5 months into the year, is your business growing?
That is a sobering question.
I’d venture that half the time the answer is “no”. And if it is indeed “no”, there’s no shame. Identify what’s stopping your business from growing and you can fix it. It is never too late.
Most of the people who own a business aim for growth year on year. Sometimes there’s something stopping them from doing it. To help us narrow down some common causes, I spoke to Andrew Bailes, fractional CFO and founder of Hertford Advisors. Andrew has been a CFO since 2006. He has extensive experience in telecoms, logistics, manufacturing, among others, managing finance, legal, and HR operations.
What commonly stops business from growing?
“90% of the time, it is either your ability to sell your product, or your ability to manage a sales team to sell your product that limits the growth. And that's how it should be. But make sure that you've got enough money for that. One of the things that's always a pain point for me is when I come across companies that have sold all this product, but they don't know how to deal with delivering it.” Andrew says
The value of bookkeeping in business
Andrew stresses the importance of good bookkeeping in business. He says, when they take over a business’ books, they “need to tidy up from the past. There's lots of hours we spend on it. I would advise every business owner to just get ahead of it, and don't let it build up. And don't be afraid of QuickBooks, QuickBooks is by far the market leader. 90% of my clients are on QuickBooks. It can cost as little as $20 a month, and they'll be the best $20 you've spent. So even if you're a one man band, doing something very small, and you've only got 10 transactions a month, it's a lot easier in QuickBooks than it is trying to do it in Excel. There is other software out there, but I would recommend everybody use QuickBooks because it's just so intuitive and easy.”
Why business owners need to work on becoming unafraid of numbers
Business runs on numbers, yet so many people are afraid of them. Andrew points out, “They hesitate on it, because a lot of people are scared of numbers. And you really shouldn't be because a lot of bookkeeping can be very simple. And it can be based just purely on the transactions in your bank account.”
Fun, frank advice from Andrew Bailes, fractional CFO
“Work out what it is that drives your business, and then work out how to make that factor as successful as possible.”
If you’d like to listen to the full episode with Andrew, on my podcast, you can find it here: https://iamamillionairesonowwhat.libsyn.com/ep228-stop-being-afraid-of-your-numbers