← The Ops Experts Club Podcast
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the Ops Experts Club. If you're at all interested in anything we talk about here in this episode, go ahead and check out the description down below and click any of the links there. Or if you just want to know more about us, click the links below. Now onto the episode Ops Experts Club. We are here today, man. OPS Experts. I am excited about today because we have got an amazing guest with us today who I'm like, hey, would you mind joining us? And she, I would call her a reluctant guest. This isn't something that she loves to do, but she promised me she would do it with a good attitude. So Taryn Turner and I are on the show every single week. Like Tabby's way prettier and way nicer than me and Taryn combined. So I think that you guys are going to appreciate that if you're watching the video or you're listening in. But Tabby Claire is a part of the leadership team here at the COLAB team and we do a lot of finance function here at the COLAB team. But you know, within the leadership team, each one of the leaders kind of has something specifically. They're strong and that's what makes them a leader in the COLAB team. And Tabby's leadership is in the finance end of things for COLAB team. And so in for all the clients that we touch on. Tabby usually is involved at some level in some part of the finance function, whether that's part of our team. You know, we have four ladies on the COLAB team that specialize in finance and so they all tee up into tabs. They're all in different clients in different ways. But Tabby is like instructing and then carries clients on her own. And so I just thought as we come to the end of the year, a lot of visionaries panic in January or really probably in March as they prep tax prep for April of things they should have done before the year was over. You know, very few things in the digital marketing space are date tied. You know, I mean like you can do things retro, you can build things as you're creating it, you can do a lot of different things. But finance is one of those things where it's like you better do the things you need to do in the tax year that they need to be done before you close up the year and you have to report on it the following. So I just thought why not bring in somebody that I have so much love for, so much respect for, see help clients on a daily basis, probably deeper than most. And so Tabby Claire, with no further ado. I know I just built you up huge. Thank you so much for joining us this morning on ops, our OPS experts club.
- [02:14]
B
Of course. Happy to be here and thank you for the hype. It's a lot to live up to.
- [02:20]
A
Reluctantly. Happy to be here, but we are excited to have you here. So, Tabs, you know, when I met you, you were just starting with P. Vargas, you know, and you were just like, I think not too far out of school with a degree in these things, and were, you know, coming in as just kind of an understudy on a finance team. And I watched you really ascend and build up to a place where by the end that you were managing people and managing functions and making decisions. And so when your time came to an end with Pete, I just thought, man, let's. Let's see if Tabby would want to come and do this fractionally, you know, and so I reached out to you and I said, hey, what would you think about coming alongside of me and beginning to do this? And you took it on at kind of a small level, and then, you know, you started working for another employer. And then you got into that and you're like, you know, I. I actually think I'd rather do this fractionally. I think I could be really good at this, and I think that you're just a badass at this. I love bragging on you to any client we talk to about it, but I've just been really impressed to watch your growth trajectory. How has it felt to maybe just give people a quick snapshot on that whole growth trajectory and things you've learned over time and things you've appreciated and things that you've seen in certain kinds of businesses. Because you've got to be in the underbelly of a lot of different kinds of businesses, something that maybe most, you know, bookkeeping or finance professionals don't get to do? They get pretty pigeonholed. I feel like you've got to see a lot. Maybe talk about a little bit about that.
- [03:42]
B
Yeah, it has been a. Quite an evolution. And you're right. I think I've. One thing that I haven't expected necessarily about the way my experience has progressed is just like all the different types of industry I get to see manufacturing, retail, digital, like, either. It's just all over the place. And that's, I think, is part of what I love about doing this fractionally. You get very. You get to see some things from different industries that carry over into other industries that you wouldn't necessarily think about or understand or get to just like, push and pull from different types of things, take what works. And I think it's just been a really cool way to learn, a cool way to just continue to enhance my skill set and know how to treat. Like, as I get new clients, as we I look at new types of financials, getting to see just what works in other places and what doesn't work in other places, and getting to plug that in in ways that you wouldn't necessarily think of. I think that getting to start where I started meant I just saw it from the ground up, which has helped so much in really thinking of finance from an operations perspective. And I think that's one of the best things your finance people can do is find, like so many people separate those things. There's finance and there's operations. And I think when you can bridge the gap, think about finance from an operations perspective and operations from a financial perspective. It just creates so much just synchronicity across your business and helps things. I think it really is kind of a game changer when it comes to reaching the goals that your marketing team, your operations team, all these other people are kind of going out and setting. Sometimes we forget to bring the finance piece in. And I think when you do it alongside, it can just be a. A really powerful tool in a way that's underutilized a lot of the time.
