Business is often described as a rollercoaster of emotions with very high highs and very low lows. It hardly ever is smooth sailing for long – challenges will inevitably come and you’ll have to face them. After helping run Ladder through ups and downs, I’ve realized how important it is for everyone in our team (founders, executives, employees, etc.) to keep emotions out of the business.
Oftentimes, the first place to seek understanding of the financial well-being of the organization is to examine the organization’s financial statements. However, GAAP accounting, supported by General Ledger systems, is designed to capture costs at the functional/department level and although they can be structured for P&L data at a granular level (e.g., office or branch), they may not deal with indirect/overhead costs, overlap/duplication, value creation, or activity fragmentation.
Sales growth at all costs? Most of the clients I work with have great sales, are growing revenue, or could grow revenue if they had additional cash to fund the growth. At the same time, every one of my clients is struggling to manage their cash.
After doing the basics of getting their cash management systems in place I almost always recommend that they fire some of their clients.
Yes, fire clients.
When you are looking to fix your cash management issues, don’t just look at the symptom. If you don’t dig past the symptoms you are seeing at the surface of a problem, you probably don’t know what your real problem is.
Most of the time when I am asked to come in and resolve issues, I am asked to fix the symptoms of a business’s troubles.
