The Internet Marketing Secret That Stops Small Business Own - Author: admin P... http://ow.ly/16CvqM

Become An Eco-Entrepreneur - Author: admin Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2010 7:58 pm ... http://ow.ly/16zWLN

CFO Services – What Angels Need To See

If you are an Entrepreneur and you want to be prepared for an Angel or an Angel group you are best served to have the following ready:

• An Executive Summary – no more than 3 or 4 pages.
• Pitch Deck – 10 to 20 page power point presentation.
• Be prepared for a lot of questions
• 6 to 12 character references – after all they are investing in you!
• Names of customers or potential customers.
• Financial Model and Business Forecasting Tool
• Where is the money going to be spent?
• What are the real economic levers in the business?
• How does it look like over the next 4 quarters
• What hypotheses are you trying to test.

The Interim CFO or Part Time CFO can help you with the final 5 points.

Angels want to know if you financially thought through the project you are proposing. You need a financial model that addresses all of the contingencies and possible what if scenarios. You need a financial model that shows the angels you know how much cash you need and when you will need it. You need a financial model that shows the angels that you are on top of:

• Headcount and employee plan
• Purchase and/or production plan
• The costs related to your marketing and advertising plan
• Where their investment is being spent
• The metrics that will measure the businesses performance

Angels know that every business/investment opportunity they look at is going to have a set of hypotheses that the entrepreneur is going to present as there are no certainties. Each hypothesis needs to be carefully thought out and presented. The Angel needs to know what hypothesis or solution to a problem you are trying to test. What are the economic levers that are dictating that your solution to the problem is the answer and what economic levers are going to drive your solution to the market.

Speaking of angel investors there is a solid list of them on the following website Angel Capital Association

Getting Video SEO Right - Author: admin Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 10:31 pm ... http://ow.ly/16uDF5

CFO Services – More than the numbers

Recently a client emailed me a complaint about two things:

• That he is losing touch with his customers because he decided to delegate
• Things are getting crazy, disorganized and disjointed. I liked it much better when we were more organized.

As an Interim CFO addressing these kind of issues is commonplace. Business Owners look to the CFO for direction and guidance.

With regard to my client feeling like he is losing touch with his customers I responded to him as follows:

In business you either go up or down. There is really no state of neutrality. Any business that does not try to grow usually goes down. If you strive for neutrality you are very likely to go down. Therefore you must continuously strive to grow. Having said that, as you grow you are going to continuously feel a disconnect with your customers. However there is a solution. It is called communication. I think on a consistent basis you need to call these "delegated customers" directly and get the feedback from the customer on how it is going and on how your company can do better. I know it is more work but it is part of managing the growing process. Your employees will never in a million years tell you that there is anything wrong with their service until it is blatantly obvious and then it is usually too late. Tell your employees in advance that you will be calling these customers and give these employees both positive and negative feedback as to the results.

With regard to my client feeling that his business is crazy, disorganized and disjointed and liking it better when things were more organized, I responded as follows:

I think you need to change your mind set a little bit here. When I was in the retail business I knew business was going well when things got a little crazy, disorganized and disjointed because that meant things are growing as planned. When things are not in that aforementioned state then believe me there will not be joy in organization there will be potential stress and loss of focus as being human we all get complacent. The challenge is as things get crazy, disorganized and disjointed to be ready with solutions and improvements so when the current set of circumstances happen again you will be able to avoid the crazy, disorganized and disjointed and move on to new things that cause more craziness, disorganization and disjointedness. Believe it or not that is the winning formula for running a successful business.

Being a Part Time CFO is not just about working the numbers, the metrics and the forecasts. Being a CFO means you need to have a thorough understanding of business ownership and in turn understand how the inner workings of business work.

Controlling Payroll Costs

As mentioned in a previous post the four major expenses for most businesses are payroll, rent, advertising and insurance. One way that the Interim CFO can work to control payroll costs is through the use of forecasting tools like CashTell. The beauty of using a forecasting tool for the purposes of controlling payroll costs is that you can optimize both the headcount and the labor hours for different levels of sales.

