I recently met with a prospect that was interested in growing her business (super exciting stuff… my favorite prospects to meet with!). Her energy was contagious and I could tell she had a passion for what she was doing. It made me even more interested in how I could help her achieve her goals. Our conversation started off with her talking about her business- what service she provides, her customer demographics, the values her business holds, and where she wants to be in the next year or so.
Great! She had that info down and rattled off answers to all of my questions.
It was downhill from there.
The conversation continued with “Okay, this is where you want to be. Where are you now?”
Her response was “Well… I’m not real sure what our sales are. Nope, not real sure what my gross profit is. Ugh, no idea how much my monthly payroll runs.”
What?!? I followed that up with, “How would we monitor your growth if we don’t know your numbers?”
Crickets.
What I went on to explain to her was that it is impossible to do financial coaching or growth planning without accurate numbers. Accounting can be overwhelming and intimidating but numbers are concrete. They provide a map to your growth (positive or negative). They allow us to monitor progress, make adjustments to your strategies, and keep growing.
So at the end of the day you can have the best action plan and strategies, but without the ability to rely on your numbers you won’t be able to measure whether you’re going to reach your long-term goals or not. You need to be able to tell whether your plans are really working, or if you should change tactics to reach your goals.
If you’ve been relying on bad numbers, or NO numbers at all you should consider outsourcing your accounting to an expert. Let’s setup a time to chat and see how we can help you GROW your business.