Fighting Financial Anxiety

(Plus 4 bonus tips for finding the right advisor)

The start of a New Year celebration is typically spent with family, friends, and sometimes strangers with one goal in common. We remanence about the past year, the ups and downs, the good times and bad, which provided us with incredible lessons as we consider what’s in store for us this upcoming year.

While many people are popping champagne and singing “Auld Lang Syne” as we welcome the New Year, most business owners are asleep well before midnight because we know there’s a lot of work ahead of us in the coming weeks.

Closing out the prior year’s books, income tax preparation, revenue growth planning, and many other financial thoughts keep most business owners from New Year celebration parties. There’s so much work to do in the coming weeks that it often times becomes overwhelming!

Here are three things you can do now to ease your January financial anxiety.

Build Your Unofficial Board of Directors and Buy Them Breakfast.

Think of your key contacts as your unofficial board of directors who each bring a different and specific skillset that can help your business thrive in the new year. They can include your accountant, bookkeeper, banker, attorney, insurance broker, CFO, controller, etc. A business planning breakfast is a low-cost way to gather your key professionals together at one table to simply discuss your company, your goals going into the next year, and the expectations you have for each of those professionals. It’s important to have only one table so they can get to know each other and help each other find ways to support your business.

Take Your Banker’s Temperature

Do not assume that your bank or banker fully understands your business. Now is the time to take your banker to coffee to discuss the bank’s financial performance expectations of your business. Bank regulations change, and these days, regulators are putting a ton of pressure on banks to shift their entire loan portfolio. It is important to understand how these changes can affect your ability to access capital for this upcoming year and what your business may need to change in order to stay within the bank’s financial performance covenants. Do not wait until your loan or LOC comes up for renewal. Get in front of this now before it’s too late.

Determine When It’s Time To Hire Fractional Help

Hiring qualified people who want to work at your company is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive these days. Often times, it may be less expensive to hire a short-term fractional advisor to fill the talent gap to ensure that vital projects are developed and managed by a more qualified professional.

Bonus Tip: Here are four things you should consider when hiring a fractional advisor:

• Hire a fractional CFO for a 6–12-month project that can then be managed by your existing controller once the project concludes.

• Find a fractional marketing professional to help with social media planning, lead generation, marketing/sales campaigns, etc.

• Find a fractional operations strategist to help build out a quality CRM, funnels, automations, and other necessary operations

• Get a fractional capital advisor to help your company prepare for a capital request, outline the right capital structure that supports your business goals, interview multiple lenders to determine which capital provider will best support your capital structure, and help you negotiate capital terms throughout the capital process. (Spoiler, we here at Green Zone can do all of this and more!)

Green Zone Capital Advisors wishes you the very best as we embark on this wonderful New Year, and we’re here for you when you need access to capital. We know which lenders are great, we know their financing structures, and we help our clients navigate the entire financing process the right way.

We continue to lead with integrity and transparency every single time!

Check out the industries we serve and the types of capital financing we help our clients obtain. When you’re ready to inquire about capital financing options by completing our easy Capital Inquiry form.

Have an amazing and Happy New Year!