15 business ideas on finding opportunities, managing finances and working with clients.
Michael Hinton is the founder and CEO of Finatix. He has started several companies and worked with a range of small businesses and Fortune 500 companies. A Civitas team member sat down with Mike to discuss finding opportunities, managing finances, and working with teams and clients.
Summary of the best ideas from the discussion:
- There are always going to be opportunities within adversity.
- Adopt the attitude of "let's do this together". It helps your clients to buy into your vision and create trust.
- Offer an idea and then ask the team how they think it should be carried out. It creates accountability and responsibility.
- Don't think that because you have one day of doing business, it's going to be like that forever. You need to be adaptable and flexible. That's what creates opportunity.
Finding opportunities
- Be flexible to find opportunities in tough times. There are always going to be opportunities within adversity.
- Don't think that because you have a single way of doing business, it's going to be like that forever. You need to be adaptable and flexible. That's what creates opportunity.
On managing teams
- Adopt the attitude of "let's do this together". It helps your clients to buy into your vision and create trust.
- My philosophy is to try to learn and upskill staff as quickly as possible so that I can move on to do other things. No one should be in the same position in the same company for longer than 5 years.
- Try not to get bogged down by details and dictate how you believe people should work. Covid has taught us that we are more resilient than we think we are, and we can work almost anywhere virtually (well not my dentist!).
- Offer an idea and then ask the team how they think it should be carried out. It creates accountability and responsibility.
Working with clients
- Create a hands-off process for your weekly catch-ups with clients. Ask what do you want to achieve this week and then next week discuss what was completed and what was not.
- We use emails and in-person chats but from an improvement point of view we could streamline it by using software like a project management tool.
- Never take no as an answer. When your client says "can you do x,y,", always say yes and then figure it out.
Managing finances
- Review your accounting systems to make sure it's not disjointed.
- Updated accounting systems can assist you to identify fraud and create clearer reporting lines.
- Create a dashboard that displays sales on a daily basis. From this you can see if your marketing is working and what products are resonating.
- Try to keep money in your call account, it earns good interest. It used to earn better interest before Covid, but it’s still more than you get in your current account.
- From a treasury function, look at your cash balance once every three days for the first 3-weeks of the month. At month-end, check it daily to ensure you can adequately plan and cover salaries, expenses etc.
- I read Business Insider, Time Magazine, The Economist and Business Day to keep my finger on the macroeconomic pulse.
