Episode #126: Alvin Carlos | The Critical Skills Business Owners Need for Effective Financial Planning

In this Episode of Enlightened Entrepreneur Podcast, Alvin Carlos, a certified financial planner and a managing partner of  District Capital Management, shares his expertise, particularly the critical skills he’s learned and developed through the years that every business owner must have in order to achieve greater success with managing their finances.

Key Questions Asked:

What is Alvin’s background and how did he get started with the financial planning industry? What are the critical skills that business owners need to develop and how can they develop them? How important is having an outsider work with the business owner either as a mentor or adviser? What practices can business owners implement right now to get them started on the road to saving money for retirement? What is the perfect mindset a business owner should have about developing these skills when it comes to financial planning? What criteria does Alvin use to identify who to go to? Knowing what he knows now, if he were to start all over again with building his business, what are the two areas that he would have focused more on that can help him or that is helping him now to reach his goals? How does Alvin go about finding experts? What other criteria do they need to look out for apart from their credentials? How important is financial planning today to a business person and why is it important that they should act now?

Highlights of Lessons Learned:

Critical Skills

The very first important skill that we all should have is just being aware of the impact of the things we do in our credit score. The most important thing that small business owners need to be aware of is paying bills on time. If you have a late payment it will stay in your credit report for seven years and creditors will see that for the whole time and it will raise red flags. The second important skill is smart tax planning. A lot of small business owners intermingle their personal finance and their business finances. One of the first things that Alvin asks his clients is to separate that.

Mindset

If you have a spending plan in place, you can take steps to bring your debt down and improve your credit score. Business owners must have an open mind and be capable of accepting advice from experts. They also need to be able to identify who to listen to. You will want to work with a financial adviser that has the right credentials. Look for certified financial planners. One thing that Alvin has come to appreciate when he was starting out was the connections he’s made with the experts from different industries. The sooner business owners act, the sooner their finances can get solidified and can then have more financial stability.