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Hi everybody, Karl Diffenderfer here. Today, we’re going to have a little bit of a podcast where we talk about the seven ways to look at the cash flow in our business. I’ve invited a special guest to be with us today, his name is Dave Ashworth and I’m gonna add him to the call right now, and we’re gonna spend some time talking about that. Hi Dave, are you there?
I’m here, how are you?
I’m good. So, everybody, this is Dave, a long-time friend, at least a Covid-friend, how about we say it that way. Right, he and I have met numerous times, we don’t live too far from each other. He’s actually moving up closer to me. I think he wanted to spend some more time with me. I don’t know.
Probably it.
Probably, yeah. But we’re here to talk about something today. Dave, why don’t you share your topic and share a little bit about yourself, and then we’ll dive in.
So my name is Dave Ashworth, I run an outsourced accounting business called the Quantified Group, been in business for a little over 10 years now, and the topic for today is: Ways to Improve your Cash Flow. You know, for any business, if you’re in business, it’s important to understand your cash flow, and there’s a lot of things that you can do, pretty easy things that you can do that gets overlooked a lot to improve, and so that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
Okay, so Dave, why would a business owner care about their cash flow? I know that’s a silly question you ask. But it’s a very important question to ask.
It is. You know its most simple level. Cash flow is the amount of money coming in versus the amount going out, and if you have more going out than you have coming in for a period of time you’re gonna be in trouble most likely. Eventually, you’re going to just lose enough money where you can’t stay in business again, there are some caveats to that, if you have outside funding or if you have loaned things that could fund some of that cash flow negative, you could be okay for a period of time but in general, if more is going out than coming in, that is not a good place to be for a period of time.
So when you go in to meet with a business owner, how often do you find that they: A. don’t even know where their cash flows at and B. they’re actually a cash flow negative, and they don’t even know it.
I think more so, what I see is people don’t know. I think they just don’t have the understanding of that, and then it just depends on the business. Some don’t know, but they’re doing very well from a cash flow standpoint which is great, but it doesn’t mean that they can’t be doing even better. And so I think it’s important to understand that whether you’re struggling with it or you’re doing really well, you still need to know, and you can always improve.
Yeah, yeah, good. Okay, so why don’t you have seven different topics to share today or seven different keys. Let’s start off with the first one and go ahead and share it, and share a little bit about what that means and I’m gonna ask some questions about it.
Perfect. so the first one is pretty simple. It’s Understanding your Bank Balance versus your True Cash Balance. So what do I mean by that? What a lot of people will do is, if they’re running a business, if they have a payment due or a bill they’ll log into their bank, they’ll see how much cash is in there, and then, they’ll go off of that. The problem is that’s what their bank is saying, but that might not be the True Balance of cash that they have. So a perfect example is, let’s say I log into my bank account that says a hundred dollars, well earlier that day, I wrote a check to somebody for $25, but it hasn’t been cashed yet, so that’s not going to show in that hundred anywhere all I’m going to say is I have $100 and in reality, I only have $75 and so you need to understand the difference between those two. How to track those in order to make the proper decisions, and the easiest way to do that is just doing bank reconciliation. So you’re tracking some of those things that are, you know maybe they’re in transit or other things that you need to keep track of and account for to get to a True Cash Balance and see how much cash you actually have, but you need to know the difference why it’s important and how to reconcile the difference between those two.
Yeah, and when you get into a larger business, though that changes, that shift. So what are some of the variables, a larger business owner would need to look at as they’re identifying their Bank versus Cash Balance?
Yeah, so there can be one. It’s just going to be inflated even more because there are just bigger numbers on the line. So there are a lot more expenses happening, and there are a lot bigger numbers happening. You know that one of the biggest, I think you can also have like you’re then starting to deal with like credit cards and loans and other things that are included, payments that are coming up due. So you really need to know at any level you need to understand this, it just becomes even more complicated as you as you become a bigger business.
Yeah for sure. Okay, and then once you get to that spot where you have things reconciled, is that the number you should go off of then as you make financial decisions, or are there other factors you should take into consideration.
