From Entrepreneur to Expert: Navigating Business with Shauna Schubert

Why the bookkeeping is. It takes that emotion. It takes the feeling. It takes everything. It brings it back to black and white, and it really just gives you sense of those decisions that you need to make and why you need to make them. It doesn't mean they're easy decisions. I think the more we can systemize, the more we can be digital, the more instant we can be, the closer we can be to having those books tied up at following the end of a month.

Good day and welcome to the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast. I am your host, Bob Govreau. I've got a very special guest with me today who I will introduce in a second, but I just want to remind you that this is the place where we dissect the elements that contribute to entrepreneurial success, from mindset and leadership to profits and revenue. This particular episode is going to be with my good friend Shauna Schubert. We're going to be talking about her going from entrepreneur to expert and navigating business challenges with Shauna. Anyway, welcome to the podcast, Shauna. My pleasure. And you know what? Shauna is one of my favorite people that I have the privilege to be able to work with every day. And even if we don't have an opportunity to chat every day, I go by and I make sure that she's working every day looking over her shoulder, because that's what every good boss does. No, I'm just kidding. But Shauna has been part of my life for a long time in a couple different roles, and maybe, Shauna, I'll just get you to introduce yourself and maybe give a little bit of the background of how you came to be at our firm.

Yeah, I would love to.

Great.

So, Shauna, I moved to Peterborough with my family when we purchased a business here. So family business. It took us across the province. Big change for our lives. I had no intention of getting involved in the business at all. I was on my way to teachers college, and my education was taking me that direction. But all through, even my high school job, I was involved in the back end of a business. So I worked at a grocery store. They needed help in the what?

Grocery store.

Ooh. Not. It's a little independent chain that doesn't exist anymore. So it's affiliated.

Okay. All right.

At L and M. Tiny little. If there were nine. Nine of them.

Okay.

Southern Ontario.

Nine's a good number. Nine's a good number.

Yeah. Nine. I think I'll get in trouble later. They needed help in the office, and I loved that side of it. So I just actually started out counting Floats and then totaling sales numbers for each of the departments on the weekends. So I had that experience going into the family business. I was in university, had a full course load, but I was also working 30 hours a week to pay for.

University a hundred percent.

And so part of that, taking the skills I learned at the grocery store, moving them into the business, I was counting floats. I enjoyed it. I love organizing. And that's why I like business in this role. And maybe we'll get into later. Yeah. But started taking more and more on. And as I got to the end of my degree, I was like, I just. I don't think teaching is for me. I'm really enjoying what I'm doing here. There were health issues with members of my family. So my dad was not well and he was. He was the brains at that time in the business. So I started to step more and more into that role and really enjoyed it.

So not. Not just being a good person as well, being supportive for the family, but I, like, definitely can resonate with the teachers, college, the element of it. Right. Because I had the same journey intended on being a teacher. And now look at us here, teaching and sharing.

You can plan all you want.

That's right. So you got into. Into running a little bit more of the family business.

Yeah. Yeah. So started just. I took on payroll. Had no experience in payroll. You learned the hard way. So team members don't. You can't mess around with. With pay.

No.

For team members.

No.

Super important. So you really have to perfect that and quite quickly. There's a steep learning curve when you have nothing to go with. And then started to look at each aspect of the business. How the sales were starting to come in, how our sales volume and staffing levels started corresponding and putting the picture together. Learning the hard way why we had to count inventory. Inventory. Hated inventory.

Probably because the accountant said it's something that had to be done.

And when you don't know why, you're just like, why am I doing this? Why does it matter? We get the stuff, we sell the stuff. What do you care how much I have sitting around here? But the more, the longer I got into it, the more I cared about what I had sitting there.

Yeah.

And what I.

It started to make sense what I.

Didn'T have sitting around there.

What. Oh, yeah. Interesting.

So you start to. Yeah. Start to do that. My husband, he had a different career path in mind, so I talked him into joining me in the restaurants. And he. He was more the face of it than I was. I. I became the brains. He became the face, if I can say that.

I don't know. We'll see. We'll see how he feels about this later.

