Check Your Business Health

The small business health-check questions for you:

• Do I know what is going on in my business in all areas or have I abdicated some responsibility to staff? You can pick and choose what you do work-wise everyday, you can not pick and choose what you should know about and make decisions about – this is your business, not your staffs business – act like it.
• Am I running my business or is it running “itself”? No business is running itself, other than into the ground!
• Do you know how your cash-flow is doing? Done this one before, yet it always comes back to this, check it out.
• Do you have an overview of your small business fixed costs and sales, are you happy with the situation? I guess you could always do better, but if you do not know the details you can not improve your situation.
• Is your vision in line with your small business targets? You need a vision for your business, that will allow you to develop your small business strategy and plan, so you know where you are going – don’t just drift along.
• Have you asked your staff lately? Have a power-meeting with your staff once a week, to see how they are feeling about your small business, last week or the next few weeks. It will motivate them and give you a new insight in how others see your small business.

The central message here is to be involved in ALL areas of your business ALL of the time – in a management capacity. When I hire people I always hire people who do something better than I, but you have to stay involved.

Small Business Ideas

There are some great small business ideas for you to consider:

• A grocery checkout efficiency consulting service.
• A traveling poker school offering intensive weekend tuition.
• Assist businessmen who have trouble writing speeches or organising presentations.
• A baby fitness class for parents and kids.
• Restaurant where customers cook alongside the chef to aid learning – then eat their own meal.
• Become a virtual assistant and offer your skill-set to others for hire.
• Using Google Earth to work out green improvements to a given area.
• A non-profit organisation that takes old donated tech items and makes them suitable for use by other non-profits.
• Rummaging through other people’s houses to find saleable items which can be placed on eBay (you will take a percentage).
• A service which reclaims gold from old electronics.
• A website for generating name and branding ideas.
• A service allowing volunteers to list their availability for charity projects in their area.
• Private investigation for restaurants – find out whether your employees are following Health & Safety procedure.
• A service which will transfer vinyl / CD to MP3 for people who don’t know how.
• Unique bachelor / bachelorette parties tailored to specification.
• Become a singer / songwriter making songs written to order for special events.
• Digital picture blinds – when closed, they display images from a USB stick.
• Highly trained babysitters who are available at the last minute.
• Live tutoring online via webcam or chat.
• A positive news channel / website with a special focus on good news!

Business Factoring

Well the Business Sector sure has taken a hit this last year or 2 as we as Business owners try to muddle through the landmines of building a business. It can be a daunting task. It will if youre not careful suck the life right out of you. In todays market and economy it can be very difficult to try to start a business let alone keep one alive and flourishing. There are ways to avoid the pitfalls of possibly going out of business but you as a business owner need to be aware of what avenues are available to you and if that avenue will fit your specific need. I have never believed in the herd mentality when it comes to business. Everyone is completely different and has different needs. I will discuss one option to consider today in this article that might help your business out.
If youre in business and you run credit cards or are planning on running credit cards this is a must read article. Now, we all know there are only a handful of options available to us as business owners when starting a business one of them is getting a merchant account, a way to run credit card transactions. Having a merchant account can be extremely important to the survival of your new or existing venture. I have a lot of clients that do run on a cash basis and do not take credit cards or payments. What we do in this situation is number 1 set them up a merchant account. Once they set up a merchant account is brings credibility to your business model. By running credit card payments youre showing a possible investor that you can handle and maintain your clients and payments. Also it shows the Banks and lenders that your business can survive and weather the storms. Let me give you some examples of what factoring is. Factoring is when you take your account receivables and receive funding from your processor or a 3rd party company. If you run 50k a week in business then you can in some cases receive money based off what you run each month or each week, it all depends on how you set it up. Here are some examples:
1)Factoring is a financial transaction whereby a business sells its accounts receivables at a discount in exchange for money. Let this be clear. Simple
2)Do research prior to going down this avenue. There are companies that will allow you to arrange a plan on how your payments back to the lender will be. What I mean by this is if you run 50k one week and your re-payment is 600.00 and then the next week you run 35k your payment would be 400.00. Look into all options as there are a lot of companies offering this type of funding. Dont get stuck in something you cant fulfill.
3)Factoring will definitely free up cash flow for any business. If your running in the red all the time and barely making your bills this type of funding will allow you to free up some cash, make on time payments still for your business obligations and most importantly you wont miss out on an investment opportunity that come your way because now you DO have the funds to proceed.
4)This type of funding can be expensive but ask yourself this question, if youre not planning on going out of business and you can support the cause of actually getting the funding you need then who cares? Right?
We all as business owners go through ups and downs its the nature of the beast. Lets be honest here, if it really was this simple wouldnt everyone be in business for themselves. CNN quoted not too long ago that the Small Business Sector of our Country (USA) makes up 95% of business owners. Imagine if all businesses take credit cards and process payments. Imagine if us (the little guy) as they call us didnt push forward and be creative and help this country grow, then where would we be?
Factoring can be vital to a business in any industry in any market anywhere in the world. Be sure to be creative and look for other alternative ways to fund your business. This is one of the best ways to help a business make it through the rough times and free up cash flow. Cash is King remember! Thanks for the reads and remember as the market changes, we change! If youre in need of information on how to go about taking care of your business needs please feel free to reach out to me, I offer free advice! Take care until next time, comments would be appreciated.

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