Finance: 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Profit Margins
While every entrepreneur needs a top line focus (nothing happens ‘til someone sells something) we need to be reminded about attention to profits. Samuel Johnson once said, “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.” Here’s a reminder to pause in the top-line thinking and get some practical bottom-line focus – because even if you may have Walmart revenues, but have Nordstrom operating expenses, you’re going to go broke: Inc: 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Profit Margins
Finance: Seller Notes for Acquisitions
“It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.” -Warren Buffet Growth through acquisitions is a common occurrence for business owners. But judging whether the company to be acquired will meet Mr. Buffet’s definition of wonderful can be difficult. When circumstances are somewhat uncertain, some of the risk of the future performance of the acquired company can be shifted to the seller. Read more…
Finance: What is Bitcoin?
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” -Albert Einstein Would Einstein understand Bitcoin? Bitcoin is one of a series of newly created virtual currencies. If it can achieve adequate acceptance, it can provide the same utility as your current electronic banking, but with a very important difference. No bank or government is involved, and transactions are entirely anonymous. For a more detailed description visit http://www.bitcoin.org. Read more…
Image credit: Finance: Is Your Estate Planning Current?
Time for some mid-year evaluation – things that you probably should have done as a New Year’s resolution, but hadn’t gotten to yet. Well, it’s not too late to avoid counting another failed resolution. Is your estate plan up to date? Nothing like some horror stories of people who could have easily afforded the right help, but didn’t. So if you need some motivation to avoid the procrastination: AICPA: Famous People Who Failed Estate Planning
Finance: Raising Prices – the Entrepreneur’s Anathema
Pricing has the single most significant impact on how much you take to the bottom line. It’s the quantifiable, and therefore comparable, definition of your product’s value. So, “with great power comes great responsibility.” But there’s also a corollary, “with great weight comes great inertia.” As you’re planning for next year’s profitability, here’s a couple resources: A classic McKinsey article: The Power of Pricing (http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/marketing_sales/the_power_of_pricing?cid=other-eml-cls-mip-mck-oth-1511) and an Inc Magazine video Inc: How to Raise Prices Without Losing Customers.
Finance: The Case for Not Selling
Inc. Magazine last month had a great article entitled “How to Build a Company That Will Be Around in 2015” (http://www.inc.com/magazine/201510/bo-burlingham/built-to-last-and-last.html) — on entrepreneurs are exchanging “steroid-like” growth with outside investments for the more deliberate organic growth that endures. A good read for sure, but what caught our attention is a sidebar on the financial reality of selling a company vs continuing to run it — something we regularly discuss with clients. Inc: The Case for Not Selling.
