Top 26 Financial Tips for Entrepreneurs

By Benilyn Formoso-Suralta

Starting and growing your own business can be exciting, but it is also extremely challenging. Your business’s finances are a crucial aspect of entrepreneurship, and you need to know how to manage them well. We spoke with business leaders and industry experts to get the best financial tips for entrepreneurs to elevate their business.

Below are the top 26 financial tips entrepreneurs wish they knew earlier, straight from the pros:

1. Manage Your Inventory Efficiently
James Cassel, Co-Founder, Cassel Salpeter

As entrepreneurs, you should always check your inventory levels and make sure that they are efficiently managed. Reduce your inventory during a downturn to help free up capital, avoid obsolete products, and maybe even cut down your warehouse/holding costs.

2. Keep Your Business & Personal Finances Separate
Yoko Kawamoto, Finance Staff, Founder’s Guide

Even at the early stage of your business, you should strive to keep your business and personal finances separate. Open a bank account intended solely for your business, and as soon as you can, get a business credit card as well. If you need to use your personal credit card because you are not yet eligible to open one for your business, just make sure you monitor and record your business expenses and account for them properly.

3. Provide Customers with Convenience Through Technology
Julie Pukas, Head of Commercial Product Integration, TD Bank

Entrepreneurs should look to merchant solutions providers that can keep them on top of the latest payments trends and POS systems, many of which offer features beyond just simple payment processing. By adopting technologies that parallel those of larger organizations, but at a smaller scale, entrepreneurs are able to deliver the convenient experiences consumers have come to expect. Contactless payments, for example, offer increased security and reduced transaction time, allowing businesses to focus on other important tasks while pleasing customers with a shorter checkout time. Entrepreneurs and business owners should start by identifying weak points in their current processing systems and find a merchant solutions provider that has the ability to tailor service to meet unique needs.

4. Create New Cash Flow Without More Debt
Viktor Monder, Founder, Monder Law Group, PC

Creating small amounts of cash flow through your investments early on will help push a marketing campaign that many entrepreneurs would normally not have had the budget for until years down the road. Entrepreneurs may find the journey to be difficult and getting into debt feels like the easiest option at times. But if you want to build a sustainable business, you should learn to diversify and begin a collaboration effort to bring in additional cash flow while you are building the business. Figure out ways to leverage ideas to create small streams of income to fund your business and try to stay out of debt as much as possible.

5. Be Careful Using Debt to Fund Operations
Tony Schy, Chair, Vistage International, Inc.

As a small business owner, the first time you take on debt and later work to pay it back, you are met with a rude awakening. Normal accounting rules allow you to deduct the expense that you funded with debt at the time you incur the expense. But later, you have to repay that debt with after-tax cash (profit). If you funded operations with debt, you could find that servicing that debt consumes a large portion of your after-tax cash flow. This can lead to an income statement that looks good, but a cash flow statement that looks terrible.

6. Know the Importance of Accounts Receivable
Ben Ricci, Managing Partner, Stevens & Ricci, Inc.

In setting up your business make sure you invest the time to develop a strong credit application and invoicing/payment policies – and stick to them. Accounts receivable can be used strategically to increase revenue (cash flow) and minimize bad-debts. Learn to manage, control and even profit from slow- pay and no-pay customers with incentives to pay on time and penalties for slow or no payment.

7. Budget More Time & Money for Setup
Jonathan Rosenfeld, Founder, Nursing Home Law Center

Probably the biggest bit of advice for a new entrepreneur is to budget significantly more funds and provide more time towards their initial set-up and opening. Opening and getting a business off the ground always costs more and takes longer than anticipated. The people who are willing to endure and see the projects through are the ones who will be successful in the long-term. It’s important to know that things will be difficult at the start, but that’s what makes the reward that much sweeter, because you earned it through a lot of hard work and risk.

