4 min read
Client Spotlight: Consulting business Revealed Resources has cash flow mastered
Rashid Kotwal and his wife Barbara Sauter have decades of combined experience helping professional services business owners maximise their businesses.
After 20 years working in corporate IT, Rashid closed the door on this chapter of his career, and focused on building a new life as a business consultant in Sydney. Barbara left behind her corporate job in the travel industry.
Together, they built their consulting practice, Revealed Resources, which specialises in helping business owners maximise their sales results.
“We're like sports coaches for business people,” Rashid says.
“We help leadership teams find the critical path – a very few activities which, done right, maximise your results, so you meet your business objectives.”
Rashid says the problems he and Barbara solve are two-fold.
“We coach business leaders who are caught up in the day-to-day grind. They run around like mad, or they find it hard to set a vision or a strategy. In effect they’re working ‘for’ their businesses. Cash flow is unstable and often everyone else gets paid before them.
“Having said that, nothing happens until someone sells something. We have a major focus towards sales. Maximising your results. Finding the critical activities you need to do to position yourself, prospect and market your services effectively,” Rashid says.
Years ago, Revealed Resources mainly got paid via cheques from their clients. This involved a lot of manual and time-consuming processes for a company of two people.
“I distinctly remember a time when a client of ours gave us a cheque. I asked if he could just transfer the money because if you give us a cheque, we have to take the cheque to the bank, then wait the five days for the thing to clear. He said ‘I'll do it tonight’. Of course, tonight never came,” Rashid says.
“One day turned into two days, two went to three, then it went to three weeks, and we still didn't have the money. I learned a lesson from that.”
When it took one client more than three weeks to pay an outstanding invoice, and Rashid and Barbara’s own expenses still owing, they knew they needed to look for an alternative payment method to secure their cash flow.
“Looking at our business model, we realised almost all of our clients were on a monthly retainer. Rather than sending them an invoice to pay when they got around to it, we looked for a more automated solution,” Rashid says.
“What I like about Ezidebit is that they don't charge a percentage. It’s a flat, nominal fee. And it’s pretty seamless. We fill in the paperwork and our clients sign the agreement, and then every month the money comes into our account. It saves everyone a lot of hassle. We still invoice people for their records, but the money comes in automatically.“
Eight years later, Rashid and Barbara are still using Ezidebit to take the hassle out of their payments.
“With a small business, any business really, it's absolutely critical that you keep on top of your cash flow.”
Revealed Resources business owners Rashid Kotwal and Barbara Sauter say that 95% of their clients are on monthly retainer agreements with the payments being processed by Ezidebit.
“Ezidebit has taken a lot of the hassle of working out, do I need to make sure that I've invoiced this person? Have they paid? Do I need to chase them up? Do I need to make phone calls?”
“In the past, even with good clients, you still might have to make a phone call, because their bookkeeper hasn’t processed the payment or something would stop the payment coming in on the day,” Rashid says.
Although well established, Revealed Resources hasn’t finished growing yet. They’re planning to release a series of new online marketing and selling programs to accompany their already robust library of free resources for clients.
Need a hand getting your cash flow basics covered for your business? Get in touch with one of our payment specialists today to get started.