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Understanding Your Business From A Financial Point Of View – With Lee Manning

Monday 28 June 2021

Understanding Your Business From A Financial Point Of View – With Lee Manning

Understanding Your Business From A Financial Point Of View – With Lee Manning 


In episode 1 of Beyond the Balance Sheet podcast, series 2, host Ashlee Bloom interviewed Lee Manning, one of the Partners here at Raffingers and one of only a few Profit First Professionals in the UK.  

Lee is an expert on helping clients to succeed, grow and be cash-rich, and in this episode shares his advice on how businesses can benefit from the pandemic and what they should be focussing on to get them through 2021. Lee also talks about what business owners can learn from taking stock and really understanding their business from a financial perspective. 


Often when you start a new business, it is because you have identified a problem that needs solving in the market and believe you have the best solution to solve that problem. What you DON'T think about, is the amount of business and financial 'admin' that you must do because of becoming a business owner, and how future-proofing your business finances are essential.  

Lee reinforces this point: “It's amazing how many business owners when they start just jump straight in. They don’t have a proper plan; they've got no goals set and they don't really know where they’re going. For every business owner, it’s critical to pull pack, get to know where your cash is, where the profit is, where your sales are coming from and where your peaks and troughs are.” 

Often, business owners aren't taught anything about finance, e.g. how VAT works, and before you have the profits to hire someone to do the books and the admin work, it’s essential to understand how your business is performing and to pay your profit first from the beginning.  

Whilst staying on top of your finances and managing your cash flow has always been one of the keys to success, after all - cash is king, this is now more important than ever before, following the pandemic.

2020 was a difficult year for most businesses, however, Lee predicts that 2021 and beyond are going to be far more challenging. To ensure your business is as lean as possible going through summer and coming out of lockdown, Lee believes that the most important thing business owners should be doing right now is to take stock of their finances and have up-to-date forecasts that allow you to be prepared for anything that might impact your finances, such as paying back your bounce back loans. Thousands of UK SMEs will now be starting to repay their loans, as yearlong holiday payments start to tail off. The bounce-back loan was just one of the measures the government introduced to assist businesses who were struggling because of the pandemic, and businesses need to make sure they are on top of their numbers and have plans in place to support any repayments. 

With that said the pandemic wasn’t all bad and Lee, who deals with hundreds of clients across a wide range of sectors, witnessed many entrepreneurs positively adapting their businesses during Covid-19, who have since gone on to experience more success than they could have possibly imagined.  

Lee explained: “What a lot of people have done is they’ve used lockdown to take the time out to look properly at their whole business. They have reviewed their marketing plans, looking at how they're really driving sales into the business, some have entered new markets, launched new products. They've really taken the bull by the horns and gone for it and ultimately developed their business for the better.” 

Whether you are someone that has recently started a side hustle, or a business owner of a mature company, Lee’s experience in helping businesses stay on top of their finances and scale up to the next level is invaluable. If you would like to hear some tangible tips on how to grow, scale, and secure the financial future of your business, then have a listen to the full podcast interview and explore series 1 and series 2 of Beyond The Balance sheet.  

Listen to episode 1 here:

Acast - https://play.acast.com/s/beyond-the-balance-sheet/understandingyourbusinessfromafinancialpointofviewwithleemanning

Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/understanding-your-business-from-financial-point-view/id1534549965?i=1000527089823

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/4IYsvZ0tnvbNjDAysRWm4J?si=e6bsZBUQQqeZkRLY21mPcQ&dl_branch=1&nd=1

Raffingers - https://raffingers.co.uk/hub/podcasts

If you would like to get in touch with us about how we can help you achieve your business and financial goals, please don’t hesitate to contact us. 

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