I wish to pursue a career in environmental social impact and believe that being a Founder/CEO of my own company provides both challenges and opportunities to develop. But earlier this year I was at a difficult cross road concerning the day to day challenges of managing my company EcoFuture’s finance management. However, everything changed when I received the news that I had been selected to take part in the 2017 SE Outreach Accelerator.

I was about to get a loan from a financial institution but I kept pushing back accessing the funds because I knew something wasn’t right concerning the company’s finances. I had searched online sources to find templates to handle day to day money transactions and bought an app but it wasn’t working. We recorded a net profit at 35% but I couldn’t see this cash and ended up having to use money from the company’s grant award funds to operate the business. I had attended business training from other countries and organizations but finances kept being a challenge to me. So I didn’t know what to expect when embarking on the journey to Stockholm, but I was hoping for a possible change in my entrepreneurial journey. And the Accelerator was 1000% beyond my expectations.

I met one of our mentors, Maew, who made me list out my expenses on a monthly basis which enabled me to understand the basics for cash management. And another mentor, Luciana, changed my whole perspective on finance. She helped me understand EcoFuture’s finance/income management DNA and create a colorful and easy-to-use financial template to guide me on this journey. I was flabbergasted and knew instantly that EcoFuture’s financial management challenges had been solved.

Working with the new template I realised that my profit margin that I thought was 35% was actually 15-17%, so my new goal is therefore to increase EcoFuture’s profit margin to 35-45% through the following model I’ve set up with the help of my Accelerator mentors:

• Change the company supply chain channel by strategic partnership with public-private partnership waste management companies
• Work on the company customers’ delight by using value based costing in order to generate more revenue
• Give one of my current management team 10% of the company shares with a signed vesting document in order to compensate for his input for the first one (1) year and as an incentive to increase work output

This blog post was written by Destiny Frederick, a participant of the 2017 SE Outreach Accelerator. To find out more about her and her business, read her profile here.