Business Discussions

Name: Nani Waddoups, LPC QB Community member name: @266221 Business: Finding Center, Therapeutic Counseling for Modern Life Location: Portland, OR Launched: 2012 Nani Waddoups has a long and remarkably varied history as an entrepreneur. Although she went to college intending to become a psychologist, after graduation, Nani instead ended up working for herself in the design industry. For more than 20 years, she worked as a self-employed florist, importer, specialty contractor, interior designer, garden designer and house stager --  the list goes on. In 2008, however, Nani realized she’d never forgotten her dream of becoming a professional counselor. At 47, she left her design company partnership to attend graduate school and earn an M.A. in counseling. Nani was ready to start a brand new business – her own private practice -- and help clients through times of transition. We caught up with Nani to find out about the particular challenge of offering care-based services while als

  As a business coach I am often asked for advice on how to find the right business coach. My short answer? It really depends on you. Here are a five tips to find the best business coach for your business. 1. Understand the outcome you would like to have by working with a business coach. Do you want to grow your sales? Become a better leader? Manage fear? All of the above?!? Starting with understanding what will make you feel like coaching has been fruitful is your number one task.   2. Look for a coach that has both business AND coaching skills. If they are only strong on the business side, you will be getting more of a consultant. If they are less strong on business but great at coaching, you will have more of a life coach. I find that my clients have the best outcomes with a combination because the fastest results require strong guidance in both areas. 3. Look for a coach that has clients at least 10x bigger than yours but not more!

  Name: Anna Matuszewski Business: Teenie Banana Disco/Anna Matuszewski Choreography Location: Seattle, WA Launched: 2000; with Macklemore since 2008   From the age of five until 17, Anna Matuszewski (mah-two-SHEV-skee) spent her childhood training for the Olympics in figure skating. When she injured her knee, the door to the Olympics closed. Happily, another opened, this one leading to a career as an independent ice skating coach and choreographer. Eventually, Anna’s passion for dance led her to start a “floor” choreography business with clients like Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Nordstrom, AT&T and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.   Since Anna’s parents and her three siblings all own and operate their own businesses, perhaps Anna was always destined to be an entrepreneur. We caught up with her in Seattle in between tour dates to talk about how she’s grown her business over two decades, how she balances single motherhood with worldwide performances and why sh

  Do you remember your first summer job? Maybe you were a camp counsellor or lifeguard at the local pool. Given that you’ve chosen to run your own business, maybe a summer job gave your very first taste of self-employment. Whether you walked dogs, mowed lawns or fixed flat tires for cyclists on the bike path, perhaps running your own summer gig shaped your  entrepreneurial mindset – and helped you get where you are today.   With that in mind, let’s take a look at some summer opportunities for the budding teenage entrepreneurs you might know (or even be related to!). When young people try their hand a running their own business, they experience decision making, earning power, independence, adapting to changing situations – the learning is endless. Perhaps best of all, they get to try on your entrepreneurial shoes for size.   If the budding entrepreneur likes to work outside, consider:   Walking dogs and caring for pets. Doggies, kitties, birds, oh my! Responsi

Have you used these services? Can you recommend some?

Have you ever screwed up so royally that there are simply no words (not the acceptable kind, anyway)? KFC just did, and for all you Rocky fans out there, the company feels like a "Kentucky Fried Idiot" for good reason: This week, a bunch of their U.K. locations kinda sorta ran out of chicken.    Not ideal, right? And that's exactly what KFC's response was, in its full-page ad. "A chicken restaurant without any chicken. It's not ideal. Huge apologies to our customers, especially those who travelled out of their way to find we were closed. And endless thanks to our KFC team members and our franchise partners for working tirelessly to improve the situation. It's been a hell of a week, but we're making progress, and every day more and more fresh chicken is being delivered to our restaurants. Thank you for bearing with us."   The response has been overwhelmingly positive. No excuses or blaming the supply chain. The situation just sucked and KFC owned it.    What's

