August 10, 2008
What If you can't get a small business loan?
It's getting harder to find a bank that will advance you a small business loan, especially in the current credit climate.
So what are your alternatives?
Re-mortgaging your home is perhaps out of the question, it's far too risky, besides you'll be lucky to get a bank to even consider your load application. Family and friends can't help either because they are feeling the pinch as well. So what can you do?
Assuming your business is up and running here are just a few tips on how to squeeze and manage cash flow through the credit crunch. It all boils down to prudent planning.
1. Prepare a cash flow statement and review it often, daily if possible. Determine what you can or should spend now and defer non critical expenditure until you can meet the expense. Use cash flow software to automate the process as much as possible.
2. Before you agree a new customer do a credit check to make sure they are not a credit risk. The last thing you want is to lose cash due to bad debts.
3. Keep good bookkeeping records. Instead of storing up receipts and invoices to hand to your bookkeeper or accountant once a year for tax and accounts preparation, keep track of your expenses. In fact you cannot manage cash flow unless you keep track of cash receipts and cash payments.
4. Perform daily bank reconciliation
5. Talk to your bank, suppliers and customers regularly. Maintain good relations during the good and bad times. Surveys show that maintaining good relations with your bank and suppliers in beneficial when events take a turn for the worst, for example when your business faces a crisis and you need all the help to recover from the situation.
Once your business starts to expand you may seek capital from angel investors or venture capital.
The following article on small business finance has some useful tips once your business is ready to move up a notch or two.
Note: I see so many businesses making the mistake of not producing a cash flow statement and reconciling their bank statement to their cash book. During this credit crunch cash is d king. I hope you find the above tips useful and that you’ll apply them to your business if you are not already carrying them out.
Posted by David at 9:59 PM | Comments (0)
August 2, 2008
Small Business Ideas in the Apple iPhone
If you are looking for small business ideas that can pay you up to $2,000 per day part-time then why not focus on ideas for the Apple iPhone. Exactly what do I mean?
Exactly what do I mean? Well you could come up with a puzzle or some other utility that appeal to owners of Apple iPhone.
Critical to your success is to develop apps that fill the need that people want. How can you find out what Apple iPhone owners want? well you can visit where Apple iPhone owners hang out like forums, blogs, groups and chat rooms and see what are the frequently asked questions and answers (FAQ&As). Among the FAQ & As you can spot ideas for solutions to common problems.
That's exactly what Eliza Block did. Her crossword puzzle idea is making her almost $2000 per day. This is a great business model. The great thing about linking your business idea to popular products like the Apple iphone is that you can ride on the coat tails of successful products.
The key to success is to focus on what people want NOT what you want or what you think they want and certainly not what you want.
Posted by David at 8:01 AM | Comments (0)
