Louis Massaro walks through building a financial forecast before expanding to a new location or product. A detailed forecast shows you anticipated expenses, how much cash runway you need, and whether to bootstrap or raise capital. It prepares you for slower growth, pricing pressure, and unexpected shifts that could drain cash.
Fourth thing you need to do is create a financial forecast so that you can see, okay, if we're going to open up in, you know, let's say January, all right, what do we anticipate our expenses to be based upon your level of how you're going to open up? Remember, you could bootstrap it or you could just throw a ton of money at it and go that route, right? But you want to be able to have that financial forecast that you can see So you're not just kind of like, you know, tossing it out there to see if it works. You have a game plan and you know that you're going to have the money to stick in there and make it happen because it might not take off as quick as you think it might. So you need to have the financial staying power to be able to, you know, muscle through any, any, you know, unforeseen circumstances, any slower than usual times. You know, maybe you need to adjust and adapt to the market and the way the competition prices. There's a lot of things that could go on. You don't want to be strapped for cash, uh, in that situation.
