Question 01
What is commercial financial consulting for SMBs?
Commercial financial consulting for SMBs fundamentally involves guiding companies through their primary bottlenecks, particularly those impacting their commercial performance and financial health. My goal is to support businesses in resolving these issues to enable effective scaling. For instance, in manufacturing, one of the keys to SMB Growth is achieving the lowest possible unit costs to ensure profitability across all sales channels.
Many SMBs struggle to pinpoint these core drivers of profitability, an immediate area of opportunity. My focus is particularly on services businesses, which often face identifiable challenges. These include optimizing their sales motion to acquire new customers, streamlining team operations to deliver services at the lowest viable cost, and conducting sophisticated pricing analysis.
The focus is not so much helping them price relative to competitors, but more importantly, to price to value. These are all critical questions I’ve addressed throughout my 12-plus years of experience, and I am dedicated to helping businesses navigate them.
Key Takeaway
I help SMBs identify and resolve core commercial and financial bottlenecks, focusing on sales, operations, and value-based pricing, keys to SMB growth.
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Question 02
How does financial advisory help small businesses?
Financial advisory is absolutely critical for small businesses because it provides the data-driven foundation for thoughtful decisions that drive long-term profitability and viability. In its absence, business owners often find themselves endlessly working without seeing real growth. Our first step as a financial thought partner is to thoroughly understand a business’s current financial position: its revenue, costs, and the two or three key performance indicators (KPIs) that truly drive its long-term success.
I typically conduct a ‘Sprint’ to provide a historical financial perspective. This involves compiling all financial information into internationally accepted statements, such as those adhering to GAAP, providing clear visibility into past performance. We then collaborate with the management team to define their growth objectives. Together, we identify how measurement of key metrics (additional keys to SMB growth) will evolve with scale, pinpoint necessary capital and human capital investments, anticipate potential bottlenecks, and strategically deploy top talent to seize opportunities. Essentially, we help develop the robust fact base from which all thoughtful strategic questions can be formulated and answered.
We then establish simple, ongoing methods to collect these KPIs on a regular cadence and define action steps to take based on the read of the metrics each time.
Key Takeaway
I establish a data-driven financial foundation for SMBs, clarify KPIs, provide historical insights, and strategize investments to ensure long-term profitability and viability.
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Question 03
How to find the best SMB growth consultant?
Finding the ideal SMB growth consultant is more of an art than a science. The most satisfied clients are often those who’ve received a recommendation from another SMB that had a positive experience. However, the SMB consulting market is still quite undeveloped, and many businesses aren’t sure what they truly need or what quality of data they should be seeking.
Consequently, they often bring in a consultant to fulfill a perceived need rather than an actual one. The key is to find a consultant who is not just a task-completer, but a strategic thought partner. Someone willing to put in the hard work to gather the foundational facts necessary to answer critical strategic questions. To find such a partner, I suggest looking to larger businesses, perhaps those with over $10 million in revenue, and asking who has most effectively helped them with their strategy.
Often, it’s a board member asking insightful questions, or a friend who challenges their data, ultimately revealing the pivotal information needed to drive the business forward. While this type of high-level strategic support is prevalent in larger corporations, it’s less common for smaller businesses, which typically find incubators or general growth support rather than dedicated strategic consultants.
This is precisely the gap Oryx Horn aims to fill, building an offering specifically for SMBs with $1 million-plus in revenue, where this sophisticated level of financial and commercial advisory is desperately needed. We believe the keys to SMB growth are unlocked while firms remain small.
Key Takeaway
Seek a strategic thought partner, not just a task-completer. Ask larger businesses for recommendations, as the SMB market for strategic consultants is still evolving.
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Question 04
What services do business financial advisors provide?
Typically, business financial advisors offer three main categories of services.
The first is compiling a financial summary of the business’s historical performance. This often involves a ‘Sprint’ to gather all recorded information and produce a comprehensive set of financial statements, including the profit and loss statement, cash flow statement, and balance sheet. This historical data forms the essential baseline for making informed strategic decisions.
The second category is ongoing consulting, usually on a retainer basis, across a variety of topics. This approach is common because each business faces unique challenges that require tailored solutions, not a one-size-fits-all response. Advisors on retainer delve deep into the business’s operations, identify keys to SMB growth for the organization, adjust practices that are not working, and then influence key individuals within the organization to implement those changes.
The third category is project-focused work. This is when the ownership team has a very specific problem that requires a dedicated ‘SWAT team’ to solve quickly. Examples include analyzing a sales pipeline to identify high-probability conversion clients, or dissecting historical financials to pinpoint accounts where the business is losing the most money.
These projects are typically time-bound, require a fast turnaround, and are designed to provide the ownership team with the necessary insights to make a clear decision. At Oryx Horn, we lay out the sets of questions the owner needs to address, and typically also lay out the implications of each decision.
Key Takeaway
Financial advisors offer historical financial summaries, ongoing retainer-based consulting, and specific project-focused solutions like sales pipeline or cost analysis.
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Question 05
Best strategies for SMB financial planning and growth?
There truly isn’t a single universal answer; it’s always context-dependent. The most effective approach will be shaped by the specific circumstances of the business, the operational style and objectives of the ownership team, and the company’s overarching long-term strategy and outlook. What works for one business might not be suitable for another, even within the same industry.
Therefore, my keys to SMB growth for any owner seeking an effective consulting or financial advisory firm involve gaining a crystal-clear understanding of your business’s objectives, articulation of those objectives concisely and compellingly to your growth consultant and co-creating a solution.
This clarity is paramount because it allows us to effectively collaborate and develop a strategic plan specifically tailored to achieve your unique goals. Without a shared, precise understanding of where you want to go, even the most brilliant strategies will fall short.
Key Takeaway
No single strategy fits all. Clarity on business objectives and concise communication with your consultant are vital for effective financial planning and growth.
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Question 06
How to optimize cash flow for small business growth?
Optimizing cash flow for small business growth is a multi-pronged challenge, as it involves several interconnected elements.
We evaluate the capabilities of the treasury management function, which dictates the cadence of cash flowing into and out of the business.
That analysis leads directly to cash flow optimization, in which we analyze your cash receivables versus your cash payables. The optimal approach depends heavily on your business model: should you aim to receive cash before spending it, or does your model inherently require spending before revenue comes in? Retail, for example, often involves stocking shelves and waiting weeks or months for payments, meaning you spend before you receive.
Additionally, factors like customer willingness to pay and available payment channels significantly impact cash flow. Consider healthcare, where insurance companies must validate transactions before payment, often leading to a 30-to-60-day lag. This contrasts sharply with a direct-to-consumer model, where cash is often received almost instantaneously upon shipping a product.
While the universal truth is that cash should come in before it goes out, the specific implementation of this principle must be meticulously tweaked and customized based on your unique business model and operational realities.
Key Takeaway
Cash flow optimization is multi-faceted, relying on treasury management, balancing receivables/payables, and adapting to your business model’s unique payment cycles.
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Question 07
What is business valuation consulting for SMBs?
Business valuation consulting primarily comes into play when an SMB is contemplating a business transaction (e.g., a sale, an acquisition or a financing). This typically includes either the purchase or sale of a business or its assets, in which understanding the business’s true worth is fundamental to making an informed decision. This is often the first-ideated scenario people think of when discussing valuation, but there are many additional use cases.
For example, if you’re looking to raise capital, perhaps by offering debt to investors, those investors will invariably want to know your debt capacity. This capacity is often contingent on the amount of cash your business generates or, more broadly, on its overall valuation. Therefore, business valuation literally involves determining what a business is worth. These calculated values can then be strategically employed across a variety of scenarios, from M&A activities to capital raising and internal strategic planning.
