Awesome financial services tips with Daryl La Fountain? In the early stages of a company, CEOs get involved in everything. As your growth ramps up, however, you must become strategic with your time. You need to put systems in place for building and scaling a financially viable business while preserving your attention for mission-critical items. As a fractional CFO for growth companies, I help clients navigate this shift on a daily basis, and I’ve found the following tips useful in nearly every situation. Every business leader understands they need a strategy for attracting and converting new leads into customers. But when you’re growing sales on a budget, you need to be creative. Instead of costly ad campaigns or branding strategies, I’d recommend you build strong, reciprocal partnerships first and that you do so as soon as possible. I’m not referring to simple networking. I’m talking about identifying companies with business models that complement your own and approaching them with a win-win proposition. The relationship can be formal or informal, but the key is to offer something valuable in exchange for inexpensive exposure to your target audience.
Daryl La Fountain‘s recommendations on improving your firm financial situation: Organizing your business’ finances means ensuring that it won’t run out of money. In order to do this, it’s essential to plan for your expenses by establishing an emergency fund to cover them. By doing this, you have some money ready to pay your bills when they’re due and demandable. Indeed, it’s a challenging job to get your business finances organized. However, by following the tips mentioned above, there’s no doubt your company will reap many benefits. One of them is the creation of a stable financial future for you as a business owner, your employees, and partners.
Just as your parents probably sent you off to kindergarten with high hopes of preparing you for success in a world that seemed eons away, you need to plan for your retirement well in advance. Because of the way compound interest works, the sooner you start saving, the less principal you’ll have to invest to end up with the amount you need to retire. Why start saving for your retirement in your 20s? Here’s an Investopedia example: You start investing in the market at $100 a month, averaging a positive return of 1% a month or 12% a year, compounded monthly over 40 years. Your friend, who is the same age, doesn’t begin investing until 30 years later and invests $1,000 a month for 10 years, also averaging 1% a month or 12% a year, compounded monthly. After 10 years, your friend will have saved up around $230,000. Your retirement account will be a bit over $1.17 million. Company-sponsored retirement plans are a particularly great choice, because you get to put in pretax dollars and companies will often match part of your contribution, which is like getting free money.
If you’re single, it’s important to establish a financial plan that not only helps you meet your immediate goals, but that ensures your future self will be taken care of. This means doing all the things mentioned above without making any assumptions that things will somehow work themselves out. A big mistake? Assuming you’ll meet someone who will take care of you and deal with the finances in your relationship. If your relationship status changes or you get married, you’ll be well equipped to plan your finances together if you already have things in place for yourself.
About Daryl LaFountain: Daryl is an energetic professional CFO with a background in politics. Daryl has done fundraising, been a candidate, and worked in politically appointed positions in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia. Daryl has worked for Democratic candidates and nominees in 18 additional states. Would like someone to do bundling and fundraising for you.