Are You Surviving or Thriving?

I had an interesting conversation with my life coach a while back about goals for my business. I went through the usual spiel about needing to bill so many hours at a certain rate to make enough money to make ends meet and have a bit extra for college savings, retirement, maybe a vacation here and there.

Sound familiar? She said that sounds pretty depressing - that I’m talking about a survival plan, and that I should be planning to thrive, not just survive.

That hit home for me. I grew up in a household that struggled to make ends meet. Bills weren’t always paid, utilities were turned off, notices from landlords, powdered milk, etc… A new glove or spikes for baseball was a big deal. We were never poor as in government-assistance poor, but I think we were working poor or close to it. My mom had a steady job at the local university that didn’t pay that well but did provide great health insurance, thank goodness. My dad sold cars but it always seemed to be a losing battle for him.

All that said, our family was and still is tight and we love each other deeply. My parents were successful in building an environment of love and acceptance. They just weren’t “reach for the stars” kind of people. They were products of the Great Depression and probably considered financial struggles a given.

It makes sense that I have had to struggle with the notion of thriving. It just wasn’t part of my upbringing - we were survivors, not thrivers.

So that conversation with my life coach was startling. It struck deeply and altered my outlook profoundly. I now think of building a business with unlimited upside. It’s no longer about how many clients I can handle personally, but about building an organization that scales to the business opportunities available locally, regionally, and nationally.

And that all started with my coach helping me to identify my self-imposed limitations and removing that barrier to merely survive.

So the question is - are you a survivor or a thriver? Is your business thriving or merely surviving? If you’re in the survivor camp, FLX Business Services can help you identify those self-imposed limits that are holding back your business and build a plan to thrive moving forward.

Click here today to book a free initial consultation!

Do You Need a Bookkeeper?

Every business needs accurate and up-to-date financial information. Trusting the information in your P&L, A/R, A/P, cash flow, and balance sheet reporting is essential to making sound business decisions. While we all like to believe we can “trust our gut” when faced with uncertainty, reducing that uncertainty as much as possible can be the difference between barely surviving (or not!) and thriving. So yes, you do need a competent bookkeeper at the very least.

Many business owners try to handle the books themselves. They feel like it saves them money and gives them a more intimate understanding of their finances. I suppose they feel its worth the tradeoff in time that could otherwise be spent with customers, employees, vendors, family, etc. Nine times out of ten this is a big mistake.

Unless that business owner has previous accounting/bookkeeping experience the information will most likely suffer, and even if it doesn’t, the value add of spending additional time with the business’s various stakeholders would far exceed the money saved or any insights gained from diving into the financial minutiae of the business.

Your bookkeeper can provide daily/weekly/monthly reporting to keep you abreast of the business and any potential issues. They can also provide insights into your business that you might miss. After all, you should be hiring an expert that is working and/or has worked with many other businesses.

Although you may think you save money by doing everything yourself, the fact is that a professional bookkeeper actually saves you more. That’s because there is a reduced level of risk for human error, lack of knowledge, missed payments and tax obligation due dates, and delayed accounts receivable.

Plus, your time is money that you could be using toward improving your business operations and bringing in the revenue to move to the next level.

Here is an article with some more information for you to consider. A quote from the article:

“Bookkeeping is an essential role that every business owner should be able to handle, and he should enlist the help of someone who can take care of this task if he cannot. You don’t necessarily have to hire an accountant or in-house bookkeeper to do this for you. Many business owners outsource their bookkeeping needs instead.”

FLX Business Services would welcome the opportunity to talk with you about improving your bookkeeping and helping your business thrive!

Year-End Checklist - Are you Prepared!!

It’s early November and year-end is right around the corner. Are your books up to date and your planning in process for 2021? Often, business owners know about where they are financially and have some ideas about what they hope to accomplish in the coming year. However, in the rush of year-end business and holiday activities, both are often neglected and then they’re playing catch up once the new year begins. Check out the below articles and let us know if FLX Business Services can help!

Here are some resources to check your progress:

YEAR-END ACCOUNTING CHECKLIST: 8 TIPS TO GET YOUR BOOKS READY FOR END OF YEAR from basis365.com

Year-End Business Planning Tips for Smart Entrepreneurs from coverwallet.com

FLX Business Services offers bookkeeping and business planning services. Please let us know if we can help!!

PLAN YOUR EXIT STRATEGY

It's never too early to start thinking about your exit strategy! Building business value and identifying exit partners (family, employees, third parties) should be key elements of any business plan. Here's a great article to help jumpstart your thinking. And call me if you'd like to get started on exit planning for your business!

“An exit strategy is how entrepreneurs (founders) and investors that have invested large sums of money in startup companies transfer ownership of their business to a third party. It’s how investors get a return on the money they invested in the business.”

— Candice Landau

Click here for the full article!!