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FROM THE FOUNDER
This person is at the core of what makes your business successful, however not all financial managers are competent. Competent financial management
A s someone who has been an entrepreneur since I was a little kid and started businesses and grown them and bought businesses and sold them, and who teaches entrepreneurship at a major business college, I have always liked the architecture and engineering business because it doesn’t take much to start one of these firms. All you really need is a skill, along with a computer and a client, and voila – you can be in business! That’s great!
Mark Zweig
As long as your personal overhead isn’t too high, and your client pays their bills, you have the foundation for a business you can build on. But as the years go by, and the business grows with new clients and new people, financial management becomes a bigger and bigger issue. Not all of those clients pay their bills promptly, and cash flow becomes more critical. A line of credit is often necessary and banking relationships become more important to you. The firm becomes valuable, and other employees are added as owners. Leases have to be taken on for equipment and space – maybe a building is even acquired for office space. The accounting system has to be rethought, and information on projects and the business becomes more and more important. Bills have to go out
faster and be collected sooner. Overhead increases constantly. Things start to get a lot more complicated. That’s when you find yourself in need of a competent financial manager – someone who can deal with all of this stuff and make sure you have the capital you need to operate and grow the business. And someone who can take care of all of the business stuff no one else wants to deal with, or has the knowledge to deal with. The problem is not all financial managers ARE competent. I have worked with a lot of them – really good ones and really bad ones. The bad ones make
See MARK ZWEIG , page 6
THE ZWEIG LETTER SEPTEMBER 30, 2024, ISSUE 1555
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