Far West Capital | Small Business Blog - Factoring Tips
383 FOLLOWERS
Far West Capital's small business blog provides factoring tips, working capital and tailor-made financial services that meet your company's specific needs.
Far West Capital | Small Business Blog - Factoring Tips
5y ago
What are we doing all this for?
In my role, I talk to entrepreneurs and founders constantly, people who are building something for their families and their employees. These are people who are working a lot; burning the proverbial midnight oil, waking up early, working through lunch, missing dinners they’d rather have had with their families. And they’ve taken a leap – stepped out into the unknown, put their talent and finances on the line to achieve their goals. Their motivations vary, but one common thread always comes up: freedom.
We all want it, in some way, whether it’s financial freedom ..read more
Far West Capital | Small Business Blog - Factoring Tips
5y ago
The other day, our client’s office ground to a halt.
It was silly, really – a single crucial password that had been lost to time and turnover and someone’s Post-It getting stuck on the back of the wrong notebook. It was one of those things that wasn’t critical – until it was.
Little things like that – small hangups in your processes, meetings that aren’t working, small costs that add up – are the kind of thing that can build and build while you’re busy making rain and charging forward. In addition, playing catchup on those can hurt the time you need to invest in the future, in yourself, and ..read more
Far West Capital | Small Business Blog - Factoring Tips
5y ago
This year brought a lot of change – and we wrote about the lessons learned through it all. We profiled four clients whose commitment to customer service drove them to start their own companies. And we talked a lot about trust – how you find it, how you maintain it with your employees, and how you communicate it to your customers.
Here’s what we talked about this year.
January:
How do you avoid complacency? We started a new relationship, and got inspired to trust in new leadership.
You could do worse than following Central Bank chairman’s advice:
“I would want to be less judgmental, less af ..read more
Far West Capital | Small Business Blog - Factoring Tips
5y ago
Ruben joined the United States Army in 1996, a South Texas kid who wanted to serve his country.
Twenty years later, he signed his discharge papers and retired from a job he’d had more than half his life. He’d deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe. He had five children – all under the age of 20 – who he’d seen between deployments, but hadn’t had much of a chance to raise. He’d been at home maybe a year in 16 years.
“It was time to get out and succeed as a parent,” he says, just a bit ruefully. “My wife is a hero. I owe her a lot.”
It was an adjustment. His family wasn’t used to having him aro ..read more
Far West Capital | Small Business Blog - Factoring Tips
5y ago
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the wors ..read more
Far West Capital | Small Business Blog - Factoring Tips
5y ago
The last time we checked in with this staffing company, three family members – Cruz, his wife Nelba, and daughter Cecilia had taken their staffing business from their kitchen table to the office they built in 2007, and were expanding. Cruz had spent years in food manufacturing before launching his company, and through the first few decades, his company focused on providing staff to food manufacturing plants just like the one where Cruz had once worked.
They made a name for themselves with service. Last time we talked, Cecilia had pointed out “We don’t sell divots, and we don’t sell lumber. We ..read more
Far West Capital | Small Business Blog - Factoring Tips
5y ago
The long game
For four years now, I’ve volunteered with Explore Austin. It’s a really cool organization; teachers nominate high potential students from low income communities as mentees the summer before their seventh grade year, and then we meet one Saturday every month until they graduate high school.
We use the outdoors (rock climbing, mountaineering, canoeing, etc) as a way to emphasize character and leadership development, with the ultimate goal of transforming their lives for the better. Every summer, all the young men & their mentors go for a weeklong outdoor adventure. It gets the ..read more
Far West Capital | Small Business Blog - Factoring Tips
5y ago
I don’t get angry. I don’t get anxious.
That’s just how I’m wired; I always thought it was a good thing, an advantage. It certainly helped when I was building a company. It helped, too, when there were problems; I didn’t overreact, didn’t let it keep me up at night.
Lately, though, I’ve been rethinking whether it’s an advantage – or whether it’s a liability, in ways I hadn’t really considered.
An operating system for life
How many decisions do you make a day?
Little ones, big ones. What do I wear? Does this email require my attention?
How should I react when someone lets me down?
Mental model ..read more
Far West Capital | Small Business Blog - Factoring Tips
5y ago
A disclaimer: I am very biased.
I grew up in Houston, Texas, and came of age during the glory years of Hakeem ‘The Dream’ Olajuwon. When the Houston Rockets won the NBA Championship in 1993, I was a fifth-grader, barely allowed to stay up late enough that summer to watch them take down the Knicks in seven games for their first-ever championship. I loved the Dream, of course, but I really loved the role players. If you made me rank them, I’d tell you my favorite was Vernon “Mad Max” Maxwell, followed by Mario Elie and “Big Shot” Robert Horry, who strongly resembled Will Smith in those “Fresh Pr ..read more
Far West Capital | Small Business Blog - Factoring Tips
5y ago
Luis has always worked with his hands. First carpentry, then formwork – molds – for concrete pouring.
In 1978, just shy of his 40th birthday, he decided to go out on his own, getting his own license and eventually incorporating his own construction company in 1980.
For the first twenty years, he kept it small; just county projects, manageable stuff. Then he hired a talented CFO in 2000, and since then, they’ve built Luis’s construction company to tackle huge projects – all commercial; most of them big, ambitious, multi-year challenges. Museums. Sporting arenas. A movie studio’s giant parking ..read more