The Healthy Links of Wealth

It’s Financial Planning Week! Did you know that only 20% of small business owners set goals? If you’re in the 80%, it’s not too late to start. Don’t sit down and create a financial plan as if you’re King Midas counting your money. Take a minute, right now and write these three words of note – Efforts to Outcomes – and stick it somewhere you’ll see it. If you make efforts in the following three areas you will likely see positive outcomes in your wealth. Some from money, and some will be from important connections that you make with people. In fact, your small business will be more valuable if these links are strong.

Three healthy wealth links in a small business:

Client Support
Community Support
Personal Credit Score

Let’s start with 3. Your credit score

Do you know what your credit score is and if it’s excellent? What effort can you make to increase it? An excellent credit score is a healthy wealth link.

A credit score is a snap shot of your history as a borrower. It helps lenders determine the risk they are taking if they lend you money. The two largest components of a personal credit score are payment history and amount of debt outstanding. Here are basic guidelines to what your credit score means to a lender:

Number vs. meaning of a credit score

760 – 850: Excellent

720 – 760: Very good

680 – 720: Average – very good

620 – 680: Fair – poor
Below 620: Poor

2. Community Support

Are you aware of the resources your community has to support your small business? Are you actively making an effort to use these resources to build your business? Community support comes from programs and people who help you make easier efforts to get the sustainable profit outcomes needed in a small business. As a board member of SCORE San Diego, I help with our mission to foster vibrant small business communities through mentoring and education. I do this because I know that healthy small businesses help build healthy families and communities. “Financing Your Business Workshop” is a workshop I lead every other month, you can sign up for the 10/10 or 12/9 workshop at sandiego.score.org.

1. Client Support

What efforts are you making to keep and grow supportive clients? This part of your chain must be strong. It won’t matter how strong your credit score or your community support links are if you don’t have enough clients. The outcome must be enough clients who together pay you a bit more money than it costs to serve them In short businesses must be profitable to exist.

There you go the simplest financial plan of all – commit to making efforts to get positive outcomes in these wealth links – personal credit score, community support and client support and your small business’s value will grow.

If you need more help in this area, please contact me at liz@moneynative.com. I will help you speak the language of money.

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Liz Lemesevski, founder of Money Native, is passionate about creating an everyday, forward-thinking, fully participating San Diego Economic Region. Money Native’s aim is to grow organizations by focusing on profitability and managing risks and rewards. Ultimately, the goal is to become attractive to lenders, long-term investors or donors. Liz has her MBA in Finance from Fordham University and her BS in Finance and French from Rutgers University.