No matter your reason for taking the leap as an entrepreneur, you will encounter a number of concerns as you progress. It’s important that you know how to recognize and handle these concerns so as to avoid derailing your business.

In dealing with many small and medium-sized businesses over the years, we have been able to distill some of these concerns down to four of the most common questions.

At some point in your business journey, you will find yourself asking a variation of the following:

1. How will I achieve what I want in my personal life?
2. How will my business help me achieve my goals?
3. Do I really have control over business performance and numbers?
4. How do I get more from my business?

In this post, we will help you navigate these concerns and emerge from the other side a better business owner.

How will I achieve what I want in my personal life?

Running your own business should be about achieving personal freedom.

Freedom to work on what you want, when you want. Finding joy in the day-to-day is the ultimate goal for many entrepreneurs.

So, to get to the heart of what you truly want out of your business – and how it impacts both your personal and professional life – ask yourself the following:

• Why did I start my business?
• How is my business organized?
• Do I feel I am on track with my goals?
• What keeps me up at night?
• What do I do in my spare time?

Once you have a handle on why you’re in business for yourself, and where your passions lie out with your business, you can start working on balancing the two. Otherwise, the business will consume you.

How will my business help me achieve my goals?

In order to achieve your personal and professional goals via your business, you must be the one in charge.

Now, this might seem a little strange given that you own your business; who else would be in charge?

But the truth is, your business can quickly take on a life of its own if you let it.

You must be the one in control, rather than taking a back seat and letting the business drive you. If you’re achieving success almost by accident, then you and your business are driving blind without a strategy or a roadmap.

Your goals will go unfulfilled if you don’t treat your business as more than just as means of making ends meet.

Do I really have control over business performance and numbers?

We know it can feel like you don’t; that your numbers can spiral out of control amidst the day-to-day of running your business.

But you can and you must take control of those numbers, and by extension, the performance of your business.

You should:

• Know exactly what your numbers are for the month
• Have complete clarity on which products or services are selling well (or not)
• Understand what’s in your financial statements, and what those numbers mean
• Know how much tax you’re going to pay, well ahead of the due date

When you do, you can actually look forward to meeting with your accountant!

How do I get more from my business?

When you have a handle on your goals, you’re building a business geared towards meeting those goals, and you’re accurately tracking your numbers at least monthly, you will get more from your business.

It’s really that simple!

You can then look forward to scaling your business, hiring employees (if you want), outsourcing work, spending time working on your business rather than in it, taking a day off now and again, and even taking a vacation.

Let’s Address Those Concerns

If any of those concerns are keeping you up at night, then here’s how we can help:

1. Personal Goal Setting

We can help you get to the very heart of the reason why you went into business in the first place. We will determine what your goals were, and how they have changed (if they have at all).

If your business has taken on a life of its own, we’ll find out why, and how far you are from achieving the goals you had when you started.

By taking you through a personal goal questionnaire and a one-on-one meeting with one of our advisers, we can develop a report that will show you what you want to achieve, what’s missing, and how you can go about accomplishing your goals.

We’ll then help you devise a specific plan of action – one with dates, milestones, and clear responsibilities.

2. Business Planning & Strategy

We want to help you take control of your business. No more autopilot, no more backseat driving.

Together we will develop a business plan and strategy that will have you questioning everything, and testing what you think you know.

We won’t focus solely on ‘best practices’; rather, we will help you find your industry’s ‘next practices’.

What’s more, we want to instil a belief in you, your team, and your mission that will see you carry out this plan to fruition.

3. Monitor KPIs

It’s no use merely glancing at your income statement in order to monitor your business. That’s a bit like watching a hockey game by only looking at the final scoreboard. To get the bigger picture, you must look at the activity within the game.

We will help you map and monitor your progress by focusing on a few Key Performance Indicators.

These will be tailored to your business, meaning no generic indicators or reports. Only valuable and actionable information.

4. Profitability & Cash Flow Improvement

Finally, we will help you get to grips with your profitability and cash flow by getting you up and running on cloud accounting software.

Everything will be real-time and instantly trackable by both you and us, meaning we can spot any potential cash flow issues, so that you can take action ahead of time.

How Can Checkbox Help You Become Great?

In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins wrote:

“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, as it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline.”

We can guide you to greatness. We only ask for your conscious choice to work together, and your discipline to meet, review, and check in.

You can grow a great business. Let us help. Contact us today to get started.

The post The Four Biggest Questions You’ll Ask Yourself as a Business Owner appeared first on Checkbox Accounting.

Overhead expenses and the cause or goal of the nonprofit can be two good measurable indicators of success within a nonprofit organization. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation point out that they use many measurable indicators to prove their cause is a success without limiting themselves to JUST the overhead metric. Their causes or goals are measurable, attainable, and set within a time limit to encourage continued movement towards the goal/cause. SMART goals, as you might have heard them referred to in the for-profit sector.

Different from the for-profit sector that can increase overhead to increase success, nonprofits find themselves the center of negative questioning in the media when they increase overhead to reach their goal. Increasing their overhead then results in the reduction of dollars towards their cause, regardless if the cause is being measured and attained within a specific time limits. Causes that are measured and being attained SHOULD prove the success of the nonprofit and not JUST the use of funds towards overhead expenses.

