Podcast 06: Bookkeeping & Accounting for Entrepreneurs

We just finished up an amazing interview with Beth Cochran of Success Lab and Wired PR. Check out what we think it means to run a small business and how to do it well. this interview was so much fun!

-----> Listen to Success Lab Here

In this episode, I’m in The Lab with Tina Garza, founder of Accountingprose, a bookkeeping and payroll services company. We discuss some of the top things every business owner should have in place in terms of their bookkeeping and accounting…information I wish I would have known when I first started my company. I’ve known Tina for several years now and she is a rock star at what she does, so I’m excited to share the information she provides.

Discussion with Cristina Garza:

• The most important thing you can do as a small business owner is to do your due diligence on local tax laws, find someone who’s successful in your same industry who may be willing to serve as a mentor and follow what they’ve done accounting-wise.
• Hire a bookkeeper and accountant early on. It’s not worth your time to try to figure it out.
• Save your receipts and use something with a paper trail (purchase with a credit card for example). Review what’s coming in and going out each month. Don’t wait until the end of the year to correct something big.
• Quickbooks is the obvious one, but Xero a forward-thinking and will likely gain market share soon.
• When looking for a CPA, look for someone who specializes in your industry. Also, look out of the H&R Blocks of the world…oftentimes their representatives aren’t actually CPAs.
• Cristina’s pro tips for small business owners: Surround yourself with successful people, always have a thirst for knowledge, take time off, and build a power team.
• Check out Crankset Group and their two books, “Making Money is Killing Your Business,” and “Why Employees are Always a Bad Idea.”

This week’s Biz Hack:  This past week in our SuccessLab mastermind group, one topic that came up had to do with content marketing and managing it all. This is an area I love and something we regularly manage for clients, and one thing I suggest for any kind of content marketing program is to create an editorial calendar. This may seem like an obvious or simple biz hack, but a lot of people overlook it. But an editorial calendar will help keep you on track and focused, and provide a roadmap for you to follow. This is particularly useful if you have more than one person creating content for you. Here is a downloadable template for an editorial calendar model we use in the show notes, but a few things we like to include are the type of content – blog, podcast, video, etc. – focus keywords for that piece of content, who is responsible for creating it, a due date and publish date, and where it will be shared – for instance, if it’s a blog post, can it also be shared via email, can it be made into a video and shared on Youtube or a slide show and posted on SlideShare, and of course the obvious networks – Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Having it mapped out lets you see what you need to create ahead of time and where it will go. It’s also helpful when you are measuring your content’s effectiveness as you can use it as a reference to see where you shared it and which keywords you used and compare it to your metrics.  

Action Items: Last week’s action item was all about finding your ONE THING, and this week’s builds upon that… its goal setting to the now in which you set a future goal and then drill down to what you should be doing now to achieve that someday goal. In essence, you set your someday goal by asking “what’s the one thing I want to do someday? Then based on my someday goal, what’s the one thing I can do in the next five years? All the way down to, based on my daily goal, what’s the one thing i can do right now? So this week, work on setting your someday, five-year, one-year, monthly, weekly, daily, and right now goals. This is also from the book, “The One Thing.” So if you need more help with that definitely check out the book.

Quote of the week: You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…” ~ Dr. Seuss

Be sure to tune in next week! We’ll be in the lab with Andy Crestondina, founder of Orbitz Media Studios in Chicago. We talk all about content hubs and why marketers need them. Until then, have a prosperous week!