Cash is king
It doesn’t matter how much money you’ll be earning a year from now – you need to have cash flow to carry you from now until then.
At last week’s Entrepreneurship 101 lecture, Andrew Graham, Senior Director, Corporate Development at George Weston Limited, made sense of what is often seen as a rather complicated subject.
His lecture dissected the basic tools of financial planning:
- Income statements
- Cash flow forecast
- Balance sheet
If you want to get investors’ attention, you have to have a realistic plan that shows how you will spend and make money. You also need to be able to understand the details: revenue, cost of sales, gross margin, operating costs and more.
This lecture used several case studies to show how companies forecast growth both successfully and unsuccessfully.
Key takeaways:
- It’s all about cash
- Forecast from the bottom up
- Get expert advice when you need it
For more on how to build your financial plan, watch this Quick Hits video:
To watch the entire lecture, click here.
Resources:
- Speaker slides: Financial Planning
- Video: Financial Forecasting: What you need to know – Five hot tips for startups
- Workbook: Financing Workbook 1 – Developing a Financing Strategy for Your Company
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Next week’s lecture: Meet the Entrepreneurs – Social Innovation.
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