I mean there are always other things to take into consideration, you know it’s important to know where you’re at today, like how much cash do you actually have, but you also, and we’ll get into some of that as we kind of move through the list, but you also should be looking ahead as well you should be looking forward to what expenses are coming. What revenue do I have coming in because I might have a hundred dollars today but maybe tomorrow I know that somebody’s going to pay me 200 or maybe tomorrow I know that I have to pay this bill that’s 150 right so my cash has a hundred today but that might not be what I have within 24 hours so it’s important not to just look at today to also to look ahead a little bit because it can change very quickly.
Yeah very good, okay uh number two, we have I’m gonna share it this time. Accounts Receivable Reverse Collections or Slash-collections talk a little bit about the accounts receivable. This is a good one because I can’t say how many business owners I run into that really don’t manage this well.
Yeah yeah, this one has been a little bit surprising to me over the years. You know a lot of people in business feel like they complete the job, and then the billing can kind of be secondary. It’s like, “I completed this job, I’ll get the bill out to them when I can or when I feel like it or when I have time”. To me, that’s just the completely wrong approach, like completing the job is the first step, and the second step that needs to follow immediately after, is getting the bill out into your clients’ hands, because that receivable is money that you’re owed, and the longer that takes for them to get a bill, the longer it’s going to take for you to get money into your pocket, and so I think it’s a mindset shift, a little bit that business owners need to have they need to correlate finishing a job and getting a bill and put those two things together all the time. You know I’ll just speak for us in our business, we’ve taken it a step further, and some businesses can do this, some can’t, but we actually bill ahead so, we bill on the first of the month for the work to be done in that upcoming month. That eliminates all our accounts receivable for our entire business which is, you know, if you could do that’s great again not every business can you know has the ability to do that, but the longer that the cash is in their hands the people that owe you money, the shorter it’s in yours, and that causes cash flow issues so.
Yeah and also like my experience has been the longer you wait to get an invoice to somebody, it’s almost like they view that as you don’t care as much, and so then, they take longer to pay you as well, have you seen that to be true?
A hundred percent. It’s like a psychological thing too, it’s like they completed the job. If I take five days to send you an invoice then they feel like they have more time to pay you right? If I finish the job and I send you an invoice, I hand it to you as soon as I finish that job, then there’s a sense of urgency there that this needs to get paid, and this needs to get paid on time. And it’s important to get that money, to get the money that you are owed as quickly as you can.
Yeah, and as a side note everybody one of the other things you need to do to make sure you do is that you have uh clearly defined payment schedules upfront so if you’re doing 10 30 whatever your percentages are, make sure you educate the client in the beginning as to how that’s going to work so that there are no surprises and then also with that with your contracts um make sure I just talking to a guy earlier today that was talking about somebody that he had to do a service for him and at the end, they changed the price they didn’t tell them they were going to they just changed the price so make sure you’re real with your pricing this is what it’s going to cost and if it’s going to be different, go talk to the client for as soon as you can as opposed to later in the game if you send an invoice that’s higher with surprise you know it’s a surprise for the client and you’re going to get bad feedback guarantee.
Yeah, so I have a funny story for you around that. Okay so, we were talking before, my wife and I are building a house, and we had to have an engineer go out to just do a little bit of survey work, and he told me it’s going to be 500, 750 to do the job. I said fine he goes out does some work doesn’t really say much and then I get a bill in the mail for fourteen hundred dollars, and he didn’t say a word to me, well obviously, I wasn’t happy about that, and I called him, and I said listen like if you took extra time like I’m not questioning the hours that you put in I’m not questioning what is going on here, but you needed to communicate to me that your bill is going to be double than what we talked about, and that’s exactly what you’re talking about that communication. If he had just called me and said hey, we’re running into this issue it’s taking more time my bill is probably going to be closer to this, I would have said fine like I wouldn’t have had an issue with it like I know you’re not trying to cheat me out of anything, but the lack of communication, and then so I said look I you need to hold back to your word you need to discount this bill he did end up discounting it down which is what I felt like he should do but that cost him money by a simple lack of communications I think that’s a really strong point that you make there.
Yeah, and you also now have a flavor in your mouth of I don’t know that I want to work with this guy again, so he hurt himself not just in the current but also in the future I would assume I mean that’s the way I am.
