Small Business Stress: Part 1
This is the first in a series of blogs, provided to you, by our very own accountants in Central Missouri. Over the next several weeks, our Central Missouri accounting firms will focus on common stumbling blocks for start-ups and small businesses. Our Mid-Missouri accounting firms' goals are to be conversational and to provide readers with thinking points that may kickstart important conversations in their organizations. All stories told in these blogs are completely fictional and not based on any individual, but the themes will probably be familiar to many small business owners. Please keep in mind, if you are trying to start up a business in Mid-Missouri, Wilson Toellner CPA is here for you and can help you with any tax planning assistance you may need. We also offer many other services that can be extremely helpful to small business owners. All of these services can be found on our website at www.WTCPA.com. Give us a call today to learn more. In the meantime, keep reading for the first part of our Small Business Stress blog series.
Most small businesses begin when an individual or a team has an idea, a skill, or a product that has value to others. If you have a product and a customer, you might just make a sale. If you can create recurring and profitable sales, you might just have a business.
The trouble is that as sales ramp up, your product or skill alone is likely not enough to keep you in business, no matter how useful or unique it is. Instead of doing the thing that your business was born from (also the thing you’re the most passionate about) you now have to manage relationships with customers and vendors, keep your bills paid and make sure your money shows up on time, carry appropriate insurance coverage, track liabilities for sales and use tax, keep organized books and records, and try not to get waylaid at income tax time... and that’s all before you dip a toe into hiring and managing your first employee.
For example, let’s look at Sally. Sally is a 45-year-old mother of two teenagers. She also owns her own business. In college, Sally studied business management, so she’s got a general grasp of what small business owners should know. Her real passion, though, is learning about people’s motivations and tastes and then applying that knowledge to provide them with exactly the right product from her store. Her ability to do that has enabled her to grow her sales volume by 250% in the last five years, hiring 8 team members along the way. Members of the community look at Sally’s success in business and think she’s got it all together, but no one understands what Sally has been struggling with for the last couple of years behind the scenes. She enjoys the people who work for her, but she’s frustrated that none of them have become leaders in the business. No matter how long anyone stays or how many new people she tries to bring in, no one takes the torch from her as lead salesperson, and she’s too busy doing her own work to train them to do theirs. She’s also dealt with some turnover on her staff, losing someone recently because he wanted a raise. Sally valued the employee but simply couldn’t commit to the extra expense until after her income taxes were paid. Sally has no idea how much she will owe, and her tax return is currently on extension because she hasn’t caught up her books from last year yet. Sally’s husband wonders why she doesn’t turn the bookwork over to a CPA, but Sally blames it on the cost. She took some accounting classes in college, so she can plug the numbers and prepare her own filings when she has time. Even if her books were current, filing right now would be tough. Last year she was crushed by self-employment taxes after she prepared her return, and she’s got a sales tax underpayment notice on her desk currently (she must have calculated something wrong). She figures she can catch things up and organize herself in a few weeks when her family goes on vacation. She’ll spend some extra time in the office while they’re away.
Sally is dealing with pressures that are entirely too common among people who own and operate growing businesses. She’s struggling to delegate work; she’s failing to create great experiences for her staff; she’s flying blind without accurate data to show the financial health of her business; she’s barely in compliance with regard to income and sales taxes; she lacks advisors and advocates to coach and encourage her; she’s getting pulled away from the part of her business she loves; and she’s missing out on family life away from the office.
Sally is wearing every hat that she’s capable of, and that’s admirable on the surface, but her business has grown to a point where she no longer has time to effectively perform that many functions and the future of her business (and her family) may depend on her willingness to accept that. Even if she could, where would she turn?
At Wilson Toellner CPA, we see Sally as an ideal client, because we can deliver life-changing results to her business and her family. By taking the time to get to know Sally, her areas of strength, her personal and professional goals, and her challenges, we can collaboratively develop a workable strategy to pull Sally out of this rut. We use our expertise not simply to prepare financial statements and tax returns, but to coach and counsel business owners to make their work and lives more enjoyable.
