Beyond The Launch: Essential Business Finance 2

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Even if you have a great product or service, it is not enough. You need to know how to make your business work for you and be profitable.

Most small businesses fail after 3 years because they do not know how to manage their finances properly.

Making those important business decisions can be difficult, especially if you're not sure what your options are or how much it will cost.

Many small businesses don't take advantage of professional accountants or finance experts, which means that they often end up making costly mistakes as they try to navigate their way through this complicated world on their own.

The Beyond the Launch series of the “Small Business, Big Ideas” podcast is designed to give you practical advice from real-world experience so that you can avoid common pitfalls and learn how to run a better business without breaking the bank.

We discuss financial reports and forecasting, how to stay out of trouble, managing the personality of money, accounting basics, and more!

Tiffany holds two degrees in business and is both a Senior Professional in HR (SPHR) and an Enrolled Agent (EA). She works closely with local businesses and non-profits, helping them analyze their profitability, operational spending, and projected tax liability. Her firm also provides payroll services to about 40 businesses and prepares 1,600 tax returns annually.

Tiffany has 10 years of experience in Human Resources and is beginning her 5th year in tax preparation. Tiffany is passionate about employee and client engagement and serving as a solid business resource to the community.

A life-long advocate for civic leadership and entrepreneurship, Ken's career has included small business creation and ownership, the director of an entrepreneurship center and faculty member of a community college, and leadership in the not-for-profit and community development organizations of his community.

Over the last decade, as founder and President of Distinct, Vince has worked with over 400 small businesses and nonprofits. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from DePauw University and is an MBA candidate with Quantic School of Business and Technology.

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Transcript

Vincent Aguirre: Hello, everyone! My name is Vince Aguirre. I'm the president of a web design company named Distinct. Since 2013, we've worked with over 400 small businesses to improve their online presence through web design, SEO, and marketing. I'm also the host of the Small Business Big Ideas podcast and Facebook group. Today I'm joined by Ken Eitel and Tiffany Deer. Tiffany holds two degrees in business and is both a senior professional in HR and an enrolled agent. She works closely with local businesses and nonprofits, helping them analyze their profitability, operational spend, and projected tax liability. Ken is a familiar face from our last session. And his career has included small business creation and ownership. He's been the director of an entrepreneurship center, a faculty member of a community college, and leadership in a nonprofit and community development organizations in this community. I'm gonna first bring Tiffany up to say a few words and we'll bring Ken on as well. Hey, Tiffany!

Tiffany Deer: Hey Vince, thanks so much!

Vince: Yeah, happy you're here!

Tiffany: I'm excited to have the opportunity to be here!

Vince: Absolutely. Is there anything you want to tell anyone listening before we get started?

Tiffany: I'm Tiffany Deer. As Vince said, I have been in the tax preparation industry for just about five years. And prior to that, I spent 10 years in human resources. I currently am the owner of Deer Accounting here in Greencastle Indiana.

Vince: And before we get started if someone does want to send you an email, what's the best way for them to reach you?

Tiffany: Great. You can reach me at Tiffany@DeerAccounting.com.

Vince: Perfect. Let's bring Ken in. Hey Ken!

Ken Eitel: Hi Vince! Welcome Tiffany, glad to have you. My background has been said as in retail business, probably 50 years in retail. But in addition to that teaching at a community college, as well as doing consulting for small business startups. I just want to take a minute to talk about what we talked about last week to try to bring those who weren't around up to speed. And then kind of turn it over to Tiffany for the first section of what we're going to do here. We talked a lot about business statements. We talked about balance sheets, or asset and liability statements. We talked about earning statements, which some people call profit and loss statements, and how you need accurate statements to properly run your business, not just to know where you are, but actually with forecasting and experience where you're going. And so Tiffany is going to talk a little bit about common pitfalls that she sees in her accounting practice. In terms of what you all need to know, after you open your doors, you know there's a lot of planning goes in before and a lot of excitement. But sometimes there are these realities that come along after you kind of get launched, so to speak. So Tiffany, why don't you talk about some of the common pitfalls that you see.

