Managing cash flow is one of the main challenges cited by female entrepreneurs. Here are 3 simple cash flow tips that you can work through to reassess and strengthen your financial position.
Review your services and products
Are your products and services that you’re offering still suited to the current environment or have you become complacent and are just doing things the way you have always done them. Be honest here.
What can be changed to suit the current environment. Have you been thinking of going online, creating evergreen content or changing the processes?
What can you continue to provide and what do you have to let go of? Some of this may be a permanent shift or it may be just for the time being. Focus your time now on the activities which you can offer and consider the impact changes will have on your income.
What else can you add in to encourage an injection of cash into your business? Maybe you have old stock you can sell at a discount or that guide you have been meaning to put together as evergreen content on your website. Start thinking creatively about what you can offer right now.
Review your outgoings
Where can you start to trim expenses that you no longer need or can do without temporarily?
Review subscriptions
A useful thing can be to go over your credit card and bank statements and make a list of all the subscriptions that currently come out of your account without you even thinking about it. I guarantee you find at least 1 that you no longer need or which you can use the free version for the time being.
List your needs vs wants.
Be brutal here. Can you live without it? If the answer is yes, it’s a want and you can consider letting it go.
Hot tip: Shop around and see what else is on offer. A sneaky trick is to start the process of cancelling subscriptions and when asked why select ‘too expensive’, many times companies will offer a cheaper rate immediately.
(please note: try and apply this to big corporations and not your local small business!)
Is there a free version from that provider or a different one completely? Maybe you disregarded it previously because it didn’t have all the bells and whistles of another option. Can you forego these things now to save some money?
Assess your position
Each single step above will have a different impact on your financial position. Whilst it may take more time and effort on your part, look at the ‘if x then y’ scenario of each financial decision. Some are no-brainers like cancelling a magazine subscription which you never read and it will save you $30 a month.
Some are harder ‘if I change my phone plan I will save $10 per month but I lose 10GB of data which I sometimes use’.
Redo your forecast and be realistic. Look over each of the possibilities you can change and assess the bottom-line impact each will have as well as any risk you face in the future. Try to remove emotion from your decision, which is probably the most challenging thing.
Remember, you are doing what is in the best interest of the business. Proper cash flow management is essential for the long term success of your business.
