Finances are everything to business. It’s how you support your family, compensate your employees, pay your bills, and it’s how you’re able to do work that you love while making a profit. Whether you’re good with numbers or not, feeling confident with your finances is not an inherent quality of being a business owner. It doesn’t matter why you lack financial peace of mind; what matters is that you move forward, own your finances, and find the confidence to carry you through to your next big move.
Get To Know Your Company’s Numbers.
Knowledge is power, and while we usually hear the phrase applied to other industries, it also pertains to your company’s numbers. While you may sit in the c-suite and have a good oversight of your finances, have you looked at them lately? Understanding the behavior and trends of your numbers requires a comprehensive and hands-on approach that digs deep into your finances. This is where a trusted financial advisor can help out, as they can provide an outsider’s perspective regarding the health of your company’s numbers. Where are the gaps? How can efficiencies be improved? Where are your growth opportunities? Sometimes, owners and execs are too close to the finances to see what is happening truly. Once you and your advisor study, grasp and interpret your company’s financial data, you can feel confident about taking the next steps to improve the profitability and health of your company’s finances.
Develop Financial Goals
You might already implement goal-setting practices at your company, such as retention efforts or culture development, but what about your finances? Your financial goals should be extremely specific regarding what you want your financial numbers to look like, how you will achieve that goal, and what time frame you have to reach your accomplishment. Examining inefficiencies and producing financial clarity on all levels will be imperative to arrive at your financial goals. It is never too early or too late to set financial goals. Whether you’re struggling financially, ahead of the game, or hitting a plateau, it’s up to you and your trusted advisor to make a plan to carry you forward. You will feel confident in your company’s financial direction when you have detailed goals and understand how your everyday choices align with your future.
Prepare For The Worst
Once you understand every aspect of your finances and develop goals for your company’s future, you must also plan for the worst. Whether it’s an emergency fund or a Plan B, you must consider the worst-case scenarios your company could encounter so that you’re not left scrambling around trying to figure out where to go when you end up on shaky ground. Financial confidence is more than understanding where you are today and where you want to be tomorrow. Economic confidence is knowing what to do next if you lose that client or don’t retain enough customers. It’s more than estimating or predicting how your company will do in the future; it’s about contemplating what will happen when it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. Answer those what-ifs and be confident in the best and worst financial scenarios.
Prioritize finding confidence in your company’s finances to have financial peace of mind during the good times and rocky moments. Reach out to a trusted advisor or ask for expert financial help to take your company where you’ve always dreamed it would go, and you feel confident every step of the way.
Notion CFO & Advisors acts as a fractional CFO/outsourced accounting firm, so you can focus on your business while we focus on the finances.
