Why You’re Short on Cash Again – in Just 7 Minutes with Jeff Prager

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Related Links and Resources:

Our free giveaway will be our new book "Make More Money: The Business Owners 5-Step Plan for Bringing in More Cash". If you want get a free copy of it, go to the www.TheCFOproject.com/MoneyBook

Summary:

Jeff Prager, co-founder of The CFO Project. His company has one purpose: to help you make more money. He has been a former CEO/CFO and owner of several successful multimillion-dollar companies.

Jeff’s breadth of experience is remarkable and extremely valuable to entrepreneurs. He’s been a CPA for over 40 years, so he understands all the confusing numbers stuff. But he’s also an author, speaker, and life-long entrepreneur, not just some paper pusher.

Because of his vast experience as both a CPA and a business owner, he has a firm grasp on the challenge’s businesses face whether they’re start-ups or seasoned pros. He's great at simplifying the numbers and an expert at providing a clear road map to improved profitability and cash flow.

Here are the highlights of this episode:

1:52 Jeff’s ideal Client: We normally work with small to medium size businesses that want to generate more cash flow, boost cash reserves, fund their growth, potentially build a cash cow and build the value of their business.

2:22 Problem Jeff helps solve: We help companies make more money - PERIOD. That's our whole mission.

2:50Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Jeff: Let me target a few for you. If you're stressed out every month due to inconsistent or lack of enough cash flow, if you're frustrated by financial statements that seem to be written in foreign language.. and by the way they are. Even though I'm a CPA, when I own my own businesses, I realized they weren't telling me the right story. The data that was provided was not helping me run my businesses more effectively. If you're angry that you started your business to make money and gain freedom, neither of which are happening at your desired level. If you're worried that you are in a 'catch 22', you don't have enough cash to expand your business but you can't grow without more cash. And the final one is if you struggle to set targets for your organization and you feel that you're navigating a motherless ship, then you're ready for us.

4:11 What are some of the common mistakes that folks make before finding Jeff and his solution: You hit the nail on the head. The first one I always talk about is not having a guide who's been there, done that. There are lots of coaches and consultants out there who have never ever run their own business. The second thing is focusing on sales' topline growth or net profit bottom line growth, but not focusing on cash, that's a huge mistake I see out there. Number three, not using that information to create 30-day action steps. And the fourth one I find is they solve problems on a tactical basis, in other words they look for 'A solution' like SEO, or direct mails. But they don't look at how it factors into the whole business funnel from lead generation to cash in the bank. Therefore, making decisions not based on the long term.

5:28 Jeff’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): Start looking at where you want to end up versus where you are today. Think like an owner of a business not like an accountant. Review your cash coming in and going out each and every week. And then to project out the next couple of weeks, months, and years. So, you're trying to start with the end in mind, work backgrounds to how much cash you have today, how much will you have tomorrow, how much will you have next month, and next year. That's how I look at it.

6:20 Jeff’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Our free giveaway will be our new book "Make More Money: The Business Owners 5-Step Plan for Bringing in More Cash". If you want get a free copy of it, go to the TheCFOproject.com/MoneyBook

7:22 What's the simplest way to manage a business? At one point I managed 156 companies at the same time and I did in less than 10 hours a week. You need to ask one question; "is my business hitting my goal?". Your management should be nothing more but 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down'. If you're hitting that number- thumbs up, good job. But if you're missing the target- thumbs down, what do I have to do next. That's how I always manage my companies just by pointing my thumbs.