keep transactions and contracts in the cloud if possible and go paperless so that you can access them at any point and on any device.

Do You Have The Right Leadership Qualities?

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Are you planning to start a new business during the next few months? Would you like to make sure you have what it takes to succeed? Then take a minute or two to consider some of the information on this page and make sure you understand the most crucial leadership qualities you will require. If you don’t have them at the moment; now is the best time to improve your skills.

Communication skills

If you struggle to communicate with your employees or clients; you will never reach your full potential in the business world. Communication is vital, and you need to make sure you can explain your ideas and highlight concepts in a way that others grasp quickly.

Problem-solving skills

You are going to encounter many problems and stumbling blocks in the business world. Success lies in your ability to solve those issues and overcome anything that blocks your path. If you aren’t the best problem-solver right now; you need to work on that ability.

Project management skills

As an entrepreneur; it is vital that you plan working practices that ensure your employees become as productive as possible. Maybe you would benefit from taking a project management course or something similar before you push ahead?

Now you know about some of the most critical leadership qualifies for entrepreneurs; you can begin to improve your skills and make sure you get everything right with your new venture. Regardless of the nature of your business idea, the same rules will apply. Take a look at the infographic for more tips.


Design created by USC Online

The Big Picture of Business – Entrepreneurs’ Guideposts to Real Business Success

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship ArticleThere are many romantic notions about entrepreneurship. There are many misconceptions.

People hear about entrepreneurism and think it is for them. They may not do much research or may think there are pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. They talk to other entrepreneurs and learn that it all about perseverance and building sweat-equity in companies.

The wise entrepreneurs have mentors, compensated for their advice, tenured in consulting and wise beyond reproach. Advisers are important to fitting the entrepreneurs to the right niche. Mentors draw out transferrable talents to apply to the appropriate entrepreneurial situation.

The corporate mindset does not necessarily transfer to small business. Just because someone took early retirement is not a reason to go into a startup business. People who worked for other people do not necessarily transfer to the entrepreneurial mode.

Those who have captained teams tend to make better collaborators and members of others’ teams. Entrepreneur is as entrepreneur does

Make an equitable blend of ambition and desire: Fine-tuning one’s career is an admirable and necessary process. It is quite illuminating. Imagine going back to reflect upon all you were taught. Along the way, you reapply old knowledge, find some new nuggets and create your own philosophies.

We were taught to be our best and have strong ambition to succeed. Unfortunately, we were not taught the best methods of working with others in achieving desired goals. We became a society of highly ambitious achievers without the full roster of resources to facilitate steady success.

Every company must and should put its best face forward for the public. Public perceptions are called “credence goods” by economists. Every organization must educate outside publics about what they do and how they do it. This premise also holds true for each corporate operating unit and department. The whole of the business and each sub-set must always educate corporate opinion makers on how it functions and the skill with which the company operates.

Gaining confidence among stakeholders is crucial. Business relationships with customers, collaborators and other professionals are established to be long-term in duration. Each organization or should determine and craft its own corporate culture, character and personality, seeking to differentiate itself from others.

Every business, company or organization goes through cycles in its life. At any point, each program or business unit is in a different phase from others. The astute organization assesses the status of each program and orients its team members to meet constant changes and fluctuations.

I’ve talked with many entrepreneurs and founders of companies which rapidly grew from the seed of an idea they had. Most admitted enjoying the founding phase but lost interest shortly after giving birth. Over and over, they said, “When it stops being fun, I move on.”

After the initial honeymoon, you speak with them and hear rumblings like, “It isn’t supposed to be this hard. Whatever happened to the old days? I’m ready to move on. This seems too much like running a business. I’m an idea person, and all this administrative stuff is a waste of my time. I should move on to other new projects.”

When they come to me, they want the business to transition smoothly and still make the founders some money. They ask, “Are you the one who comes in here and makes this into a real business?” I reply, “No. After the caretakers come in and apply the wrong approaches to making something of your business, I’m the one who cleans up after them and starts the business over again.” The reality is that I’m even better on the front end, helping business owners avoid the costly pitfalls attached to their losing interest and abdicating to the wrong people.

Entrepreneurial companies enjoy the early stage of success…and wish things would stay as in the beginning. When “the fun ends,” the hard work begins. There are no fast-forward buttons or skipping steps inn developing an effective organization, just as there are no shortcuts in formulating a career and Body of Work.

Questions to ask entrepreneurs:

  1. Do you have goals for the next year in writing?
  2. Are the long-range strategic planning and budgeting processes integrated?
  3. Are planning activities consolidated into a written organizational plan?
  4. Do you have a written analysis of organizational strengths and weaknesses?
  5. Do you have a detailed, written analysis of your market area?
  6. Do detailed action plans support each major strategy?
  7. Is there a Big Picture?

About the Author

Hank MoorePower Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.

Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.

Power Stars to Light the Business Flame is now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.