So he. He did a great job for a lot of years, and it just became not. It was never his passion. He did it. It put a good effort. But it was two restaurants by the time we were ready to sell. One was 24 hours with 65ish staff members between the two. So a lot of responsibility. We had a young family. I could have taken it on by myself, but I just decided, no, let's. Let's step out. It's been great, but let's see what life has in store. We're. Now, we met. Going back to your original question, we met probably about halfway through buying and selling restaurants. I think we were right in the midpoint there. And we had bookkeeper, accountant, husband, wife, duo. And I didn't fully know what I was doing, but I ended up having to keep my own set of records because when I was.

Ooh, the second set of books, it was.

It's. It's a really crudely put together spreadsheet saying these numbers are just not adding up. For us, it was payables. We were missing the payables. And I really counted on those being entered because I sent my inventory number in, but I wasn't getting numbers because they matter together.

And specifically, in your business, you had reporting requirements on a monthly basis to send in profit and losses.

And again, we did.

Yeah.

So part of a franchise system where we're to send that in. And looking back, what a blessing. I don't know if I would have done that. Like, it really forced me to learn very quickly.

That's a good point. Yeah. And now you realize more. So this is why they encourage franchisees to do it, to make sure they're successful. Yeah.

The system we came out of, they were really passionate at the time we got in about making sure not only they were benefiting, but the franchisee was benefiting. You can't tell anything unless you have financials.

That's true. Yeah.

So we reached out to a friend and said, hey, we. We're just not getting. I can't just keep sending back corrections and corrections, and then by the time you get something back and you're like, I don't even know if I can trust.

Not a good. Not a good spot to sit in your business. Right. Not comfortable.

And then when you're. When you're dealing with that number of people and that volume of sales complication, you actually even Regardless of number of people in the business and volume.

If you're relying on it. Yeah, if you're relying on it, it's really hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So. So we started the tedious process of looking around, and that's what brought us to you.

And that's where we met, which was. And it was a while back, too, so I can only imagine that our team at the time. I know it was actually me specifically, we were working together. I feel like we might have only been six or seven people at that point. Maybe not that. So to think of that. Yeah. So really, really interesting. So I. I got the opportunity to. To get to know you and your business fairly well, which was a really great opportunity and ended up working out really well for me.

And me, Mr. Win. Win. So.

And so you. You had the opportunity. You know, you guys came in, you started running multiple locations, 65 employees, which is a very difficult thing. And not that many people get to the stage where they're managing 65 employees. So it's like, kudos to you. And into that journey and that experience. And then you guys made a decision. You're like, you know what? Now is a really good time to exit from this franchise. There was some stuff going on and. And then what happened, Shauna?

Well, I remember a conversation and you had said. And I think it was even prior, like, we were just tongue in cheek.

Oh, you weren't even talking about exiting.

No, no, just like, just something that was. I wonder what would happen. But nothing. And he said, if anything ever were.

To change, call me, call me, because I would hire you in a minute. Yeah, because. And I will say this, so, yes, we were helping support Shauna at the time with her company's financials, but she knew what they were going to be before we gave them to her, so. And was always super organized and had everything lined up and was a really great business owner, entrepreneur, and managed an incredible office. So, like, all of the attributes, not only of a wonderful client, but at the time, you can imagine when I said, hey, Shauna, if circumstances ever change, come work with me. Because, one, I really enjoy working with you, but two, man, you're really good at this stuff. Yeah, maybe I should have told. Maybe I should tell you this more often.

Well, funny enough, I don't know if you'll remember this part of conversation. In that conversation, it had started out with you and I saying, I can't imagine working for somebody after being in this role.

Oh, you said that?

I did say that.

Oh, yep, that's here we Are. And I understand that conversation because I don't know that I'm employable anymore. I think I've gone so far down the. That rabbit hole that I don't think I'm employable anymore. And. Well, you definitely have fixed that one now.

One.

That one works really well.

You know, I sat sold and I sat for a month and I thought I would enjoy being bored. I thought I would enjoy just having a break. And, and I got antsy after a month, called you. Well.

And how many, how many business owners honestly think of this as yourself. How many of us feel like, wouldn't I just love to be out of this right now? And wouldn't it be great to just not have to worry about the 65 employees and multiple locations going to make another decision? Oh, yeah, take it. Yeah. 100. And then, you know, on the other side, where the grass isn't always greener, it's like, okay, well, I appreciate maybe not having to the headaches of the 65 team members and, and making the decisions and all of that, but I need to use my brain and I need to solve problems and that's probably what led to us having conversation. Yeah. Need to be part of something, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah. It's super challenging. And especially at the level that business owners put themselves at where the intensity of the work, the commitment level and the sense of purpose of what it is that we do all the time, you know, when that. There's a void there, I can only imagine.

