The Pressures
- Rising energy costs.
- Fuel prices are going up.
- Rent/mortgage rises.
- A slowing down economy.
The two simple answers
- Understand your cash-flow going forward.
- Market harder than ever.
Understanding your cash-flow going forward
My wife and I have been through the grinder several times. We know, all too well, how important it is to have a good idea of what the future financial picture may be so that we can take steps early to avoid disaster.
We began our first business in 1981 and ran headlong into the depression/recession of 1988/9. That was when I began perfecting my own Excel Cash-flow and P&L system.
If you’re running your own business and that feeds your personal economic situation, it is absolutely vital that you run a system like this.
I update my system every Monday morning and reconcile my figures with the bank statement. This gives me a solid base to go forward from.
Each month has its own sheet, and each sheet is broken down into weeks by date so that I can pin-point any pinch points in the future. Forewarned is fore armed.
Each month interlinks with the preceding and following months.
Your known income and costs
By breaking your income and expenditure into known accounts, you can project both your income and expenditure into the future.
Interact both sections, and you will have the bottom line, namely your bank balance, be it black or red.
Your future income and costs
Having got the basis of your system, you can forecast new business and expenditure.
To make life easier, put a summary sheet at the end of each year, which will take the figures from the monthly sheets and allows you to see at a glance what the year is looking like.
If you do this for the following year you can then be planning a rolling 12-month forecast with a degree of certainty that allows you to either take remedial action early or breathe a sigh of relief.
This is harder to read than do so if you want to build yours, by all means, give me a call on 0808-172-1900 and I’ll talk you through it.
If you’d like me to run a system for you, we can talk about that.
Market harder (whilst only spending your time, not your money)
While you keep your hand firmly on the cash tiller, you also need to devote a lot of time to marketing, more so than normal in this recession.
Make sure the website is up to snuff, and start blogging and sending out social media messages.
That’s got the basics covered, so now you need to start outreach programmes. These will find people who may be looking for what you can do for them.
We find that a combination of digital marketing and messaging, telemarketing and emailing is the best.
This is something you can do for yourself regularly, so long as you have the time.
Make a golden rule to spend at least 1 hour each day promoting your business with some form of outreach programme.
If you would like to talk this over, just call us on 0808-172-1900.
Summary
If you keep a firm eye on the cash and keep marketing every day, you will be stronger when you come out of this recession.