  We all know business in the internet age is rapidly evolving, and perhaps this is no more apparent than in the food industry. (The clothing industry, too, is undergoing huge changes and shifts.) Hungry customers want convenience, speed and quality when mealtime rolls around. Smartphones have caused seismic shifts in the restaurant world, and one one of the biggest is customers’ desire to enjoy restaurant-quality food at home -- either via delivery of a meal prep-kit or via courier service from a local restaurant. When diners do go out to eat, it’s overwhelmingly to patronize a “fast casual” establishments -- think Chipotle, Panera Bread or Smashburger -- that offer higher quality ingredients than fast food chains but skip the table service. These days, transparency is also a deciding factor for dinner: Diners want to know where the ingredients came from and who prepared the food (if they can see the kitchen staff at work, so much the better). We’re exploring these culinary-ind

  As a business owner, you not only need to understand your customer, the market and how to sell your product or service, you also have to learn a whole new language of business terms. Here are 22 key financial terms you’ll come across often while running your business.   We’ve defined them in detail below, and we’ve made a handy-dandy guide to help you remember on the fly! Accounts receivable: Quite simply, this is what you are owed. The work was done, you sent an invoice and now you’re awaiting the payment. On your balance sheet (see below), you include “accounts receivable” in the assets column.   Assets: The things your business owns. Tangible assets include computers, furniture, office supplies and your inventory. Intangible assets are any trademarks or copyrights you own. Both types of assets are part of your business’s total value.   Balance sheet: A key document for any business owner, this is a round up of the financial big three: assets (cash on hand,

Name: Megan Corazza, Owner & Operator/Skipper Business: Commercial fishing aboard the 52-foot F/V Centurion Location: Prince William Sound, Alaska Launched: 2000 Captain Megan Corazza grew up commercial fishing with her parents out of their home port of Homer, Alaska. From a young age she learned firsthand about the high stakes and unpredictability of the fishing business, and she swore she’d never go down that path herself. In fact, she was on track to be a doctor when the fishing business beckoned her, and she decided to follow in her family’s footsteps. Today, Megan has owned her own commercial fishing operation for nearly 20 years. Each summer in the Land of the Midnight Sun Megan, along with her crew and her sons, catch millions of salmon to sell to canneries. The days are long and sleep is short, but this seasonal business allows Megan to pursue her other passions -- motherhood, writing and skiing -- during other eight months of the year. We caught up with Megan just before

We are a property management company with several commercial/residential properties.  Each property has it's own bank account.  How can I set up a coa for each property?

What’s your initial reaction to this question? And what does that say about you and your focus as a business?

  Every entrepreneur dreams of having a steady stream of loyal, repeat customers and clients. To make that dream a reality, it’s helpful for small business owners to stay in lock-step with customers’ ever-shifting preferences and priorities. A key example from the current consumer landscape? The increasing demand for businesses and brands to be authentic in what they say, do and sell.   (Re)define authenticity According to recent global research, “authenticity” in business boils down to three key questions.   Is your business reliable? If it is, you deliver on promises about your products and services, giving consumers exactly what they expect at a consistently high quality. Is your business respectful? R-E-S-P-E-C-T starts with the understanding that customers and clients are individuals who deserve thoughtful and attentive interactions. As a business owner, you make every effort to protect consumers’ privacy and data (by the way, this priority emerges across al

Here in QB Community, we love learning from business coach Julie Gordon White. If you’ve spent any time with Julie, you’ll know one of her (many) superpowers is her ability to turn thoughts and ideas into actionable, step-by-step systems. Today we’re sharing one of Julie’s favorite systems, which stemmed from her own desire to start every day feeling positive and productive. Problem was, like so many busy entrepreneurs, Julie could never quite get around to writing in a gratitude journal or doing the other things she thought defined an effective “morning ritual.” So, in typical Julie fashion, she came up with her own system for setting up each day for success. She calls it the G.I.V.E Morning Ritual – and it’s as powerful as it is simple. All you need is a few focused minutes at the start of your day -- maybe you’re lying in bed, in the shower or out walking the dog – and the desire to get every morning off to a fantastic start. Julie’s G.I.V.E Morning Ritual Go through the acronym t