And if you're not a business owner, you just can't truly understand that your friends just do not.

No, they don't get it. They, they think they don't get it. Yeah. Which is why it's so wonderful to be surrounded by business owners. And so I, I don't even remember what year, Shauna, but we're, we're five plus years at this point, aren't we? We're almost seven. Are we seven? Yeah. Six. Okay.

Yeah.

And so, Shauna, I think you came in and joined us when we were a team of maybe 10ish.

Been number nine.

Number nine. It's hard to keep track six years later. But so six years later, from nine to 99, which is where we're at right now, is 99. Yeah. So a little bit different situation. But along that journey, I know you, you came in and started really as an entry level bookkeeper supporting business owners and now into being the director of bookkeeping and advisory services.

Well, I have some learning to do for sure.

Yeah, we all do. But one of Those things like Shauna and the character of someone who's been a business owner who knows what it takes, who definitely rolls up her sleeves more than almost anybody in the entire office, and is here for the purpose, which for us is empowering entrepreneurs to make informed decisions, which is what we really want to chat about today, which is the importance of bookkeeping. So maybe, Shauna, I'll turn this to you, and let's have a conversation about the fundamentals of bookkeeping and why it's important. You kind of talked about it as having it in your own business and seeing it. But what do you see from a business owner perspective now that we work with, you know, hundreds on the bookkeeping side, what does that look like for them?

So my biggest thing, I always say, is you're in it. You're in the grind. And perspective switches with how the team is, how the business feels like it's performing. Sometimes how in the restaurants, one of our customers treated you, and you're like, I'm failing. I can't do this.

This is not because it's hard.

It's.

It's hard.

It is hard. Not for the faint of heart.

No.

But why the bookkeeping is. It takes that emotion. It takes the feeling. It takes everything. It brings it back to black and white, and it really just gives you sense of those decisions that you need to make and why you need to make them. It doesn't mean they're easy decisions.

No.

Looking at, you know, if you're having a. A downtime. I remember well, we took over two restaurants in the middle of the 2008 recession. Horrible time to take over.

Yeah. That's the year I started my business. Hard time to start a business, for sure.

So you're looking at, okay, do we have the resources to keep all the team members on? It doesn't mean it's an easy decision if you have to lay off anybody. But black and white right in front of you says, I have no choice.

Yeah. And it's true. And, you know, one of the. One of the sayings is numbers don't lie. And it's. It's true unless they're wrong. And that's just misleading you. But they definitely don't lie to how they demonstrate. And there's no emotion like Shawna saying on a piece of paper, this is how your business is performing, whether you like it or not. It's what you do about it, really.

And looking at the restaurants, we had lots of metrics coming in from our POS or point of sale system. Even we get reports in from, from hourly sales for our team members, and they come in and say, we're so understaffed. We don't have any. We don't have enough people. Like, we can't keep this up. And then you look back at your numbers and you say, okay, well, I see you had a rush here, but there were this many people. Was somebody on break? Was somebody on that? Like, you go back to your numbers, you go back to your financials, and you say, okay, what can we do? Is it a training issue? Do, do we need to coach our team, who's in charge about how to better utilize their team at. For certain points, everything goes back to those numbers.

Well, and all of the things you're saying, I know us as a business has gone through that, those same conversations, you know, and, and it's an, it's an evolution. When you go from a business that has 10 employees, where at any point, you know what everybody's working on, what they should be capable of, you can go in and support them in every way, and then you evolve to 65. You have to be knowing your metrics, and you have to have accountability to people and say, these are the things that you should be capable of. We should know what the team's capabilities are when we bring it to the table, because everyone has. Well, maybe not everyone. I shouldn't say that, but most people would rather say, well, I'd rather just perform at 70%. I don't want to perform at 100%. I get it. As entrepreneurs, we push ourselves to that night, that 100% mark too long, which is burnout. And, but, you know, we maybe don't have those same expectations of other people. But unless we have those metrics, those accountabilities, we're never really going to know where they should stand. And, and the transparency with the team, to know that this is something they should be capable of too, is so very important.

