What’s on your mind, yogis?

Hi Vita and fellow Yogis!
I am very thankful for your course and it gives me a very good picture of how it can be. I am blown away how much work you put into creating all the formulas and a real system that can run without you already! I feel very hopeful that it is also possible for me! Right now I am just absorbing all the theory because I am super busy and overwhelmed in the midst of a very busy Holiday season. I have started turning people away since September as we just can’t keep up with the volume of coming in work (Hiring new help is like pulling teeth these days, so I had to go get behind the sewing machine) plus my very long time installer (7 years) gave me a notice about a month ago, so I’m just stressed.
Once this madness ends, I need to rewatch all the videos again at Christmas break and make a solid plan of steps to take and bring my business to the next level. I also have a business partner and that worries me a little bit since he is very much stuck in his own ways and not super open to new ideas or changes ( maybe it’s the age talking…he is 67 with no desire to retire).
This letter kind of came out too negative and complainy and whiny…that was not my intention at all.
* I have good people working for me, I just need to find others that are as good.
* I am very hopeful there is a light at the end of this year’s tunnel! This will actually be my most successful year financially! Yay!
* I have cleaned out the bottom of my van from tons of fabrics! Still have to tackle the closet but it will happen for sure! even though I wasn’t very successful with finding a lot of places to donate the fabrics to, I still found a few, so that’s progress!
* I am taking some meditation classes and trying to incorporate a healthy every day body approach!
* I realized that I can actually plan on taking a very long vacation in the summer (about a month), so all these systems will be very handy.

So Thank you Vita from the bottom of my heart for giving me hope!

I’m with Olga, pulled in too many directions, and there is so much to reflect on after each class I am planning to rewatch each one also.

Vita, I am continually impressed with your vulnerability, so I am going to try and do the same 🙂

Finances…
Finding good finance help was critical for me, and one of the first things I invested in after purchasing my business. I pay my firm $300 per month for bookkeeping, managing sales tax, and financial reporting. They provide a very thorough 8-10 page monthly performance report with an exec summary, M/M, Y/Y and YTD financials, KPI’s, cash flow reports, etc. I was doubting that the time spent entering so much data into QBO was paying off, but I am now seeing the value because they pull from QBO.

This side of the business is not my strong point… I still am learning how to read and understand these reports, much less use them to make informed decisions. To this end, I have just entered into a new relationship with one of the partners at my accounting firm to provide monthly COO / CFO guidance so I can begin setting goals and budgets, forecasting, and using the data to make decisions. This was a scary investment, at $1500 per month, but I recognise that I need help in this area.

From a process standpoint, my office manager enters all vendor invoices into QBO, and connects them to projects. This allows us to analyse profitability on a project by project basis. Sometimes a project is a single room, sometimes a whole house. We have been doing this for one year come January, and I look forward to having a solid year of data to compare. We also use QBO to analyse client and designer spend. I’m thinking to send holiday floral arrangements to my top designers and clients as a nice end of year thank you.

People…
This part of being a business owner has been another big challenge for me. I struggled so much with the people aspect. When I bought my business last year, I kept on the existing team. I felt so blessed to have their experience as I learned a completely new industry. Unfortunately, the admin did not work out as he was not willing to grow into the expanded role I needed from an office manager, and expressed his frustration and anger at me until I had to let him go. Two weeks later, my window treatment specialist put in her notice. She had been with the business for nine years, and managed the entire hard treatment and installation side of things. The previous owner taught me the soft treatment side of the business, so now I had to learn crash course in hard treatments. While also taking on all admin responsibilities.

Two weeks ago I had to cut ties with my installer as he was becoming more and more unreliable, making lots of mistakes, and had a bad attitude with clients. I am now in the process of “testing the waters” with several new installers, who I am paying to fix mistakes at my cost. I was late to class yesterday because I had to do an install myself to keep an excellent client happy. This is a very hard lesson on having the right people in place that do good work and hold to the values we set as business owners. I let his bad behaviour slide for too long because I felt I had no other options, and now have lots of client relationships to make right. The good news is, new installers are so far very conscientious and reliable. Hopefully the fixing will be over soon and I can begin accounting for their (much!) higher install cost on new estimates.

Hearing your troubles hiring a general manager made me tear up. I am continually blown away by your willingness to be so vulnerable about your hard lessons and share with us ways to avoid those same mistakes ourselves. Which brings me to the brightest point in my people journey… my office manager is a freaking rock star. She is very close family friend (more of an aunt to me) who moved from NC to help me. I called her this morning to thank her (again!) for the great work she is doing, despite her being hard on herself. I shared with her what you said about the steep learning curve in this industry, which reinforced what I’ve been telling her all along. I was really telling myself too, because I too get overwhelmed with how much there is to learn, and feel like I make mistakes all too often.

My new goal is to create an SOP doc for my business, inspired by yours.

Ok, enough rambling!
Nikki

Hi ladies,

Wow! That’s a lot happening, you are making me feel not so alone when I read your notes. I do everything but fabrication and installation myself, so no staff to worry about but it’s been an interesting year of experimenting with new workrooms and new installers. After many years of smooth sailing I’ve had to make a lot of changes in both areas which has been challenging but I’m trusting it will make me better and stronger and able to grow.

Vessie, I made the switch to QBO a few years back and really hated it at first. It felt like a primary version of QB desk top to me at first, but I got used to it and can’t really remember what the problem was any more. I agree with Vita, you might want a 2nd opinion as most accountants like it and it does make it easier for them to help you through the year as well as at tax time. The only problem I had was with sales tax, it’s been years and I feel it just doesn’t work right and the help desk can’t seem to help me make it work correctly, so I literally figure it out on a form I created and then plug the findings into QBO before I pay the tax. I set up QB myself, so it probably is just a set up problem.

Nikki, I’m so impressed with your investment with your accounting firm, and for jumping in with the CFO investment! I’m a big believer in knowing your numbers. Since we are all here to make a profit, it just makes sense to get that component figured out. I’m on a mission to find a new accounting firm who can take over my bookkeeping and sales tax. I love my CPA and he is great for year end taxes, but I don’t love their in-house bookkeeper so I’ve always done it myself. Would you be willing to sharing the contact info for the firm you work with? On another note….your staff! Wow, that is a lot to handle, can I just say I’m impressed with how cheerful and curious you always showed up to Vita’s classes with all of that going on!

Olga, You must be doing something right if you have been turning down business since September! I used to think having too much business was a good problem to have, until THIS year happened! Now I just feel a bit naive, my really great systems only worked for as long as I didn’t need help, so now I’m scrambling to get everything set up in a way that I can hire at least virtual help to manage the projects and do my books. Good luck with all the changes you want to make, especially with a partner who is reluctant!

Vita, I can’t even tell you how much your class has launched me forward into a place of finally understanding how to split up the work I do every day into “departments”. For some reason I could never see how to pass off just a part of each project, now I feel like I have a path to follow and I am so grateful!

It looks like we all will be re-watching the videos over the Christmas break. I for one would love a zoom call to discuss what we have re-watched and problem solve and dig in a little deeper. I’ll be around between Christmas and New Year if anyone is interested in setting a date to chat.

You are all such an inspiration – thank you! Merry Christmas!

Myrna