8. Invest in Health Insurance
Sally Poblete, CEO, Wellthie

Entrepreneurs should invest in health insurance because it supports their employee’s health and productivity. Employees who feel well directly correlate to their performance at work and the company’s bottom line. Health insurance is an important benefit that employees value in seeking a job – thus, it helps with attracting and retaining good employees. Even for sole proprietors, solo entrepreneurs or freelancers, getting health insurance is an important step in securing both your health and financial security. Getting access to full coverage for preventive, routine, urgent or more serious medical conditions can be costly if you pay for it out of your own pocket, and it can even lead to bankruptcies for some.

9. Identify Your Market Before Developing a Product
Ross Cohen, Co-founder & COO, BeenVerified.com

It is important to spend time identifying your target market before getting your business up and running. Don’t spend years developing a product that doesn’t have a distinct customer base. Some businesses find it difficult to determine their target market. Instead, most of them just went after the broader consumer market.

10. Don’t Spend Too Much on Branding
Deborah Sweeney, CEO, MyCorporation.com

Entrepreneurs should know not to spend so much money on branding without focusing on its return on investment early on in their business career. As time progressed, you’ll find that many of these marketing expenditures were ROI negative. Many business owners lost money because of irrelevant or bad marketing bets when they should have been more careful to watch what was working and what wasn’t for the business. Small business owners should pay attention to their company’s ROI at every stage in business. Know exactly where the money you spend is going and how the investment is paying off.

11. Learn Basic Accounting
George Krueger, Co-Founder, BIGG Success

It’s not exciting, but the most successful entrepreneurs understand the basics of accounting. Accounting is the language of business. Your financial statements have so much to say about the status of your business and you should know how to listen. They will help you understand how your performance stacks up. They will serve as a tool to pinpoint what you need to do to improve your business.

12. Maintain Majority Control
Noel Moran, CEO, Prepaid Financial Services

One of the biggest mistakes most entrepreneurs make is scaling a company without enough investment. It’s important for business owners to keep onto as much of their company as they can, for as long as they can. If you don’t go down the investor route at the start, it would be a lot easier to not dilute the shareholding or ownership of the company.

13. Diversify Your Investments
Allan Dib, Founder, Successwise

Once you start to see a good ROI from your business, you need to think about investing in something other than your business. Whether that is property or the stock market or whatever, it’s essential that you have a portion of your money invested elsewhere. Some entrepreneurs were raking in dollars one minute and overnight lost everything because of the rise of something bigger and better.

14. Evaluate Your Breakeven Point
Walker Peek, Founder & CEO, Commercial Acoustics

It’s important to develop a good break-even model in the beginning and use that to evaluate your business strategy. As entrepreneurs, we want to do and execute as soon and as fast as possible. But it’s important to stop for a moment and look at the numbers. Has your break-even changed? If so, why? Was your original assumption about cost and COGS correct? Are things more expensive? Can you cut costs? Overall is your model correct? and are you focusing on the activities that are going to get you past break-even?

15. Learn to Manage Invoices
Marwan Forzley, CEO, Veem

Although you may exchange dozens of emails detailing your order with your supplier, the invoice will tell you the exact nature of the product you are to receive. Be certain the specifics are in the invoice. That means that if the invoice doesn’t specify that the product be boxed, expect it to arrive in bulk. You should request a product sample before finalizing the invoice. These can help you control the quality of the product you’re importing. Be sure to find out about points of no return: once production is started, you may not be able to make changes to the product. You should also manage how your supplier will be invoicing you and when they need to get paid. For first orders, many will want the money before they release the goods. Some will need payment before production starts so they can purchase materials. If you’re on the same page as your supplier in regards to payment terms, it will smooth out your entire supply chain and potentially stop costly mistakes from happening down the line.

16. Know Your Contribution Margin
Justin Tysdal, CEO & Co-Founder, Seven Corners Inc

Many business owners thought that each piece of new business or sale was good and added positively to the company’s performance. The process of assigning workload and effort towards a revenue number was something most entrepreneurs did not take into consideration when they started the company. Make sure to determine your company’s contribution margin and that it positively impacts your business.

17. Avoid the Lifestyle Creep
Mark Ortiz, Founder, ReviewingThis

One of the best financial tips for entrepreneurs is to avoid lifestyle creep. Some business owners experience that as their business grew, their day-to- day personal expenses increased as well. Some make unnecessary upgrades on apartments, cars, gadgets. This is a grave mistake because it meant less money to re-invest into the business. Also, if the business is on a downturn, it would be difficult to scale down your personal expenses as quickly. So, if you’re an entrepreneur, and your business is growing, focus on re-investing back into it, instead of upgrading your lifestyle.

18. Learn to Screen Ideas
Shane Walker, VP & CMO, ProActive

To maintain stronger financial staying power, you absolutely must say no to some good ideas to focus on the right ideas. Not every idea drives excellence and adds to your core value. Lots of ideas will come that could help make the product or service better in some aspect but every idea costs money. Remember that and be choosy about where you spend. Chasing too many good ideas that don’t add to the excellence of your core business can lead you down a financial rabbit hole and straight out of business.

19. Talk to Customers & Identify Their Needs
Sherman Lee, Founder, Good Audience

Entrepreneurs should know the value of having real revenue from real paying customers. Spend more time talking to your target customers and identify their needs. That way, you can develop a product and/or service that can cater to their needs. This helps ensure that they will buy your products and services and earn revenue from them.

20. Start Tracking Your Expenses From Day 1
Rhian Williams, Founder, Rhian’s Recipes

Small business owners should start tracking their expenses from day one. Even if you don’t know if your company is going to generate any income, it doesn’t hurt to prepare for the future by keeping track of expenses. Use accounting software like FreshBooks or QuickBooks, which allows you to store all the necessary information as well as photographs of the receipts/invoices. It’s much better to do this kind of thing as you go along rather than leave it to build up over a few months or even years, because once your business start generating income and you have to do tax returns, you’ll definitely thank yourself for having kept on top of your bookkeeping from the beginning.

21. It’s Not How Much You Make But How Much You Keep
Michael Brennan, Founder, Law Offices of Michael J. Brennan

As small business owners, we are always concerned about our income and the day-to-day operations of our business, that we can lose sight of the expenses and the costs of doing business. At the end of the year, we see our income went up, but our expenses also went up even more and what we think was a great year turns into a disappointing one. Keep track of your finances and ensure that your costs don’t eat up your income.

22. Keep Your Burn Rate Low
David Waring, Co-Founder, Fit Small Business

One reason most people don’t start a business that they are passionate about or end up failing is that they cannot afford to survive long enough for their business to be successful. With this in mind, a piece of good advice is to keep your personal burn rate low. This will allow aspiring entrepreneurs to save enough money to focus full time on their passion and provide existing entrepreneurs with a longer runway to be successful.

23. Make a Conservative Budget
Bill Baumel, Managing Director, Ohio Innovation Fund

An important tip is to budget wisely – assume expense ranges come in on the higher side and revenue ranges come in on the lower side. By doing so, the worst case scenario is you have enough money to operate your business as planned, and the best case is your revenues will be higher and/or your expenses lower. This means you’ll have cash left over to invest even more in your business’s expansion. You want to really map out your entire business – from the supplies you need to buy, who to hire, the space you need, your marketing costs, IT, legal, taxes and other costs – so there are no unpleasant surprises.

24. Operate in Survival Mode
Daniel Joelson, Founder, Car Loans of America

Some believe the workday starts at 9 AM and ends at 5 PM, Monday through Friday. These are the same people who often never realize their goals. Why? Because if you prefer to leave your work at the office, you probably do not want to be a successful entrepreneur. Here’s one need-to- know tip if you want to be a successful entrepreneur: operate in survival mode. Meaning, work as if every day is the day your business could go under. Earn more, spend less, and always push yourself harder, motivating your team to do the same. Encourage others to show up early and stay late and do so as well. A successful entrepreneur is not made overnight but if you follow this tip, you are guaranteed results.

25. Invest in Financial Education
Tod Colbert, President & Founder, Weather Tight Corporation

When you are first starting out and trying to build a business from nothing, time is your most valuable resource. Your responsibilities include sales, marketing, accounting, maintenance, customer service, technical support, and more. You put in countless hours and work long nights to try to get everything done. Forward thinking and planning are low priorities which means that learning about how to make money work for your business is overlooked. Experienced entrepreneurs understand money concepts such as pricing, time value of money, tax planning, and investment in their businesses.

26. Hire Competent People & Establish Good Relationships with Them
Dewayne Hamilton, Director, Web Cosmo Forums

Less is more and it rings true while doing business. Entrepreneurs should take a step back and simplify their goals and strategies. You should have faith in your abilities, but also include checks and balances by introducing a diverse group of colleagues that will support and challenge one another. Listen to your employees and try to establish good professional relationships while at work.

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Buying a company? Due diligence is needed — and it’s a balancing act

By James Cassel

In 2011, Hewlett-Packard acquired a company called Autonomy for over $11 billion. Unfortunately, after the acquisition, HP found out that Autonomy’s management had committed fraud. For years, prosecutors alleged, Autonomy had been cooking the books ultimately resulting in HP being swindled and lots of litigation. It’s a great, albeit costly, lesson on the importance of proper due diligence.

The amount of due diligence needed when purchasing a company is a balancing act. One has to take into consideration the available resources. You often have to decide whether to drill deeper when a red flag arises, even as you try to determine if it’s feasible or not to proceed with the deal. But you shouldn’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish. There are areas you must target and costly services you must use. That’s just part of the cost of any deal.

Company finances are a good place to start. It’s costly, but hiring an experienced accounting or consulting firm is essential. You are looking for the true financial picture of the company. You need to know whether the company is growing or shrinking, its profitability and cash flow, its capital needs, its customer concentration, and its relationship with its suppliers.

To get this information, a financial audit may be necessary, as well as obtaining a quality of earnings report. Beyond looking at the balance sheet, a quality of earnings report provides a true financial picture by looking at the financials, books and records of a company, including its EBITDA, earning power, cash flow, financial systems and its accounting principles and policies.

You should also conduct operational due diligence, looking at the company’s main operations to try and determine whether its current facilities and capital expenditures are in line with its present and future operations and that everything is in good condition. You might also want to conduct some commercial due diligence to review the market position of the company’s products or services. If you’re concerned about the company’s exposure to reputational issues, you may want to conduct IDD, an integrity due diligence. And of course, legal and regulatory due diligence is required to be performed by lawyers.

There’s a due-diligence provider for almost every aspect of a company, from its IT to its IP, but before you begin any of them, you’ll want to research the company’s leaders. You might be surprised what a simple Google search can yield. Compromising reputational matters, strained relationships with clients or suppliers, even fraudulent activity, can often be discovered with a few clicks of a mouse.

When you find something amiss, take a step back and review what can be fixed and what can’t. Sometimes a price adjustment works. Sometimes it’s best to walk away. But sometimes, you may find that the issues can be resolved or overcome, and the deal can move forward.

If the issue is something like sloppy bookkeeping, perhaps a good financial professional can clean it up. Maybe it’s just that the company isn’t running efficiently. In that case, you can hire a process improvement expert.

Even if it comes to pass that you do all your due diligence and everything checks out, remember that even with the best due diligence, you can’t always find fraud until it’s too late. For that reason, you might consider insurance in case everything isn’t on the up and up. Representation and warranty insurance may cover certain losses resulting from a violation of the representations and warranties that were made to you by the seller, whether intentional or not. It can be a useful tool to protect you from potential exposure should it arise.

But some problems can’t be fixed or are just too costly to fix. If that’s the case, you must walk away. And if you didn’t, and find yourself in a situation similar to HP’s, then it’s time to take a step back and see where your due diligence might have failed. Don’t look for another deal until you understand what you did wrong and how you missed the problem. A costly mistake can still have value if it teaches you how not to repeat it.

James S. Cassel is co-founder and chairman of Cassel Salpeter & Co., an investment-banking firm based in Miami. jcassel@casselsalpeter.com.
At LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesscassel

Florida’s private equity deals were strong in 2018

By Kevin Gale

James Cassel

Chairman & Co-Founder

Private equity deals in Florida for 2018 were nearly double the total of 10 years ago, showing a recovery from the Great Recession.

An analysis by Cassel Salpeter & Co., a Miami investment banking firm, counted 293 PE deals in 2018. In 2008 there were only 154 deals while the total reached a low of 131 in 2009.

Cassel Salpeter says the total for 2018 will likely rise since reporting often lags the actual activity. South Florida accounted for 39 percent of the PE deals statewide in 2018. “Despite the nebulous economic times we live in today, deal activity in 2019 is showing no signs of slowing down. As economists start to talk about a possible slowdown or recession in 2020, PE firms and family-owned businesses are giving thought to going to market now so as not to miss this opportunity before the next cycle. Still, whether it happens in 2019, or in the years that follow, as each day passes, we are one day closer to a possible slowdown or even a recession,” says James Cassel, co-founder of Cassel Salpeter.

Add-on deals accounted for approximately 57 percent of the state’s PE deals, topping platform creation, growth/expansion, recap, add-on and buyout/LBO, Cassel Salpeter found in its analysis of data from Pitchbook. Click here to take a deeper dive into Florida’s private equity deal activity for all of 2018 and get more of the firm’s insight for 2019.

2018 Florida PE Deal Report

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Top 25 Ways to Prepare Your Small Business for the Next Recession

By Benilyn Formoso

Recessions are difficult to predict. The best time to prepare for a recession is when the economy is doing well. Planning is critical to ensure your business won’t be affected during an economic downturn. We spoke with experts to get their insights on how to prepare your business for a recession.

Here are the top 25 ways to prepare your business for the next recession:

1. Increase Your Line of Credit
Laura Faulkner, Vice President of Marketing, Credit One Bank
Demonstrate good payment behavior and increase your line of credit prior to a recession, as you may need a higher credit limit during the economic downturn. Most banks use a behavior score when making credit line decisions, so making payments on time is an important factor. In addition, paying more than the minimum amount due and paying in advance of your due date are also important because they portray you as a lower risk and could increase your behavior score.

2. Automate Workflows
Mike Hughes, Managing Director, West Monroe Partners
In order to be prepared for the next recession, it’s important that small businesses start optimizing their workflows now to drive productivity and efficiency. According to our recent survey of 250 business leaders, one way executives are already looking to drive productivity is through the adoption of automation, with 69% of respondents having already adopted some form of automation in the workplace. While employee concerns may exist over automation taking their jobs, the overwhelming majority of managers (97%) agree that automation will allow them to do their jobs more effectively and let them spend time on more challenging tasks, and 90% of executives say the same.

3. Claim & Optimize Your Google My Business Listing
Bill Fukui, Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Page 1 Solutions, LLC
This Google platform is much more than a free tool to put your business on the digital map. You can communicate all of your business information to prospective customers, upload engaging photos and videos, provide customers with a virtual tour of your office, cultivate and interact with customer reviews, and make time-limited posts that tell consumers about specials, events, and more.

All of these Google My Business (GMB) marketing tactics are free to use, so they are a cost-effective way to provide value to users performing searches for goods and services in your industry. What’s more, should we enter a recession, customers are more likely to look closely at businesses to ensure that you fit within their budget and deliver sufficient value for the money they spend. Google My Business is a cost-effective way to inform and persuade users of this value proposition when they find you in online searches.

4. Stay Focused on Your Long-Term Goals
Heather Ishikawa, Senior Vice President, Caliper
Although it is important to increase your savings for rainy days, you also want to make sure to keep working to achieve your long-term goals. You may have to change the approach or timeline, but you don’t want to lose focus on the end game. If the business slows down, it is time to stop and think about what is working and what isn’t working. Then figure out what you can do with what you have to build and/or maintain your competitive advantage.

5. Reduce Discretionary Expenses
Sabina Gault, CEO, Konnect Agency
Any time there is financial instability (whether it’s due to the economy or company shortfalls), the first step is an obvious one: reduce discretionary expenses. Discretionary expenses need to be cut, and this is the time to re- evaluate your company policies for travel, per diems, and office supplies. Most companies’ highest expense after salaries is paying leases and bills for their office space. During a recession or other financial strain, look to see if you can sublease some of your space to offset those costs that must stay. Finally, look at vendor output and decide if you can hold off on online advertising, web design, accounting, or other miscellaneous services.

6. Make Conscious Decisions Based on KPIs
Scott Anderson, Audit Partner, Sensiba San Filippo
One strategy to avoid making decisions with worst-case scenarios in mind is to incorporate warning levels into your reporting. Most companies are looking at key performance indicators on a weekly or monthly basis. Adding benchmark levels that would indicate that action may be required will help you stay the course if things are going fine, despite what media outlets or others are saying.

Whereas many businesses might hesitate to take action soon enough, you’ll already have resolved what levels warrant action. The decision and logic are pre-defined with a trigger level to take action. This can prevent a business owner from indecision, which can cause a business to dig into a financial hole that could have been avoided. Remember, you can always change the course, but warning level indicators make for conscious, unemotional decisions.

7. Look for Ways to Optimize ROI
Deborah Sweeney, CEO, MyCorporation
The best way to prepare your business for the next recession is to begin paying attention to areas where there is return on investment (ROI) for the company. Keep an eye on methods where ROI can be optimized to grow your business. Look at ROI for everything you do. Then leverage your nimble nature to make adjustments and correct. Be willing to test, learn, and adjust quickly.

8. Simulate Your Cash Flow & Operating Expenses
Jason Patel, Former Career Ambassador – George Washington University & Founder, Transizion
Cash flow is the lifeblood of a business, and when a recession hits, you need to be prepared to strap in and get leaner. This means you need to simulate your cash flow if revenue were to drop 30%, 40%, or even 50% in the event of a recession. You need to know how your business will survive if revenue slows down cash flow. Furthermore, look at your operating expenses and delve into what can be cut if the business were hit hard. You don’t want to get lean without prior training; make sure you have your game plan once the economy slows.

9. Make Sure You Employ the Right People
Kimberly Rath, Co-Founder & Chairman, Talent Plus, Inc.
Businesses that employ individuals who are caring are more likely to bounce back faster after a recession. It’s important to carefully select individuals who are hardwired to be resilient, growth-oriented, resourceful, and optimistic. These are the traits that help one overcome financial difficulties. They are more likely to be optimistic and possibility thinkers. Use a validated assessment to help you select the best individuals who are hardwired to be an asset and who can add value to your organization.

10. Manage Debts Properly
Gerri Detweiler, Education Director, Nav
To prepare a small business for the next recession, owners should reduce debt before the economy slows again. Less debt will give your business more flexibility if the economy slows. Pay off debt aggressively if you can afford to do so. If you can’t pay off your debt, tackle your highest-cost balances first to get the most bang for your buck. Also, pay down personal debt. This will also make life less stressful if your business doesn’t hit its normal sales or revenue targets and you need to cut your personal income. If you can’t pay down debt, make sure you have secured the lowest interest rates for which you qualify. Rates will continue to rise, and locking in lower rates as soon as possible is a smart move.

11. Create a Growth Mindset
Ollie Smith, CEO, ExpertSure
One way to prepare your business for the next recession is to create a growth mindset. Instill a positive, you-can-achieve-about-anything mindset. This will be especially relevant when your employees come up against roadblocks down the road. Make sure to lead by example. If you expect everyone else to double down and work long hours late into the night, then you must do the same.

12. Pay Off Your Business Credit Cards
Jordan Tarver, Credit Card Writer, Fit Small Business
It’s important to pay down any large outstanding balance on your business credit cards as soon as possible. Failing to do so can hurt your business during a recession, when money is harder to come by. Another smart move is to consolidate your credit card debt onto a credit card with a low APR. Consolidating your debt onto a business credit card with a lower interest rate can help reduce your monthly financial debts.

13. Develop & Follow a Strong Business Plan
Keith Chulumovich, CPA & Director, O’Keefe
Business owners should look at every aspect of their business, starting with how well the business is performing against its business plan. Developing and following your business plan is fundamental to the success of any entity. Losing sight of it can bring unwanted results. It’s crucial to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs), including loan covenants and looking at historical trends to see if they are moving in a positive or negative direction.

