Meet Daryl LaFountain and some of his financial and political operations thoughts? 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 LaFountain‘s advices on improving your firm financial situation: Separate Your Business and Personal Finances: One of the best ways to organize your business finances is to separate them from the personal ones. By splitting these things up, it’s much easier and faster to keep track of business expenses for tax purposes and other related uses. Remember, when you mix your business and personal funds, you may lose track of all your finances. This will jeopardize your organization in the long run. Thus, in order to ensure the separation of your personal and business finances, consider opening a distinct bank account. If you have credit cards, it’s best to designate one of them for business expenses. By doing this, you can keep everything organized, especially in terms of the financial aspect of your company.
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.
Yup, taxes! Taxes are annoying, but they’re certainly not going away anytime soon. So make sure your long-term income projections include taxes. Not planning for taxes can impact your cash flow in a major way. In addition, you definitely want to look into tax savings investment options and stay up to speed on any relevant tax deductions you can apply to help you save money on tax payments. You can plan to sit with a tax accountant or financial planner to help ensure your plan for taxes is adequate. You should also check out our blog post on how to reduce your taxable income! Estate planning is not something a lot of people like to think about, but it’s essential! It allows you to determine exactly what happens to your assets after you are gone. It involves listing out all your assets, creating a will, and making it accessible to the people who need to have access to it. A financial planner or estate lawyer can help you set things up correctly.
About Daryl La Fountain: 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.