Monday, June 13, 2011

Profit Mastery

Farrah Rhea, Family, and Friend on a recent trip to Disney World
Farrah works hard as our Director of Microlending
but knows it's important to take time for family, friends, and fun!

Speaking of balancing work and fun, just before my relaxing vacation this past week, I was fortunate to get to take a business course called Profit Mastery that is available to small business development clients through Wyoming Small Business Development Center facilitators. I took the course in Casper with SBDC business counselors training to facilitate this service to small business owners. The founder,Steve LeFever, knows that comprehending financial statements can be a dry subject.  He's funny and communicates engagingly while walking us through what some might consider complex concepts and mathmatics.  It was extraordinarily helpful for really comprehending how minimal action in one or more sectors of your business can significantly impact your net profit, capacity for sustainability, and the value of your business, helping to grow, sell, get financing, or even determine the weak areas and exact needs, rather than relying on “best guess,” at any given time.
This is a great financial management tool to analyze profit and adjust your business strategy throughout the life of your business. It is a 16 hour session and can be broken into sections for easier access by a client or a small group of clients via the SBDC facilitator.
Each section has an activity and quiz to which your own figures can be plugged in.
1)An Introduction- defining success, goals, a sort of outline for envisioning the entire process from early on in the business to examining value for sale.
2)Current financial position comprehension.
3)Price-Volume-Costs, and using Break-Even to begin manipulating those features of your business.
4)Cash Flow-Manipulation of timing for income and outflow can be highly affective and effective.
4)Managing Growth-How much and when, and costs of growth, how it affects other areas of your business.
5)Financing Properly and Planning for Transition-rather than doing this first, do the others first in order to get the numbers correct and establish credibility with your lender and establish real net worth.

For more info, click here.  We are always happy to share info to help gain financial independence for small business development!