Pay Play Profit

Most small businesses fail because they no longer have the cash to continue. And if you're growing a business, you've got to keep everybody on the same page and have the tools in place to drive extreme clarity. In this episode, we're going to talk about how to master cash predictions through budgets. As a business owner, you have to get good at predicting. By putting the right systems and processe...

As a business owner, you definitely want to maximize your tax deductions. In simple terms, a tax deduction is anything you spend or incur in your business that is an expense of some sort. It's a deduction against the revenue of your business, whether you consider it a cost of goods, an expense, or even a home office deduction. Sometimes, tax deductions are not 100%. In particular, most people thin...

When was the last time you took a day off? It's every entrepreneur's dream to have the freedom, flexibility, and discretion to take time off whenever they want. A lot of entrepreneurs want that freedom but they never get around to taking it. As we get older, we need time off even more than we did when we were younger. We also need to play more than ever. After all, what's the point of hustling so...

At The Bottom Line®, we're following the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) style where we break our annual planning down into 90-day segments to make sure that we're still aligned with our annual goal. Now, the bigger the goal is, the more you can lose focus. If the goal feels too big, it can get overwhelming to the point that your productivity suffers. EOS teaches you how to compartmentalize...

People matter, and prioritizing people has great rewards. But it comes with great responsibility and great risk that it can be daunting and overwhelming. Today, we're going to talk about leveraging your core values to hire, fire, reward, and recognize in 2023. If you're not really great at hiring because you don't hire a lot, or you've never hired before, hopefully, this episode will give you the...

Let's dive into another hot year-end topic as we discuss the financial closing checklists to put your year behind you.  People need to care about having their books updated before year-end. It's not for tax reasons, but so that you can clearly see how your business is doing and make strategic decisions for you and your business along the way.  You've got to get your books together. Make sure all o...

Today, we're diving into our annual planning for 2022 and we'll show you how we're crafting our one-thing commitments for growth in 2023. This activity is actually a part of the EOS way. But whether you're on EOS or not, this exercise definitely applies to every single business. Trust is the foundation for every relationship and it has been a very important ingredient in our journey with EOS for t...

As part of our yearly tradition, our team is gathered here today to dive into our Word of the Year. Every year, we pick a theme that we want the company to focus on as a whole. In 2022, our theme was Shine and Be Kind. And so, today, we discuss some lessons about giving or receiving kindness that we are grateful for in 2022. We're also sharing our individual Word of the Year for 2022 as well as th...

It's the end of 2022 and there have been some new things that have been flying through about taxes this year. From the new reporting requirements for returns to new credits and new things around energy being done. You can't navigate this all on your own because frankly, we can't either. It's a frenzy most of the time, especially when we're cycling up to an election year. And this is the very reaso...

In this episode, we dive into crafting and delivering your Company Core Values Speech quarterly. How? By sharing our own core values speech at The Bottom Line. We have our core values speech that happens every quarter. And we decided to share it for you to have an idea of what our team hears every quarter. Hopefully, you will find value in it. In March 2023, we will be celebrating 10 years as a bu...

In this episode, we're diving into all things payroll. In particular, we focus on completing a year-end checklist for January. It's simply a checklist of things you need to do before the end of the year. This is very important because payroll has very tight deadlines that you need to complete by January 31 of each year. The year-end starts before the last payroll is run for the year. Once the fina...

Inflation is here – and it's here to stay for a bit. Obviously, we have to deal with it, but how? In today's episode, we discuss some things you have to think through to shield yourself from inflation, or at least mitigate its impact. Hindsight is a good teacher. And so, if you can capture those lessons and put them in your plans for your future, you're going to be better prepared when the next cy...

What kind of entrepreneurial life do you want? Many people loosely exchange words like freelancer, sole proprietor, small business owner, and entrepreneur but really, they're not the same.  Entrepreneurship is a long journey and has its different seasons. For instance, you may have been freelancing for a while to get some extra money on the side. Then you probably caught the entrepreneurial bug an...

If you're planning to or already starting to do business across states, you've got to know what's going on from an income tax perspective. A multistate income tax is different from a sales tax. And a multistate income tax can have a lot of different names attached to it depending on the state.   Joining us today once again is Chris Mahler, CPA who is also part of our TBL family strategic partner a...

A lot of people have this idea that they can just open a shop in whatever state they want and just send the paycheck to the person working remotely. Well, it's actually more complicated than that because there are some things you need to consider to ensure compliance when it comes to hiring from outside of your state.  At The Bottom Line®, we've been doing this for almost 10 years now, and so, we'...

Maybe you're wondering what data you should be paying attention to, and what KPIs or metrics should you be doing. There are numbers that give you safety and those are the numbers you're drawn towards. Then there's also data that can be challenging and frustrating. And so, you just don't like dealing with those kinds of numbers. There are so many pieces to financials and financial numbers, and the...

Feeling stuck in your business? Well, don't we all get that feeling at some point? Maybe you're wondering why you can't get to the seven figures or nothing just seems to work, we all have been there.  When you're at this point in your business where you feel stuck, you've got two choices. You either whine and stay stuck – or you do something to break through that ceiling. In this episode, we're go...

Here at The Bottom Line®, we're always celebrating our wins, big and small – and today, we're celebrating our first 100 episodes of The Pay Play Profit Podcast! If you think running a podcast is easy, well, it's not. Launching a podcast is just half of the battle. The other half is making sure we're releasing something valuable each week, and that requires a lot of dedication. That's why it pays t...

The accountable plan is a policy within your company or your entity, which outlines how you reimburse yourself as an owner, employee, or shareholder-employee. And if you have team members within your business, the accountable plan is a good policy for them to get reimbursed for expenses as well.  One of the ways you get compensated for your business is wages, distributions, and expenses. And so, y...

The decisions you make today create what you own tomorrow. That's why you need to code your wages and know the differences between them. You want to create straight lines and clarity across all the players by making sure you're breaking down everything in your books.  Today, let's delve into the officers compensation vs. shareholder compensation vs. wages & salaries. Knowing the difference is impo...

The best profit decisions are happening with your time, energy, and money, which means more pay, play, and profit in your business and life. And a huge part of that is understanding your financials.  Your financials are three-dimensional – profit, tax, and cash flow. You also need to think about direct costs versus expenses in all these three dimensions. "Direct cost" refers to the cost directly t...

How can you attract new clients and make sure you're the right fit for each other? There's so much to talk about when it comes to client onboarding, and part of that is learning how to attract new clients and set the right expectations from the start. A partnership is a two-way street, which means your clients also need to know how they can help you serve them better. The magic happens when there'...

If you're a small business owner with employees and you still don't have an accountable plan, then now is the time to start thinking about it. In this episode, we're diving into using an accountable plan to create tax-free reimbursements – in a legal way.  Every decision is a profit decision, and profit is measured in time, energy, and money, and that especially happens around your tax, your tax s...

It can be so intimidating to start to talk about a 401k for yourself as a business owner, much less adopt a company 401k, especially if you're just a two-person team with your first deputy team member. If retirement and being aggressive towards retirement are on your radar, there's no better time than now to understand what adopting a company 401k means. The savings for you could be substantial de...

The health of your accounting and your book starts with the health of your chart of accounts, which is basically an accounting terminology that refers to a list of categories including income, expenses, and liabilities. If your business is extremely consistent in how it's spending money, what it spends money on, and how it receives money, then you can make sound decisions over the course of 90 day...