Financial Strategy: The Recipe for Small Business Success

What is a Small Business Financial Strategy?

A Financial Strategy is a guide on the most lucrative and efficient way of budgeting, implementing, operating, marketing, and selling products, services, and processes and then projecting and managing future financial outcomes.

A financial strategy should give you confidence that the business model can be supported financially and is sustainable.

How to Create a Financial Strategy

Before you can start strategizing, you need to know all of the things, or processes, that your small business does. Identifying processes is based on what you need to do and the steps required to complete it.

For example, the process to create and post new content could be to identify the content required (eg create a blog, Instagram Reel, or ad), conduct content research and planning, write and edit the content, review the content for accuracy, completeness, and accessibility, add branding, and then post.

Want to know more about processes? Here is the FREE Guide on Process Reviews and How to Complete them.

Use processes as a way to show how you will effectively order your financial processes. Once you're ready, add the following:

Vision	Identify short and long-term financial goals that identify revenue and expense goals. The vision should be based on both intrinsic and data-driven metrics.
Budget	Identify the amount of money that can be spent per business segment on a frequency that is comfortable with your business.
Strategic Options	Identify ways to cut costs while maintaining quality. Eliminate expenditures that do not meet objectives. For the financial expenditures that are required and cannot be eliminated, identify cost-effective ways to achieve the same results without compromising quality.
Execution Plan	Identify the steps required to meet the strategic options.
KPI and Thresholds	Set baseline KPIs and thresholds that will be used to manage and track the performance of each workstream.
Management Plan	Identify how, and at what point action plans will be created and how they will be managed. Identify how performance will be monitored, at what frequency, by whom, and how. Identify how, and at what point action plans will be created and how they will be managed and remediated.

Use this information as a way to start thinking through your Financial Strategy. As you write, think about your needs first without editing. Write down everything you could need. Then as you revise, remove any process that is unnecessary, financially unviable, or that removes the quality from the process, but keep or add anything that would be financially lucrative and efficient.

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