Did you happen to watch the series The Bear? The show follows a struggling small business owner in Chicago who is trying to save his business.  It's a story a lot of small business owners in the U.S. can relate to. To help out these struggling entrepreneurs, Cheddar News brought on an expert here to help take your company from stressful to successful.

<div class="block">Did you happen to watch the series <i>The Bear</i>? The show follows a struggling small business owner in Chicago who is trying to save his business.  It&#39;s a story a lot of small business owners in the U.S. can relate to. To help out these struggling entrepreneurs, Cheddar News brought on Juliana Berger, director of payments at Intuit QuickBooks, to help take your company from stressful to successful.</div>
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Stretching Your Dollar

Don't Be 'The Bear.' Take Your Business From Stressful to Successful 

So do you happen to watch the series? The Bear? Will it be hard not to at least not to hear about it with many people raving about season one and season two, if you haven't, the show follows a struggling small business owner in Chicago who's trying to become successful and we got the windows, the demo, the brick that 50 K plus 20 K and that is 70 K. That's not bad. Really? Is your head spin? Well, it's a story that a lot of small business owners in the US can relate to and the good news is that we have an expert here to help us take our ideas, our small businesses from stressful, too successful. Joining me now is Juliana Berger, the Director of Payments at into it. Quick books, Juliana, what is the right recipe for small businesses that want to thrive? I love the way you said it from stressful to successful Chris. And so we're gonna anchor on that first of all. Thank you for having me. So excited to be here and talk about small businesses, small businesses are the backbone of the American economy. So if they're successful, America is a success. And so sharing tips about how businesses can thrive and ultimately stay alive is so key to our uh our story into it. And if you think about it based on facts from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business is about 20% of businesses fail within the first year and only about 50% of businesses actually survive past five years. And the top reason for this is actually what we call cash flow crunch, right? And into it, we survey the businesses that we support and we were learned that 69% of businesses actually suffer from managing their cash flow well, and up to about one in four business owners actually then end up dipping into personal reserves to bridge that gap. And Kristen, that is such a shame because there are tools and there are tips that businesses can leverage to be able to mitigate that risk today. Ok, Juliana. So let's talk about those tools, the ones that small businesses need to adapt early on to sustain that cash flow and the business. Yes, so we call these embedded financial services tools and Quickbooks is a great example of this, right, a tool that allows you to aggregate your financial data and then provides you a vantage point to see both historically as well as predictive future forward, what your cash flow is gonna look like and look small business owners, they're smart, right? They know their space well, they know their products, they know their customers well. But one of the biggest challenges I see is that small businesses tend to make decisions based on cash flow on a specific need at a specific point in time. So they're asking themselves questions, like should I open a second location? Right? Or can I afford this marketing campaign? And some of the challenges of having decisions made at that specific point in time is that cash flow is dynamic, it's interconnected, it evolves. It depends on the time of year. It depends sometimes on the time of the day. Um you know, macro shifts can, can impact it, competitive threats can impact it. And so um a lot of really small smart business owners tend to lose the force for the trees when they only focus at decisions a certain time. And so these tools allow you to see holistically what both um your trends were in the past and then they leverage especially today with rapid innovation like generative A I future for predictive analytics to be able to really pinpoint your needs and call them out before you even know them. So I think some people who want to start a business, they might be overwhelmed. Right. Wondering do I need an MB A to run a business to manage things like cash flow. Juliano, what would you tell them? I would say no, right. And I would say, please don't think that you have to solve it all yourself, leverage these tools to be able to give you that strategic advantage, to make the decisions, the right decisions at the right point. And so leveraging that information to see holistically is super important. And there's two things I would say as well. One is, please do not think about these services as a crutch or a cost. So many small businesses that I speak to, it hurts me, but they're like, we don't want to accept credit cards or we don't want to accept payments because we don't want to pay the processing fee or we don't want to take out a loan because we don't want to owe money. And this is such a shame because they think about these embedded financial services as a crutch or a cost instead of actual strategic growth levers. And so the ability to think about um these services as an opportunity versus a cost is a real game shift in how people think and how businesses thrive. And so, you know, an example is small businesses, about 52% of small businesses get paid late and of those businesses that get paid 89% of them say that that significantly impacts their ability to hit their growth metrics. And so if we think about accepting digital payments, like credit cards or paypal, not as a as a cost, but actually as the ability for you to convert your sales better as an ability for you to gain your money faster. That's a game changer, right? Because the money faster then means that, I mean, one of the single most important thing you can do as a business owner is actually maniacally focused on this because it all definitely comes down to cash flow. Julian, I just want to jump in to keep things moving here. Cash flow you need to sustain and create a thriving business is clear. Sometimes factors will be out of your control. But what typically does lead to a small business failure that some potential owners or owners themselves out there will want to avoid. Yeah, and it's really focusing on your product and your and your business, right? And so what ends up happening is business say, I'm doing great, I'm growing, you know, 5% 7% a month, but they don't see the larger picture, right? So having that wider lens and looking at well, um how's the market growing? Is the market growing faster than you or not? Are you, are, are you beating your competitors or not? And so um the ability to look not only at your growth relative to, you know, how you were doing a month or so ago, but look at the in like influence of other factors in the decision would be really big in terms of understanding how much cash flow you need to survive. What's what's coming your way? OK. Final words, Juliana, your best advice to small business owners. What does everyone need to know to stretch their dollar automate, automate automate. I mean, it is amazing how much time small business owners spend on manual administrate administrative payments related tasks up to 14 hours a week. Now, if you were to think about a five day work week and eight hour work day, that's one third of your time spent on manual administrative tasks, imagine what you could do if you could automate some or all of that and then spend that energy to grow your business. That would be the make or break that plus these financial services will be the break between that thrive and that survive, which is so important for businesses as they look, uh look forward, right? Juliana Berger. Thank you so much for joining, giving us all the tips that we need to thrive and do more than survive if we're interested in opening a.