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Why does hiring a book-keeper make sense for any sized business?
Welcome to The Streamer Show. I’m your host Debra Conrad and every show we spend some time together learning how to grow our businesses and keep that growth profitable.
Podcast #14 – Hiring A Book-keeper
A Few Updates About My Business: We are back to looking like hoarders in the house. In fact it looks like we just moved in, again!
Inventory is everywhere, and I my business set-up is in transition. We are in the middle of remodeling the garage and everything had to land in the middle of my living room/dining room.
I am certainly out of sync when my home/work space is out of sync.
CPA just called with total still owed for taxes. Yikes! Making a good profit can have a little knee jerks. Funny… my CPA was trying to make me feel better with all kinds of little positive remarks, I finally had to stop her and say “It’s okay, I have the cash saved because I knew that I had a great year.
Today’s Topic
Hiring a Book-Keeper
Why it’s one of the best decisions I ever made for my business.
1.) I don’t know about you, but I really don’t like playing with numbers all that much. It’s not really the numbers, it’s all the papers and data entry that make me crazy.
I will put it off until it’s a huge mountain and then when it’s down to crunch time (like right before tax season), I will plow through for hours and days.
The problem is this: When I am in a hurry to get through the entire mountain (which feels like a J.O.B.) – I don’t know if I’m making mistakes or have time to analyse the figures.
When you don’t have numbers plugged into anything that spits out how your business is growing (or not) at all times, you are just not in a great postition.
After I hired a book-keeper, I now know every thing I need to know on an “almost” instant basis. Because the book-keeper is only entering data monthly, I can’t know the daily numbers – as a very large company might have access to.
I don’t really care if the information is getting entered on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. It’s getting entered and I can now make logical and wise decisions based on knowledge.
2.) I don’t have the anxiety. Period. Every expense and every bit of income is accounted for. I don’t have the “Pile ‘O Papers” sitting on my desk. I don’t have bills that don’t get paid. I have someone who can take care of it all if I’m out of town or ill. It really is a piece of mind thing.
I also have hired someone who cares. This is HUGE. She questions when any bill, expense or bit of income doesn’t look right.
3.) Time. You have heard the old saying “Time Is Money” – right? For years, I was THAT person, the one who wouldn’t pay for anything I could do myself. I spent a lot of years telling myself that I couldn’t afford to pay anyone, and it would be silly to pay someone for things I can do myself.
Sure, I can do it all myself. If I did it on a timely basis and wanted to work for hours every week on something that doesn’t make me any money.
You see, when your brain is locked onto those mind-numbing routine tasks, you are not engaged in what you should be doing as a business owner. Growing, Inovating and also – really important – have time to relax.
Yes. It cost’s money. Cold hard cash that you have worked your behind off to gain. It pained me to think about writing a check for something as seemingly simple as a book-keeper.
This is what I have at the end of one day each and every month.
A clean desk – every piece of paper is filed. Every bit of information is captured in a way my accountant can use. Every bill is paid. Every question is answered. Everything I need to actually take care of myself, has a notation of exactly what and when I need to do my part.
Organized. Peaceful. Anxiety Free.
I have times when I don’t think I pay her enough, but don’t tell her.
That’s it for today.
You can find this podcast on DebraConrad.com. We also have a huge archive of podcasts on ThriftingForProfit.com (over 110 episodes), where we dive in to a variety of topics that revolve around selling products on Amazon.
All of our podcasts are available on iTunes, TalkShoe and Stitcher.
That’s my story… and I’m sticking to it…
Debra Conrad
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What book keeper did you use?