I’ve been thinking a lot about my business—just as any business owner should. Why do I do what I do? What do I love the most about what I do?
‍
My passion is analyzing businesses, departments, and processes and helping owners understand and improve their businesses. I accomplish that through interviews, analysis, financial review, and discussion. I’m the quiet one who sits in the back, takes it all in, and then speaks up, mostly with shockingly accurate scenarios and next steps. I’ve heard more times than I can count, “We should have listened to Linda. She is the only one who figured it out.”
‍
I’ve always been able to take all the separate pieces from different perspectives and then put them back together to see what’s working and what’s not—to see if I’m being told the whole story. The most important part of that process is that I can explain it to owners and managers in terms they understand. They aren’t CPAs or EAs and don’t have finance degrees. I speak their language.
‍
I use the accounting department as the starting point with my small business clients. According to the SBA, small businesses are defined as businesses with less than $38.5 million in gross revenue (billings or invoicing) and usually fewer than 50 employees. I look at accounting, payroll, employee benefits, and department and project budgets (or lack of budgets) to present to my clients the overall health of their business and how to make it more profitable so that the owners can keep more of their profits.
‍
I teach small business owners how to understand the financial health of their businesses and how to put the processes in place to build their businesses and still have time to enjoy their life and the fruits of their labor.
‍
Let me tell you a little about ‘my ideal client’—Robert. Robert is new to business (3 months as an entrepreneur). He’s never done pricing for clients. He’s never done billing. He’s never run a payroll. He has, however, been a fabulous electrician and can look at a project and tell you how long it will take and how much the materials will cost. He’s managed staff—his team of electricians—but not the HR portion of managing staff. He works hard but is confused by the list of things he must do.
‍
He asked his wife to help in the ‘family business,’ but she’s not a bookkeeper and has a full-time job. She can do a little just by watching videos and fiddling around with the programs they think they need—at least an accounting program, a scheduling tool, and a contact management tool.
‍
He reached out to me because we worked together at a developer where I was in the sales department (supporting sales managing escrows), and he was the Electrical Trades Manager. While working together, he saw how I worked with the architecture team, the sales team, the construction team, the trade managers, the site managers, the project managers, purchasing and accounting, and how I could get everyone into a room and get them all understanding what each was trying to say—but all saying it in their language or jargon! Every trade or business has its language. It takes an interpreter sometimes to get everyone truly on the same page.
‍
That’s what I love to do.
‍
~Linda Weathers