So again, to continue my example backing up what you’re saying, my builder, came to me and said hey, we need an engineer to do some more survey work on the site he said do you know anyone I said, I do know someone, but I don’t want to work with him if you have someone we’ll work with the perfect example it costs him money on the job and it cost him a lot of future income in his business by not just picking up the phone and having a phone call.
You know I know a really good coach that would love to work with him if you want to introduce me.
So I will do that, but I did have a list here, and then we can kind of maybe talk about some of these, but I’ll just run through it quickly of ways that you can speed up your accounts receivable.
Okay, good.
Because it is important from a cash flow standpoint that the quicker you collect your money, the better your cash flow is naturally. If it takes me 30 days to collect it versus five, I want to collect it in five that help my cash flow so, here are a couple of things.
Before you do that can I just I want to paint a picture here for everybody, if you have money and yeah well, if you had a stack of money, would you just let it lay on the floor next to your desk no, you wouldn’t and do banks just sit on your money and not do anything with it no they don’t, but ultimately you not invoicing your customer is you being the bank for them with no return on investment you’re not they’re not paying you I mean you can charge them, you know late fees and stuff like that but I think legally, you’re only allowed to charge 18% per year which comes out to one and a half percent a month so it’s really not a lot of money you can make better money putting in a savings account somewhere right um so don’t be the bank for your customer and if you are having that problem start to put some procedures and policies in place and some accountability upfront of what the expectations are for that so right yes right continue on Dave.
Yeah, so here’s a couple just ways that we’ve found and seen over the years to help with this, so the first is you want to read through my whole list here, do you want to kind of dialogue about them as we go I could do either.
I’d say read through the list.
Okay, so the first is invoicing quickly, which we talked about as soon as you’ve done a job get an invoice out if you can do it upfront, do that. The second is to make sure your invoices are clear and easy to understand, and I know for me, personally, I’ve gotten invoices before that I look at it I don’t really understand what’s going on I can’t figure it out so what do I do with it put it on the side of my desk I’ll figure it out another day that’s adding days to for them to collect that money.
The next one is simplifying your payment process to make it easy as possible for someone to pay you money. I know for me if I have to sit down and write out a check to somebody and put it in an envelope and drop it in a mailbox, I’m going to be a lot more a lot slower to pay than if I can log into a website type in my credit card and click pay so simplify your payment process now this is just a basic one this is just good business but have good relationships with your clients have good communication.
You know if Karl and I are our good friends, and we’re in business together there’s a lot better chance that he’s gonna want to pay me for my services, because we have a good relationship, so that’s just a general that’s good for any business, but that does help with your collections at times.
Creating a flow to send payment reminders so maybe you know after the first day, you send an email after three days, you send another email after a week, you have a call, create a system around what that looks like, so you’re always following up and staying on top of people you know following up with delinquent accounts, if you have to use a collection agency you know there are options out there, but make sure that you’re staying on top of the ones that haven’t paid.
Then you know if you have a long-time client and maybe they’re not paying you, talk to them about a payment plan or something that can help get you some money in the door because them not paying is not helping you at all if they pay a little bit at a time that’s better than zero so that’s just a quick list of you know if you start to implement all of these things together your receivable collections will be in a lot better position.
Yeah, and on that, you know I think as a business owner, my challenge to you today is don’t be afraid to dive into these things, sometimes business owners are too nice, they’re afraid of upsetting their customers, so they don’t call and they don’t call you to need to have these bold conversations with your customers and say hey, you know I noticed you didn’t pay, you know what’s going on how can I help you and make it be about them, and it’s okay like don’t be upset with them, by the way, don’t burn bridges, just be real with them don’t burn the bridge and talk to them and see what happens, I guarantee it will go well and if it doesn’t by the way you don’t want them as your client anyway.
100% yeah, if they’re a good client, and again, goes back to that relationship, you should be able to have these conversations they know that they owe you money they probably want to pay you you need to have a conversation with them it starts there.
Yep yeah, that’s very good, okay let’s keep moving through this just for the sake of everybody else here. I know you guys are probably taking a lunch break right now watching us so next on our list is number three? Is that where we’re at number three? Yep three okay, go ahead Dave with us.
