Not talking about social justice

The last couple of weeks have been very full. I was at protests with my boys, thankfully peaceful. I’ve been engaged in connecting locally in Harrisburg with the community, being involved with conversations with my neighbors. I’ve been supporting clients in their desire to speak up in troubling situations.

I only received one angry ranty email from someone who thought I was disgusting for standing up against white supremacy. I’m not sure how they got onto our email list, since it’s not a new topic for us.

And I don’t want to focus on social justice in this moment. Simply because your business also needs attention.

On Facebook, I posted this:

I see all of you small business owners, who are standing up for social justice, who are trying to make the world a better place
AND
You’re also attending to your business. Being visible with your offers, making sure that people who need you can find you.
A both/and world means many things. This is one of them. I celebrate you.
Today I want to talk about something very simple, that will help make your business easier.

It may be that you’ve already done this, and if that’s true, then I want you to take a moment and just be in gratitude for it. I know I am.

What is this thing?

Outsourcing your bookkeeping and accounting

I was coaching a member of our Learning Community, who had done a bookkeeping job before, and knew she *could* do her own bookkeeper, and so was resisting hiring someone else to do it.

At the same time, she didn’t love it, and she didn’t always keep up on it.

Bookkeeping is one of the very first things we advise people to outsource. Why? Five reasons:

1. For most people it’s an emotional burden. It just is. It’s uncomfortable you have some money healing to do, regardless it’s just not fun.

2. It’s absolutely necessary. Without bookkeeping, it’s really hard to do your taxes, and you have to get your taxes done.

3. It’s not expensive to hire out. For most solo or micro businesses, the number of transactions, whether income or expenses, is not huge. Often it takes maybe 1-3 hours/month for a good bookkeeper to keep you up to date.

4. You can then spend time with the numbers. Every week I meet with our financial person on the team, Cathy, and we go over everything. Income, expenses, projections, issues. I stay on top of the numbers of the business.

5. It’s fun to get your taxes done early. At the end of January, once the previous year is closed out, we can just hand over the bookkeeping to our accountants. They ask some questions, then a couple of weeks later, usually by mid to late February, the taxes are DONE. Just done. What a relief!

For you as a solo, with potentially a less complicated business than ours, you can probably do this once or twice per month and still stay up on it. Instead of struggling to spend the time putting the numbers in, and then taking more time to look at them, you can just spend time reading the reports and being with the financial health of the business.

I get that it isn’t always immediately possible to outsource when you just start up. But as soon as you can, even before it feels feasible, you should do it. The relief and spaciousness that it provides will be AMAZING, and a real boon to developing your business.

Plus, it will get you used to hiring help, which is a skill you definitely want to acquire as you move your business forward.

Social Justice Bonus

I thought we were going to side-step social justice in the moment, but you don’t have to. A part of social justice is making sure money is reaching communities that have less of it.

You can find a bookkeeping firm, or solo bookkeeper, that is a person of color, and in the US, perhaps specifically black or Native American.

It’s not hard to do, and it just takes an extra step of asking. If you don’t know where to start, you can look for a business association that is for minority business owners, or you can just search for bookkepers and their websites, and check out who owns the company on their about page.

I hope I’ve convinced you to get some help with your bookkeeping. It can seem like a simple step, but it’s actually an early step in stepping into being a true business owner, and developing your business into momentum.

Questions? Thoughts? Comments? I love to hear’em!

With love,

Mark Silver, M.Div.
Heart of Business, Inc.
Every act of business can be an act of love.

P.S. Don’t let your business fall to the way side.

Especially now, we need your business to thrive. We need ALL of us, and this is not the time to let the big corporate businesses have all the attention.

If you’re not sure how to move your business forward, if you have a trouble relationship with business, or you just feel like you need an immersion into how your business could be run from the heart…

And especially if you resonate with how we do things.

Join us. The Heart of Your Business is a short, nine-week course that helps you get your arms around your business, to understand what it needs to thrive, and what you need to be healthy with it.

Big picture, heart-healing, AND nitty-gritty. All at a price that you choose.

People who are registered already have the pre-work/orientation, which you can get as soon as you register. It starts June 30.

Check it out: The Heart of Your Business