It takes everything that's going on in your business, and it, it highlights where you need to focus your attention. So it doesn't tell you why there is some work you still have to do. But is your labor hours too much? Are you spending too much in labor? Do we have too many people hired? Or are we just not, to your point, performing where we should be performing so we should be able to do this. Do we need to get some more training? Do we need to. It pinpoints where you need to focus your time and attention.

Absolutely.

It's still. Still work to be done.

But when I feel like there's always going to be work to be done. If, you know, I was thinking about this earlier today, you know, the idea that business would be easy thinking about business owners. And I thought about putting a social post out there that said for those who think they've got everything nailed down and have for years, I want to hear from you because I would question their willingness to push the limits to create greater impact. Like, I feel like if you've got yourself into a spot where it's very comfortable, then you're taking it really easy. Not pushing yourself into areas of learning and growth and likely not creating opportunity. It's gotta be very, very stable or boring, which. Boring is not a bad thing. Boring is not a bad thing. Yeah, it's a keyword with our boring year this year in 2024. But, you know, thinking of those business owners, I, you know, I don't know anybody, especially right now with some of the economic climate that people aren't having challenges with team members, with clients. You know, there's a lot of emotion and people's characters have been modified. Times start getting stressful, people interact with others in a different way. It's super challenging. So, yeah, a hundred percent, it's. We've got our black and white data and then we've got all of the other things that we need to deal with. So why not just make that part something we can rely on?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. So what are. If we're thinking of entrepreneurs and business owners, what are some key principles that they could put into place for their bookkeeping to get that black and white, reliable income statement and financial report every month.

Organization is going to be key. So. And you said it. I was maybe a little over.

We like organized. I want to say that not to.

Not to say that I don't love a good cleanup. It's organized. But, but when I hand it back over, it's your responsibility to keep it up. It's really organization. It is routine. Certain things you just need to. And I did that in the restaurant too, every Tuesday. There are exceptions always. But every Tuesday I think I did all my collect all my bills. Every Wednesday I paid bill bills. Every. I had my days and for the most part I focused on that. There were days stuff went sideways in the restaurant and I was grinding it out at midnight because that was my day to do it. And there were days that it had to wait and I doubled. I did double duty the next day. But that routine, that organization and really that understanding. You know, I mentioned earlier that I was counting inventory initially but not having a clue what it meant. Like, I was counting numbers, so. And it's the why behind it, too. Right. Counting that inventory. I was careless, so I skip a box. Oh, well, we'll get it next time. What does it matter? But it matters. And that's that learning as you go. So as an. Of an entrepreneur, but also that why and making sure. Understanding. When I'm meeting with clients, I love to just. Especially businesses that are coming that are saying, I'm newer help, because I don't know what. I love to just say, okay, let's step back. This is what this is. This is what this is. This is why your inventory is important. This is why.

Yeah. The understanding of what these numbers actually mean. Because I think that's a whole different animal, too, that a lot of business owners really are scared of. Right. What does this actually mean?

Human feedback. Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm afraid to look at it, so I don't look at it.

Yeah. You know, it's one of those interesting things. And we're growing it around right now. This year to date, 37% is where we're. We're at. So we're meeting a lot of new clients, we're taking on and supporting a lot of new businesses. And a lot of the time on the intake side of things, the business owners are. They come in and they're embarrassed. And the comment, the regular comment is, we're so embarrassed. We should have been doing this a long time ago. But it's this. The inability to face the fact that we've let it get to this point where we have no data, we have no financial information. But we know if we want to grow our business and we want to be successful, we know we need it. And one of those things I say to you guys is, that's okay. You're not alone. It's one of those situations where it is very challenging. So, Shawna, what I want to ask you is let's put ourselves in a position of being a business owner who doesn't want to deal with the finances. That the idea of organizing and managing things the way that you did seems like an absolute nightmare, because that's not their skill set. How can your team, the bookkeeping team, how can your team support that type of business owner?

That question.

A good one.

A good one.

I let it.

