Learnings from ProjectionSmart Growth
Aug 19, 2019 by Roger Scherping
After beta testing ProjectionSmart Startup (for startup business) with 300 entrepreneurs, Bob and I recently held workshops with SCORE (the Service Corp of Retired Executives) and with 60 chiropractic students at Northwestern Health Sciences University who are about to graduate and start their own chiropractic businesses. We showed both of these groups the benefits of Startup and the Proof Plan, and it was very satisfying to see how quickly they grasped these key concepts, understood the numbers of their businesses, and gained invaluable confidence in their ability to understand financial statements.
Now we’re beta testing our new Growth business model (for existing business). Our beta testers are small businesses (under $10M in sales), with a non-financial owner, no controller or CFO, and who use QuickBooks. And one more thing: They have a pressing concern or pain. Some of them have fast-growing businesses and are concerned that things will get out of control. Others are concerned about whether their staffing might be too heavy for their projected revenue. Still others want to know where their cash will be in the future, especially if they’re concerned about a drop in revenue. As we walk these small business owners through the use of Growth, here’s what we’re finding:
1. Growth gives them the knowledge they need to confront their concerns. Growth helps them see into the future to understand whether they have a problem and how severe it is. They gain great confidence in going from being in the dark and concerned about what they don’t know to clearly seeing what the numbers say and understanding the situation.
2. Some of them had no idea this sort of analysis was even possible, or that they were capable of doing it themselves. Remember, these are not financial people. These are marketers, salespeople, and production people. ProjectionSmart Growth is helping them overcome what they consider their greatest weakness as small business owners: Their fear of finance.
3. They understand what they’re doing. At ProjectionSmart, we’ve made financial modeling simple. We ask small business owners simple questions about their businesses, so they understand the inputs to the model. After all, they know their businesses. They know what their plans are. And since they understand the inputs to the model, they also understand the output of the model. They understand what the charts and graphs say because they created them and tweaked them until they told them exactly what was happening with their business. That’s powerful.
4. Their knowledge of financial statements broadens. Sure they knew what a balance sheet and income statement were before, but now they understand how the statements interact. They understand how borrowing money will impact both their balance sheet and their cash flow. They understand how an increase in costs will lower their profit and lower their cash flow. Frankly, this one is a bonus to us. We didn’t anticipate the value that Growth would provide in helping educate its users on financial statements.
So we’re enjoying introducing ProjectionSmart Growth to small business owners. If you’d like to be part of our beta test group, email me. You’ll get the benefit of using the program for free, and you’ll also get a few hours of my time in helping you understand the numbers of your business.