MARK ZWEIG, from page 1 companies have so much unnecessary bureaucracy in their billing process that they waste days of time. The sooner you get the bill out the faster you get paid and the less of your own money needs to remain in the business. 4) Rent or lease everything. You don’t want to use up your precious capital buying anything and paying in full for it. Rent or lease, if possible. And if not, finance it. Remember that the average A/E firm generates more than a 60 percent return on equity. When you can borrow money for just about anything at rates of 6 percent or less, using precious cash for buildings or vehicles or expensive equipment just doesn’t make economic sense. 5) Get a line of credit based on your accounts receivable and don’t use it unless you need it. It’s amazing to me how many companies in this business still don’t have a line of credit. They would rather give away or sell expensive equity than borrow money at low rates. Makes no sense from a financial perspective. 6) Get your landlord to make the tenant improvements for any facilities you need. You never want to put a dime of your own cash into an office buildout. Get the landlord to do it even if it means you pay a higher rental rate for the space. Let them use their cash versus you using yours. 7) Write leases with free rent on the front end. This is another good way to save cash. Negotiate a rent free period into the front end of the lease, especially for new businesses or new offices. You will be glad you have the time to ramp up your volume with lower overhead initially. 8) Write leases with escape clauses if specific performance metrics aren’t achieved. This is one of my favorite tactics. Write into the lease a requirement that the volume of a new office has to achieve a certain number and if it doesn’t, you are off the hook and released from the lease at some point in time. 9) Slow up disbursements (payments). Push everything out as far as you can and keep your cash as long as possible without screwing up your relationships with critical subs and providers. 10) Create an incentive program with lower base pay and more pay based on company performance. Again – not easily done as base salaries are so critical for recruiting, but then again very few companies in this business actually commit to and follow through with a bonus program that pays out a certain percentage of profits to ALL employees every month. If they did, maybe more of them could have a system like this. Leave it subject and pay it out once a year and you won’t be able to use this bootstrapper’s tool. 11) Sub out everything vs. hire if it reduces your need for facilities, tools, equipment, training, etc. If you cannot make a long term commitment to keep a particular person or group busy on profitable work at all times, maybe you would be better off using subs or temps for the work. There is a lot of associated overhead with every employee you add to the payroll. 12) Provide incentives to clients for quick payment. Sometimes it makes sense because the cash is more valuable to you than the discount you are providing. 13) Buy another firm and get the sellers to finance it to you. Always a classic bootstrappers’ growth tactic. Some sellers may be willing to finance 100 percent of the deal. Even if you buy book value for cash, you get cash and AR for cash – and you can hopefully get the seller to finance the rest of the value to you over time.
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1200 North College Ave. Fayetteville, AR 72703 Chad Clinehens | Publisher cclinehens@zweiggroup.com Sara Parkman | Senior Editor & Designer sparkman@zweiggroup.com Christina Zweig | Contributing Editor czweig@zweiggroup.com Liisa Andreassen | Correspondent landreassen@zweiggroup.com Email: info@zweiggroup.com Online: thezweigletter.com Twitter: twitter.com/zweigletter Facebook: facebook.com/thezweigletter Published continuously since 1992 by Zweig Group, Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA. ISSN 1068-1310. Issued weekly (48 issues/year) $250 for one-year print subscription; free electronic subscription at thezweigletter.com/subscribe © Copyright 2020, Zweig Group. All rights reserved. Tel: 800-466-6275 Fax: 800-842-1560
MARK ZWEIG is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.
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THE ZWEIG LETTER March 9, 2020, ISSUE 1335
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