Business Financial Expert Nick Duva: How to Overcome the Three Biggest Mistakes That Can Kill a Business

LA JOLLA, Calif., May 14, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Failure to execute in three key areas will guarantee business failure, says author and business financial expert Nick Duva.

Duva is the CEO of Bonduva, Inc., a management consulting and turnaround firm. He has been the interim CEO or COO of 11 different companies, of which four were sold. He also has provided financial and operations improvement consulting to hundreds of other companies.

His new book, "The Biz Fix" (www.thebizfix.com) was published by CreateSpace in April, 2013. The book speaks to owners of privately-held companies who are ready to focus on cash flow, operational efficiency and having the best business model.

Duva has lived in the owner's shoes every day dealing with all aspects and pressures of business. Having run everything from a start-up firm to a $150 million consolidation, he has dealt with problems in all business functional areas. He specializes in helping businesses in the $5 million to $50 million revenue range.

If owners want to achieve the dream of one day achieving financial independence from their business, Duva says they must be exceptional performers in the following three areas:

1. Cash Flow. This is the most important fundamental to know in business. It is highly likely business owners will not be able to grow their business to achieve their dream, if they do not understand cash flow.
2. Operational Efficiency. Operational efficiency is absolutely necessary for on-time delivery, to keep costs low, and to provide customers with what they want. The business will not be able to grow to the needed value to fulfill the dream without operational efficiency.
3. Business Model. Business owners must continuously examine their business model to see if it still makes sense. One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is to keep doing what they have always done even when it doesn't work anymore.

"Failure to execute in any one of these three areas is the biggest mistake that can kill your business," says Duva.  "Failure to execute in all three guarantees business failure. There is no such thing as coasting when trying to improve or grow a business."

In each of the major areas of cash flow, operational efficiencies, and the business model, Duva advises that business owners must do the following:

• Have a ferocious discipline. "My definition of ferocious discipline is repeatedly doing the things you need to do to be successful, even if you don't like to do them. In other words, you are so disciplined that the correct, most important things always get done."
• Develop the processes that allow your employees to produce your product or service with consistent quality.
• Be able to focus on the things that deliver the profitable goods and/or services your clients want to buy from you.

Duva says there are two ways to die: a simple failure or a crash and burn. "If you recognize a business will not work, you must shut it down and preserve your other personal assets. You have simply failed, but you will live to do something else to capture your dream."

The other way for a business to die, says Duva, is when owners decide to keep pouring good money after bad and put everything they have accumulated outside the business back into it. In addition, they borrow more money from other sources and then lose all of that as well. This is a crash-and-burn scenario from which the owner will never recover.

SOURCE Nick Duva