How startups can use reverse mergers to go public

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship ArticleThere are a number of compelling reasons that a new startup might seek to take itself public. Pubic companies, on the whole, usually have much higher valuations than private firms. They also have a patina of legitimacy and transparency that private companies lack. As a consequence, public firms often have access to many different credit facilities and financing options that private companies do not enjoy.

But the single largest reason for a private firm to seek to become publicly listed is in order to raise capital. When it comes to fulfilling this end, the usual route to going public involves an initial public offering, also known as an IPO. IPOs can confer great benefits on companies that are able to go through them. They are usually able to raise large amounts of capital that otherwise would never have been available to the firm that is going public. But IPOs also come with some steep costs and excessive risks. In this article, we’ll look at why a startup might not want to go with an IPO and how a company that still desires to become publicly traded can use what’s referred to as a reverse merger to get nearly all of the benefits of an IPO with almost none of the costs or risks.

Buying versus selling

One of the chief concerns that any entrepreneur may have when considering an IPO is that they are effectively selling their company. In this case, rather than the buyer being another individual or a company, it is instead the total investors who buy into the initial public offering. While this may sound a bit abstract, the consequences are very real in terms of ownership and retention of control. There are many instances where entrepreneurs take their companies public only to later end up being thrown off the board of directors or fired from other executive roles. In fact, this is precisely what happened to Steve Jobs at Apple, the company he founded.

On the other hand, a reverse merger doesn’t suffer from this drawback. A reverse merger involves the startup acquiring an already-existing firm that is already publicly traded. In most cases, this firm will be some form of shell company. At the most fundamental level, the difference between an IPO and a reverse merger is that an IPO is selling the company being taken public while the reverse merger is simply buying the shell company that is already public.

This has a number of major advantages, many of which may not at first be obvious. The clearest advantage of taking a company public by acquiring another already-public company is that the principals of the startup get to retain nearly the same level of control that they enjoyed before the merger. At the same time, they can save tremendous amounts of money and avoid the huge inherent risks in attempting to take their company public through an IPO.

IPOs have huge costs and risks

Another one of the most compelling reasons that smaller startups may choose to go with a reverse merger rather than an IPO is because of the enormous costs and risks associated with initial public offerings. A typical IPO can take a year or more to complete. And going public always requires hiring a team of highly specialized mergers-and-acquisitions lawyers. The company will also need to hire an investment bank to handle the underwriting of the deal. Both lawyers and bankers are required on every IPO deal due to the sheer complexity that often arises. Because IPOs involve the complete restructuring of the company’s ownership, there are many details that need to be ironed out. Old debt holders need to be paid off and new debt is almost always issued, usually with complex seniority hierarchies and special debt instruments such as convertible bonds. The issuance of stock options, warrants and other special equity instruments are also common. In general, these are deals that only highly competent professional lawyers and bankers are qualified to handle.

Because there is always a significant risk of the deal not being completed, the majority of these fees cannot be structured on a contingency basis. This means that the company going public will have to foot the bill out of its cash flow and reserves. With such costs running into the tens of millions of dollars, it becomes impossible for the majority of small firms to foot the bill for these requirements. And worst of all, many IPOs never get completed due to market downturns. When this catastrophic result happens, it usually means that all of the time and money spent preparing for the IPO have been wasted.

On the other hand, reverse mergers can avoid all of these problems. Although it sounds somewhat exotic, a reverse merger is really a very simple transaction. It is simply one company acquiring another, usually paying in company stock. Another feature of reverse mergers, which is usually but not always the case, is typically that the acquiring company is worth vastly more than the target of acquisition. This means that a simple tender offer usually suffices to complete the deal.

Such transactions can be completed in as little as 30 days and for as little as $200,000 or less. Compare that with the more than a year and up to tens of millions of dollars that a typical IPO requires. Clearly the reverse merger is the superior option for the small startup on a cost-comparison basis alone. But there is an even more compelling reason why a startup might want to consider the reverse merger option.

Public companies are worth a lot more

A quick glance at a site like Empire Flippers will show that many solid internet businesses are only being valued at around the three-times-earnings mark. By contrast, many of the largest publicly traded tech companies that operate in the same industry as the private businesses for sale on Empire Flippers are valued at up to 40 times earnings. Such vast disparities in valuation may not be typical across all businesses and industries, but it illustrates the principle that public companies are often worth far more than private companies by virtue of the very fact that they are publicly traded.

This can become a powerful advantage for reverse mergers. Once a private company goes public, it may find that a few years down the road it is valued at three or even four times what it was as a private company. At that point, it becomes possible to raise massive amounts of capital without having to seriously dilute ownership. This is the real power of reverse mergers. And if the reverse merger has been carried out right, this is a result that can reliably be attained.

About the Author

This article was written by Delancey Street, a nationwide real estate lender that provides private money loans to real estate developers. We use artificial intelligence to reduce the time it takes to provide borrowers with an answer by almost 200%.