Art & Money Matters Mondays
In honor of Small Business Saturday, I worked off leftover Thanksgiving turkey, sweet potato, sweet bread and apple crumb pie at Live Now Fitness (@LiveNowFitness), a boutique wellness and fitness center in Howard County, Maryland led by David Girton. It’s a small business, but you couldn’t tell by the level of commitment and heart from its clientele who regularly make it to early morning bootcamp.
Small Business Saturday was launched in 2010 by the major credit card company, American Express in 2010 and officially recognized by the US Senate in 2011. It is always the Saturday after Thanksgiving which is quite fitting because small businesses tend to have slower than normal sales during the holidays (except probably at Christmas time) and therefore less cashflow, a major threat to the viability of small businesses. The experienced business owner knows that CASH IS KING!
So for my Small Business Owners, here are 5 ways to manage your Cashflow this holiday season.
1. Move the inventory: check your inventory for items that haven’t sold well during the year and offer them at a special holiday discount or bundle it with other top selling products as a gift idea.
2. Change your payment plans: Offer an incentive for customers to pay early. Ask for more money upfront (instead of 25% upfront ask for a 50% downpayment).
3. Manage your expenses: Hold off on making major purchases around the times when you expect slower than normal sales.
4. Revitalize your business. Boost your brand to attract new clients and get old ones to recommit to you. This is the right time to launch a new twist on a current product/service or a product/service for which current customers have been clamoring.
5. For every sale made, save a certain % in a reserve fund. Build at least two months worth of operating expenses in an emergency fund.
In fact go a step further and sign up your business or a friend’s business for a FREE financial assessment performed by me, Principal The Art of Money Matters. From now through January 2016, I will select 10 creative small or mid sized businesses and do the following (financial assessment) for FREE!
1) Review the past 2 years of financials to assess the health (financial position) of the business.
2) Review and assess the systems, policies, procedures (financial infrastructure) currently used to manage business finances.
3) Make a single recommendation on how to improve either the businesses financial position or financial infrastructure.
Note: To get a copy of my findings from the financial assessment and any additional recommendations made to improve your business, there will be a nominal fee.
Interested? Email me today at artandmoneymatters@gmail.com. Put “Free Financial Assessment” in the Subject Line.
#shopsmall #smallsbusinesssaturday #smallbusiness #artandmoneymatters