The Overhead Myth letter (found here) does a good job of describing just how wrong it can be to solely use overhead spending as a key indicator to success. The continued review of overhead spending by potential donors can be detrimental to nonprofits in the long term as they deter away from making the investments in infrastructure, workforce and other forms of capacity, preventing them from having a greater impact in serving their constituencies. As Mr. Pallotta points out in his TED presentation (found here), organizations must be give the freedom to attain the kind of scale in their operations that will enable them to make more of a difference.

However, as the Overhead Myth letter also points out, overhead indicators do say something important about nonprofit management’s effective stewardship and can be a red flag for poor financial management. The question then becomes how to link financial indicators, like overhead ratio, with other nonfinancial indicators of performance and outcome effectiveness. How do we determine if the additional investment in capacity and building scale is really paying off, not just in terms of how many dollars the organization is raising, but in terms how those dollars are being put to use in having an impact on the organization’s mission, cause and goal.

Performance measurement and management – the task of choosing metrics and outcome measures that truly capture the “success” of the organization in the largest sense –  may be part of the answer. As Bill Gates stressed in his recent annual letter issued  for the Gates Foundation,  performance measurement is a critical tool for effectively delivering social impact in classrooms, clinics and cities, “setting clear goals and finding measures that will mark progress toward them can improve the human condition.”

So let me ask you again… If a nonprofit is creating concrete goals, attaining those goals/causes, and doing so within a relative time constraint, but spending 60% on overhead, would you donate? This means that 40% of your dollar goes towards the cause. What about 70% given the same results? 80%? What do you feel is the ideal investment a nonprofit should place into overhead to allow that nonprofit to attain its goals?

The post Focusing on Overhead: The Nonprofit Circle appeared first on Checkbox Accounting.

If you are trying to grow your company, you know it takes two things: time and money.  Your time is limited to the number of hours you, personally, can invest.  Then you need money to hire people – essentially buying more time.  How can you generate enough money to buy peoples’ time without getting outside investors involved, and losing equity in your company?

When you need to bring money in right away, there are two ways to do it:  offer equity or assume debt.  By offering equity, you gain immediate funding, but you lose future profits and some control of your company.  Assuming debt may be a better “investment” for you.  Opening a line of credit or getting a loan from a bank may cost less long term than sacrificing a percentage of your company.  Taking out a loan so that you can bring on an employee, for example, might be a better choice for your company if you can pay the loan off quickly with the profits that employee will bring in.

You will also need to pedal your wares.  Sell yourself.  Sell, sell, sell.  Get your name and your product out there as quickly as you can.  Sell to your family, your friends and their friends.  Ask people who already trust you to take a chance on you.  Set up coffee meetings and lunches, and network your way to success.  When you sell enough, hire someone, and make them do the same.  Networking can go a long way as you try to get your product out there.  Using social media can give you a huge advantage.  You can reach more people in less time, and since your time is money, social media is a game changer.  Use it strategically.  Spend a little extra and put out ads.  Use social media to create stronger networks, and to develop trust in relationships that you will come to depend on as you grow.

Exchange goods and services if you need to.  Bartering can be an effective tool in today’s market.  Don’t just exchange for good and services that you need.  Stay open to exchanges that you can use to network or sell your own product.  While you may not be able to use something like a spa treatment or a haircut, offering that service to someone else can be great for networking.

The post Keep Your Equity: Expanding Your Business Without Outside Investors appeared first on Checkbox Accounting.

Creating a budget can be a tricky task.  Allocating money to different areas of your life or business takes time and effort, and occasionally some
deep introspection into your personal spending habits.  Sticking to a budget can be just as tedious, particularly if you don’t have a great system for remembering how much money is budgeted for what.  But creating and following a budget is a critical practice if you want to achieve success.

Very few people achieve success in life or in business without a plan.  Budgeting is exactly that: a plan – for your money.  When you have a plan, it’s far easier to reach your goals than going at it blindly.  How you create your budget depends on your goals.  If you are working toward a large purchase or investment, make sure your budget reflects the need for bigger savings.  Work your budget out and adjust it to fit your goals.

Once your budget is in place, it’s important to find a strategy for staying on budget that works for you.  That is where the Envelope System comes into play.  The Envelope System separates the elements of the budget.  Money goes into each “envelope” for each part of the budget.  Energy costs, for example, would go into one envelope, while entertainment money would go into another, and a house payment in another.  Create (and follow!) rules for each envelope – determine which ones you can borrow from, and create one called “left over” that holds any money that’s left over after bills are paid.  This should be the first one you borrow from, if you ever need to borrow.  At the end of the month, any money in the left over envelope should be put into savings.  Start over each month, and make minor adjustments if they need to be made.  Make your budget work for you.

You don’t have to deal in cash to make the Envelope System work for you.  You can keep it digital if you prefer.  You just need to keep track of where you spend and what you spend it on, and update your “envelopes” daily.  Opening several bank accounts can be helpful as well.  We are seeing, more and more often, that people have different checking accounts for gas, groceries, entertainment, and bills.  They have multiple savings accounts – for retirement, a new home, home improvement, vacations, and new cars.  Check with your bank regularly to see if they offer any incentives if you open a new account.  Oftentimes, banks will offer financial incentives for opening new accounts.  If your bank does offer incentives, wait until the time is right to open additional accounts and take advantage of the offers.

If you need help creating a budget for your company, or finding the right strategy to reach your goals, contact us at CPA Corporation.

The post The Envelope System: How to Create a Budget to Reach Your Goals appeared first on Checkbox Accounting.