By taking over the back-office work that’s eating into her time, we can produce timely and accurate data to not only keep her compliant but to proactively plan ahead and minimize her tax. This will help her keep more of her money, reduce her stress, and allow her to make better decisions. It will also supply Sally with the time she needs to teach, engage, and retain her best team members… after she gets back from her family vacation.
Written By: Adam Wolfe, CPA
Most small businesses begin when an individual or a team has an idea, a skill, or a product that has value to others. If you have a product and a customer, you might just make a sale. If you can create recurring and profitable sales, you might just have a business.
The trouble is that as sales ramp up, your product or skill alone is likely not enough to keep you in business, no matter how useful or unique it is. Instead of doing the thing that your business was born from (also the thing you’re the most passionate about) you now have to manage relationships with customers and vendors, keep your bills paid and make sure your money shows up on time, carry appropriate insurance coverage, track liabilities for sales and use tax, keep organized books and records, and try not to get waylaid at income tax time... and that’s all before you dip a toe into hiring and managing your first employee.
For example, let’s look at Sally. Sally is a 45-year-old mother of two teenagers. She also owns her own business. In college, Sally studied business management, so she’s got a general grasp of what small business owners should know. Her real passion, though, is learning about people’s motivations and tastes and then applying that knowledge to provide them with exactly the right product from her store. Her ability to do that has enabled her to grow her sales volume by 250% in the last five years, hiring 8 team members along the way. Members of the community look at Sally’s success in business and think she’s got it all together, but no one understands what Sally has been struggling with for the last couple of years behind the scenes. She enjoys the people who work for her, but she’s frustrated that none of them have become leaders in the business. No matter how long anyone stays or how many new people she tries to bring in, no one takes the torch from her as lead salesperson, and she’s too busy doing her own work to train them to do theirs. She’s also dealt with some turnover on her staff, losing someone recently because he wanted a raise. Sally valued the employee but simply couldn’t commit to the extra expense until after her income taxes were paid. Sally has no idea how much she will owe, and her tax return is currently on extension because she hasn’t caught up her books from last year yet. Sally’s husband wonders why she doesn’t turn the bookwork over to a CPA, but Sally blames it on the cost. She took some accounting classes in college, so she can plug the numbers and prepare her own filings when she has time. Even if her books were current, filing right now would be tough. Last year she was crushed by self-employment taxes after she prepared her return, and she’s got a sales tax underpayment notice on her desk currently (she must have calculated something wrong). She figures she can catch things up and organize herself in a few weeks when her family goes on vacation. She’ll spend some extra time in the office while they’re away.
Sally is dealing with pressures that are entirely too common among people who own and operate growing businesses. She’s struggling to delegate work; she’s failing to create great experiences for her staff; she’s flying blind without accurate data to show the financial health of her business; she’s barely in compliance with regard to income and sales taxes; she lacks advisors and advocates to coach and encourage her; she’s getting pulled away from the part of her business she loves; and she’s missing out on family life away from the office.
Sally is wearing every hat that she’s capable of, and that’s admirable on the surface, but her business has grown to a point where she no longer has time to effectively perform that many functions and the future of her business (and her family) may depend on her willingness to accept that. Even if she could, where would she turn?
At Wilson Toellner CPA, we see Sally as an ideal client, because we can deliver life-changing results to her business and her family. By taking the time to get to know Sally, her areas of strength, her personal and professional goals, and her challenges, we can collaboratively develop a workable strategy to pull Sally out of this rut. We use our expertise not simply to prepare financial statements and tax returns, but to coach and counsel business owners to make their work and lives more enjoyable.
By taking over the back-office work that’s eating into her time, we can produce timely and accurate data to not only keep her compliant but to proactively plan ahead and minimize her tax. This will help her keep more of her money, reduce her stress, and allow her to make better decisions. It will also supply Sally with the time she needs to teach, engage, and retain her best team members… after she gets back from her family vacation.
Written By: Adam Wolfe, CPA
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