Financial Fitness of Entrepreneurs

While creating a growth business can be exhilarating,many entrepreneurs—especially those starting a company for the first time—don't pay enough attention to some core issues surrounding the financial management of their businesses.
Often, founders don’t have formal training in finance—they’re  “techies” launching the next Apple Computer or Netscape, professionals putting together advertising, management consulting,
or human resources agencies, or super-salesmen types who’ve figured out how to sell a pizza or deliver a package faster, better and cheaper.
Always, they’re intimately involved with their core product or service. Often, they are too busy to burrow into the details of some of the company’s functions, of which finance is the most critical.
These entrepreneurs are sav v y enough to know they must work with financial professionals, such as their CFO and outside auditors or CPAs. However, no matter what their background or inclination about finance, founders need to have a working understanding of the basics.
An elementar y level of financial literacy means they’ll work more intelligently with their financial advisors and become the first line of defense for spotting potential problems in the young company.
What follows are some fundamental financial tenets that all early- stage entrepreneurs should be aware of, understand, and heed.
CASH IS KING
No matter what, don't run out of money. Nothing else in this article matters if you run  out of money. This means know your burn rate (the net cash that is flowing out of your business each month) and be aware that your low cash point for any given month may not be at the end of the month. In other words, don't get caught planning based on full month figures only to find that you do not have enough money to pay your most important vendor on the 15th because your customers don't pay you until the 30th.
PUT IN REAL FINANCIAL SYSTEMS FROM DAY ONE
Lots of entrepreneurs figure that they'll “get around to putting in real financial systems someday soon.” Of course, that rarely happens, especially if no one on the founding team has a strong financial background. The cliché, “It's better to build on a strong foundation,” applies. Put the foundation in place early so that as your business grows, you are on solid financial footing.
MEASURE EVERYTHING
If you have real financial systems in place, you can measure everything. Be obsessive  about it. Some things that you'll measure will be similar to what most other businesses measure, such as your P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow statements. Other things will be unique to your business—oriented around your specific Customers or products.
As your business grows, make sure you evolve and expand what you measure to best reflect the current state Of your business. Look especially for metrics that will help tell you where your business is going, not just where it has come from. Financial systems  can and should capture more than just historical financial results.
BUILD AN ANNUAL OPERATING PLAN
Be disciplined about creating an annual operating plan and budget every year. You  should have it finished before January 1. This is your easiest benchmark to measure against—your own expectations. If you don't set them, you won't know how you did.
USE YOUR VENDORS TO FUND YOUR BUSINESS
Vendors love to get paid on time (or early). However, as a young business, your vendors  will appreciate consistency of payment over timeliness. While most vendors will want to be paid within 30 days (or less), it's typical to stretch payables 45 to 60 days. The key is to pay consistently—if you have a vendor from whom you continually use services or buy products, don't store up your bills and pay in one lump sum sporadically. Instead, send regular payments. Also, don't dodge calls from vendors about paying late. Tell them when you are going to pay them, and then make sure you follow through.
USE YOUR CUSTOMERS TO FUND YOUR BUSINESS
Customers—especially ones that value your products and services—will often be willing to pay on very short terms. Don't be bashful about asking them to prepay, especially if you are a service business.
BE CAREFUL OF PERSONAL GUARANTEES
Banks love personal guarantees. Entrepreneurs hate them. You should avoid them if  you can – only sign one as a last resort. You are already investing a huge amount of your personal assets and energy in your business. If you can't get financing based on the strength of your business, you should question whether it's the right kind of financing. In the upside scenario, when your business succeeds, the personal guarantee doesn't matter. It's the downside case you should be worried about, because you could lose major personal assets like your house.
IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT PROBABLY IS
While this is generally true in life, it's especially true concerning financial issues sur-
rounding an early stage company. Your books should always balance, financings will
always have a cost, and investors are always going to have strings attached to their
money. Ask questions, be wary, and know what you are getting into.
FINANCE YOUR BUSINESS APPROPRIATELY  FOR WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO CREATE
One of the most common mistakes an early stage entrepreneur makes is trying to raise the wrong kind of money for the business. It makes no sense for a service business that could potentially be a $5 million company within three years to try to raise $10 million of venture capital. Correspondingly, it doesn't make sense for a capital-intensive company that needs to build a plant to raise $250,000 of angel money.
CHOOSE PROFESSIONALS CAREFULLY
It may be tempting to use your wife's brother's friend's neighbor as your lawyer, be- cause he will give you a great rate and you see him at the neighborhood barbecue, but you get what you pay for. The same is true for accountants and other services that your business will use. Find professionals who know what they are doing and have experience with young companies.
DON’T TAKE ANYTHING FOR GRANTED
Double-check everything. If you have the right systems (did I mention that you should  have good systems?), this is easy. If you don't, reread the second bullet point and put in the right systems.
PAY YOUR TAXES ON TIME
Unlike customers and vendors, our local, state, and federal tax authorities don't appreciate being used as financing sources for your business. In addition to potentially incurring onerous penalties, missing or delaying tax payments is often a serious crime.

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What is a Business Plan?

