MBA1498 Guest Teacher: Brian Hamilton – How and Why To Use your Accountant for Much More Than Taxes

Let me tell you about Intuit QuickBooks. When I was starting out my business, I remember sitting at my desk late at night, not working on my business, but cleaning up numbers, tracking and reconciling payments and wondering how this became my life. But once I automated the admin side of things, of my finances, those nights had disappeared and I felt a whole lot better. Outdo it with Intuit QuickBooks. QuickBooks is the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on for getting paid, managing finances, paying employees, finding new customers, and more. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts. So doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster, their customer agent finds leads, follows up and secures more sales, and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Ready to save on new tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Product perks include Dell rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals. Hey O. Welcome to the 100 Arm Business Lessons. You need to build a business you want every day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. Before I jump into today's lesson, a special special announcement. If you have been hit financially by what's going on in the world with COVID 19, if you're looking for ways to earn extra revenue, a new revenue stream, even if that's just an extra thousand or $2,000 a month, I'm running a free live workshop to show you how you can earn some extra income by building something for yourself. To register for this live training with me for free, head on over to 100mba.net workshop. Again, that's 100mba.net workshop. Can't wait to see you there. But register now because spots are limited. Today's episode is a guest teacher episode. Today we have Brian Hamilton and he's gonna be teaching you a very important lesson. How to use your accountant for much more than just taxes. One of the best hires you can make for your business is a great accountant. A great accountant is gonna keep you out of trouble. They're gonna Save you money, they're gonna make you money. And I'll explain in a bit. They're also gonna handle a big part of the side of the business that is boring, laborious, time consuming. So what do you look for in a great accountant? How do you get them to do more than just your taxes? That's what Brian Hamilton's here today for. He's going to show us exactly how. Brian's got a great sense of humor and he's going to really get down to the truth of what makes a solid accountant. Can't wait for this lesson. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's guest teacher is Brian Hamilton. He's one of the co founders of Sageworks. Sageworks is one of the first fintech companies in the U.S. brian actually came up with a system to translate numbers into words with artificial intelligence and has helped thousands of accountants. Today's lesson, how to get the most out of your accountant. Cash flow and money is the bloodline of your business. You need somebody focused on that. Now a lot of people think, oh, I can't afford an accountant. I'm just doing all my finances myself. You can't afford not to have an accountant. Even if that account is on retainer and they're just part time, you're paying them a few hundred dollars a month. There's plenty of accountants that do this of service to make sure that your taxes are in order, you're claiming the right amounts, you're saving as much money as possible as well as taking advantage of some incentives that are out there from the government, from banks, things like that. But when you're shopping around for an account, what do you look for? What's important? That's what Brian Hamilton is going to show us as well as how to best utilize them to get more out of them than just doing your taxes. I'll be back to wrap up today's episode as well as give some insights from my own experience. But for now I'm going to let Brian take it over and teach you his lesson. Take it away, Brian.

Hey everybody. I am Brian Hamilton. I am here to talk about something super interesting, how to use your accountant. Actually, I am here to talk about that. I'm goofing around on the tone and everything. Accounting is kind of a dry subject. But I'm going to talk about how to get more out of your accountant than you're getting right now. And I think we'll have some fun. But I'll also give you hopefully some good Content. So let's get down to business. I'm really happy to be here. I have a lot of experience in this. I ran a company called sageworks and our first product helped. It did not help. It was a software product that. An AI product that converted financial numbers into words. So we worked with thousands of accountants and, I don't know, we generated millions of reports and all this good stuff. So it was all around trying to make your financial numbers come alive so you can kind of understand what was going on in your business and how to run it better. But the real topic of this is really using your accountant. I really am passionate about this. Not an advocate, because I have had a lot of experience as a business owner, but I've worked with tons of entrepreneurs and tons of accountants. And unlike peanut butter and jelly, which go together most times like entrepreneurs, they're not exactly a peanut butter and jelly with their accountant. They're not working with them properly. So I want to convey to you a way to engage with your accountant to really get more out of the relationship so that they can help you. An accountant, what is it? What's an accountant? Okay, so an accountant is someone who knows this thing called accounting. We could call this bookkeeping accounting. They might have a cpa. I'll talk about that later. But you go to your accountant to help you get your taxes prepared. You're probably doing that now, and that's pretty good because you don't want to go to this thing called prison. I also started an organization called Inmates to Entrepreneurs, and we help people who have been incarcerated to start their own businesses. But you don't want to be starting an organization called Entrepreneur to Inmate. And you don't want to be going to prison because you don't file your taxes. So you go and you see this accountant, right? And that's why a lot of people go to their accountants for what I call compliance, to comply with the law or whatever and get the taxes done. But that's not really the reason you should be using your accountant. And this is the purpose of today's session. The reason you use your accountant is to help you understand what's going on in your business financially, what's going on in your business generally. And to use that accountant as a trusted business advisor, advisor to help you do better. And that's what I'm going to talk about. I'm going to assume you go to the accountant, you get your taxes prepared, and you're not going to go to prison. I highly recommend. But really that's not What I'm going to talk about today, I'm going to talk about how you can use your accountant to get more out of them. Okay? So I want to keep this real simple. What I want you to do is go to your accountant once a quarter. Now, in layman speak, you know, that's like once every three months. I think there's three quarters. There's four quarters in here.

