Episode 24 | Three Things You Need to Know For Your Year End
Mar 20, 2021
In this episode...
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In today's episode... we are speaking with Laura about three things we should be completing during Year End! When we think Year End, we think about taxes and money… but Laura shares tricks that go much further than money and can make huge impacts on your business!
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TRANSCRIPT
Laura:
Welcome everyone here at Boss It. We would love to hear from you. Join us in our Boss It community by heading over to our website, bossitclub.com and join our mailing list. As we grow, we will be launching our community of fellow Boss It BFFs, and we want you to be a part of it. Okay. Sophia Noreen. Let's dig into this I can't wait to tell them all about how we got here
Sophia Noreen:
Welcome to the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen and I took an Etsy startup and launched it in big box retailers within 12 months. As a creative with an entrepreneurial drive, I left my full time career in healthcare to find better harmony between career, family and self care. We believe you can have it all. Yes, you can launch and run a successful scalable business while maintaining harmony in all aspects of your life. We believe we can learn from each other and draw on many experiences to create the best life possible. During each episode, we will share proven life hacks that will keep you on top and striving every day. There should be no hesitation. Make a plan. Take action. We are here for you. This episode of the Boss It Podcast is brought to you by Unstoppable by Boss It Club. This membership and community is amazing for anybody who's looking for not just business development, but also personal development. We understand that the world of business and your personal life are always intertwined and you cannot work on one without working on the other. The first zero to five years are the hardest, and we know that you need as much support as possible. This membership is chock full of practical and resourceful advice for anybody who is just starting off in a business, or has been in business for a while. During each enrollment, you'll receive a mini-course that will help you with either business or personal development and also workshops and one-on-one coaching. Head to bossitclub.com to learn more about this very unique and very resourceful community and membership.
Sophia Noreen :
Hello everyone. Welcome to another amazing episode of the Boss It Club Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen, and I'm going to be your host today. But we are so lucky to be joined by Laura, who is our financial expert in Boss It Club. And today we are going to talk about the three things that you should do after your year end. Okay. Laura, give it to us. As business owners, what are we supposed to be doing after we do our year end.
Laura Hargrave:
Okay. So before we dive into the three things, let's talk about what year end is. I know for financial people like me, that's a natural thing that just rolls off the tongue. But for a lot of others are going "What the heck is a year end?" Year end is basically the end of your business year. So you might hear it in terms of your fiscal year end or year end, whichever. A lot of entrepreneurs who are sole proprietors have a December 31st year end. So now being in January is a great time to talk about this for those who did have their December 31st year end. But corporations can have year ends anytime of the year. I know you've got one coming up later in the year. Regardless of timing, these are still great things that we can do at that point in time.
Sophia Noreen :
Nice. Awesome. So when we speak about year end, this applies internationally, right? No matter where you are US, Canada, Great Britain overseas in the Middle East. Is it everywhere that year-end really applies or is it per national country?
Laura Hargrave:
Everybody has a year end. And what we're going to talk about today applies to anybody. It's just practical, useful information that's a little bit financial, a little bit total business. And it will help you set up for your year ahead.
Sophia Noreen :
Yay! Okay, great. I am looking forward to this episode. And everyone knows full disclosure. I need this episode because I'm one of those crazy creatives, which I know many of you are. And sometimes we just need to slow down. And a year end is a great time where we take stock and we just understand how the year was financially. And maybe even through some operational analysis, we can see if we are hitting all of our targets and what do we need to do then if they're not hitting our targets. Okay. So Laura has three really big tips for us. So give us the first one.
Laura Hargrave:
Okay. Tip number one is look over your data. So often when the year end is done we're so hyper-focused on being proactive and looking ahead. What's coming up next? What do I need to plan for? What do I need to go over? We forget to look back at what just happened. So at your end, it's a great time to just say, okay, before I start setting any pressure or any new goals or anything going forward, it's a good time to look back and see, okay, what happened? And when I say that, I mean look at actual data. So for those of you who are going, "Oh, but I don't have any data tracked." Okay, that's your first tip is track all your data. So things like customer inquiries or your sales, all of those things are great key indicators to be tracking. So go back, scan through what all the data that you've collected and look over it with this objective mindset. Get a story picture of what happened over your year. I think it's so important because there's so much we can do with that data. Things like having that data helps us to look at milestones for comparison. So before we start being proactive and plan our year, at least I know what last year looked like. And that can maybe give me a good picture for going forward. It's also a great area to help with mindset. So I know personally an example that works for me, being in a service-based industry, is that when I am going into my year, I'm very seasonal. So there's peaks and ebbs and flows of when certain things happen. And so in the wedding booking season, for me, it's always in that January to April sort of area. And it plays with your mindset so much as a service provider, because they may go, oh man, I'm not booking anybody. I haven't had any inquiries lately. I feel like I'm such a failure. Nobody's asking me anything. What's going on? I'm not going to get any bookings this year and I'm going to fail. You can totally follow yourself down that rabbit hole. But I think what's great about having this data is I have a system that allows me to look back at all my customer inquiries for the year. So if I'm having a month where I'm feeling like I just don't feel like anybody's inquiring. What's going on? I always and immediately pull up my data from last year and I look and see where those peaks are. And so while I may be feeling like, oh, I haven't had a wedding booking in forever. I might look back last year and say, okay well, you know what? It looks like the second week of February, I had six inquiries and it's only the first week of January, so I'm not even there yet. Laura, pace yourself. It's okay. It's a great way to keep yourself in check so that you have that data to go forward. And also something that I think is super helpful. And I know that you'll agree with. You like to track data for this reason is marketing. So when you're looking at marketing, you were obviously trying to target specific cycles within your business. So there's no point in me advertising for new wedding clients when it's the middle of July and I'm three quarters way through my wedding season. And it's just shoot, shoot shoot, shoot. That's not the time when people are booking. If I know that all my customer inquiries, that they're mainly shopping between January and April say, then that's when I want to target my marketing to those new clients and get out there and do the networking do my campaigns and my influencer marketing or whatever it is. Knowing your cycles of when your business flows is so important. So by having that data and being able to drill down, like even your sales, tracking it by month by week and analyzing it and looking at it, it helps to make informed decisions going forward.
Sophia Noreen :
I love this example. I think 100% you are so on the money. Because what ends up happening for many people is they forget what their previous year look like. And so if you're taking stock, if you're going and you're mapping out in your situation how many clients you had per month or per week, depends on how frequently you collect your data. And you go back and look at that data, then you don't go into that mindset where you're saying, oh, I'm not good enough. I didn't do enough this year. Or I haven't gotten enough clients signed up or I haven't sold enough product this year. I think that's a really great plan and I think your advice about collecting data to begin with is very important as well.
Laura Hargrave:
And it doesn't even have to be financial data. That's the thing is, yeah, I have my sales and I know when I made that product, when I sold it, that sort of thing. But sometimes it's great to collect this nonfinancial data. So just for instance, with me, customer inquiries is a great thing for you, I would think when you started your marketing campaigns, how fast they were ahead or how they lagged afterwards, little things like that. Just tracking it and keeping stock on all that information is so helpful because it really helps you to make an informed decision going forward instead of just going forward, blindly and saying, okay, we need to start this and that and get doing this. It's actually going to inform that decision. And so therefore you're working a lot smarter and using that data to make those good decisions. And I do want to mention too; so a great way to track that it is just plain old, simple Excel. I think having that spreadsheet, you can manipulate spreadsheets so easily and they're so great to take track of all the information. So just grab Excel spreadsheet, a table, whatever you need there, stick it in your Google docs folder if you need to. Whatever. And just track it as you go along through the year and it will really help you to gather the milestones to look back at.
Sophia Noreen :
We use Google sheets a lot. And the benefit of using Google sheets is it's cloud-based. I can share my sheet with anybody on the team and say, for example, I decide to delegate a task off with marketing, for example. And I want to say, okay, very simple example We have a campaign to grow our social media following. And so we can say, we're going to track our social media following for six months to see how many followers we get. Now, that's not a really great example because you can probably get that metric somewhere else. But another really great metric could be the number of clients you signed up. Or another great example could be if you're starting a marketing campaign with influencers, which has been a very hot topic recently in the Boss It Club because we have a new course that we're offering. And we could say we had X amount of influencers last year. And then we want to increase that number of influencers this year. Having that tracked data really helps anybody on any of the goals that we have planned for the upcoming season. So I think it's really smart to track your stuff. Another great example, which a lot of people don't really think about is when you go to trade shows. And I know right now in the middle of the pandemic being 2020. 2021, we are not doing any trade shows, but time and place we'll come back when you are going to be invited to do a show where you go in person. And what we do in order to ensure that we are getting our ROI back for that table is we counted the number of sales that we got from that convention. And then we would take a percentage saying, if we knew the convention attracted a thousand people and we only had 10 sales that means we only had a 1% sell-through rate. And so we need to ask ourselves was that a good investment for us? And then that also depends on your cart size, your basket size at the time and how much your table costs. So it gets a little bit more complicated, but the benefit of tracking your numbers, just even tracking the number of sales you had for that convention is that if you're invited back to that convention in the future, you have a good understanding of what you can potentially bring in. So say for example, the convincing goes to you, oh we're attracting a much greater audiences and we're going to be five times the size, but they're now charging you five times the money you can say based on my statistics and my data points last year; only had 10 sales. My 10 sales resulted in, say, a hundred dollars because it's only $10 per item per basket size. And the table costs me $200 last year. I did not get my return on investment. Even if they are going to increase their audience by five times, you have to see now what is going to be your potential return on investment. Remember, there's no guarantee. And if it is worth your time to go to that Convention or to that trade show? That's a bit of a complicated example, but you can just see that having the basis of just counting the number of transactions is so important because it will help you make that objective decision when you are presented with opportunities like this.
Laura Hargrave:
Exactly. And I think, speaking of that word opportunity, it's going to show its face here again, as point number two in something that you should be doing after year end is looking at missed opportunities and challenges. So again, we're done our full year. I don't always remember what happened in January, February, March. It's now next January and your mind has certain things that it remembers and forgets. I think it's great to make that concerted effort to really go through and look at what missed opportunities you might've had within the business. And also any challenges that you encountered. So for instance, in a service-based business and a lot of seasonal businesses, we encounter things such as burnout so bad. You just go so hard, so fast in such a short period of time and you get so burnt out. And so taking that challenge and that, process, you need to dissect it and look at it and say, okay I know I was super burnt out last year. Why? Well I did, 15 weddings in one month. Okay. Why? And keep drilling down, see what the STEM of that challenge really is and think about it. What can we do to change that challenge around into an opportunity for the future? Or how do we find an efficiency that's going to fix that problem? If we know we're having a repeated difficulty somewhere in our business this is the chance to really take that and turn it around. Another great example was for me and my business after I think it was about year two. So this was the year that I had started seeing a ton of bookings coming up for year three. And all my bookings were now not my friends and not my family. They were total strangers that I didn't know. And I felt like, okay so Joanna and Joe have a wedding on June, blah, blah, blah. And so-and-so has a wedding on. This dah, dah, dah, dah. And I had until then been relying on Excel spreadsheets to keep things organized. But as my business grew, and as the volume grew, I knew that I needed a better way to keep organized. And I started to see that kind of jumbling in my head going, oh, I feel like I can't keep track of this all. W hat I'm doing isn't working anymore with the volume that I have. At that point is when I started to seek out the customer management software system that I wanted. And this is a great time to look back and say, okay, what do I need to add to my business, to create some efficiency, to get rid of those areas where I'm having challenges, where I'm getting burnout, where I'm just having this difficulty that Continuously is rearing its head in my business. What things can I put in place to fix it? I know Noreen, you're a big proponent of this. Another great thing that we can do when we hit those challenges is look at outsourcing for small tasks, right?
Sophia Noreen :
Yeah, for sure. I'm sure you guys have heard me say this before, but if there's something that you do not enjoy to do in your business or something that takes a lot of energy or you're just not looking forward to completing the task; once you can afford it financially, I highly suggest delegating it out to somebody. Or asking somebody who is either in your family or friends to help you out. Because Laura touched on a burnout is real. And it can severely jeopardize your business growth and your personal growth. Because now you may feel that you're not capable of completing the task, it really does hit your self esteem. And overall, it's not that you are unable to do it. It's just the fact that you have to respect your body. You have to respect your energy. And you have to respect your time. And so delegating out tasks that you found onerous throughout the year, or you didn't have time for, or you feel that you can excel the business in another area. Like for example, in our situation at Also Sophia. I'm much better at doing the creative aspect of the business versus picking and the packages and fulfilling orders. We hired out a team to help us with that now, because it's just easier for everyone to complete the task. It's easier for them because they're in a warehouse environment and it's easier for me to complete my tasks. And now I have time to actually follow through and do the creativity. Laura, would you suggest that when they're doing their year-end and they're looking at their opportunities and challenges, do you suggest that our listeners go through their task list that they need to complete for their business? And see if there's something they can delegate out or automate?
Laura Hargrave:
It just all comes back to looking at that challenge and opportunity and looking at the root of it. For instance, you just said, I felt like I wasn't able to do the creative side because I was bogged down with continuously picking and packing because my level of volume had grown so much in such a short period of time. We tend to just keep going once things get busy and we're like, okay, I just got to do this. I got to go forward. I got to move forward with my goals. But I think that's the beauty of year-end is it's like, okay, no, wait, stop. Let's stop that hamster wheel. Let's stop going forward for a minute. We need to look back in order to make sure that where we're going forward is actually in the most efficient way. That's why I think it's just such a great time of year is to take the time to analyze what we can learn from our past, in order to proceed forward.
Sophia Noreen :
I think it's great. I think it's great advice. I don't think enough of us take the time to slow down. We're just so in the grind of our business, that we don't sit down and say, okay, how can I make this more efficient? How can I automate this task? How can I delegate this task? And I think year-end is a perfect time to consciously take on that, analysis of your business.
Laura Hargrave:
Sure. Okay. And so number three, this is a good one. I am going to tell you what is totally counter-intuitive from what you are going to think here, but I'm going to tell you now is the time to sweat the small stuff. Okay. I'm not saying not to sweat. I'm saying, okay, you need to sweat it.
I don't know if I agree with
Sophia Noreen :
this entirely, but don't sweat the small stuff. Okay. Tell us why only at this time of the year, should we sweat the small stuff?
Laura Hargrave:
Okay. So this is a great chance to really look back with that fine tooth comb and see what we can do to help us going forward. Nobody really loves micromanaging. And so often, as we just alluded to, we do get so busy in cycles of volume and seasonality that we don't get a
chance to look at things minutely. So
Laura Hargrave:
I am telling you that this is the time
And the
Laura Hargrave:
reason why I'm saying this is because it's going to make a difference. For instance, stuff like your financials. Okay. I know a lot of us ignore this for the year. We get busy, we do the bare minimum. Okay. And
then it's year end and
Laura Hargrave:
oh, okay, let's go
forward. Well no. I'm
Laura Hargrave:
saying sweat the small stuff for a minute here. Take the time to see if you have, for instance, gotten all your tax deduction. So have you recorded all your expenses that you had in the year or
is there a pile of
Laura Hargrave:
receipts sitting in the drawer that you haven't dealt with? Get those receipts and get them recorded.
That makes
Laura Hargrave:
a difference to your bottom line. And I know it's so hard because we don't always have time for the little tasks, but I'm saying this is a great time to do it. Review your books. Did you get your cell phone charges in there? Did you track your mileage last year? That's a deduction. Don't miss out on these things that can actually help you out. I know they're small and I know they
take time. I Know it's micromanagin g but take that moment to
Laura Hargrave:
stop before you can go forward. Because
a) who doesn't
Laura Hargrave:
want to save money?
But also b) from that
Laura Hargrave:
might come a better solution for efficiencies in the future.
If you're
Laura Hargrave:
not tracking your mileage, so maybe it's a matter of going online to the app store and seeing what mileage tracker is going to work great for you. And then starting going forward from January 1st using it, so that next year you can definitely get all those little deductions in and save yourself some money. Another great thing to
review that's considered
Laura Hargrave:
maybe small stuff is review your insurance policy. I don't know how many people forget to do this. Look at your business. Where is it? Has it grown? What kind of liability do you have currently? Does that cover all the things that you are doing? Do you need insurance and you didn't have it before? Do you need to shop for a better rate? Do you need to ask around? This is a great time to sweat this little thing and work it out. I know so many of us hate these little tasks. But if it saves your business both legally and some
dollars, why not? Let's
Laura Hargrave:
do it. And then lastly, I would
also say
Laura Hargrave:
in terms of
the small stuff,
Laura Hargrave:
get your filing done, get your
paperwork done, get your receipts
Laura Hargrave:
filed away. These are all things that are so helpful. If you ever need to look back, if you're ever
audited, if there's
Laura Hargrave:
something that comes up next year and you need to refer back to it, having all these ducks in a row is really going to help you going forward. So essentially while it is sweating the small stuff, it's actually gonna save you time in the long run.
Sophia Noreen :
Oh, so well said, and I really, really appreciate the detail that you went into because I think a lot of us, especially as business owners service-based,
product based -it doesn't
Sophia Noreen :
matter. There is some expense that we are not accounting for. It could be as easy as the mileage that you use to go pick up your boxes for a shipment that you had, or you went to go have coffee with a potential client that you forgot about. Would you suggest that during this time of the year, at year end, if you have perpetually been forgetting, say for example, to include your cell phone bill. Would you suggest to try to automate a monthly or a weekly check in with your finances to ensure that you have gotten all of those line items into your books?
Yeah. That's
Laura Hargrave:
the beauty of back to number one is, looking over your data and tracking
your data. I f you have
Laura Hargrave:
all the information and then with point number two, if you're looking at those missed opportunities and putting any efficiencies in place; with
this small stuff, you can
Laura Hargrave:
also do that, too. Create a flow that
works for you. T he great part
Laura Hargrave:
of a
new year is
Laura Hargrave:
it's time for reinvention. It's time to create more space in your day and in your life and in your business. And forget the
resolutions. Forget the new year's
Laura Hargrave:
goals. Take the time instead to just set yourself up for some really great wins over the year. And like you said, if it's continuously missing to input these things, maybe it's setting up tasks in your Google calendar to
say, okay, on the 10th
Laura Hargrave:
day of every month, I'm going to make sure that I record my cell phone bill. Or on the 20th day of every month, I'm going to go through my receipts and itemize them and
then file them away.
