Manny Skevofilax

Manny Skevofilax is a consultant and speaker that helps his clients successfully navigate the challenges of growing their businesses profitably. Since 2003, Manny helps businesses enhance their results by using his experience in strategic planning, financial statement analysis, operations, organizational development, and team-building.  His consulting firm, PORTAL CFO Consulting, Inc., has attracted clients from diverse industries in the United States and abroad. Manny can be reached at 410-808-3441 or via email at manny@portalcfo.com.

The Value of Business Growth Planning

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Portal CFO Growth Planning Tips

Whether you’re just starting out or already have an established, profitable business in operation, business growth planning should be near the top of your priorities list. Every industry has unique challenges, but some common practices can position your business for future success. We’ve compiled four tips that will give you the most value out of your business planning and set you on a course for success.

Growth Planning Tips for Success:

1. Real Time Accounting

From the basics of Excel or QuickBooks, to more advanced custom accounting software solutions, every business has a way to track their financial position. Implementing a software system that delivers insights on your finances in real time can help you make strategic growth planning decisions and spend your limited capital where it will have the greatest impact.

2. Set Goals For Growth

You may be just getting started in a new market or launching a new product, but all businesses have aspects like revenue or cost savings they want to accelerate and measure. Setting growth planning goals and milestones and using them to track progress over time for your most important business activities makes the mission clear for employees and helps remind everyone what you’re striving towards.

3. Forecast For Tomorrow

Every business should use their existing data to develop strategies for what they can do better in the future. Building forecasts and models for costs of goods, profitability, or logistics expenses can help set expectations for capital requirements, and can often reveal inefficiencies or blind spots that can be addressed to make your business even better.

4. Talk To An Expert

Meeting with consultants is a great way to learn more about your industry, the major players and challenges, and how you can develop a growth planning strategy to win against the competition. If you’re working on a difficult project or seeking to maximize your return on investment, growth and planning consultants can set you on the right course for accelerated success and profits.

Growing your business can be as complicated as running it day to day, but the payoffs can take your operation to the next level. Take charge and use these tips to get a head start on growing your business today.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

For more interesting topics on successfully managing the challenges of growing your business profitably, please search our blog at our website www.portalcfo.com.

Three Strategies That Can Bring Your Business Growth Plan to Life

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Business Growth Planning Tips

A business growth plan is only as good as its implementation. If you have an idea for growing your small business in writing, but have it gathering dust on your shelves, it’s not going to be of much use. A plan that includes ideas on how you can grow your operations will inspire you to act, so you can turn what is in writing into a reality. Here are three strategies that you can adopt as part of your business growth plan to bring your ideas to life.

1. Venturing into New Markets

There are many reasons why small business operators choose to extend their operations beyond the local market, including the pursuit of growth. Breaking into new markets can imply a lot of things such as opening a subsidiary in a different location, introducing a new product line after identifying a niche opportunity, offering services or products that complement what you are already selling, among other things.

Accessing new markets as a small business operator will expand your client base, and as a result, your enterprise will grow.

2. Growing Your Sales Through Existing Customers

The saying that “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” applies to small business owners as well. Loyal and existing customers can play an essential role in expanding your operations if you focus on them. Engaging your customers to discover the solutions you can offer for current problems and encouraging loyal customers to become your brand ambassadors are among the approaches that can help you grow your sales.  These approaches should be the cornerstone of your business growth plan.

3. Pursuing Potential Customers

The fact that there may be many individuals out there who have no idea about your existence implies that the opportunity for growing your small enterprise still exists. Conducting a market analysis will help you identify target clients, and you can follow that with an appropriate marketing campaign to capture the attention of such individuals.  Expanding your customer pool by targeting potential clients will ultimately promote the growth of your business.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

For more information on business analysis, business planning, and ways to grow your small business profitably, please check out our website www.portalcfo.com.

Tips for Making Your Business Profitable

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Portal CFO Make Your Business More Profitable

Building a successful business is more of a marathon rather than a sprint. Succeeding in business today requires planning and organizational skills. Adapting to changes arising in the target market also plays a significant role in business success. Generating profits, as many entrepreneurs find out, requires investing more time and money in your business. Here are four tips on how you can make your business more profitable.

Organize Your Business

Completing various tasks and achieving your business goals requires good organization. Creating a to-do list daily for your business helps in completing pending tasks before assigning your staff new duties. Proper organization can also enhance the hiring process for employers seeking the right job applicants. Hiring the right candidates saves on resources, which increases profits.