One of the things I quite often will say to clients when I'm meeting with them is, is our team here is excellent at what we do, and you, the business owner, are excellent at what you do. So give Us as much information as we can access so that we can do what we do best. And you can focus on growing your business. So things like, if you're an online business, access to where we can pull reports for you so that you're not having to go in and do it. Technology like a Hubdoc account where you can take a picture and upload your receipts so we can get it. We're not pestering at you. Your attention is focused on the business. Anything that you can do so that we can, we know what we're looking for. Sometimes sales software is great. You send a sales report because that's what you think, that's what the software says. Here's your easy sales report. But we're trained on what we're looking for and sometimes the summary report is not quite the detail that we need to get you the financials you need. So just if we have access to different reports we can pull, we can dig in, we can say something's not quite adding up. Oh, here, oh here, oh here. And our team is great at going in to find that stuff so that you can be sure that the financials you're getting back are accurate and you.

Can be confident in that 100%. And I again, business owners, I love you. We can relate to you in so many ways. We just happen to be financial experts as well. But one of the questions I get asked all the time is how do we ensure that if you take this over for us, how, how is this going to be the most successful that it can be? And I usually say, you know how it'll be. The most successful is if you just get out of the way and you let us take it over. And what I mean by that is, as a business owner, again, my schedule is jam packed every single day. Phone calls, meetings, employment, employee meetings, partnership meetings, you know, client meetings, whatever it is, the day is busy and if one of the team members is waiting for info from me, I'm holding it up. And you know, some of those areas are login access or giving reports, particularly like the, the bank statement, waiting on clients for bank statements, waiting on responses for what certain entries are because we don't have access to it. So when I say get out of the way, I mean just give us full authority to go in and deal with all of those things on your behalf so that you can focus on making the sale, supporting the team, being the leader, growing the business, supporting the business, focusing on partnerships, all of the very strategic things so that our team can come in and just Support you in something that we know really well that will allow you to see these reports, even with some insights from team members like Shauna, who are like, this is why this looks good. This is why it doesn't look good. This is the black and white of the situation. These things can help support you take your business to the next level and continue to focus on the strategic part of it versus getting involved in the weeds. Because this is where we're good.

This is where we're good. And like I said, your expertise is somewhere else, and so you're best served somewhere else.

100%. Yeah, 100%. Couldn't agree more. So when we're thinking of a business owner and we're thinking of maybe some more advanced financial strategies, thinking about growing and thinking about efficiency, how can maybe let's. Let's give a couple ideas of how a business owner could use financial information to support. Support them in being more successful.

Yeah. I live in the cost of goods sold section, and so often money starts rolling in, and so things start getting spent, and we're a little bit more generous with where we're spending. Quite often, new businesses forget the tax liabilities, sales tax liabilities, and the money is gone because we had that money rolling in. But we're forgetting about the materials that we have to buy. Or all of a sudden, based on how the contract is set up, you're on the hook to purchase those materials ahead for the client for sure, and the cash flow is not allowing that to happen. That gets in the way of your growth. You have a great business, you produce a great product, but it's in the way.

Absolutely. And you know, like a couple of the scary sort of stories that I've had with clients over the years, and there's been lots, including some major tax bills that some people are either happy about or not so happy about. But one of the greatest challenges, I feel, is in the very first year when people are trying to figure this out, and they get to the end of the year and let's say their business made a hundred thousand dollars this year, and which is wonderful. And then they realize they don't have that a hundred thousand in their bank account. But part of the reason is they've had to pay that HST liability, they've had to buy inventory, they've bought equipment, they've bought other capital items, they've put some in their own pocket. So by the time they get to the end of the year, they forget, oh, geez, we still have to pay taxes, we still have to Maybe pay that HST or sales tax, liability, payroll liabilities, all of that stuff. They've kind of been operating as if it's all in silo. So I've definitely seen some cash flow related challenges in that circumstance. Happens all the time. One of the areas that I love to look at, and I know we had an opportunity to work in our CFO program together for a couple years. Were we doing that a couple years? Okay. One of my favorite areas is always to look at the gross profit margin and you know where you were going with the cost of goods sold. I, and I don't know, maybe I cut you off. But one of the things about the cost of goods sold is that it's so easy to watch that inflate and we start losing some of our profit margin as we're going in and we're growing our business. So really good example. Hey, I've gone through it too. You start adding more and more people. If you don't have accountability in place, you know, the revenue that they're generating per person starts diminishing because there's just more people, more work. Gets a little confusing. But unless people are being held accountable to what it is that they're supposed to be accomplishing, you watch those margins diminish. Even if it's not payroll, if you're continuing to offer like a construction business or some, a retail something that you buy and resell, or you're buying materials to build something. Sometimes like inflation in 2023, 2024, we watch our expenses go up as well, like the cost of materials go up. And if we're not looking at these financial statements on a regular basis and we don't see these costs go up, next thing you know our profit margins have dropped, we're making less money, our overhead's probably continuing to grow because of inflation, because that's just what we're continuing to do as well is take on more office space. Our insurance goes up, our utilities goes up. So next thing you know, we're actually in a loss position even though we didn't change anything from last year. So it's so important, business owners, for you be to be looking at this monthly profit and loss statement because like Shawna saying, your cost of goods sold can get out of line, your margins can drop, your profitability can drop, and if you're not paying attention, your cash flow could be going the other way. And that's the number one reason businesses fail, is because they run out of cash, not because they don't have a good business so, so, so very important with that.