Laura Hargrave:
Setting tasks can be so helpful. And so I think just getting a system and a workflow that works for you. Sometimes it's hard to stop when
you're on that hamster
Laura Hargrave:
wheel of going forward, because you feel like it's just, oh, I don't have time for that. I can't think about it right now. But honestly, it'll just set you up in such a better space going forward.
Sophia Noreen:
I love that advice. I am going to take that advice and try to automate a few of those. And I'm going to try to automate having a day where I put in my receipts, because we know that's not happening on this end. And that's full disclosure for all of our listeners that even as we have scaled, we have been struggling in this little territory called getting your year end solid and
going back and reflecting
Sophia Noreen:
on the past year, and then planning for the year to come. So that is great, great advice for all of us. So really, we try to automate these small things. Sweat the small stuff at year
end. Automate.
Sophia Noreen:
I love it. It's fantastic.
Sophia Noreen :
Okay. This is so great.
And so on point, Laura,
Sophia Noreen :
considering we are also starting our Unstoppable founding members launch, which means that individuals will join. We're going to be talking about productivity and how to get organized for the first two
months of Wnstoppable.
Sophia Noreen :
So that's fantastic.
I feel like
Sophia Noreen :
I'm going to do air quotes, "Sweat the small stuff" is a great way of looking at this. Because it's really easy as business owners, like you said, to get into the grind and not pay attention to the small things. But paying attention to these small items could actually help uncover bigger problems. So for example, if I'm not recording my cell phone bill in my financial records every month, that could also mean that I'm not staying on top of a few other line items that are expenses, which we may not need. So I feel like sweating the small stuff is going
to help us in Unstoppable
Sophia Noreen :
really go ahead and pick on the things that we should be picking on and help automate those items so we are not missing the fundamentals of our business. If you guys have any questions about your end and how to close off through your end or things that you could do in addition to your ad, or you can always email and Laura would be happy to jump on here again, I am sure.
Laura Hargrave:
So if you guys found today's topics helpful, we would love to hear from you. We'd love to hear what challenges you faced in the last year and how this discussion might've helped hit us up by email or by DM. And we would love to chat it out.
Sophia Noreen :
Yeah. And if you guys are not following us on
Instagram, @bossitclub all one word bossitclub. And you
Sophia Noreen :
can hit DMS there any time. Laura would be happy to jump in here. I'm sure to give us some more practical advice about year ends. And again, if you guys are interested, unstoppable is opening up. It's going to be monthly. You can enroll. And we are going to be talking about productivity during the first month. So it's going to be quite exciting. I think the sweat, the small stuff might be something I use in unstoppable. And the reason why is because I want individuals to take note and ensure that they are being as productive as possible in their business without burning out. Okay guys. This was such a great episode. I'm sure you guys have taken some notes.
s always
Sophia Noreen :
make sure you have written down what your plan is because we're not just
listening And we're
Sophia Noreen :
just gonna go from the top just so we
can recap. A 30-second rundown
Sophia Noreen :
of what she spoke about in this episode. So you guys can jot it down quickly and then make an action plan. Go ahead, Laura.
Laura Hargrave:
Okay. So number one: look over your data and if you aren't tracking your data, do it now. Number two: take a chance to look over those missed opportunities and challenges that you faced in the past year. And number three sweat
the small stuff.
Laura Hargrave:
This is your time to micromanage and get all your ducks in a row.
Sophia Noreen :
Love it. Okay guys. That's all we got for today. Thank you again for listening. And remember, make a plan and take action. And yes, you can have it all. Talk to you guys later. Bye.
Laura Hargrave:
Bye.
Sophia Noreen:
So my fellow bosses, did you enjoy that episode? Now is time for you to make a solid plan and take action. But first, remember to subscribe and follow the Boss It Podcast so you receive a notification whenever we drop an episode. Remember to leave us a review on iTunes. Take a screenshot of your review and share it on Instagram as a post or a story and tag us @BossItclub. If Instagram is not your thing, no worries. Email your screenshot to [email protected]. As a massive thank you, we will be sending you our Top 50 Tips for Starting and Scaling a Business. This list is exclusively for podcast reviewers. So don't miss out. Now remember bosses: make a plan and take action in all aspects of your life. Yes you can have it all.
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