Keep Detailed Records

Detailed records are necessary for every successful business. Keeping accurate recordsHow to Manage Small Business Finances will give you insight into the financial position of your enterprise and the challenges it is facing. Finding a solution to problems facing your business is easier when you keep correct records.

Be Creative

Improving your business policies makes you stand out from the competition. Your business should adapt to changes in tastes and preferences of target customers. Implementing strategies that set your business apart from competitors will be profitable in the long run.

Prepare to Make Sacrifices

Hard work helps a business to scale. Putting more resources such as time and money in your business expands your operations, which in turn, will increase your profits.

Provide Exceptional Services

Offering excellent customer service plays a significant role in business success. You will enjoy repeat business from customers who feel satisfied with your services, and as an entrepreneur, you should have an understanding of your target customers to make money. When you meet or exceed the expectations of your clients, you will win their loyalty, which will improve the profitability of your business operations.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

For more information on business analysis, business planning, and ways to grow your small business profitably, please check out our website www.portalcfo.com.

How to Position Your Business for Growth

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rapid revenue growth

When the dream of owning a business becomes a reality, it brings a lot of joy, but it also poses a new challenge to the business owner — how to position your business for growth. In that case, an understanding of how you can expand your business will prepare you for what the future holds. Here are some tips on how you can position your business for growth.

Evaluate Your Company’s Current Position

As you analyze your company’s current operations, you will learn a lot of things regarding its future, and that is important if you are focusing on expansion. Some of the things you can consider to help you position your business for growth include the perception of customers towards your products or services, your cash flow, number of conversions within a specific duration, the number of one-time and repeat clients, among other things.

Accountability is critical as you verify the current positioning of your entity whether you have a board of directors to assess such a report or not. The reason is that accountability will help you establish whether you are on the path of growth or not.

Define Your Company’s Future

Once you establish the current position of your enterprise, it’s time to define where you want it to be in the future. Feedback from clients and your employees is instrumental in shaping your organization into what you want it to become. As you engage your employees, you will discover what they appreciate most about working with you and the changes you can consider making.

On the other hand, customers will share details on what they value most about your products or services and the improvements you should make. The information you gather from those who interact with your business will help you develop the right strategies that will spur the expansion of your operations.

Adopt The Right Strategies

A plan of action is necessary when you consider how to position your business for growth.  Compiling the details you gather about the current position of your firm, and the feedback from your employees and customers will provide the necessary insight for developing the ideal business growth strategy for your enterprise. Adopting the right business growth approach using the information at your disposal after assessing your operations will promote expansion.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

For more interesting topics on successfully managing the challenges of growing your business profitably, please search our blog at our website www.portalcfo.com.

Business Advice: Tips to Avoid Burnout

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Portal CFO How to Avoid Burnout

It happens to the best of us: burnout. Of course it does. Getting your business off to a good start, keeping an eye on profits, employees, competition, inventory, can wear anyone out. It take a lot of time, energy, and focus. So how does one avoid burnout and stay consistent? In this post, we’ve compiled some of the most common sense tips to avoid burnout in your business

Tips to Avoid Burnout:

Take time off.

Many business owners work more than forty hours a week. They may start early in the morning and work late at night, squeezing in as much time to work as possible.

However, if you don’t want to experience burnout, you are going to need to take time off. If possible, don’t work every evening and weekend. Your body and mind needs time to unwind and relax, so you are ready to go back to work!

To do that, you should work set hours.

It is important that you set aside certain times for work and times to have off. You shouldn’t just try to work every free moment that you have. Then, once they are set, make sure that you follow them.

Spend quality time with your family.

Even though you are probably working on your business for your family, it is still important that you find time to spend with those that you love.

Spending time with your family can really help you relax and enjoy life. This is necessary to avoid burnout!

Burnout is real, and it can be disastrous to a business. Many businesses fail because their owners overdo it.  To avoid it, you need to make sure that you take time off every day.  You can’t work twenty-four hours a day. You also can’t work seven days a week. In order to be successful, it is important to set a schedule and stick to it!

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

For more interesting topics to help you successfully manage the challenges of growing your business profitably, please search our blog at our website www.portalcfo.com.

