Jumpstart Your Business

As a small business owner, you owe it to the business to decide whether your lender is right for your business or not. Banks and lending institutions use five factors to grant credit to you or your business and these are:

Capacity
Your ability to repay the loan. They look at your cash flow and your expected business performance over time to see whether you have the ability now and in the future to be able to keep up with the loan payments.

If you think that you’ll be able to get a grant to start your for-profit small business from the federal government or even from a private foundation, think again. Even with all of the billions of dollars floating around under the American Recovery and Re-investment Act, you still can’t find grants for your small business start-up.

A successful business partnership is like a sound marriage. The usual key factors are the same:

1 – Start by having a shared vision & mission. The way you see and approach life should be the same.

2 – Each partner’s needs and expectations should be addressed.

Strategy in a small business dictates a completely different type of thinking in today’s fast changing environment. We can’t afford to think too short term while concentrating on results and we have to be careful and not think too long term and in the process forget those things that really work. Strategic planning combines goals, objectives, tactics, and iterative approaches across multiple facets of your business.

A successful small business strategy begins with a framework for making decisions about your business. Here are some of the factors that should be included in your decision making framework:

1. Financial
What are the financial goals and objectives for your small business and how do they lay out by product or service? This needs to be both a revenue and a profit outlook with consideration of the cost of the market variables involved in your business as time changes.

Very early in your plans for your start up, you need to understand that business is more about managing risk than taking risk. One of the best ways to manage risk is by making sure that you have adequate insurance coverage. Sit down early with your insurance agent and review the specific needs of your planned small business and be certain to look at the following:

Fire Insurance
Provides protection for loss or damage of buildings and inventory in case of fire.

If your small business had a net operating loss (NOL) in 2008, (your expenses exceeded your income), under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), enacted in February, you may choose to carry the resulting loss back for up to five years, instead of the usual two. You may be able to carry that loss as far back as tax-year 2003, rather than the usual 2006. This could mean a special tax refund or a larger refund because the loss is being spread over as many as five tax years, rather than just two.

If you have a good idea for a business now may be the best time to start up. Here are six good reasons why you should carefully consider doing so.

1. Your competition will be like everyone else and won’t think now is the best time to go into business. This gives you less to worry about now and by the time the economy picks up, you’ll be so far ahead they’ll not be able to come after you.

In tough times it is necessary to really manage the everyday operations of a business. Here are some basic tips to help you be a good manager and be on top of your business in this stagnant economy.

1. Think Inside the Box – “Their Box not Yours”
If the situation concerns a customer, think like the customer to get a handle on how he/she feels or what he/she needs.