Plan Your Way to Growth: Newsletter June 25, 2021

Hello All,

When I started my business, my primary goal was to earn enough to cover my living expenses while doing something that gave me more fulfillment than my previous job. I worked hard, had some lucky breaks and was fortunate enough to achieve my goal within a reasonable period of time. What I hadn’t contemplated was how I would deal with success i.e. when I had too many clients who wanted my services but not enough bandwidth to do everything myself. This led me to make decisions reactively rather than proactively.

If your business is doing well, the decision on how to deal with growth often comes sooner than you think and usually when you’re not fully prepared. Of course, if you are faced with making a decision in the moment you are already extremely busy which means that you likely will not have the time to properly consider your next steps and build a holistic plan. Instead, you quickly cobble together your requirements for the extra resources that you need i.e. employees or subcontractors or suppliers, and consequently implement a course of action that might be less than ideal since you haven’t had time to review the big picture.

The solution to this problem is simply and obviously to have a plan in the early stages of your business. You don’t necessarily have to create a formal business plan (although I highly recommend it) but you should sit down and have a think about your long term goals for your business and how it fits into your life aspirations. Perhaps you have limits on how much you want to grow - you just want to be a one person shop and not deal with hassles that come with managing employees. If so, you need to figure out how you will turn away business once you have exceeded these limits and your capacity to service potential customers. Alternatively, you might want to grow as much as possible (to the moon as Mr. Musk likes to say!). In this case, you should have a sense of what that will look like and create, at the very least a rough plan, of the types of additional resources (employees, office space etc.) this will entail, and how you plan to accomplish this. Your goals don’t have to be set in stone and can completely change as your business grows and evolves, but having a sense of where you want your business to go can really help you focus in the present, which can only help you refine and build a more successful business.

Further to our discussion about growth, my latest blog post discusses why and how to transition from a sole proprietorship to a corporation. I have also included a previous post for those of you who currently have sole proprietorship but are considering incorporation.

Small Business Articles/Tips

Preparing for Growth: For those of you who do want to grow your businesses, I highly recommend The E-Myth Revisited. It is a book about how small business owners can create businesses that don’t rely on any single employee or resource by creating and documenting processes. This allows for new employees to transition into their roles seamlessly while the business owners can focus on the more value added and creative aspects of their business.  The blueprint for this model are franchises like McDonald’s, but essentially applies to any business who is looking to grow beyond a one man operation.

Tax Tip : For those of you who filed your tax returns but realized that you (or your accountant) made an error or forgot to include something, submitting an amended return is fairly straightforward. It should noted that you should not amend your tax return until CRA (and RQ) have issued your notices of assessment (NOA) for the year in question as often they will catch the error and amend it on their side. Once you have received your NOA, you can go ahead and refile/amend using the guidance here on how to amend your return.

QBO Tip: There is a handy little feature in both QB Online and Desktop where you can calculate amounts directly in the amount fields (this works on invoices, bills, expenses, journal entries etc.). When creating a transaction simply put in the amount and the “+” or “-” (or multiply/divide) directly into the field and it will act as a calculator. This saves time and hassle of going to your calculator or an excel sheet for simple calculations.

Books

Thanks for everyone who purchased my books. I really appreciate it and sincerely hope they have been useful. I would love to hear your comments!

Small Business Tax Guide: If you are doing your own tax return or simply want to understand how your small business taxes works, this guide explains tax concepts as simply as possible and provides somewhat entertaining examples (especially if you’re fan of detective fiction).

Small Business and Your Dividends: If you want to understand how small business dividends work, the differences between salary and dividends and how to prepare and submit your own dividend declarations, this book takes you step by step through the process. There is also a free dividend checklist that you can download here.

Start Your Business: If your goal is to start a business, or you currently have business and want to make sure you haven’t missed anything, my book explores what every business owner needs to know from a regulatory, financial and tax perspective and provides actionable guidance.

All three books are also available at Amazon in both ebook and print format.

Discount: Save 25% on either guide by using the discount code “special” on my website.

QuickStart Your Quickbooks: I’m currently working on my next book on setting up QBO and working with it (with lots of screenshots!). If you would like to be notified when it becomes available, you can sign up here.

Reviews/Feedback

For anyone who would like to provide their insights into existing blog posts, topic ideas for new blogs, feedback on my products/website or anything else, you can use my feedback form or email me directly. I’m always looking for ways to improve or provide value (to the extent possible) and this will be most helpful.

For anyone who has purchased my books through Amazon or even directly, and have found it valuable, a review directly on Amazon would be hugely helpful.

Thank you to all my subscribers. I really appreciate you guys and I look forward to hearing from you.

Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!

Ronika