Name: Doug Tarr Business: MVCode Location: Five code clubs throughout the San Francisco Bay Area Founded: October 2013 Doug Tarr was a seasoned software developer who had spent many years working at startups and large companies, as well as co-founding a tech startup in Seattle called PayScale. After moving with his family to Mill Valley, CA, Doug was approached by some fellow parents who wondered if he’d be willing to teach their kids to code. Doug agreed, so he invited a dozen 4th graders to squeeze into his living room for a weekly coding session. Word spread about how much the kids were learning and how much they were enjoying it, too. Eventually, Doug decided to move his unofficial club into an official downtown location. Now MVCode had a name, an address and a mission: to create a sustainable, local community business that teaches 1st through 10th graders to master the basics -- and beyond -- of coding.   Doug, what was the tipping point that inspired you to work for yo

Hello everyone, Tim here again. For those of you who aren't familiar with me, I am a Residential and Commercial Paint Contractor in the Midwest. For any type of construction or home improvement industry contractor one of the most tideous jobs is simply filling out the paperwork for an estimate. Sure talking about what a project might entail is simple but then the contractor faces having to put all of that into written format in order to submit to the client. Wait there is more! Once that estimate is filled out and submitted upon acceptance you then will have to follow up with an invoice. Yes more paperwork! In the "old school" way of doing things this process would require you to visit a local office supply store. Purchase an estimate and an invoice tablet with carbon copying features and manually write by hand your estimates. Contractors would constantly find themselves writing the same phrases and terminology over and over again. Which is one of the many reasons that this part o

  You’ve been burning the candle as a small business owner at both ends for weeks, months, maybe even years now. However long you’ve been dedicating days, nights and weekends to building and growing your business, you deserve a vacation. Question is, how do you give yourself a much-needed break without undermining all your tireless efforts by putting your business on hold?   We’ve got four tips to help you kick back and relax while things at work stay right on track.   1. Plan ahead for being OOO (out of office). If you’re still scrambling en route to the airport to fill orders, communicate with employees, finish a project or pay bills, you’re going to have a hard time disconnecting mentally and emotionally while you’re on vacation. Instead, think ahead – way ahead, if necessary -- both about what needs to happen and who, specifically, will make it happen in your absence. Advance planning will help you relax, unwind and recharge – and isn’t that the whole point of a vac

  Entrepreneurs notoriously are an independent lot. Most of us relish the autonomy of making our own decisions about virtually every aspect of business. Yet we all know that working for ourselves doesn’t actually mean working alone. Far from it. In fact, small business owners need to build strong, trust-based relationships with countless people who each play a different – and, often, critical – role in helping their business grow and thrive.   To find out more about the value and benefit of shifting from “me” thinking to “we” thinking in business, we turned to seasoned client-agency “relationship” experts Diggi Thomson and Gene Tiernan. Together, Diggi and Gene (QB Community username @TheDotConnector) run The Dot Connectors, a company that guides client and agency marketing/creative teams work together to live up to the promise of their combined ambition, talent and experience. As a result, those client-agency teams produce better, more creative and more effective results. H

In an age when we’re redefining the very concept of money, tell us: What’s the biggest business “shift” you’ve made when it comes to getting paid?  I accept cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum or Litecoin I use a “mobile wallet” system like ApplePay, AndroidPay or SamsungPay I have an automated credit card reader (like GoPayment, Square, Clover Go) It’s cash or check only in my business Something else! If you’ve made a shift to a new payment systems, was it easy or difficult? How have your customers and clients responded? What tips can you share about changing the way you accept payment?  

... is 'Visioneering' by Andy Stanley. It all starts with cultivating, seeding, and growing vision! ( link here -> https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/10209267-sj-barakony <- to my virtual bookshelf. Any Q's about any of the books, please ask at anytime. )

Chris Rhodes has run his own construction company in Santa Rosa, CA, for more than 30 years. In October 2017, wildfires tore through Santa Rosa, destroying 5,000 homes. Chris lost both his home and his business, and more than half a dozen houses Chris had built over the years were burned to the ground. “An integral part of my career simply evaporated,” says Chris. “Losing all those homes I identified with so much was almost as tough as losing my own.” As part of a 2018’s Small Business Week celebration, the QuickBooks team wanted to help Chris rebuild his business so he could continue the important work of helping others in the community rebuild their lives. Watch the video below to see how Chris reacts as the huge surprise unfolds … Find out how Chris stays optimistic in the face of unimaginable tragedy: Small Business Week: Chris Rhodes Lost Everything to a Wildfire – Except His Desire to Get Back to Work