So on that this is on the flip side so this is Tracking your Accounts Payable so one thing that you should know at any moment is who you owe, how much you owe them, and when it’s due, you need to be able to look ahead and say okay I have this payment coming up it’s due. Then I need to make sure I have enough money then, and so you should always have been able to have an account payable schedule at the ready at all times for those three things that I said, you know once you have that now you can start looking at how your process is around paying how you’re making payments when you’re making payments you know you can also then start to look at you know do you have late charges do you are you have instances where potentially you’re double-paying that happens or missing payments so you need to start to look at those things because you know unless you just flat out don’t have the money which is a total another issue, you shouldn’t be missing payments you shouldn’t have late charges, and then if you do again, now you’re on the flip side call that vendor and say hey i’m struggling to make this can we work this out that’s something that you need to do again that was kind of my next note is Potential Payment Plans, but create a relationship with your vendors so that they can see you as a person and work with you and then, the last one is there’s some you know solutions out there that can help kind of organize this one that we like is called build.com there’s there’s a bunch of them out there that just kind of pulls in all of your payables into a nice list when they’re due you can click approve and then they they send out the payments for you so something like that can keep you really organized those are just a couple things around the payable you know it’s not just about in right it’s about money going out and the processes around that that are also important for your cash flow.
Yeah, and I’m gonna add to this for a second Dave just because you know many of you know I own a tiny home company, and so one of the things that we’ve had to do is we’ve had to track our bills but then also track the materials inside of those bills to specific customer projects because at the end we need to be able to assess the profitability of each project and but unfortunately some of the vendors that we use are handwritten no lie, and written you know sales receipts and so like when we have 10 items on the sales receipt and we have to pull okay these three go to this customer and it’s a pain in the neck but at the end of the day, we need the numbers so as you’re entering your bills decide okay how do these bills actually fit into my KPIs and my business and my metrics that’s something we could talk about in the future Dave but for sure.
For sure yeah.
That’s uh your bills are more important than you think.
They are yeah, I mean if you get to a point where you owe too much money that you can’t pay, I mean you’re going bankrupt basically, so to stress the importance of your payables, understanding them, and having the funds to take care of them just can’t stress that enough.
Although I will say sometimes a business goes through massive growth and so they’ll feel like they’re behind, but it’s actually their growth, their profitability. their growth their cash flow hasn’t caught up with their growth.
Correct yeah, you need to yeah again I kind of said at the beginning there is a caveat to that right there are seasons of life and businesses we’ve had that in our business where our cash flow on a monthly basis was negative but we knew it was negative, that’s the difference we were following it we had a plan okay it’s going to be negative, but as we come out of the season it’s going to be way more positive because of what we were trying to do, we had cash saved up we had a line of credit we had things that we could utilize but when it’s going negative and you don’t have a plan that’s when you can get into trouble so, yeah it is it’s not a hard and fast rule you have to be positive it’s not that um but the understanding of it all is is really the key very very important yeah yeah.
Okay all right now let’s go to the next one what’s the next one.
Yeah, so the next one is, and we’ve kind of touched on it on these couple ones, but Cash Flow Projections, so kind of looking ahead. A lot of times we recommend just a straight cash flow 12-week projection is what we look at, and we look at it on a weekly basis. The idea behind that is that there are different seasons and there are some cycles in a business, and so you need to be looking ahead an example is let’s say that this week I have a bunch of people that are paying me, so I have a bunch of money in my bank account I feel like I have all this extra money, and now I want to go out and spend on marketing or something else to help push the growth but then next week I have a bunch of my big bills coming or maybe three weeks from now a bunch of my big bills coming due well I need to allocate some of that cash from this week to those coming weeks or else I’m gonna spend it all and then those weeks now I’m gonna be way negative and now I’m in a really bad place, yeah and so projecting out at least 12 weeks some businesses will do like a 12 week and then we’ll do like a year projection because some businesses have huge swings they’ll have you know the fall there make a ton of money the winter they’re really slow so sometimes we’ll do month over month for a year so that they can plan ahead as well, but you need to really start looking ahead at your cash position, and you’re tracking it down to your cash balance to make sure that through all of those months that it’s remaining positive again in general so that you have enough cash to continue to run the business.