3:36 Have Multiple Bank Accounts & It's Important to Find a Good Banker

Tiffany: Sure Ken. Unfortunately, a lot of what I'm about to tell you isn't exactly as exciting as it is to start a business from the ground up. But, that said it is just as important to focus on a few of these items that I will bring to your attention. Some individuals that have just started a business may not have thought about these areas. And it just when you don't think about these areas, it really could expose your startup business to risk. One of the very first things that I always encourage clients or new entrepreneurs to do is to start up and open a business checking account. I know Ken you touched on this last week, but I want to reiterate, it's so important to separate the transactions between the business and your personal. And when you mix those two, it becomes very complicated and challenging to determine, ‘What is the expense of the business? What are you paying yourself?' When all of those funds are in the same pot, it's next to impossible to reconcile that and to determine what your expenses are for your business as well as the revenue coming in. This also helps at tax time when your tax preparer might ask you to provide a summary of what your business brought in as far as revenue for the prior year. On that point, I can't stress enough that it's important to find a good banker, build a relationship with somebody local, with somebody that understands the community, maybe not the direct industry that you're in, but certainly, the area that you're located. Build a relationship with somebody reliable, and somebody that can follow you along as you grow, as you might need. Alone, or even just about somebody bounces some things off of them. So find a good banker. It's just as important as finding a good accountant.

Vince: It really is. I've been blessed to work I work with PNC here in town. But you know, on the local level, everyone in the bank knows me they know that's going on our account, it's been so beneficial. Even though it's a national brand, that local touch has been so beneficial.

5:52 Make Sure to Have Accurate Accounting Ongoing & Be Strategic with Debt

Tiffany: And you don't have to catch anybody up. When you do come in the doors. They know you they know your business; they even probably know a little bit about your industry. You can't put a price on that. The next thing I encourage entrepreneurs to look for is to make sure you have accurate accounting ongoing. This starts from the beginning. It's not impossible, but a very big challenge if you decide to have accurate accounting a year or two in because then there's the challenge of the catch-up. You may not be educated enough or even have a desire to spend that much time looking at your books. So it's important from the very beginning to make sure that your chart of accounts and your accounting is in a good position to grow and to succeed. Make sure that those are transactions are sorted correctly. Because this allows you to run reports to look at your current trends, what's happening currently in your business as well as it allows you to do projections to look and see what do I expect in the near future for my business. The next point is debt. So many times I have clients that say they want to stay away from debt. But I challenge you to think about debt in a way that it's maybe not always bad, debt positions you in the market in such a way that you might be able to borrow some money from that local banker and take advantage of some market growth. Maybe you might be able to offer, maybe you have some extra warehouse space. And you might think about offering an alternative product. If you are willing to take on a little bit of debt, you might be able to increase that revenue and see success with that. I do caution you though with debt. And that it's important to be proactive with it and not reactive. So think about the interest rates that are available out there. Make sure you shop and are aware of those. And don't find yourself in a position where you're behind on the operational bills. And so you just need to borrow money to catch up with those.

Vince: So I know Tiffany, you're the expert here and Ken, you have more experience than me. But I found that in the last year or so there have been so many opportunities with Small Business Association lending and COVID relief that it's a really good time to take on that debt if you want some debt to grow your business with a low-interest rate. So I'd love to hear both of your takes on that and see if we all agree or if there's a difference between that.

Ken: I agree with what Tiffany saying completely that the money you borrow in some way has to relate to how your business grows. And I've been through very high-interest rates as well as very low-interest rates. I mean, I'm talking 14, 15% interest rates so My general rule is, is that if that money is borrowed is not making enough additional revenue to at least pay the interest, it's not a good debt. So someplace that money whether you buy a piece of equipment that increases your sales or you use it to buy additional inventory that you're going to sell, somewhere that expense that interest expense has to come back through revenue. And that's kind of been my rule of thumb on borrowing.

Tiffany: Right. And that goes back to that accurate accounting because, in order to determine if that new piece of equipment will pay back more than the interest, you really need to have a good constant knowledge of your business plan.

Vince: Absolutely. And I don't want to take us down a rabbit hole. So we don't have to go here. But knowing your ratios is something that I've recently learned over the last 12 months or so. And that's been really helpful for me. So we don't have to go that we can go on to our next subject. But last week..

Ken: I did not hear your comment, Vince. What rabbit hole was this?

Vince: Oh, managing your ratios, understand the ratio. So I brought this up last time, you would think they're paying me but managing by the numbers really helped me understand my different ratios and how that's important for my business. So we don't have to go down that we can move on to reserves. But I just want to drop that again.

