4 ways to fight financial failure in 2010
This year looks like another downer, says CPA firm Lacher McDonald and Co. But these tips can help you tread water and maybe improve.
The start of a new year hasn't given the veterinary consultants at Lacher McDonald and Co. CPAs a rosy outlook on the economy. The patient is still bleeding, just not as bad, according to the firm in its latest newsletter. It has all the trappings of a year of further decline in the economy, but tight times shouldn't give way to despair. Here are some tips to help your practice hold its own:
1. Focus on service. Good service is always important, but businesses that have always had it as a mantra are still seeing results.
2. Be smart about cost cutting. Cutting the obvious dead weight was easy. But from here on, all cuts are best handled with care. Practice owners who cut too deep will face trouble hiring qualified team members when the economy turns around.
3. Train. Turn downtime into learning time. Better-educated team members make for better client service and can be an added boost.
4. Hold back on spending. Pay down debt, but think long and hard about prepaying any loans. Keeping cash on hand can be more important than prepaying a mortgage whose ending balance is decades away.
Practice owners who take an active role in practice management are staying afloat and sometimes excelling, according to the newsletter. There's no reason you can't be in that group.
