5 Finance Tips All Business Owners Should Follow

I don’t know about you, but finances aren’t really my strength. I’m an entrepreneur -- a big picture guy. I like to tackle big problems and develop big visions. I don’t like to sit around staring at a financial spreadsheet while I spend hours upon hours entering expenses by hand.

But whether we like them or not, finances are a necessary part of running a small business. To get some insight on effective procedures that entrepreneurs can adopt to improve their own accounting practices, I sat down for a quick chat with LessAccounting founder Allan Branch.

Here’s what he had to say on this critically important subject:

8 Myths Technologists Believe That Sink Businesses

Most technologists have little interest in the mechanics of starting and building a business. That’s why I recommend that they find a co-founder who loves business challenges, including marketing and finance. I usually envision a 50-50 ownership split for their efforts, but every engineer believes the technology side deserves the majority share.

In fact, an entrepreneur friend of mine, who made millions on her marketing expertise, asserted recently that most inventors fail in business because they refuse to believe that any business expertise or experience is worth more than 5 percent in partner equity. If you consider yourself a technologist, you probably believe and may be propagating one of the following myths:

8 Practices to Promote Urgency Within Your Startup

The business world is changing ever more rapidly these days. If you see a need or a big opportunity but don’t act fast enough, the opportunity will pass or a competitor will get there before you do. Customers and opportunities don’t wait. If your startup culture doesn’t include a sense of urgency, your probabilities of long-term success are miniscule.

Some of you may remember MySpace, which came early to social media, but lost the lead to Facebook by evolving too slowly, many analysts say. Other examples often mentioned include Hashable and MapQuest. A sense of urgency won’t save a bad idea or the wrong team, but the good news is that it will fail faster, allowing people to move on quickly to more productive opportunities.

A culture of urgency does not mean a hyperactive reaction to the crisis of the moment. It does mean a proactive and ever-vigilant plan to keep moving forward with the market and stay ahead of competition, even if you must make your own products obsolete. As an advisor to entrepreneurs, I recommend the following practices to build and nurture an urgency culture: