Up Your Business LLC

As a coach to small to medium-size businesses, I hear as well as read a lot of stories about business owners and lenders, especially bank lenders. Many are tales of woe, negativity and that business lending throughout the country is on life-support resulting in many businesses being in intensive care waiting with their name on a transplant list for new capital.

Business owners today are frustrated as increasing uncertainties in financial and credit markets have produced conflicting and misleading information about the availability of business financing. For many business owners it is probably not clear if business finance funding is realistically available to them. In addition, they are experiencing lower tolerance for risk by lenders, less willingness to lend, much lower loan-to-value requirements on collateral, higher credit scores and more proven profitability.

Lenders are frustrated, too. There is additional scrutiny by regulators, as well as internal loan auditors and third party auditors to deal with and answer to.  Many banks are being forced to restructure, cut expenses, pare down their loan assets and significantly increase loan loss reserves. Underwriting restrictions have become more stringent and government reporting has become more onerous. Many banks, instead of focusing on new loans, are putting a majority of their time and energies into handling loans assets that are in trouble. 

I’m not going to place blame or judge business owners or lenders. It seems to me that it’s time to move forward toward doing things that will make a difference and propose solutions that make sense and work.

Now is the time to be proactive. Many business owners I talk to or read about don’t feel there are many options facing them. Options do exist and knowing what they are along with the ramifications helps in moving forward. Things can and should be done today that will put your business in good stead tomorrow.

One aspect of running a business, as well as borrowing money, is the ability to put into place and use cash flow projections. Regardless of the time or economy, all lenders consider the use of cash flow projections as one of several key or best business practices.  If you cannot answer two questions and have the mechanism in place to provide the answers, now it the time to begin to do so. What is your cash balance today?  What do you estimate your cash balance to be in six months? This recession will not last forever, and knowing and understanding cash flow and applying cash flow techniques will help strengthen your business as well as your future ability to borrow.

My friend, Philip Campbell, has authored a very good, simple to understand book, Never Run Out of Cash, and produced a one hour web-based seminar explaining cash flow and offering great tips on how to get and keep your cash flow under control. In both his book and webinar he explains his easy-to-use cash flow template – The Peace of Mind Schedule.

Isn’t it time to put peace back in your business operation?  Peace can begin a click away.

www.neverrunoutofcash.com/cashflowintro.htm

I doubt you consciously think about design as you go through your day.

Reading Michael Pink’s book “Rainforest Strategy” I became aware how important design is to one’s business. Michael states, “We have a design, and design speaks of purpose…”

Imagine with me, as you look at the things that are currently around you. Everything is made of the same parts: cells, molecules, and atoms. The building materials for the trees and plants you see in the forest, as well as everything in your current environment are all the same. The only difference is how each is designed, arranged, or structured. As Pink states, “The value of everything in nature is defined not by what it is made of, but by how its parts are arranged – again, its formation or design.”

 Design is the combination of function or utility and significance.  Its function is enhanced by significance. 

Take coffee for example.  You pour hot water over ground coffee beans.  Not hard or complicated and relatively inexpensive to make.  Millions of people go to Starbucks and pay top dollar to let them make their coffee.   Why Starbucks over McDonalds? 

They both serve coffee.  Starbucks serves up ambience, experience, story and passion making it emotionally compelling. Starbucks has designed the entire purchase experience to be memorable, to attract certain types of people.  It’s the same for McDonalds. They designed the eating experience for primarily families with small children, to be quick, relatively inexpensive and with clean surroundings. For each their design is different, however their individual success and profit as well as their value is created by their individualized design. Let me repeat that: value, from the customer’s perspective, is created by design, which leads to profit.

Therefore, at all levels of your business, design should be a focus to deeply connect with the customer experience.  Does the design of your business, the physical experience, the products and services create the right emotional message about your business and answer the question, “Do You Matter?”

In the very technological, rapid paced world we find ourselves in today, with a focus on convenience, efficiencies, and return on investment, it is easy to miss the aesthetic value of design. The human psyche needs and responds to beauty, harmony and upliftment and it is easy to overlook these more right-brained elements when considering the design of your business, for you and your employees as well as your customers. One of the keys to success today, in this world of abundance we have in the US, is that products and services must not only provide utility or function but it must also provide significance or meaning.    

Is it important to carefully consider each aspect of your business’s perception? You bet it is. This involves the design of your product, the structure of your business, the design of your business location, facility, the perception of your product or service, the design of your website and so much more.  Spending time carefully thinking all of this through will determine your ultimate success.

How you can grow your business by leaps and bounds using unconventional ideas is how my business is designed to help you.