Ken: Well, let me give us a segue into reserves. Because one of the things since I tend to be the more aged person here, if you go back many years, and much farther than me, you know, it used to be business was financed, it was all-equity financing. If you wanted to expand a business you took on a partner, or you saved until you had the money to expand your business, then all of a sudden things changed. And we became a debt expansion economy. And that's where we are now. And so it really is very different than it used to be. And some use properly as we're talking here, that's great. But it's become awfully easy to find yourself, way too far away. And that money that was saved to expand is what Tiffany is going to talk about next, which is reserves. And if you think about that, this is why reserves are important. So Tiffany…

11:31 Take the Time to Plan and Setup Your Emergency Fund

Tiffany: Exactly. I see it… Unfortunately, too often that a business can be very successful, even profitable at the end of the year. But they're really one endemic away from having to close the doors. And this can happen to a small business or even a large business. It really doesn't discriminate. It's so important. I say the rule of thumb is to have between three and six months of expenses. Should the revenue stop coming in? Should we experience something catastrophic? God forbid we have another pandemic. It's so important to be able to take the time to plan and how will you continue to keep your doors open? And how will you continue to service your customers? If you don't have a cash reserve? And how I guess that leads into how do you build that if you don't have it, I say it just takes some discipline, set up a monthly payment just like it's a fixed expense. Transfer that money you can even set it up to auto-transfer every month so that you don't even have to worry about it. And before you know it, you'll have that cash balance for that emergency fund. And then another piece to that is if you do dip into that it's so important to pay it back. Don't fall into the habit of I need to grab $500 here, and then oh well I'll just add this to my tab. Be sure to put it back every time you take money out. That shouldn't be an account that you should try and leave it on touched all year long.

Vince: That makes a big difference for me having a recurring deposit going into a savings account for reserve. Like you said it just feels like another expense even though not spending it mentally, helps me a lot.

13:44 Be Thoughtful on How You Structure Your Payment Arrangements

Tiffany: Exactly. Another common pitfall that I've seen is aging accounts receivable. Accounts receivable is going to happen. You have people that you provide services for and then they pay you, I think you should be thoughtful in how you structure those payment arrangements. If you are in an industry where you require a lot of the payment upfront so that you can purchase the materials for the product or service, then it doesn't make sense to have a 60-day payment term. Make sure your accounts receivable payment arrangements match up with what you realistically can function with. And on the same token, make sure you negotiate good payment terms for your accounts payable as well. That's just as equally important.

Vince: That was a.. sorry to keep interrupting. But that was something Ken had taught me a few years ago. And my net terms were based on QuickBooks defaults. I think there were just net 30 because that's what Quickbooks said. In the simple change of changing that the net 15, just gives you so much cash to work with that you can really guide the ship better. So that was a huge revelation for me. And I'm pretty sure as many times I mentioned that a lot of you change your receivables or give people an incentive for paying sooner. So simple, but a game-changer.

Tiffany: Something totally to try out, right?

Ken: In our flower shop business, we were daily invoicing. The day it was delivered, the next day the invoice went out. And so you know, obviously you have a one-time immediate cash flow. But you can identify those bills that are past due before they get really old. Because we did generate statements at the end of 30 days. However, my billing daily, we had a constant cash flow and we almost became a cash business because of that, especially when you started seeing more credit cards because you got paid immediately with the credit card. So I whether it's definitely required deposits on large or large jobs or cover your purchases that you have to make to get started draws whatever you want to call them. It's just really, really important that you guard that because [inaudible] effective business.

16:24 Make Sure the Inventory Your Purchasing & Retaining is Selling

Tiffany: For the inventory, I've seen this. I've personally provided services for fewer clients that have inventory, but I can still speak to it and that it's important that you make sure that the inventory you're purchasing and retaining is selling. I know that sounds really common sense. But it's unfortunate, something I've seen is that inventory is not reviewed as frequently as it should be. If you have inventory in and I don't know, Ken, maybe you have a rule of thumb for this, but if you have it sit for X number of months, maybe you should consider changing how you purchase?

