Your Survival Budget

I thought that most, if not all small businesses had at least stablized, if not partially recovered from the recession. However, I did a blog post for Entrepreneur that was based on an article about how to did yourself out of the ditch you’re in.
However, the Entrepreneur article completely missed the fact that, before you start trying things, you should have your business stabilized, at least to the point where you’re not losing money every month.
The reason is simple for the survival budget: If you do much that’s new, you’ll have to borrow the resources, which is still problematic, because the banks won’t likely lend you any money based on a losing profit/loss statement.
Your survival budget in concept is simple: whatever it takes to get you to breakeven before you run out of resources. This means cutting staff, selling buildings, renting rather than owning, whatever it takes.
No doubt about it, it’s a painful process, but you have to approach the process with an open mind. Everything’s on the table, including your ego.
I can’t tell you what should be in the survival budget, or what shouldn’t, but what I can say is that you’ll have to go through your profit and loss statement year to date line by line. If any item isn’t essential for the survival of your business, out it goes.
Anything that you’ve charged personally to the business (boats, RVs, Time Shares) is among the first.
Put everyone on a budget, give them a little spiff if they spend less than budgeted.
I hope this is helpful; we can do a live session if anyone wants one (call in on the 800 line), and I’ll quote you a time estimate to help. Until we get our payment system back up and running on ASE, however, payment would have to be through Solutions Forum.