That's right.

Four times three is 12 for 12 months. So you're going to go once a quarter and that accountant is going to have your financial results and you're going to sit down with them. You might meet them for coffee, you know, wherever you're going to meet them, it doesn't matter, their office. And you're going to go over the financial performance of your business and you'll talk about life, you'll get to know them, they'll get to know you, personnel problems, so on and so forth. But ground rule number one is understand what's going on financially in your business. Go through the balance sheet, the income statement and the statement of cash flow. By the way, you need a statement of cash flow. And hopefully your accountant knows that there are three. Three financial statements, not two. Most times we only focus on the profit loss income statement, but there's really three. There's a balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flows. Go over all three, and you ask lots of questions. Hey, what's this big red line down here where it shows I lost a million dollars last month? What does that mean, you know, and what's revenue and what about these costs? And you're going to try to just ask questions and they're going to explain things, financial stuff, to you. Now, through that conversation, we go to point number two. You're going to ask a lot of stuff about business, about finances and bank financing and partners and reducing cost of goods sold. And you're just going to ask them all kinds of stuff. The origin of the universe. Try that one. Maybe they'll do that one, too. But the point, on a serious note here is this accountant, this person who should probably be a cpa, a certified public accountant, by the way, they have seen 50,000 pitches. They've been at bat 50,000 times. You've been at bat a thousand. You're one person. Don't look at that person as just one person. Like you. They represent hundreds of their clients and hopefully many years of experience. So they are a repository of everything that can go wrong or right in a business. That's why I want to go to my Accountant, once a quarter, by the way, drink a lot of caffeine, make sure you really get a lot of coffee before you go, because all accountants are boring. And if you are an accountant, listening, by the way, no offense, I love you. You're like an engineer. Engineers at times are wonderful people, but they're very boring. So have a lot of caffeine, ask a lot of questions, and as they talk, they are a fountain of knowledge. It's amazing to me, after all the years I'm 56 years old, I've worked with hundreds of businesses, people don't use their accountants. And I look at my accountant as someone who can help me with finances. No question about it. Keep me out of prison. No question about it. But also as somebody who has seen so many types of businesses and personnel problems, remember, all this stuff is integrated. I went and got an mba, and they teach you one accounting course, and they teach you an OB course, and they teach you microeconomics and macroeconomics. And it's all math, by the way, none of which you really use, but that's a different. We're going to do that next session. But on a serious note, they teach you in quadrants, all this stuff's tied together. Personnel is definitely tied together with your cost. Your costs are tied to revenue. Your revenue is tied to advertising. It's all integrated. So when I look at this accountant, I look at a fountain of knowledge, a ton of knowledge, and I can just ask them tons of questions about, have you ever seen this human resources problem? How has that company dealt with it? Tell me other challenges that some of your other clients have. I just want to learn from them and let them talk. By the way, they're monosyllabic. They're like my son who's a math genius. So you got to really pull stuff out of them, but just keep asking them questions and let them talk. Lastly, what do I want in my accountant? They got to be old. You got to go for the old ones. And I know I'm probably breaking an HR rule here, but I don't care. We want to get somebody old. We want somebody experienced. Why? Because they've seen tons and tons of businesses. They've seen all the ways that things go wrong. And you got to get somebody who has a lot of experience, okay? They're a certified public accountant. And lastly, and finally, and I don't know where I am on the time, and I really don't care because I'm conveying what I know. I'm really done at this point. Get someone who speaks like in plain language, you can remember understand them. That means people who don't speak in acronyms, by the way, and don't talk just about tax forms and LLCs and LLPs and corporations and all this other stuff. Make sure that they speak plain language and you can kind of understand them. You do not need to be best friends with your accountant. I know, I'm not. These are not exciting people. I don't want to be around them. But they have good knowledge, so they don't need to be gregarious. You're never going to find a gregarious accountant. You don't have to be best friends, but they do need to be able to speak English plainly to convey information to you that you can use. Good luck and go get them. All right, guys. This was Brian Hamilton, previously known as Brian Hamilton. If you want to hear more from me, visit Brian Hamilton.org I have something to do with that website. Back to you Omar, and thank you so much for having me. Introducing Fidelity Trader plus, the next generation of advanced trading from Fidelity. Customize your tools and charts and access them seamlessly across desktop, web and mobile for faster trades anywhere you go. Try the all new Fidelity Trader Plus. Learn more about our most powerful trading platform yet@fidelity.com trader investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC. Member NYSE, SIPC We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon but forget about it and suddenly it's expired.

Expired in 2012. Dang it.

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It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico. What a fantastic lesson by Brian Hamilton. I love his sense of humor and his straight to the matter of the fact style. One of the things that Brian touches on is choosing an accountant that can really clearly articulate their ideas and explain things to you. Finances are quite complex, especially if that's not your natural forte. If you didn't enjoy math class back in grade school, there's a good chance you kind of gloss over when it comes to numbers. So you need somebody who can really just give it to you in plain English and save you time. That's what you're trying to buy here is time when you hire an accountant. The other thing I would like to add is having an accountant that's been around the block like you said, that's really well experienced but also is well connected and in the know. You need somebody who understands what's happening in the news and the trends in the world of finance. Somebody who's going to get your back and send you an email and say, hey, by the way, there's an opportunity here for your business because this grant just became available. This tax incentive is available for your business. If we change some allocation of your assets in some way, we can benefit in this way come tax time. You need somebody who's got their finger on the pulse and will always reach out to you with opportunities. If your account hasn't done this in the last few years, let's say two years, there's something wrong. Because things change all the time when it comes to money. There's always opportunities. There's always things happening in government. There's always things happening in terms of opportunities for you to grow or to optimize. So an accountant that's in the know, that's plugged in, that's informed and is updating you of opportunities and knows how to implement on those opportunities, is gold. Okay? Because we've had this experience with our own account where he gives us a heads up and we're ahead of the game from other businesses. Therefore, we get the maximum benefits possible when it comes to any kind of government incentives or any kind of tax breaks we can get, or even just temporary relief to increase cash flow. The job of your accountant is to present you with these opportunities and then you say yes or no and you just maybe provide some information that they need, but they implement and do it for you. You have no time to do this. This is why you have an account. They need to file this stuff for you. They need to get it right. So make sure this is one of the things you need to tick off your list. Thank you so much for listening to the 100 MBA show. I loved today's lesson. It's so important, especially in today's world. As you could see, markets go up and down and we can't predict what's going to happen in the future. So you got to be ready with somebody who understands finances, who can save those acorns for you that can kind of prepare you for the next downturn. Because it's inevitable it will happen. Whether it's an economic crash like in 2008, the global financial crisis, or what's happening right now with COVID 19. The market doesn't just continue to go up, it goes down sometimes. And you need to be ready for those times and have a plan of action and your accountant can help you. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love today's episodes, check out Brian's website Brian Hamilton's website over at Brianhamilton.org Amazing URL. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the biggest stresses in life is financial stress, and if you can have somebody that can help alleviate the stress, be proactive about it. This is going to help you think a whole lot clearly in your business, allow you to know what you're working with, allow you to sleep better at night, allow you to enjoy being an entrepreneur. Don't put the burden of finances only on your shoulders. Have somebody else and choose a superstar using Brian's advice. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon but forget about it and suddenly it's Expired.

Expired in 2012. Dang it.

Fortunately, by switching to Geico, you could save about 900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico.