Posts Tagged ‘ Financial Planning ’

For some business owners, starting their business is their opportunity to live their dreams. For others, the dream is what comes after the business.

There are some simple steps you can take to get the most future value out of your current business. It is all about how you structure your business.

The federal government is very interested in you paying for your own retirement.  There are some wonderful tax incentives to get you to set aside money for the future.

Let’s face it, Social Security is not going to pay much to anyone in the younger generation. (Like it pays that much now!)

A business plan that is clearly made from a template won’t get you any money.

The only way to get banks or investors to give you money is to prove that you don’t need theirs.

When I consider investing in a startup business and I see a plan that will make money, I do everything I can to get more money for that startup.  I’m not worried about them losing money, I become worried about missing the opportunity for them to make me money.

If you use a business plan template just for outline purposes and develop the strategy well, then you will turn some heads with your business plan and attract money when you get in front of loan officers or investors.  (Really, loan officers are investors; they just have lower risk tolerances.)

What factors make a great business plan?

Adam Stephenson is a patent attorney at Adam R. Stephenson, LTD.  Check out his business here.

Adam started out with a business plan created from a template, so we took it and made it better.  The template told him format, but we spent the time to create a plan that will give him specific milestones to measure his success as the business grows.  I helped him with the financial projections, cash flow planning, and other business management strategies.

I wanted to include his recommendation from my LinkedIn profile here:

“Tony reviewed my business plan in detail, examined my financial projections, and sat down with me face to face to analyze my market’s opportunities and challenges aspect by aspect. His advice about how to successfully navigate the startup period and manage cash flow by using ways to encourage early payments has been extremely valuable.

A reader asked how to do a break-even analysis.

Here it goes.

Whether it is salaries for new employees, equipment, or both, starting a business or expanding production costs money.  Doing a break-even analysis will tell you how productive the expansion needs to be to pay for itself.

You need to know a few things to get your break even analysis to tell you the truth.