- [05:38]
A
Yeah. The thing that I love that you just touched on there, Tabby, the thing that I really feel like makes Colab Team pretty unique, you know, because we bump up against other finance professionals as we work with all these clients, and we're not there to steal anybody's business. We're not there to, like, take work away from people. But I will say something that makes what we do really unique is that we have been under the hood of so many different styles of business, types of businesses, which gives us a unique perspective when we come up against a new problem. You know what I mean? And we're not new. Right. We're not trying to take on a bunch of new different kinds of things. Like, I feel like we've created these like, three, I would say like three channels that are our primary channels. You nailed like, retail distribution or, you know, some sort of, like, distribution at some level. And then the online digital marketer, you know, which is like, I would say the ones that we live in the most now, there are some that maybe we flirt in and out of that will help. But I think the nice thing about being we've been under some really big powerhouses in each one of those settings that educates us on how are different people doing it. You know, I think when you do things fractionally, you get to learn the best of all worlds. Whereas, like, I know for me, like, looking for a bookkeeper just for a Collab team at the very beginning, like, I'm talking to some lady down the street, I don't think that she's ever done anything like what we've done before, you know what I mean? But now I'm asking her to do my books or asking that to roll up into the right cpa, that I'm not confident that the CPA knows, like, the best ways that I can save on tax strategy. You know, I think that. But you just kind of go with a brick and mortar or like a, like one size fits all. And that's just true when it comes to finance. And I think that one of the coolest things I've watched you do is take the experience you have in each one of these things and challenge other mindsets of, hey, so I saw this person do this, and I saw this person do this. And actually let me bring this from over here and introduce this here. And that's something I think makes you really unique, makes what Colab offers really unique of us doing books for people and a month tie off for people, vendor payments for people, payroll for people. I think it makes it very unique. But also I think that's something that I really love about you and Rachel and Faith and Stephanie, all the ladies that work with Collab team on finance is you guys have such great, like, personality. That's something I told you I thought you had that such so special about you is that most bookkeepers are pretty flat, boring people. Like, they're just not like the most interesting people to be around. And I think that you bring such a special energy. Every client I introduce you to, they'll always message me afterwards and say, tabby is just amazing. Thank you for introducing me to her. So just know you carry a real special gift. And like, those of you listening, I would say, whether it's us at the Collab team, whether it's Tabby, whether it's you finding somebody, I think it's really important for you to find somebody that absolutely knows their stuff, but somebody that's agile enough to challenge things, look at things from a different perspective, somebody that's been under hoods of multiple different kinds of business, but also businesses like yours that understand what you're trying to do and can challenge what you've been doing as the norm. Because I think if there's any business end of the business that you can just get settled into, this is just how we do things. It's the finance end of the pool. No, no, that's just how we do things. No, that's just how we reconcile. No, that's just how we pay vendors. No, that's just how we consider how a payment structure should be structured. Whereas I think there are a lot of ways that you can challenge things and say, yeah, but is that the best fit for the situation we're in now? And generationally, just because that's how we started doesn't mean like that's where we should be at this, like growth trajectory, you know. So, Tab, I don't know if we want to speak to that a little bit.
- [09:05]
B
Yeah, I think what you just said about growth and as things have to shift, I think that is something that is so easy to fall into and that I see across pretty much to some extent every business I've ever worked in, that you maintain processes and things that worked for you when you were a different business than you are right now. And especially as you kind of teeter on the edge of that small business to maybe a mid sized business from maybe six digits or a year to seven. Like those transitionary points, I think are the things that it's the times that you have to address what kind of business am I? Am I? Are the processes that I am maintaining things that work for a business of my size or business that's shooting for the things that I'm shooting for. And not to get boring, but that also gives implications to tax designations and things that you want to be thinking about and talking to your CPA about or a financial advisor and things like that. It's like those things are. They're not the pretty things to think about. They're not the things that it's like they're really easy to ignore, but they can have huge financial implications down the line. And so keeping keeping those in the front of your mind or having someone that consistently brings them to the front of your mind is really important. And something that can just really, it sounds like something that's hard to bite off and get started on, but in the long run makes something that is a task not a task for you anymore. It makes you just that much more prepared to walk into those situations and be ready for tax season, be ready for, okay, we just hit a different tax bracket or, you know, we're shifting the platform, we're collecting money through whatever it may be, defined processes make it that much easy to then transition to a new and improved process.
- [10:52]
A
Yeah, I will say. And maybe we make this part too. Maybe I'm just going to sucker you in the reluctant, the reluctant willingness to do shows. Maybe we'll do a part two to this show and let's because I promised the listeners today we'd think about end of your tie off. I want to make sure we leave enough time for that. But maybe next show we talk about scaling your business and what are some of the financial things you should be thinking about? You know, because I think the things that come up in my mind are when should I be looking at a pe? What is technology that I should begin incorporating? You know, like when are other processors things that we should be considering? You know, I know all those things are pain points that Taryn, you've been in the middle of lately with clients. Things that we have been dealing with on some of our clients tabs of like, hey, so how are we tracking in the processing and why are some of our processing fees so high and could we mitigate some of those processing fees by just looking at the platforms we're using? And just because generationally we chose to use them at the beginning, is that still the best choice that we're making now? So maybe we make that part two and we talk about that next week of as you scale, what are some good financial constraints you should think about or frameworks you should think about? But maybe let's talk about today because I promised it at the beginning. End of year, tie off. End of your tie off is a big deal. You know, it's something that I think a lot of people think about after the fact. And if you're not careful, I can sneak up on you. Right, because you're into January tying off December, but you should have made probably some business decisions in December that have implications on the way you're going to have to file. You know, like end of year stuff. So maybe let's talk about from your perspective, tabs. What are some of the basics that you think people should be thinking about to get ready for end of year?
- [12:26]
B
Yeah, well, the first thing is flip your perspective. End of year is not just about compliance, it is strategy. Like end of year I think can so often just be like, ah, tax prep. And it can be such a good tool outside of that. And I think also just for most business owners, thinking of it from that perspective makes it a lot more exciting than thinking about, oh, I have to make sure I'm ready for taxes. But thinking of it from the perspective of like I'm about to get data, I'm about to get information I can use to make decisions based on is important. And I think it's what keeps you from missing an opportunity to use this information, not just package it up and send it to your cpa. So that's the overarching theme I would say is think strategy, not just compliance.
- [13:16]
A
That's great.
- [13:18]
B
Practically speaking, I mean this probably should go without saying, but I've seen it enough times that I know it doesn't start with a clean, reconciled set of books. Everything needs to be reconciled ever. You need to know that what you're working with is accurate. And while that should be a given, I have walked into books that you know it's already closed. Financials, taxes have been reported and they haven't reconciled a bank account in two years. And we live in a world where automations and integrations get to take care of so much of our workload. But those things break sometimes they need to be verified. And you know, relying on your QuickBooks integration and not knowing it broke for two months out of the year means you might miss tax deductions, you might miss things. So that's kind of a no brainer one. But I think it's important to say is make sure it's clean. Making sure you have all the, all the expenses, all the income, everything that you that will need in there. That kind of I would say next is just reviewing income and expenses and not just oh, this is how much we made, this is how much we spent. But did a reimbursement end up getting categorized as income? Are there owner draws masquerading as expenses somewhere on your P and L, you know, like dive in a little bit and make sure, you know, you hope everything was done accurately but it's, it's always a good point to just check, make sure this is what you're going to be moving forward with. So make sure you didn't miss anything. It's a great time to clean up any question marks so that you're not finding yourself at time to file my taxes and then you're filing based on your assumptions or maybe your bookkeeper's assumptions. Just really take the time to feel confident in what's there and that's going to look different based on who's owning your finances. Do you do it? Do you have an outsourced company? Do you have someone on staff? That review process could probably be a huge conversation in and of itself. But that is, I think just an overarching theme for that as well is make sure you feel good about what's there.
- [15:22]
C
Yeah.
- [15:24]
A
Taran Turner, like, great to have you. Like, I'm glad the gravel was the gravel delivered in the way it was supposed to be. Like, I mean, we're going to jump on the show and Taran's like, I got to make sure the gravel's being delivered in the right spot. So Taran, I just want to make sure. Did they drop it in the right spot?
- [15:38]
C
They drop it wherever I tell them to.
- [15:40]
A
Yes. Taren, do you get to get out there on the tractor and push it around later on this afternoon?
- [15:45]
C
Yeah, this weekend.
- [15:48]
A
That's what I'm talking about. Taran. For those of you who didn't realize this about Taran Turner, not only is he brilliant at all things operations, we call him old McTurner how to farm here on this, on this collab team because he gets to drive his tractor around and it's pretty impressive stuff.
- [16:04]
C
Yes, yes. Thank you.
- [16:06]
A
Taran, what are some of the things we feel like that you see like towards the end of the year, panic or pain points in finance, do you feel like from the clients that are under your hand, there are things that you're like, man, we should have been thinking about this probably before December. What are your thoughts on that?
- [16:24]
C
I like seeing the end of year scramble on how can I lower my tax bills by prepaint as much as I can right now. That's always a fun one, you know, and like you said, working with your CPA, I think you should always have like a Q4 CPA check in just to see where you're at and what we can do now before December 20th hits and we realize it's almost too late. So that's always good. I do love, you know, Tabby's saying cleaning up the books. I love just opportunity to get to organize and clean up and start fresh. Then the other thing I think is great is, you know, really getting to see did we hit what we wanted to hit? Did our, did we hit our break even point? Was it accurate? That's really going to help us feed into the next year if we haven't yet planned. And we talked about the SAM plan previously and how that really goes hand in hand with what your finances are. So this is that opportunity to see what they actually were to really help us guide the SAM plan and what we need to be doing. And if we can't hit our benchmarks where we need to be cutting.
- [17:33]
A
Yes. Tabs I think that that's something that I really love that you do is. And you do it pretty industry specific on. Hey, so here are the core metrics. Like. Cause most, like, let's be honest, most visionaries eyes start going a little cross eyed when they start looking at a spreadsheet or when they start thinking about having to get into their finance program. Like I just know so very. I mean we've worked with dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of businesses and visionari and the number of visionaries that I know personally that get involved in their finance end of things is so small, such a small percentage. Right. So I think one of the beautiful things that you do for people is with your dashboards like as far as, like let's roll this up. Yeah. There are a bunch of line items in your chart of accounts. Yeah. As we're looking at the profit loss, we could be looking at a bunch of different numbers here. But this number and this number and this number are the critical ones you should be looking at. And these are the percentages that those numbers should be living at. So like Taran was saying there, like what are our cogs, like what are our expenses, what is our labor at? What is our profitability? And how are we measuring up because we set goals on those at the beginning of the year, at the beginning of each quarter and how are we measuring up with those at the end of the year, at the end of each quarter and really holding some accountability to that. So I think you're right. End of the year stuff is a great time for us to really challenge because a lot of times visionaries want to live at top line. Right. We grossed this number. We're an eight figure company, we're a seven figure company, whatever it is, we're a high six figure. And they get so excited about it. But like that's cool and that's great from a sales perspective. But if that's not affecting your bottom line in a way where you're ending up in a profitable spot at a percentage that you want profitability to be at, then it's not quite as cool. Right. Like it's. Because really it, it. The bottom line is king. Maybe tab. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
- [19:18]
B
Yeah. I think the, it's really easy to. From what I've seen across different business owners really across every industry, it's really easy to get excited about top line. Top line is so fun to look at. It is the one that it's. We build goals off of. We look at it and say like, okay, we made it like you said, Aaron, we're yes, we're seven figure company. Like those types of things and understanding what comes out of that. Yes, we're looking at cogs, but then even bottom, bottom line, what about your operating expenses? What about all these different things? Where are we landing at the end of the day? Because you can have one of your best sales month ever and still end with negative profitability. There's like, you see it all the time and it's like that's why looking at all of it and understanding, okay, did I maybe my revenue went up, but I had to get my labor to 70% of my revenue in order to get to that revenue number. So that's not sustainable. You know, things like finding those little metrics like you said, Aaron, a category. What are my drivers is what I like to think of it as. What are the things driving this revenue and what are the things driving the profitability of the revenue? What's my net income landing at and what are the key contributing factors that I can push back, push more into whatever it may be to scale that revenue up and down.
- [20:50]
A
So looking at numbers besides, like, I think a lot of visionaries do what I call bank account, like bank balanced bookkeeping, you know, where it's like they don't know what their percentages are. They just feel good when the bank account is over this dollar amount or they feel bad when the bank account is below this dollar amount. And then they start carrying all kinds of stress and anxiety instead of realizing, no, no, no, really, it's not as much about as what's in your bank account as how profitable your business is. Right. Because at some point you might want to exit this business. And they're not going to look at your bank account to determine if they're going to purchase your business. They're going to look at your profit loss. They're going to performed. They're going to look at, did you manage your business well and is this sustainable to be managed well over a set of months, which is largely told by your books and unless you're planning on cooking them, which I don't think you should do, I get so much better for you just to steadily say, no, no, this is how we've done things, this is how we've performed and that's why this business is worth X. You know, I was sitting with a guy last night, a business owner that I really love and respect a lot, coffee shops. And he was talking about an exit plan and he was talking about an offer. And he was talking about coming up with, you know, valuation of the business. And I said like down and dirty. If you're. So I've seen several valuations come back. I've seen several like exits of businesses. Down and dirty. I would say, how profitable is it by the end of the year? And then multiply that across five years and then that's probably what your business is worth. Because most people are going to want to start making business by year five. Like by end of year five, they're going to want to start bringing money back in, right? So if they're paying you for something, they're going to want to know that business is, is starting to make money for them after year five. So how much, how profitable are you? And that's a really quick, easy way of getting to what's the valuation of this business at? You know. Now obviously you can bring somebody in and they can tell you if you own a bunch of equipment or if you own a bunch of things that are assets that should be added in. But when it comes to just how your business performs, especially a cash flowing business, your valuation is going to be largely told by your books. And if your books are a mess, like that's a really hard thing to get to the bottom of. So all those things, for all those reasons, what are the key drivers? Like you were saying, tabs, making sure you clean things up, make sure you challenge things. Like Taryn said, that's not something most visionaries are going to be great at. They're great at quick start. They're not great at follow through. So find somebody you can partner with that's good at follow through and that's going to hold your feet to the fire a little bit, right? Hey, no, no. We need to do at least a monthly check in tabs. I love your tie off of the books and you send out a loom video and you're like, this is where I'm going to draw your eyes. Here's the P and L, here's the reports. This is where I want to draw your eyes to give this a watch and let's set up a quick 15, 20 minutes meeting on the backside of it for you to ask questions like visionaries make that a discipline. Watch those videos, look at those reports, ask the good questions. Otherwise you're going to get to December right now and feel like Sugarfoot, like, what should I have been doing all year long before I get to December? And now I'm stressed. So I'd say those are all good things to Consider and to be thinking through and, and and then I'd love for you to speak into this tabs in December there might be something you need to consider on maybe like dropping your bank account number for the sake of investing back into your people because it's either you're going to invest back into your people or invest into your equipment or invest into something or you're going to be giving that money to Uncle Sam. Right. Like as far as if you walk away with a bunch of profit that you haven't put back into the business, like you're going to have a higher amount of money than Uncle Sam's like oh look how well you did this year. Yeah, I'd like cut of this please. You know what I mean? So maybe you want to speak to that on ways that maybe most visionaries are like no, no, I want the, I want the bank accounts to look fat. I want them to look good. I want us to know this. But it like we might be at the time of the year in the month of December where you're like I'm going to lean in and choose to invest in my people or in some infrastructure for the sake of helping me on the backside of how I'm doing some reporting in for the for the year end tie off.