Yeah, it’s good and then also with cash flow. One of the things that I look at is how do I describe this? You can look at how much work you’re going to get done and base that then if depending on the type of business you’re in you can base your production on what cash flow is going to come in from that and that helps you then engage the counterbalance of how that affects your overhead I know I’m going a little deeper here.
No that’s good.
Finances but I think it’s really important to know to shrink basically, ultimately, you want to shrink your overhead costs by increasing your production profitability.
Sure.
And so I’m thinking in TinyHome right now but this is not any business.
For sure.
Whether you’re service or product based yeah.
And every business has its own nuance, so you know like, I’ll speak for our business. We have a very consistent cash flow because we run on a basically a subscription type model some businesses are very cyclical where it’s up and down, and so every business is going to look a little bit different in how they do things, how they’re cut, how cash goes out and comes in, but these principles apply to any business they just may look slightly different, but every business should be looking at these things understanding and applying these.
Yeah very good all right let’s go to the next one.
The next one is pretty simple, but it can be a big deal and I just the note, I wrote is just identifying and not Overlooking Small Cash Flow issues so very simple things so let’s say that my accounts receivable I’m looking to collect it in 10 days and most of the time it’s 12 to 15 days seems like a very small issue. So I push it to the side I have a couple of late fees in my bank because I don’t have the right balance, you know little fees here and there push it to the side maybe there are a couple of small clients that aren’t paying their bills on time, and they’re way behind that’s not that much money push it to the side well all of these things add up right and now, to now I have a now I don’t have these individual issues are small but now I have a big cash flow issue in my business, and so you need to not overlook these small issues because you know together they are a big cash flow issue for your business as a whole. So again it’s a very simple thing but I see it gets looked over all you know way too often, and so if you have a little issue even if it’s one thing address it and fix it because as these add up they can become a really big issue.
Yeah, I had a client once that we’re looking at his P&L which by the way business owners I feel like you should look at your P&L at least monthly if not more frequently, and you know I was talking to a guy about a month ago he’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars and his number one piece of advice was to look at your numbers every day I was like wow I do at least weekly but anyway I had this client and they was looking at their P&L and I saw this in the bank overdraft category, there was a substantial sum of money in there I think I might even tell you about this and looked at it and I was like, oh my word so this client had so much cash flow issues and by the way, it’s a multi-million dollar company so I’m not talking about a small company sure they had 16 000 worth of overdraft fees for that year 16 000 and so you know we immediately started to look at. Okay, how do we keep this from happening? right, and it was merely just that they weren’t keeping enough buffer in their account to take care of those moments.
And then a company of that size, you know they may look at that you’re talking a little over a thousand dollars a month twelve hundred dollars whatever it is they might just say you know I’m making a million dollars you know five million dollars a year, I don’t care about twelve hundred dollars a month right but it’s sixteen thousand here, it’s seven thousand here it’s this year, and then all of a sudden all of these things are adding up to a full-time employee’s salary that’s…
Or the net profit that you can put in your pocket.
That’s right, or you’re or just going to yourself right, that’s right you know it could be doubling your salary with all of these things, but they get overlooked because by themselves they’re very quote-unquote small.
Do you have it on your list here at all? and maybe I’m jumping ahead, but do you have anything to talk about making sure that they have a budget in place do you recommend that?
We don’t, I don’t have that in this list that that to me is kind of a separate topic of the whole budgeting thing, you know because I with the cash flow we typically talk about a projection but yes, 100% recommend a budget that is one of the best ways to identify issues control some spending where you’re looking at things consistently, having a budget is a big deal to be the best thing about a budget is if you’re looking at it let’s say monthly, comparing budget to actual it helps you identify issues, and then you ask the why question okay, we were supposed to spend 5000 on marketing we spent $10 why is that there may be an answer for that it may be fine, but it immediately points out issues in red flags very very easily, so yes I recommend a budget not necessarily related to cash flow per se it is but it’s not, but the answer is yes.