You know, you're saying this and I'm remembering in time in the restaurant back to inventory, my cost of goods sold, my gross profit margin where I was expecting a certain number back and my food cost came back astronomical.

Yep.

So of course I said, you've done something wrong. And you guys said, nope, this is what it is. So then I went back to what are my in house operations going on? And it turns out that I had some staff on the midnight shift, I didn't want to be there on the midnight shift and were careless with product. I was throwing a lot out. And then I had some team members, you know, new team members, nervous. It's a hustle in a restaurant, dropping food, rushing too much. And so my costs of my food got out of hand that month. So yeah, step back, educate the team. Like this is, this is what this is, this is why it's important to.

These are the expectations.

You really dialed in here. This is why you need to be slow and announce that you're traveling through the kitchen so nobody backs into you and we lose all that product. Yeah, that's. We lived there too.

Yeah. And I know, I remember being in your place many times and it was delicious. So I'm sure that there were a lot of people who maybe put a little in their pockets too. And, and truthfully, right. With, without having financial reports, how are you ever going to detect that your margins are out of whack? Maybe your purchase costs haven't gone up and but you're seeing your overall purchases go up because people are skimming the till or putting the products in their own pockets. So without financial oversight, we're never going.

To see that, we're never going to notice it. Nope, nope. I'm thinking Christmas time holiday merchandise comes in. It's that old adage from the grocery store, pile them high, watch them buy when it's piled high. It's also my husband used to call it the steal me shelf.

Yeah, right.

Because you could just easily snake it in. I'm in for to grab something to eat and now I have a Christmas gift and off I go. So watching that and putting cameras in place to watch for things like that. How do you.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I remember, I tell this story often, but only because it explains the financial reporting. So, so logically. But had a butcher shop client throughout the year, costs went up for fuel. So all of the deliveries that he was getting, he had a fuel charge, fuel surcharge put on every purchase. And what happened was that Added to all of the cost of what he was delivering, shrunk his margins down. Now, he didn't grow his revenue that year, but his costs went up fairly substantially. So by the time we got to the end of the year, someone who usually made, you know, $150,000 at the end of the year had a loss of $120,000. Only because they didn't adapt and transfer that extra fuel cost onto the consumers where every other butcher shop maybe was. But this particular one, because they didn't have a financial report, wasn't doing that. So it was a lost opportunity, and it really took two years of profits to get back to where they should have been anyway. So there's lost time and lost opportunity, and we don't want to see that happen.

The key there is that was at the end of the year. So that was a full year. I mean, if you're not looking monthly to see where you're at, the damage that that can do to your business, for sure.

So with our bookkeeping team, how often are people getting financial reports?

Should be getting them monthly, should be.