- [24:38]
B
Yes, that is definitely and why we should probably be doing this episode in about September, not December. That really Q4 is the time you want to start looking at those things. Obviously there's still a quarter left of the year at that point but you really should on at the beginning of quarter four start thinking through your tax strategy and working with a financial advisor or someone who's going to understand your just personal business landscape and make recommendations based on that. I think a lot of specifically a lot of small business owners do not have nearly the reduced tax liability that they could if they were working with someone who could help them capitalize on that. So that is a shameless plug, not for me but for a very talented financial advisor. Find them, use them, pay them well. They will be worth it. That is my recommendation for that. But as far as for what you can do, I think one thing that's really important is always make sure you're validating your balance sheet because I didn't even touch on that. But there's depending on the industry that you're in, you can have a lot of potential tax deductions or different ways you can treat assets to help your overall tax burden. So don't forget about your balance sheet. Both from the perspective of there could be stuff hiding there you don't realize. But also from the perspective that there could be hidden tax liability there. But then also yes, your bank balance is one of the most insignificant aspects of your business as far as is how you can really operate and that as long as you have a good grasp on cash flow, one like that is one of the best things you can do at the end of the year. Do you have, do you have staff that you really want to appreciate and make sure that you can give them a tax covered bonus at the end of the year? Something like that. There's another thing to think about. If you're giving a bonus to your people, think about covering the taxes on it. If you're really trying to increase your expenses for the year, that's an extra. It gives that gift that much more of bow on top to your employees and it helps you on your P and L. So just anything like that that you're thinking of. I think it's really easy for business owners to think about numbers in terms of. Of what how much money's in the bank and am I ready for taxes. Those two things are just such a small aspect of it that if you can just dive in and take the time talk to your and it depends on who you're working with. Some I know some business owners, you are your bookkeeper, you are your CPA and so in those circumstances I think that's when it makes sense to, you know, read it. There's a some great books out there that you don't have to go and pay someone to get that like figure this all out for you. At some point it's probably going to make sense to do that. But read the Tax and Legal playbook by Mark Kohler. Read some different tax. I could drop some for you to put in the description Aaron, some good books that you could use for, for just educating yourself and knowing this is what. What this is what I should be thinking about at the end of the year. It's different based on your business and the industry you're in. So it's hard to give really concrete answers.
- [28:15]
A
That's good. I think that more than anything and as, as I hope like we're not tax professionals here. We're not trying to tell you what to do. We're trying to give you good ideas for you to take to your tax professional and ask hey, could this be something that I could try that would be a good decision for me before the year is up. So that's definitely what I would suggest. And then next week as we come back and we come back for part two, tabs, let's come back thinking through how can we help people scale? What are things they should be thinking through? Taryn, you're gonna have some great suggestions on this side, too. You've seen people grow monumentally in our time with people where we started with people where they were at maybe 3, 4 million, and we've grown them to 20 million, 30 million beyond. And there are some things you should be thinking about as you're growing your business on scale like that. So, Tabby, thank you so much for joining us today. Great having you on Ops Experts Club. Taryn Turner, always such an excellent thing to have you spreading gravel and talking about the books all in one show. So thank you guys for joining us. Opsex, we'll see you here next week on Ops Experts Club.
- [29:12]
B
Thanks again.