Yeah so I’m gonna share, I’m gonna get us off on a tangent here for a moment, I think you’ll agree with this as I’ve studied businesses a lot of business owners will say okay how do I grow my business what do I need to do and I when I first started in business my main focus was increasing my sales and my business coach at the time said to me he’s like carl why don’t you focus on profitability instead so I’ve come up with three things that need to that you can do to increase the profitability of your business number one Increase your Sales or your Revenue. Number two Decrease Expenses you can only decrease expenses if you keep track of what’s going in and out, and then the third is to Increase Productivity meaning the efficiency of your team and if you focus on those three things you will do great in your growth if you’re in a growth phase in your business, not every business should be in grow face but um yeah do you agree with those would you add any?
I don’t think I would add any you know I had just to kind of reiterate the one point about sales, I do think that as a small business entrepreneur, the entrepreneurial community. I think I think we do a pretty poor job at just pointing to sales as the important number and not the profit I see too many businesses that are big sales-wise they don’t have any profit and I see some smaller businesses that their sales are a quarter of that but they’re way more profitable and I would take that business 10 out of 10. I had a friend who built up an i.t company, but I think he built up to like a 100 million or something so big company and he was just going and going he decided he’s like my profit is less than when I was smaller he scaled it back down to like 10 or 20 so he cut it by a fifth I think or maybe even less and he was making way more profit and so that is just a perfect example of you know we need to focus on profitability even more so than the top-line sales because but again, as a community I think that we look at sales too much and place too much emphasis on that obviously it’s important I’m not saying don’t sell anything, but that’s not the end all be all up.
No now and a prime example if you do the math on this um and this is a real-life story somebody went from I think they’re about 15 profitability to 45 profitability at the 15 I think they did about a half a million dollars so that’s 75 thousand dollars in profit like that but if the next year they did 350 000 but they had 44 for 44 profitability well they actually put more money in their pocket and did less revenue, they had less headache, less employees like their overhead was less, everything was less but they still put more money in their pocket yep case import yeah okay.
Yeah, and I think it’s important just to define what your goal is. You know as a business owner if your goal is to build up something big that maybe has more you know corporate value that you could exit and you’re okay maybe taking less profit for a period of time maybe you’re investing in more marketing or you’re investing in more people and processes technology to get to a certain point that’s okay, but if you just are doing it just to do it you’re saying okay if I get to this much sales and I’ll be in a better position just because I’m bigger, I think that’s a little bit short-sighted.
I agree all right what’s next on the list.
All right so the next is when you’re looking at your cash flow projections, be sure not to Project your Revenue too high so I want to preface this by saying you know you need to set lofty goals I do that I set big goals for what I want to achieve and what I want to accomplish, but when I’m looking at cash flow, what I see people run into an issue you know they think okay well I’m doing 10 000 you know a month for this month next month I’ll do 20. the next month I’ll do 50 right and there’s no track record to show that you’ve ever done that before now you’re relying on this cash flow that’s coming in you’re spending on this future cash flow that you think is going to come in yeah and it doesn’t actually happen and now you’re in a really bad position so my biggest goal my biggest thing with dealing with cash flow is to be realistic, be a little bit conservative, so you put yourself in a good position and then kind of separately if you can set high goals and go after big things, but from a cash flow standpoint, you can get yourself into trouble pretty quick by projecting too high.
Yeah yeah, that’s what I’ve seen many businesses do, that’s a good one, and the final one then.
Yeah, the final one again, we kind of touched on this a little bit but Understanding your Revenue Cycle. So some businesses like ours are very consistent throughout the year some though you know they’ll have certain seasons, let’s say summer and you know spring and summer it’s when they make all their money let’s say like a landscaping business and then in the winter it really slows down, so what you need to do in that business is understanding that during those good months you’re going to feel like you’re on top of the world, you have all this cash, but no come in the winter time things are going to slow down you’re going to need to save some of that money to maintain for that time and then you’ll pick it back up in the next year, so understand your cycle and plan for it and the best way to do this is just to keep good numbers keep your books well and then you can look back month, over a month, and you can see you’ll see trends you’ll see what’s happening in your business obviously, you can most business owners can know you know in general off the top of their head okay this is when I do well, but let the numbers I would you know encourage people to let the numbers speak for themselves use your P&L use the month over month P&L look at it historically see where those things are happening and then use that to plan.