A business plan is any plan that enables a business to look ahead, allocate resources, focus on
key points, and prepare for problems and opportunities. Business existed long before computers,
spreadsheets, and detailed projections. So did business plans.
Unfortunately, people think of business plans first for starting a new business or applying for business
loans. They are also vital for running a business, whether or not the business needs new loans or new
investments. Businesses need plans to optimize growth and development according to plans and
priorities.

Uses of Business Plans

Preparing a business plan is an organized, logical way to look at all of the important aspects of a
business. First, decide what you will use the plan for, such as to:
• Define and fix objectives, and programs to achieve those objectives.
• Create regular business reviews and course corrections.
• Develop and establish a new business.
• Support a loan application.
• Define agreements between partners.
• Set a value on a business for sale or for legal purposes.
• Evaluate a new product line, promotion, or expansion.

What is a Start-up Plan?

A simple start-up plan is a bare-bones plan that includes a summary, mission statement, keys to
success, market analysis, and break-even analysis. This kind of plan is good for deciding whether or
not to proceed with a full-blown plan, to tell if there is a business worth pursuing.

The “Standard” Business Plan

A standard business plan, one that follows the advice of business experts and is prepared for formal
presentation to outsiders such as a bank, investors, or corporate managers, includes an expected
and customary set of elements. It should start with an executive summary. It should describe the
company, its background and history, what it sells, its market, its strategy, its management team, and
its financial projections.
Your plan depends on your specific situation. For example, if you’re developing a plan for internal use only, not for sending out to banks or investors, you may not need to include all the background details that you and everyone in your company already knows. Description of the management team is very important for investors, while financial history is most important for banks. Make your plan match its business purpose.

What’s Most Important in a Plan?

It depends on the case, but usually what’s most important is the cash flow analysis and specific
implementation details.
Cash flow is important because it is both vital to a company and hard to follow. Cash is usually
misidentified as profits. They are, however, very different. Profits don’t guarantee cash in the bank.
Lots of profitable companies go under because of insufficient cash, due, for example, to having to wait for customers for pay invoices. It just isn’t intuitive.
Implementation details are important because that’s what makes things happen. Your brilliant
strategies and beautifully formatted planning documents are just theory unless you assign
responsibilities, with dates and budgets, and lots of following up and tracking of results. Business
plans are really about getting results, and improving your company.

Are There Standard Steps to Completion?

I don’t recommend developing the plan in the same order you present it as a finished document. For
example, although the Executive Summary comes as the first section of a business plan, I recommend
writing it after everything else is done. It will appear first, but you write it last.

Is There a Standard Business Plan Outline?

No, there isn’t. Every plan should be tailored to your needs. Don’t include anything that doesn’t help
you do your business better. The purpose isn’t the document; it’s the results of the document.
However, if and when you have a specific audience for a business plan, you should recognize what’s
standard in that audience’s mind. Certainly banks, investors, academics, and seasoned business
people have expectations that a business plan should meet.

Form Follows Function

As we noted in above, It’s About Results, business planning is about results. Make the contents of
your plan match your purpose and adjust the outline to match your type of plan.
For example, if you are developing an internal plan for company use, you don’t need to include a
section about the company. If your plan focuses on existing products or services and is intended for
internal use only, you may not even need to include the details about the products.
Another example that comes up frequently is the level of detail required in your market analysis.
Business plans looking for investors need to have some convincing market data, but a plan for a small
business, to be used mainly by a small group of people close to the company, may not need as much
research. Is there an opportunity to improve the company and the plan by learning more about the
market? If so, then do it. If not, it may be overkill.

Investor Summaries and Loan Applications

When a plan is used to back up a loan application or to explain a business to potential investors, it
may require a special summary document as well as a complete plan. Many investors like to see a
brief summary, and a loan application doesn’t always require a complete plan. If you develop your
plan in the right way, you can use the summary paragraphs of the main sections — company, market,
product, etc. — to create these summary documents.

Timeframes: Is Three Years Enough?

Regarding the span or length of focus of a business plan — its timeframe — opinions vary. I believe
a business plan should normally project sales by month for the next 12 months and annual sales for
the following two years. This doesn’t mean businesses shouldn’t plan for a longer term than just three
years, not by any means. It does mean, however, that the detail of monthly forecasts doesn’t pay off
beyond a year, except in special cases. It also means that the detail in the yearly forecasts probably
doesn’t make sense beyond three years. Plan your business for five, 10, and even 15-year timeframes;
just don’t do it within the detailed context of business plan financials.

Control Your Destiny

The business planning process is about controlling your own destiny in a business sense. Set your
long-term business goals and use a plan to break the journey from present to future into manageable
concrete steps. Don’t let the real world of phone calls and daily routines determine your future.
Certainly, in the real world, there will be business problems and changes in economic environment,
customers paying slower than expected, costs going up on one product, down on another. In business
school they called the real world the RW, pronounced “are-dub.” Use your business plan to make
measured responses to the vagaries of the RW, instead of scattered reactions.
A good planning process helps a plan stand up to the real world. As each month closes, the plan
absorbs plan vs. actual results. Each manager keeps track of milestones and budgets, and at the end
of each month the actual results are compared to the plan. Managers look at the variance. They make
adjustments. They review the performance of their peers. Changes are made in the plan — organized,
rational changes — to accommodate changes in actual conditions. Managers are proud of their
performance, and good performances are shared with all.

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