4 Ways to Grow Your Business from Small to Prime

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Grow Your Business with Portal CFO

Many established businesses don’t become corporate overnight. It takes time and loads of resources to grow your business from small to prime.  It also takes capital, skill, and the ability to weather the storms of hard economic times that might threaten to set you back.  The magic wand for success is in figuring out how to bring in the profits and ensure the capacity needed to sustain that growth into the future.

What are the steps a small or mid-sized business owner should take to set their business on a consistent upward trajectory? Below are areas you might want to look at to grow your business from small to prime.

Accounting and financial reporting overhaul

Accounting is in simple terms a summary of your income and expenditure. If the items in your records are too generalized, it might be difficult to pinpoint conclusions from your financial transactions. The reason that it is important is so  you are able to tell which areas of your bookkeeping may need adjustments.  With improved accounting, you will be able to keep accurate and precise track of purchasing costs, wages for staff, taxes, owner draws, and other vital accounting and financial information.

Leverage on partnerships

Another great way to grow your business is to establish a connection with your suppliers and the competition.  Not only will you enhance your access to helpful industry information, stats and trends, but you will get to learn the areas where your competition is doing a great job.  Perhaps you will find out things that you could replicate in your business.

Get the bank loan

Your business might be doing so well in terms of improved profit margins, that all you might need to do is find ways to increase your sales and expand on your way to becoming a prime brand. Consider seeking the services of an expert to help you draft a compelling pitch to your preferred lender. They will give you valuable insights on how to fine-tune business components like the business plan, cash flow analysis, budget, financial projections, and any other aspect of your business the lender may ask about.

Perform an evaluation

If you truly want to come out of flat growth revenues, unchanging reported profits, and increasing costs, then reviewing your management team is not a bad idea. It may be time to consider a change in personnel with fresh ideas and energy for emerging challenges. Based on the size of your business, a restructuring initiative may be something you should consider in your growth and sustainability plans.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

For more interesting topics to help you successfully manage the challenges of growing your business profitably, please search our blog at our website www.portalcfo.com.

Strategic Planning Guide For Small Businesses

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Portal CFO Strategic Plan

Every entrepreneur should find time to be thoughtful about the future of their company. That is where strategic planning comes into play. Strategic planning defines where a business wants to be and how it will get there. It can have a dramatic impact on the profitability and morale of the company because it provides a blueprint to help you stay on track in a changing marketplace. If you are ready to set in motion a strategic plan to help grow your small business, consider these five tips to make your planning more successful.

Know Who You Are

The first step in strategic planning is to know who you are. What is your company’s mission, vision, and values? When you clearly articulate why your business exists, what you want to be known for and your core beliefs, you set the direction for your plan to grow your business. Knowing who you are also helps you to avoid losing your way while in the process of growth.

Assess Where You Are

In order to go forward, you must assess where you are today. A great way to accomplish this is using the SWOT analysis. You and your team will address the Strengths, and Weaknesses that you observe in your business, as well as Opportunities and Threats that may emerge in the future.

Create A Future Forward Plan

You will need to create long and short term goals that include the strategies and tactics that you will implement in order to achieve those goals. You should identify the resources you will need such as staff, facilities, equipment, vendors and inventory and also include the cost involved and it’s impact on your revenue.

Execution

A strategic plan must include an action plan with specific tasks, timelines, and responsibilities. A strategic plan is useless without execution. Knowing where you want to go and knowing how your going to get there is of no use, unless you put your plan into action and stick with it.

Entrepreneurs are faced with market conditions changing at a rapid pace. Be flexible and learn how to adjust your strategies, and pursue new opportunities that will be a good fit for your long and short term goals.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

For more interesting topics to help you successfully manage the challenges of growing your business profitably, please search our blog at our website www.portalcfo.com.

Business Advice: How to Dominate Your Competition

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Business Owners - How you can dominate your competition

How to dominate your competition becomes more and more intense with each year that goes by, especially for small businesses. When you’re not a corporate giant with endless resources, it becomes incredibly important to be aware of what is happening in your industry. The business landscape is constantly changing and every change brings new scenarios to think about and problems to solve.

If you want to stay in the game, and even dominate your competition, here are a few tips on how to do just that.

Know What Trends Matter to your Business

Every market is different. When planning for the year, you should have done research on patterns that have affected your target market in the years prior.

You will have an advantage if you can predict the changes that occur in your market and when they are likely to occur. If you can predict those changes, then you can adapt and be prepared when they appear and be positioned to dominate your competition.