17:59 The Importance of Knowing How Your Inventory Works and Its Personality

Ken: Okay, so there are several things about this, I think Tiffany, one is is yes, stale inventory, particularly if you're in a business that has trans is just something that if it's not selling, put it on sale, and move it out, because you need that cash to do something else. So that's the first rule. Secondly, we use what we call conservative risk. And so we would go to a gift show and we would buy an item that we thought would be really good might sell here, we'd bring it and put it in a hotspot for display, and it didn't sell. But if it did sell, we'd reorder more than the minimum order. But we never ordered the first thing we order.. first order was never more than the minimum because we wanted to test the market before we did it. So that's one other way you can manage that. One of the other things that's interesting about our business, which was a retail flower shop, and gift store, is that the way you market fresh product is it turns if you don't sell fresh product in three or four days, you're not going to sell it, you're going to adopt it. But the gift items just sat there, and they just sat there and so you had $1,000 in gifts. And you may only be able to turn that over once every six months because you didn't sell them. Yet with a fresh product, whether it's a hamburger or rows, you sell that. And so you've got that same $1,000. But if you're selling it, you can take that $1,000 and operate on that for a whole month or whatever your terms are. So it's really important to know how your inventory works and what its personality is. And you also have different markups on all those things. And so when you get into mixed margin businesses, there are all sorts of things that you have to learn. But if it doesn't sell, get rid of it. Sell it, donate it, just get it out of the store.

Tiffany: And stay knowledgeable, like you said, Ken. Make sure you know.

Vince: Sometimes I get frustrated that I can't always put a specific cost to a service, right? One website might be a little take more hours than another website, it frustrates me. And then I think about people who have to manage inventory. And I just put my hands up like, Okay, I don't have to do that. That's great. Especially, you know, like a restaurant and managing inventory, that's going to go bad. Yeah, I can't, I couldn't do I can't imagine doing it. So, I'll deal with my issues.

Tiffany: Right. I agree. So I think, you know, Tiffany's talking a lot about now things that you have to pay attention to or you can get yourself in trouble. And how do you.. what are the signals for that? You know Tiffany talked about cash flow. That's critical because if you don't come around it's payroll time and you have people working for you. And they depend on you to provide them or pay a paycheck, to buy their groceries to pay their rent, and you don't have it. And so that's a real red flag if you don't have the reserves to be able to take and pay payroll as an example. The other one is an inability to pay taxes. And Tiffany, you want to talk about those tax surprises?

Tiffany: Yes, they happen. Too often. What I see is a client might have reviewed, their earnings statement will say Profit Loss, for example. And it shows the bottom line of, for example, $40,000 net. Unfortunately, they don't have that same, well not unfortunately, it just is the nature of it, they don't have that $40,000 sitting in their bank account, for a variety of reasons, it could be that they took owner draws, it could be that they've made payments toward debt. But what then surprises business owners is that the IRS taxes on the revenue minus expenses, which is profit. It doesn't tax the bank account balance. So even if you don't have the cash in the bank account on December 31st, like maybe the P&L suggests, you still are responsible to pay the income tax on the income that you earned. So, unfortunately, that's can be confusing when you're really in it day to day. But it's just something that I think people need to hear and to hear and to hear and to hear, repeatedly.

22:14 Advantages of Having a Payroll Service

Ken: So I think the thing I touched on last week possibly but was payroll taxes. And what I've seen in the businesses that I've worked with, is the realization that at the end of every quarter, the IRS and the state is going to come to you and say we want our sales tax that you've collected. And we also want the Social Security match that you owe on what your employees have paid. Plus some other little hidden things that we all kind of hear and know about. And if you don't set that aside, in a separate payroll account, you are very much in danger of having that money, had not having those dollars, because you thought you had money in your checking account where you actually you did not. And so it's just very important. Tiffany talked about having a separate checking account, from your personal business, if it is also very important when you write your payroll to put all of the money, all of the payroll taxes in a different account. One of the advantages of having a payroll service, not that small businesses can necessarily do that. But it's just really important to put money aside in clear kind of savings. However, you do that, to make sure when the government comes calling that you have their money because you don't want to mess with the government.

Vince: They're going to get their money, that's for sure.

Ken: They're gonna get their money. So that's one that I've seen numerous times. And it's very hard, very hard to get back from.

Ken: So how do you avoid these troubles? Tiffany, what do you.. how do you, what's your recommendation to people in terms of how they avoid this?

23:57 Prioritize Setting Up a Cash Reserve

Tiffany: Mm-hmm. So I think the cash reserves are huge. Which then leads to being disciplined. Have patience with yourself, it's not easy to set money aside, especially when you have bills coming in. But I think my biggest piece of advice is to prioritize setting up a cash reserve. Another piece that I could suggest is to continue to stay aware of the expenses that you have, that you're going to have and that you have already had. It's invaluable to be able to mentally have an ongoing knowledge of where your bank account is going, on a minimum, a weekly basis. For that time, as Ken just said, when the IRS sends you a bill, it's important to be able to have that and those things are things that it's reasonable to plan for that.