Yeah, it comes back to reality in your business, and Dave or I both can help you with this in your business, you need to have anywhere from five to I’m gonna say three to seven key numbers that you watch that give you a pulse on how things are going on any of these different parts of your business and I’m not just talking about like Financial Numbers, you could also be looking at Customer Satisfaction Numbers, you could be looking at Employee Engagement Numbers you could be looking at, I’m trying to think there could be Marketing Numbers and there are Sales Numbers, it’s not just especially financially sure and so you need to create what I call a scorecard, and the scorecard needs to be numbers that you look at weekly I do it in my businesses very valuable because you can actually begin to see the ups and downs and I’m sure you’re all over that and like yeah.
For sure yeah it’s very easy, to it’s very easy to just go, you know go off of your gut, why I feel like in the summer things slow down and then whatever the case might be but track these numbers, and you let them know I can’t stress this enough let the numbers tell you the story because they will they’ll tell you what’s going on yeah, and then you use that those trends to then plan your cash flow if you do that like just that is that simple thing you’ll be in a much better position.
Yeah, that’s good, okay well I think we’re at the end of your list right.
That’s it, that’s it.
And any closing thoughts?
I would say the biggest thing you know the theme of what we’re talking about here is, just have an understanding of your numbers, you know as entrepreneurs, I think we all have a high level of intuition, and we use our gut a lot, and there’s something to be said for that, and I think that there’s a lot of good things that can come from that too, but your numbers don’t lie like they tell the story of your business track them, keep good track look at them often and let them kind of push some things out, and then there’s always going to be instances where you need to use your gut to make decisions, but if you base a lot of that on the numbers and where what they’re telling you to do I feel like businesses would be in a lot of lot better position.
Yeah and on that note, I’m going to add to that just because I feel like if your goal is to be a business owner which by the way, a business owner has a very specific mindset the business owner mindset is I’m going to grow a business that has the team of people that does the majority of the work, I’m going to help do the work, but I’m depending on people to help do this work it’s not just me I’m not a solopreneur, and so these people are going to help do this work, and that is going to create a business that really runs fluidly for me, and creates freedom for me in my life. That’s the business owner mindset, and so if you want to have that mindset, you have to track your numbers, in other words, if you want to be a business owner and you want to be serious about it, do the serious things and do it with excellence. For the longest time early on in one of the first businesses, we had cash flow problems, and I was like why well, it came out it came to the fact that I wasn’t getting the invoices out fast enough, that was the bottleneck right there yeah and yet I hated doing invoices like this oh and so you know to do the things you hate doing push through them.
Yeah, and you’ll become a better person for it all right, so let’s wrap this up, but so I want to wrap this up by saying, Dave here is a resource to all of my connections out there, and obviously all of his connections as well. And he and I are like kind of cross-compatible with what we do in the sense that you know he’s going in and he’s working in the Deep Dive in the numbers, I might be looking at some high-level numbers and helping you with like those KPIs or those types of things, but we’re very synonymous that’s the wrong word, but we’re very synergistic together with each other and so if you get stuck on your numbers if you’re like man how do I find this number what do I how do I get into this reach out to either of us we’d be happy to help you, yeah and we’re here to help all the business owners so that we can become more successful and so please take advantage of that, we want you guys to reach out, and Dave how can people reach out to you what’s the best way for them to get in touch with you?
Yeah, I spend a lot of time on Linkedin, so you can look me up on Linkedin our website is thequanifygroup.com, so either one of those avenues, yeah it is an easy way to get in touch.
Okay good, and for me obviously higherimpact.me is our website and you can feel free to reach out through there and then also there’s contact information on the website, you can reach out that way and LinkedIn as well as Facebook, you name it we’re out there so okay great Dave I really appreciate you being here this was awesome I feel like we could have like a whole bunch of sub conversations out of all this.
Yeah, there was a lot there that we could have really taken a deep dive into, but yeah this was fun. I’m pretty passionate about helping business owners understand this side of it, I see a lot of businesses fail every year not because they’re not good at what they do, but because they simply don’t understand the financial side of it, and how to make good decisions, and I feel like that is what I’ve been called to do is to help people understand that side of things, and so I love having these conversations and trying to uh provide some good education around this.
Great okay, well Dave thanks for being here today, and I’m sure we’ll see you again in the future and look forward to our next time together.
Cool thanks, Karl.
All right take care, everybody. We’ll see ya.
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