Key Takeaway
Business valuation determines a company’s worth, crucial for transactions like buying, selling, or raising capital, informing debt capacity and strategic decisions. If you would like help thinking through your options as you consider either an acquisition or a sale,
send us a message here.
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Question 08
Why do small businesses struggle financially?
Small businesses often struggle financially because their leadership often do not make the necessary strategic investments to truly understand how their businesses are performing. Furthermore, they frequently lack a dedicated team to provide them with ongoing insights into that performance. This represents a major difference to owners of larger businesses, who almost always have team members who grasp the intricate workings of the business. According to
recent Federal Reserve research, small businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to manage operating expenses and obtain financing, with uncertainty causing many to delay critical capital investments.
The keys to SMB growth involve obtaining the right data at the right time and making an informed decision. Operating without this critical information is the equivalent of flying blind, making decisions that can severely impair the business in the long term. Our offering at Oryx Horn is specifically designed to provide SMB owners with the clarity and a trusted thought partner needed to navigate these crucial business decisions effectively, transforming guesswork into informed strategy.
Key Takeaway
SMBs struggle financially due to underinvestment in performance understanding and lack of dedicated teams, leading to uninformed, potentially damaging decisions.
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Question 09
How to fix common SMB financial problems?
There are several best practices I recommend for fixing common SMB financial problems, though this list is not exhaustive. First, from a treasury perspective, it’s vital to maintain a 13-week forecast of all cash inflows and outflows. This ensures you never run out of money and, ideally, are continually building your cash reserves to sustain business-as-usual operations.
Second, and perhaps the most important of the keys to SMB growth, is thinking strategically about the long-term viability of your business. You must be highly confident that your business is on a path to becoming self-sustaining. If it’s currently losing cash, you need a clear vision for how it will achieve ongoing profitability. This is a strategic rather than tactical question, requiring discussion with your ownership group and board to ensure you’re working towards a viable long-term North Star.
A third tactical fix, which I often see with founders, is the need for much more careful spending, especially in the early years when revenue generation is often weak. Unsuccessful businesses sometimes spend out of convenience rather than carefully considering every dollar of spend. I’ve observed founders pay multiples for tasks they could have done themselves at no cost. Being incredibly thoughtful and disciplined about every expenditure in the initial stages can be a quick and easy win for many SMBs, and the list of such fixes continues to grow.
Key Takeaway
Implement a 13-week cash forecast, define a strategic path to self-sustainability, and exercise rigorous spending discipline, especially during early growth stages. If you are looking for help creating your 13-week cash forecast, we are happy to help.
Book a complimentary consulting call here. If you would like to contact us via email,
write us an email here.
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Question 10
What are new trends in small business financial advisory?
The biggest mega-trend transforming small business financial advisory is the accelerating integration and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). While SMBs are often slow to adopt new technologies, growth consultants like Oryx Horn are actively helping them identify precisely where AI can be plugged into their workflows.
The keys to SMB growth in this scenario are to automate menial, repetitive tasks, freeing up valuable human time to focus on complex, strategic questions that AI cannot solve. We’re also seeing direct financial modeling capabilities emerging from AI tools. Given a few input assumptions, AI can now handle many of the high-attention-to-detail, routine tasks that were previously manual. Think about automated payment posting for banks, or the balancing of bank statements for individual businesses in accounting. These tasks, traditionally manual and time-consuming, are increasingly being handled in automated fashion.
The keys to SMB growth will involve understanding how the trend in use of AI will further reduce human hours spent on routine tasks, allowing teams to pivot towards more thoughtful and strategic endeavors. Beyond general AI integration, there’s a rise in specialized tech tools that provide the same, if not superior, output compared to human effort in specific areas.
Accounting is one such domain, and I’ve also observed this significantly in healthcare revenue cycle management. Any set of tasks that can be accurately automated and measured is increasingly moving towards AI solutions, representing a massive shift in how financial operations are managed.
Key Takeaway
AI is revolutionizing financial advisory by automating repetitive tasks, enhancing modeling, and freeing SMBs to focus on strategic growth.
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