Tiffany: I was gonna say Vince mentioned the ratio, I wanted to point out one important ratio with respect to this topic is Assets Liability. That's a ratio that you generally find to be pretty low if a… it's a good sign, generally, it's a good sign if that ratio is low. Now, if your company is rapidly growing, if you are trying to encourage growth, and you've recently taken out debt, obviously, that ratio will be slightly higher. But what that is, is it's how much the company, how much of your company's assets are made of liabilities. Go ahead, Ken.

Ken: Yes, yeah. Yeah, that's important. If you're a retail business, that has merchandisers, ratios that tell you how your inventory relates to your sales percentages. But those current ratios.. the bank looks at specifically how strong you are in relation to assets and liabilities if they want to loan you want to borrow more money. And they also will look at your cash flow. And we didn't really talk about that last week, but that's another financial statement, that will kind of tell everybody where your money's going. And that's just a really important thing to do. So I think, you know, Tiffany, your comment about discipline, I think is one of those things that is just so hard. You know, you get caught up in your business, you have bills to pay, you know, or even when things are going really well, you know, “Oh, yeah, I really would like to do that. Let's just sponsor this event or sponsor that event”. And all of a sudden, you have no cash because you've sponsored everything. I'm a great marketing person. Don't get me wrong, that marketing is just like everything else. There has to be a return on that. And so how do you do that and just can't get caught up. And some of the things that you can emotionally when it comes to operating your business, whether it's a product you like, and you really want to bring in the store, because you want to have solar that your house, but it doesn't sell. So you shouldn't do that. And so there's just no reason to do that. One thing I learned is to buy things I didn't like, but they sold. And so if they sold, it didn't make any difference.

Tiffany: It's a great rule of thumb.

27:32 Managing Money Personality

Ken: One of the things I talk about, and people don't always understand this, but it's called the ‘Personality of Money'. And I guess I've looked because Vince & I talked a little bit about this. So, Tiffany, how do you understand how do you manage the personality of money? How do you give money personality? Me It's just money, right?

Tiffany: Ah, got control, Ken. I think one of the pieces I can recommend is to be proactive, as I mentioned earlier, and not reactive. When you need to take draws if you're an LLC and you need to pay yourself. It helps if you pay yourself on a regular structured basis. As if that were a paycheck. It becomes more of a challenge when you take $1,000 One week and then $250 two days later because you forgot you had this other bill, personally that you owe. So I think making sure that you're very proactive in planning and thinking ahead, helps when it comes to that had the flow of the cash and that personality of money.

Ken: Vince, what do you think about personality money?

Vince: Money Talks. Yeah, you know… Ken knows that we've been through different kinds of seasons of cash and data and understanding of money understanding of ratios. And, you know, if if you're not paying attention to it, it will kind of runoff and talk on its own. So I think kind of going back to Ken's favorite statement, you know, “Cash is king”. And that's the most important aspect in my opinion. I just saw a question come through you guys minds if I pop it up? Let's see if I can. Here we go. ‘So really enjoying all this, I own two businesses, one is tracked 100%. Because the way company bills are monthly first of the month. So the other businesses cash for service', I can finish reading it here. So she asked ‘cash in hand vs claiming everything'. I think this question really gets to the gist of differentiating personal and separate businesses and kind of what you're doing there to both maximize your tax benefit, but also kind of keep track of everything.

30:30 Engage in Somebody That Can Keep Your Books

Tiffany: Well, when you've got multiple businesses that I'm going to throw in there with that recommendation, one more time is to make sure that you've got multiple bank accounts. Don't try to do one bank account for both businesses out of one bank account. And then, go ahead and engage somebody that can keep your books, because at that point, at the time, when you're doing, to when you're an owner of two businesses, you have to have time to excel at those businesses you're self-employed, I don't find it likely that you would have time to sit and focus regularly and make any sense at all of what your books are telling you. So find a bookkeeper find an accountant that can help partner with you daily, weekly, monthly helping you understand what your business is, what the successes are, and then what are your opportunities for growth.

Vince: I think… I don't know if this is really what the question is, but it reminded me and maybe it is, before I jumped into starting my business, I had some experience kind of seeing family and friends growing up running their business. And one thing that was always kind of in the back of my mind, I heard it all the time. Well, that's a business expense, expense it, expense it. You know, show-loss, things like that. But after starting my business and being self-employed for a few years, and then applying for a mortgage, and realizing that my first few years of business, you know, had a lot of expenses and didn't show a real profit, even though we were making money. How do you advise people typically to kind of balance that, you know, investing in a business, but maybe not spending all of your annual profits in swag to show a loss, kind of you encounter that and people who want to do that and not think about the long term showing of their profits?

32:43 Claim All Your Income to Have Peace of Mind

Ken: I'll just jump in and say, I'm pretty black and white about this. Probably doesn't surprise anybody. But if you take something in for a service that you're offering, or product or selling, that's income. And that income is taxable. Now you can take expenses against that. But I can remember what I first bought my business, there were things that the IRS would allow you to take that later on in 10 years or so they change the rules. You couldn't take it, well I could take it until I was audited. And so and I've never been to an IRS audit, but I've been through state sales, tax audits. And some of those kinds of things. And so if you want to have peace of mind, that you know when you get audited that everything's going to be fine. You need to claim all your income, whether it's cash or cheques. And then you need to take the appropriate expenses. There are ways the IRS can look at how you live and what you claim as income and recognize that that doesn't necessarily reconcile. So, that's my view has always been my view and that's what I've always done. That's who I am as a business person. But it's hard.

34:05 Eligible Marketing Expense

Vince: Let me rephrase the question though. If you've made a lot of money, and there are eligible business expenses you could spend in December, do you think there's a benefit to spending a lot of money to have less profit? Or do you think “cash is king”, and you made a profit? So pay your taxes on it and have that cash on hand and not just blow it away to pay less in taxes?

Ken: You said eligible expense? So, I'll give you an example, a few years, a number of years ago, there was a time where you could accelerate depreciation. And we may be talking too much counting here, I don't know. But instead of buying a car or a truck and expensing there over five years, which is what the government requires you to do at that point. This particular year tax year, you could buy the truck and expense all of it. Well, if you were showing a large profit, and you wanted to buy that truck, and you had the cash, or you could borrow it, you could go ahead and buy that truck and expense the whole thing and not depreciate it, which would cut down on your profits. The other way that you do that, or can do that is and some people do this, that they don't take a physical inventory, they guess that their inventory is based on how much taxes they want to pay, well that's a short term way to do that. But anytime you have an eligible legal deduction, and you can do that, yes you can do that. And you should do that. Tiffany, you wanna weigh in on this?

36:11 Nothing Wrong with Delaying a Sale or Recording an Account

Tiffany: I agree Ken. If it's eligible in the IRS, in the eyes of the IRS, absolutely. Especially if it's an asset that your business needs to grow. I don't necessarily look at it though as avoiding taxes, rather than maybe just paying them later as a result of that purchase.

Vince: Yeah. I think I used to be hyper-focused on you know, maybe it was, you know, sweaters to give to the clients kind of an eligible marketing expense. Yeah, exactly with the logo, yeah and I used to think, you know, I'lla do that at the end of the year. But anymore, I really just like having the cash. If that means I have a more profitable and I pay a little bit more taxes, I want that cash for the next year versus you know, spending on things that are eligible, but not really necessary. I think I've kind of moved beyond that at this point.

Ken: So, you know, we were on a fiscal year rather than a calendar year. So you can't really do that much anymore, I think if I'm correct about that. But, so our year ended right after May, which was our best month. So we ended up with about six months, and six months even income, which is not always the case in the business. But there was.. there's nothing wrong with delaying a sale or recording an account for a week or two, to put the revenue elsewhere. Just like it wouldn't be uncommon for us to go ahead and buy something that we might be able to buy now. To get the expanse to minimize what we had to pay in taxes. That's perfectly legal. It's perfectly appropriate. But do I understand the question here is the money that I'm taking this a 100% cash? How do I account for that? My answer to that is as you account for that, just like you would account for any revenue and it's taxable. I think I understand that question.

Vince: Yeah, I agree with that.

Ken: So thanks for the question.

Vince: Yeah. And there's I know, we've grown we're kind of running into our time limit now. But we've had quite a few more viewers pop in. So if anyone does have a question, go ahead and submit that before we wrap up. Ken, hit us back on track.

