YOU NEED TO KNOW

I have worked in banking all my life. A successful banker myself, I now crisscross the country (and the world, actually), consulting with bank management and training their employees to enjoy that same success.

How?

By teaching them to understand you, the small business owner.

YOU Are My Most Common Topic

I spend an enormous amount of time and energy helping the staff of banks and other financial services institutions learn how to evaluate the health of your business and predict its future. I teach them how to pull apart the numbers you bring in, to develop a deeper understanding of how you are managing your resources, and of what resources are likely to be available to support the growth of your business going forward. I tell them what to look for that could hint at problems long before they become obvious, and how to assess the qualitative aspects of how you run your business.

As a banker, I worked hard to educate my business customers about those very same things: what the numbers really mean, what signs point to a healthier or a weaker future, what's important to know before putting money (in the banker's case, in the form of a loan) into your business operations.

As a consultant to the banking industry, I constantly remind my clients of how much time, effort, and resources they can save by developing better relationships and stronger communication with their business customers. I firmly believe that a smart business owner working with a smart banker will produce better outcomes for all parties than will an adversarial relationship, every time.

Taking My Message to Business Owners

So now I'm taking a more direct route to education business owners. Although I have worked for many years to indirectly promote financial literacy for businesses -- and you can see how I talk about this topic with bankers here -- I realize that not all bankers are effective at carrying this message back to their business customers.

And, after all, who is more motivated to do the best possible job of telling their stories than the business owners, like you? Given a chance to look inside the mind of your banker, how would you approach financing conversations, and indeed, all aspects of your banking relationships, differently?

In recent years, then, I have begun talking to groups of business owners about why they, and their bankers, come to different conclusions about the same data. I have helped them to understand that what may seem like adversarial questions are more often valuable pointers to areas of your business that you can examine more closely and manage more effectively.

And I have been writing materials to share with the business owner audience, to help them take a new perspective on their financial data, one that will help them to build stronger businesses, to manage toward sustainable success. (You can download some of these materials from my articles page.)

Facing Up to Financial Literacy . . . and Its Gaps

When we talk about individuals -- you as a person, buying a car or a boat, for instance, rather than you as a business owner, buying a vehicle or equipment for your business -- we, in the banking industry, talk constantly about "financial literacy." There's a strong belief that consumers need help learning about how credit really works, about credit reports and credit scores, about saving and budgeting. They need support to learn how to manage their finances to achieve their personal goals. And not only many banks, but scores of non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and government agencies offer courses aimed at building financial literacy among consumers.

But the truth is that business owners often get very little help in developing financial literacy around their business operations! I don't think this is a conspiracy, mind you, but rather an accident of how small businesses develop . . . mixed in with an issue of pride:

The result: you never encounter key ideas that can strengthen your bids for financing and extend your financial resources by using them much more efficiently. You never learn the business and management practices that will tune your use of financial resources to more effectively advance your most important goals.

Step Forward for the Sake of Your Business

You probably don't have any trouble asking for help, looking for information, or making hard decisions about countless operational and business matters, every day.

So make the decision to learn more about managing your finances. Now that you are enjoying some success, invest the time and effort into building your own financial literacy, confident that this is anything but a luxury if you want to be even more successful.

That investment will generate a return in terms of better use of your time, and more effective conversations with your bank and their staff, so that you can efficiently apply your financial resources to serve your business plan.

How do you make that investment?

Finally, stop back here regularly. I am constantly developing new articles and resources to serve business owners, and I will be making many of them available here, to help you achieve even greater success.