Finance | Teik Oh

Financial Understanding starts with the Chart of Accounts

Oct 10 2014

We are about to discuss accounting matters.

Hey, don’t click past, it really is important!

Well yes, a little boring too, but sometimes you need to get into the detail of the boring to get the information you need in order to do all the glamorous stuff like building a vibrant business. In fact often you need to get into details to make sure your product or service delivers its promise. Think of a mechanic – no point creating a culture of caring for the customer if your mechanics fail to bleed the brake valves every time. Or a lawyer who’s innovative and really digs deep for the client – not proofreading and the typos will get him every time.

So, one of the crucial (boring) details in any business is the accounting. You can hire a tax accountant at the end of the year; you can hire a once a week book-keeper; you can even employ a full time accounts-person and buy an expensive accounting software system; but the decision about some detail must lie with you and while you should take some of their advice, you need to decide on some key elements of your books.

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3 things ANY small business can do to grow

Sep 30 2014

There are many small business owners reading this, and they have probably read my earlier posts on business improvement and said “that’s not for me, I’m just a grinder, grinding away day to day in my small business”.

I’m thinking of Dave the floor sander who did the new floorboards at my house. I’m also thinking of Adam the housepainter who did such a good job on my house and Brad the electrician who comes over anytime I call him. These are all hard working small business owners who employ anything from none to 5 people, organising their work procedures, their finances and their people as best as they can, where every day is a busy day just “doing the stuff”.

If you are one of them you are probably thinking that all this “strategy advice stuff” is not for you. And yet, every time I talk to Dave, and Adam and Brad, they are always willing to talk about their latest ideas, about how they improved sales by getting a telephone answering service, about how once a year they take their staff inter-state to watch a football game as a reward and to build team spirit, about how they sit down together to work out priorities during the day. Dave and Adam and Brad are doing this “strategy advice stuff” without realising it because what they are doing is not couched in the language or the texts of Harvard Business School or a suit-wearing consultant like me, out to impress. They are using their experience and their common sense “doing the day to day stuff”.

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6 Things to do before you start your own business

Sep 25 2014

So you want to start your own business?

If you are like all small business people, you have decided to start your small or kitchen table business because of factors such as being your own boss and all that picture entails. Today, this seems even more possible due to the technology that you can use from home or a shared space that allows you to keep costs down in comparison to a bricks and mortar business.

While there are even government websites encouraging you (there’s one that has a header “Open for Business: Simple, Fast, Easy) headlines still exist that shout out nearly 80% of businesses close within 18 months of starting – and you can bet most of these are micro, small, kitchen table businesses. Read More

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Recession Proof Your Business

Jan 25 2009

Is this possible – to recession-proof your business? Well no, probably not despite the wealth of articles about how to do so appearing on the internet (about 614,000 hits on Google).

However, what is possible is to secure your business as much as is possible by following a series of simple and common sense business strategies. These strategies are no different from strategies you should employ under normal circumstances, but which application is much more acute in today’s economic climate, and with a different emphasis required. Sadly when times are good, businesses allow themselves to get “fat” and some of these every-day disciplines are allowed to slacken.

The strategies can be grouped into defensive and offensive strategies. As you look at your business performance it is likely that you will find profit performance heading south, and with the economy looking the way it is, it is difficult not to panic and begin to tighten all the hatches. However you can tighten too much, to the extent that your business finds it difficult to operate normally. Hence, while it is natural to concentrate on the defensive strategies such as cutting costs, it is important to keep in mind the offensive strategies – those that your business should take to ensure that you are the one in your industry that keeps selling when others are closing down. Read More

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Increase your sales through a highly focused marketing plan!

SMART Marketing: In this book, the owners of a small business are led through the SMART Marketing 7 Step Process to produce a marketing plan targeted at their most desirable customers. Any business can use these principles and in 4 to 6 weeks implement a plan to get them through the door! Find out how...

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Financial Understanding starts with the Chart of Accounts

3 things ANY small business can do to grow

6 Things to do before you start your own business

Recession Proof Your Business