38:16 It's Not Just a Piece of Paper, Give it a Personality

Ken: Yeah, I'd like to talk a minute though about this personality of a money thing, because I think it's just so important. You know, it's the dedicated use of monetary assets. And so the savings accounts we've all talked about here. So you have an account, that's a payroll account, you have an account, that's a savings account for asset purchases. You have an account that's set aside for something else for a particular I don't care Christmas bonus, I don't care, whatever it might be. Or you have something set aside for inventory expansion. Whatever you want and however you want that money to work for you, you make that money work, how you want it to work to help your business grow. And too often, we don't see it that way. It's just this big hunk in our checking account. Have as many accounts as you need to be able to set money aside so that when you get ready to do something, you don't have to borrow all of it. You may have to borrow a majority of it, but you don't have to borrow all of it. As Tiffany said, it predicts loss and emergency. It gives you assets for your business to grow, gives you a revenue stream to pay certain monthly operating expenses. And it's also the ability to pay cash for something and not borrow. And that's something sometimes we don't think enough about is that discipline and patience to save money for a future expense. And it is a discipline to be able to do that. Think about that it's just not a piece of paper. Give it a personality. That is like those three jars you used to keep, you know, a dime here and 25 cents here, and they all went to certain things. Same thing. Exactly the same thing.

Vince: Yeah, absolutely. So Ken, what else do you want to cover? Before we start slowly wrapping up.

Ken: You asked me that?

Vince: Yeah. You're the star of the show.

Ken: That's all I want to talk, I think. Let's talk about next week, we're going to talk about managing employees. That's always an interesting subject.

Vince: Yeah, it is. Something I'm learning about rapidly. I'll be listening to you more than anything next week. Be listening to you more than anything.

Ken: Yeah. I don't know about that.

Tiffany: I would find it so interesting to learn about what motivates different personalities. I'll be definitely tuning in next week.

Vince: Oh, boy. I mean, maybe you can share what motivates you next week if you want to join us again?

Ken: So I yeah, so I don't know whether it's still available or not. But when I was teaching, I used to use a thing called Kingdomality.com. And it's a personality test based on four guild halls in medieval Europe. And it's fun to exercise. It's not scientific. But you can find out whether you're a white knight, a black knight, whether you're a benevolent ruler, or whether you are a shopkeeper or a doctor, and it's all divided into quadrants, and it tells you what your profile is. And it's kind of an interesting thing. It's a fun exercise.

Vince: That sounds awesome. Ken, if you want to send it to me, remind me after I'll put that in the notes for anyone viewing this.

Ken: I'll check and see if it's still available. It's been a while since I've looked, but there were 13 million people taken at one time.

Vince: Wow. That's incredible. Well, Ken, I think I'm gonna go ahead and shut down your stream and let Tiffany kind of close out on her end. Is there anything else you want to share before we close out today?

Ken: I've just enjoyed having Tiffany. I won't tell you how long I've known Tiffany, but it's a long time. And she's just a great person. And it's, I recommend her as an accountant, and a human resource person because I've worked with her before. So can I stay on and listen to Tiffany?

Vince: Yeah, of course, you can. I won't shut you down.

Ken: I don't want to be… I want to make sure she doesn't say something.

Vince: Yeah. You have the chance to rebuttal if you need. Tiffany, the show is yours.

Tiffany: All I really want to say is, I'm so grateful for the chance to partner with both of you and to be here and speak on a little bit about what I see in my daily life. And please send me an email anytime Tiffany@DeerAccounting.com.

Vince: Perfect! Well, thank you both. For anyone who's listening live or finding this shortly after, this recording will be available on YouTube. The channel is called “Small Business Big Ideas”. This will also be available on any podcasting system that you use with the same title. And feel free to join our Facebook group for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Also the same type of Small Business Big Ideas on Facebook. So yeah, so we're going to be coming back maybe next week. I don't think we have a date set. But we'll make sure we post that. Talking about employees and maybe we'll see Tiffany back again. We'll have to find out.

Ken: Well, with a human resource background, she ought to be able to tell us a lot.

Vince: I would think so. I think so.

Tiffany: Maybe I'll post it. Thank you so much!

Ken: Thanks, Tiffany. Thanks a lot!

Vince: Thank you all. Thank you for the good questions. And thank you all for watching!

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