Name: Diggi Thomson and Gene Tiernan Business: The Dot Connectors Founded: 2008, expanded in 2017 Location: Stamford, CT Diggi Thomson spent 15 successful years at corporate giant Unilever, working in both Europe and North American on leading brands including Axe deodorant. But in 2008, after some deep introspection, Diggi decided he was ready to strike out on his own. For nearly a decade, he single-handedly built and ran every aspect of his marketing and branding company. Eventually, however, he faced a challenge many entrepreneurs can relate to: Diggi wanted to grow The Dot Connectors, but he knew he couldn’t realize his vision alone. He decided it was time to bring in a business partner with a skill set that would complement his own. Cue Gene Tiernan, an experienced agency-side brand leader who was ready to make a professional change. The Dot Connectors was primed to make a big shift – into high gear. Diggi, tell us about your “aha” moment about doubling the size of your company fr

      Thanks to Ringo Starr, we all know we’ll get by with a little help from our friends. People who work for themselves know in order to “get by” (and more!), they need help from certain key, essential friends – also known as employees.     Hiring your first employee is a big deal for lots of reasons. QuickBooks Community member Fobitty puts it this way:   “I'm running a small business by myself. I need to hire some help so I have time to expand. I've talked to a few prospects, but it's clear I have no idea what makes a good employee. In your experience, what should I be looking for in a long-term part-time employee? Personality traits? Experience?   “I don't have time to get this wrong.”   This single quote highlights the complexity of officially expanding your team (thanks, Fobitty!). First, your decision is likely driven by an anticipated or actual uptick in sales. That bump in scale, however, almost always means you’ve now g

    Once upon a time the word “disrupt” meant to cause problems or to destroy a process. But in today’s competitive, fast-moving, tech-driven world, “disrupt” means to innovate -- and innovating is shorthand for winning. These days, disruption is a business goal, an industry ambition -- in short, it’s all the rage. A key part of successful disruption? Keeping up with the never-ending rollout of new technologies.   Consider, for example, automation technology. Automation is disrupting old, slow and inefficient approaches to getting things done and helping business owners save money, reach more customers and streamline repetitive processes.   The great news is that small business owners are particularly well poised to take advantage of new technologies because they can adapt more quickly to change than large corporations.   Who’s afraid of the big bad robot?   Let’s first disrupt the myth that small business owners or the self-employed are resistant to cha

As a small business consultant, it is not uncommon for me to schedule new client meeting on their home turf. While these onsite visits can be very beneficial for evaluating the company's current processes, it often made it very difficult to conduct a proper presentation.  A few years back when Parkway decided to focus our service offerings around QuickBooks Online, my business partner Mike Snelson and I felt it was important to use technology to sell technology. With a vision in mind, we created new beautiful presentations that told the story about Parkway as well as explained our service offerings that could be demonstrated from our iPad or our laptops, or so we thought. Fast forward to our first chance to conduct our new high-tech presentation, we thought we had thought of everything, laptop, power cable, mobile hotspot for internet, and our VGA cable to connect to their TV. What we did not consider was how long the VGA cable would need to be.  Needless-to-say, our not

Plenty of entrepreneurs have seasonal (and, hopefully, predictable) highs and lows throughout every business year. For example, if you own a construction, lawncare or landscaping business or you run a beachside restaurant, an ice cream shop or a summer camp for kids, the warm summer months are typically your busiest. When the weather cools down, so, too, does your revenue stream. We want to know: How do you strategize and adjust for the shifting seasons in your business? How do you plan ahead – in terms of finances, employees, inventory and more – both for your busiest and your slowest sales cycles? Thanks for sharing your insights in the comments below. We’re excited to learn from your experience! Want to weigh in but not yet a QB Community member? Click HERE to sign up in a flash!