14. Shop Your Insurance Policies to Reduce Costs
Jeff Somers, President, Insureon
To best prepare for the next recession or economic downturn, small business owners should ensure their business is protected. Because insurance coverage and prices tend to change each year, it’s important that small business owners compare multiple quotes from different providers when renewing insurance or purchasing a new policy. This can lead to important savings and better coverage when every dollar counts during an economic downturn. Some insurance companies will also offer to bundle policies at a discount.

15. Get Creative with Collecting Debts
David Royce, Founder & Chairman, Aptive Environmental
The recession is a great opportunity for your business to extend better customer service. For those clients who might be struggling to make ends meet, get creative breaking up collections into smaller payments or extending the payment period. These types of clients will later reward your flexibility with their loyalty for the long term, and will often refer others to you because you gave them a helping hand.

16. Work with a Micro-Influencer
Ruth Klein, Entrepreneur, CEO, & Founder, Expert CelebrityTM Branding
A micro-influencer is someone who is a few tiers above you in your same field and industry. They’re someone whose career you aspire to have (in your own unique way, of course). They are currently engaged with the ideal clients you know you should be attracting too. Finding a micro-influencer you can work with helps to keep your brand engaging and relevant.

One of the reasons this person has become a micro-influencer is because they’re consistent with their followers, and that’s something you should try to emulate. Find out where your clients are, and connect with a micro-influencer on that platform (e.g., LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter) and pitch symbiotic opportunities you can work on together. When you reach out to someone with a heartfelt, authentic pitch to work together, you’d be surprised what can happen.

17. Test Out Most Cost-Efficient Goods & Services
Mark Ortiz, Founder, ReviewingThis
Businesses can prepare for a recession by testing out lower-priced goods or services. If your product comes with many bells and whistles, then look for opportunities to simplify the product to bring down the overall cost. Consumers will still spend money in a recession; the key difference is their sensitivity to pricing. By reducing the amount you spend on recurring expenses, you’ll have a greater ability to adjust your prices to keep your customers buying throughout a recession.

18. Build Cash Reserves for Possible Purchase Opportunities
Eric Sztanyo, Lead Agent at Team Sztanyo & Founder, We Buy NKY Houses
There may be no other industry than real estate that was hit as hard when the last great recession hit. If you didn’t learn the lesson, then your business may be in for another rude awakening. To be prepared in real estate, you need to learn how to shift your business model for any kind of market.

While the latest boom market was great for sellers and houses flew off the market, when the next recession comes, inventory will stack up and buyers will be able to get discounts on properties. As a small business, you can prepare for this by building up your cash reserves to purchase these discount properties, rehab them, and flip them. Knowing that they may sit longer and that home prices will be trending down, all economic models and estimates will be adjusted accordingly.

19. Build a 12-Month Emergency Fund
Denym Bird, CEO, Cryptosaver
You can prepare for the recession by very carefully managing your cash flow and building a 12-month emergency fund that will enable you to survive for the next 12 months in the event your business doesn’t make any revenue. This should be enough to cover all of your operating expenses, including salaries for your employees.

20. Ramp Up Your Marketing Efforts
Nicole Hudson, President, Inbound Lead Solutions
Ramp up your marketing before the recession hits your higher-level clients. Companies will still be in need of certain goods or services that your company offers, and you could position yourself to take that business at a lower rate to them but a good rate for you. You may also think of other marketing strategies like asking new or existing clients to pre-pay or sign up for a retained amount of work ahead of time. Offer incentives for this as needed.

21. Right-Size Your Labor Force
James Cassel, Co-Founder, Cassel Salpeter
To protect your company when profitability is down and relief does not appear to be in sight, you’ve got to get lean and mean. Look to where you can right-size your labor force. Low performers must go, and top employees should stay. They help drive profits and carry your company towards the future. Beyond payroll, you’ve also got to look at everything that creates costs, chews up assets, and raises revenues. Preserving your profit margin in the face of a recession requires a lot of executive action. Many CEOs fail to right- size and never recover.

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