Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Business Failure 10: Solutions to Lack of Cash or Overextended Cash

marketing planThis continues our series analyzing why businesses fail, how to avoid business failure

While your business may experience cash flow or cash strapped problems occasionally, persistent cash problems represent serious problems with your business plan or implementation. Fortunately, several solutions exist to resolve the problems. Unfortunately, many business owners resist many solutions. 

Possible Solutions

Business Know How provides several possible solutions:

Crowdfunding

Alan Hall shared 5 Ways of Funding a Business: How to Get Your Peace of the Pie for Forbes.com. He lists Crowdfunding as the 3rd most effective way to fund your business (right after personal funding and family and friends). Crowdfunding represents a relatively new way (the term first appeared in 2006 from Michael Sullivan) of raising capital.

My daughter used Crowdfunding to obtain special supplies for her public school district pre-school class for autistic children. She wanted to buy special equipment for her class and needed about $2,000 to do so. She posted her project on a Crowdfunding web site. People go to these websites and commit so much money. She raised all $2,000 within 24 hours.

Currently Crowdfunding for businesses reminds me of the wild west—out of control. The JOBS Act which President Obama signed into law on April 5, 2012 established a timeline for the Securities and Exchange Commission to clarify guidelines for business Crowdfunding. Currently, some serious benefits and drawbacks exist. Explore the pros and cons before listing your project. Don’t rely on Google to help you. The first 8 pages of my search for pros and cons only listed paid ads.

If you want to know more, several sites offer this unique source of funding. Check them out, but use caution.

Thursday we examine how undisciplined greed & money for money’s sake leads to failure

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