Know How You and Your Competition Are Different and Similar

As a small business owner, you need to know your competition better than anyone. It may even be valuable to you to buy or get service from your competitors as a form of research.

Doing that will give you key insight into how they do customer service, their sales process, their storefront (whether physical or digital), even their process of following up with a customer after they make a purchase.

You must know what attracts customers to your business and what might be driving them away from you and to your competitors.

Strive for “Good Enough”

While having a quality product and quality service is key to business, perfection is not. Perfection rarely occurs and many businesses take too much time trying to make something perfect.  Since change is constantly happening in the business world, it is important to be agile in decision-making.

Take stock of what your business does that is faster than your competition and take stock of where you can reduce the time taken. Are your meetings long and cumbersome? Do new projects go through multiple revisions before seeing the market?

Do you try to get market feedback on products before or after you launch them?  The quicker you can make decisions, introduce products, and get feedback, the sooner you will know whether there is a market for them.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

For more information on business analysis, business planning, and ways to grow your small business profitably, please check out our website www.portalcfo.com.

 

Useful Advice for Starting A Business

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Portal CFO Starting Your Own Business Photo

A lot goes into establishing a business and building it to the point of realizing profitability, and for that reason, the decisions you make at the initial stages are critical. You also need to give room for mistakes as a budding entrepreneur because they allow you to learn through experience! In this post, we have summarized three main pillars of getting a new business off the ground. Read on to learn some useful advice for starting a new business.

Start Today

Time waits for no one, which means that the perfect time to start a business will never come. The opportunity you are seeking to implement the business ideas you have on paper is here; it is today. Many startup ideas do not kick off for various reasons, which means that they will only remain a dream if you do not act. For instance, if funding is a challenge, you cannot wait to save enough as an aspiring entrepreneur. You only need to start with what you have right now, and soon your enterprise will be up and running.

Pursue Your Passion

If you are considering becoming independent and you do not have an idea of what kind of business you should begin, focusing on your passion can be a starting point. Venturing into any field in the marketplace is not advisable as well because it is one of the reasons why most startups fail. Pursuing what you genuinely love as you get into the business arena brings a sense of fulfillment in life, and over time you will join the league of those who own large enterprises.

Embrace Progressive Growth

As you start your business do not bite more than you can handle. Trying to work your enterprise into a multinational as soon as you begin is not a wise idea either. Instead, set realistic goals that will help you build your firm over time. Small incremental goals encourage continuous business growth and adopting the latter strategy gives you a better sense of how to maneuver challenges and seize opportunities.

Remember, running a business does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

For more ideas on how to keep your business healthy and thriving, check out our website at www.portalcfo.com.

Tasks To Outsource to Virtual Assistants

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Portal CFO Virtual Assistant

If you are serious about your business and want it to grow, you are going to need to hire help. However, you may not have enough work to hire a full-time or even part-time employee. For this reason, many small business owners start by hiring virtual assistants.

A virtual assistant is someone who works from home, helping multiple clients run their business. They can do a variety of tasks, including:

  • Accounting and bookkeeping tasks. This can include almost anything that pertains to your bookkeeping, including entering numbers into your accounting software, payroll, and even doing your taxes. You may want them to take care of your invoices. They can create them, send them out, and make sure that you are paid on time.
  • Content Writing. Any piece of content that you send out can be written by someone else. This includes content on your website, your blog, your emails, social media posts, and much more.
  • Data entry.
  • General errands. Many virtual assistants shop online for their clients, answer phones and emails, and much more.
  • Marketing is very commonly done by virtual assistants. They can help with your email, social media, blogging, and even your traditional marketing. Many help by responding to comments and messages.
  • Many virtual assistants plan events and parties that you may be hosting. They can even book travel arrangements and other things when you have to travel to give talks.
  • Receptionist duties. You can hire a virtual assistant to answer your phones, schedule appointments, confirm them, and other duties that you may hire a receptionist for.
  • Research.
  • Website development. If you don’t have a website, they can design the perfect one for you. If you do, they can improve it, so you get more notice.
  • And so much more.

A virtual assistant can do almost anything that you don’t have the time or want to do. In fact, many say that you can’t grow your business until you hire help. There is only so much one person can do.

Remember, running a business successfully does not need to be complicated.  Keep it simple!

For more information on business analysis, business planning, and ways to grow your small business profitably, please check out our website www.portalcfo.com.