Getting them every month. And it's important, guys, that, you know, when you talk about all of the meetings that you have in your business, one of them should be a financial meeting. And. And maybe it's not the same financial meeting that I would run, but at least looking at it and seeing one, how's your revenue? Is it going up or is it going down? What does that look like, looking at your profits? Is it going up? Is it going down? What about your net income? Like, there's some basic numbers that we should just be looking at to see patterns with, because we want to make sure that pattern is improving. We don't want to be going backwards, because if you start digging a hole, it's really hard to get out of it, I can tell you. You know, we've been through that too, where we continue to hire in advance, and we bring more and more people in to help support with the growth of the organization. But more and more people without having accountability, it creates a lack of efficiency, a lack of deliverables, and it boosts up the payroll costs inside a business. And if that happens and you're not paying attention to it, you're not adapting to it quickly, you could be out of business real fast. So we have to be paying attention to these things. Shauna, I want to talk one more thing with you about what the future of financial management looks like. Now. I know there's lots of tools that are available. We Know, AI is becoming more and more prevalent every day. What does the future of financial management look like to you? And maybe you don't even have any thoughts on this, but I do. I'm curious to hear your perspective.

So we're in the business for 16 years. So when I came in, it was a really paper driven business. We would package up. Years before I met you, we would package up paper every month, mail it off to the accountant.

We still get some of that. We do, yeah.

And get it back and then go through and then have rules of paper everywhere. I think the more we can systemize, the more we can be digital, the more instant we can be, the closer we can be to having those books tied up at following the end of a month. The more access, the more integration with softwares. And we're seeing. Even in the six years since I've.

Oh yeah.

Been here so many more.

The cloud exists. It didn't exist six years ago, but it.

Well, I came in as it was starting and I actually those were my initial.

Okay, all right. Shauna formed the cloud is what she's saying.

Heard it here. No, it was new, it was different.

It was for sure and a little scary.

And I think that's why they came to me because I had no experience otherwise.

No comparison.

Yeah. But he sticks to what they know, that we as entrepreneurs know that change is good.

Yeah.

Embrace change.

We have to.

It can make or break us and it's our attitude that changes it. And so my feeling is that the more we can embrace the digital. So we're not still getting the paper. It's going to just be great.

So on that tech stack, right. So this is a, this is a term that the kids are talking about these days, which is this is the tech stack. So tech stack, meaning what are all of the solutions that we can bring to make a business owner's life more efficient? Give them back more of their time by using technology to help support that. So maybe let's talk about some of the solutions that we use in our day to day with some of our bookkeeping clients.

Yeah. So first and foremost, we start out with QuickBooks Online Digital.

The Foundation.

Foundation. Love it. Absolutely love it. Enjoyed it when I first got into it. And how cool as they develop and evolve as well. How many more functions?

In fact, I saw a new function today. Oh actually which was strange. I was live on with a client. They said how do we use. This was the advanced accounting function that has a depreciation calculation monthly automatically done. This was new. It was Live today, constantly evolving and learning. That's part of what we do. But yes, sorry.

Great tool.

Back to you. QuickBooks Online.

QuickBooks Online. I mentioned it earlier, but a Hub Doc, there's. It doesn't have to be hubdoc. We. We do like it.

And Hub doc being like a data storage transfer, it's.

It's great. You have your spending, you take a picture. If you happen to still get a paper copy up, it goes into the software and it stores it there. You get emailed something, you forward the email, easy as that. Or you type in your email and have it go immediately there and it keeps it all in the software. It's a nice digital record. It integrates as many others do. We prefer hubdoc, but it integrates to qbo. So then sends that digital image into qbo, attaches it to the receipt.

Because a lot of times we get the question right. So what do we do with all these receipts? Well, if you have Hub Doc and you have digital storage, especially if you put like finance@your company.com, every receipt just automatically goes into this digital storage. So you never have to worry about those receipts again. Can you imagine how beautiful that is?

It's great. And the filing that can happen in there. Same. It's nerd. I love it.

So we've got, we've definitely got those. What about like accounts payable solutions?

Yeah. So we, we are using Pluto. It's a. An online software. It also integrates with qbo. And you'll see this theme here. They all talk to each other. So we have the bill uploaded to Hubdoc. We move that into QuickBooks to say this needs to be paid. Pluto pulls it out and says thank you. We have the payment information for this supplier of yours. When would you like to pay them? Click and off the payment.

So you never write a check again.

Wow.

Okay. All right, so what. What else do we have in our tech stack? Shauna?

Yeah, what else do we have, Bob? I'm thinking we have WagePoint payroll. So again, integrates. It's an easy solution to just go in, pay your team members. It. It supports with remittances to the government, depending on what your requirements are. It's calculating full source deductions. It helps with ws. So workers. Workers comp.