For example, when forecasting, several different possible business scenarios should be assessed and analyzed by both the business owner and the part time CFO. One of those many different scenarios is different sales volumes. When forecasting one must look at what happens to the model when different ranges of sales volumes are entered. A good forecasting model should be able to determine the optimum headcount and the optimum amount of labor hours for each level of sales. This is a great tool because with this information the business owner and CFO know in advance as sales go up or down how to schedule workers helping to maximize efficiency and manage payroll costs.

Many times when the word “labor hours” is used we think of mainly manufacturing, however managing payroll costs through labor hours can be done in all types of businesses. When I was in the retail business, store managers were given a set amount of labor hours each week for scheduling employees. They could not go over those allocated labor hours unless they had permission together with a logical reason. My forecasting tools determined those labor hours and then if at the start of the week sales were deviating from the forecast I would issue or withdraw more hours as needed. It was also interesting that although the store managers complained about the small allocation of hours that they got it was amazing how the job got done with more efficiency and no sacrifice on service.

Advisory Board

Even if you have a working partner that may fill one or more of these roles it is always a very good idea to have an advisory board. It is ok for you or your partners to fill these roles, but it is unlikely that all of the roles of the advisory board can be filled by the management of a small business. Even if all of the advisory board roles can be filled by management it is still a very good idea to have people outside of management to bounce ideas off of.

Today there are many opportunities to have an advisory board that will either cost nothing or very little. Develop a relationship with the following professionals and have them part of your advisory board:

1. CPA – You are going to need a CPA to prepare your tax returns and possibly to perform a compilation, review or an audit. Usually if you hire a CPA to do these things they will be part of your advisory board. Usually they will be on the advisory board for nothing if you give them the aforementioned tax preparation business and you develop a good relationship with them. CPA’s can also refer you to funding sources and other support services including referring to you more business.
2. Lawyer – You should develop a relationship with a good business attorney. It must be a business attorney. One of the perils of business is that it exposes you to legal situations. Certainly do not use attorneys if you do not have to and there are other opportunities to get more cost effective legal advice like Prepaid Legal Services and others, but you want to get an attorney on your advisory board. Therefore it is a good idea to develop a relationship with an attorney who you can trust and will bill you in a professional manner. I have seen some attorneys bill me $75 for sending a fax! It can get that crazy. However by developing the right relationship with the right attorney you can have a trusted and valuable advisory board member who you can call when the need arises for legal assistance. Lawyers can also be a source of support services, funding sources and may refer more business.
3. Insurance Agent – There are several situations in business that call for specialty insurance and special protection. A professional insurance agent will be able to identify perils and risks that need to be insured.
4. Part time CFO – By using a Part Time Chief Financial Officer you have the opportunity to get a number of financial services on an as needed basis. In addition you have a valuable advisory board member. Here are some of the CFO services a part time CFO can perform:

• Solving cash flow problems
• Determining cash needs
• Designing a plan to work with existing cash and other resources
• Structuring an exit plan
• Determining Business Value
• Optimize operations
• Drive results and drive the bottom line
• Contribute to business development
• Shape financial strategy
• Understand, identify and assess the risks of business ownership.
• Prepare the Financial portion of your business plan.

5. Technical or operations professional depending on your industry – This is where you add someone to your advisory board that has the operations or technical expertise related to your product or service. You may have someone in management but once again it is always a good idea to get perspective from someone outside of management if available.

These professionals on your advisory board may charge a fee. I would be leery of this. My suggestion is to do everything you can to build the right relationships and to promise giving business to these professionals down the line.

I have a business associate who says he never has or never worries about any problems in his business. The reason is he gives all problems to his advisory board and lets them figure out all of his problems and lets them assume all of his worries. Advisory Boards can be very helpful and it is worth the time and energy to build the right one.