COVID brought everything to a screeching halt last year, throwing companies into a tailspin as they tried to shore up operations quickly and put a pause on expenses.

More than a year later, even the most well-managed companies have struggled to make ends meet. Now that the country is starting to open back up and businesses are looking to recover, it’s important to revisit financial essentials for small operations. For example, cash flow – the amount of money coming in and leaving the company and the timing of that process – is the lifeblood of a business. A recent U.S. Bank study found that 82% of small businesses that failed cited cash flow problems as a factor.

Barry Moltz

And when disruption comes knocking – whether it’s a company-specific challenge or a disaster like COVID – companies should have a plan and emergency funds on hand to weather the storm as best they can. But recent data from the Federal Reserve found that, faced with an eight-week loss of revenue, 86% of businesses said they’d need to supplement the cash flow; for half, that would mean dipping into the owner’s personal savings.

In this episode of Promo Insiders, Executive Editor Sara Lavenduski speaks with Barry Moltz, a small business expert, speaker and author, about best practices for monitoring finances and how to establish an emergency plan and fund to survive another crisis.

“If you don’t understand your financials and your financial statements,” he says, “you don’t know where you’ve been, so how can you know where you’re going?”

Podcast Chapters (only available on desktop)
1:00 The importance of knowing your finances
4:00 Caveats on small business loans
5:27 Using a cost-benefit analysis to make decisions
6:30 Implementing a strong billing strategy
8:11 How to manage cash flow
11:47 Establishing an emergency financial plan
13:15 Sharing the plan with the team 

Watch on YouTube