I know that's in Ontario, I think pay stubs and everything everybody gets.

Employees have access to their own portal, not your headline. So they can pull what they need. Their T4s are available through that. Again, that's less of a burden on the Business owner right to distribute their year end tax slips for sure. It's fantastic.

And like these are our primary tech stack platforms. But a lot, there's a lot. You know, I, I'm thinking of a few. Dext seen Dext Receipt bank is like Hub Doc. There's probably a million different payroll platforms.

Yes, there are.

The idea would be right, any of these tech stacks, if you, if you look at, if you look at a nuisance that you feel like is part of your financial world, you likely could search it on Google and there's likely a solution. A lot of billing platforms, for example, that we work with. So the contractor space, you've got Jobber, you've got Job Nimbus Service Titan Builder, Trend Co Construct. I know this is, I'm running low though. I'm running low Joist. You know there's lots of different platforms and that's really, those are just in the contractor space you've got Clio on the legal space, you've got everywhere that you go, you've got the ability to essentially have a billing platform that's a CRM that you can communicate with your clients, you can get payments on site, you can get electronic payments that all go in and they all integrate with QuickBooks. So when you're looking to add any sort of tech to make your life easier, look to see that it integrates with your bookkeeping platform. Now we're huge QuickBooks Online fans in my opinion. There's no one really else out there that has the platform like QuickBooks has and they've got the most partners, right? They, they own, they have the, the most major market share in that space because they've got so many partners that integrate with them and, and they're going to choose QuickBooks Online first because they have the most customers. So looking at the tech stack, whoever it is that you're working with, for bookkeeping standpoint, you want to make sure that they're utilizing some of these tools because these tools can make your life super easy. No more paychecks, you've got wagepoint, no more checks going out the door, you've got Pluto. No more manual invoices, you've got Jobber or whatever online billing platform that you use. Next thing you know, everything is digital. Then you've got Hub Doc that captures all of your receipts and stores them in an online filing cabinet for you. So it cleans everything up, makes it super transparent. And then when your bookkeeper, whoever that is, is doing all of the work, they have access to everything you're out of the way and it allows for great transparency and really good up to date reporting. Shauna, this has been amazing. By the way, thank you so much for joining. Want to ask you if someone who's listening wanted to connect with your team and talk about pulling that bookkeeping stress out of their lives and into your team, where you guys are taking that off their hands, how would they go about doing that?

Yeah, they can reach out to. To us. We can reach out to me. I'll connect you with our team and we'll get you plugged in.

Yeah.

Immediately.

Yeah, yeah. And some easy ones too. If you follow us anywhere on social@govero CPA website govrocpa CA, there's a little chat feature in there. If you put it in there, you'll get connected. In fact, immediately you should get responded to from one of our outreach team and they will connect you with Shauna and her team and take the stress of doing your monthly finances right off their plate and into the team so that you can focus on building and growing your business. Any last words of wisdom for business owners out there? Shauna?

I would not have had the success we had in our business if I did not know where my numbers were. That was what we lived and breathes for those reports every month and business owners should be doing the same. You can't base it on the bank account because that goes down depending on. On what's happening and where things are. You can't base it on your feelings or emotions or your team's feelings or emotions. You really. It's black and white. You need those reports and let us do that for you. We'd love to help you.

Yeah, so you heard it here first. Work with the team at Govro to help support your bookkeeping needs. Guys, this has been the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast. We have gone and chatted with Shauna who's talked about going from entrepreneur to expert and navigating business challenges for the business owner. If you've had some valuable information in here, make sure you leave a comment, give it a like. Make sure you share this content with somebody who you think would benefit from it. Again, if you feel like somebody could be better off being connected with our team and we can support them, make sure that you give them our information, but make sure you follow this podcast. We do an episode every single week and we're actually coming up to our first full year, so 52 episodes coming down the pipe. So it's been really exciting to get to this point. We're committed to continue to give out more valuable information to support you as a business owner, so make sure you follow. Next week, you will get a notification that the next episode's coming out. We want you to hear it. We're building this for you. Any questions, any comments, throw them in the chat. Otherwise, thanks for joining us and we look forward to seeing you next time.