Episode 20 | Messes in the Books

In this episode of the Messy Back-End of Entrepreneurship, our panel discusses when you need to hire it out, how to do it, and when you can do it yourself and why you ever would in the first place.

“Many small businesses would rather face an angry barbarian horde than tackle their cash flow statement.” – Nicole Fende

Check out E-Myth by Michael Gerber!

EXPERT PANEL

I just can’t seem to keep my back-end working. There always seems to be a problem here or there and that seems like a setback. How can I run the back-end if it is not set up perfectly? Do I need to stop and clean it up first before moving on?

Lori – One of the things you have to realize is that in life you can not do everything perfectly. It is not possible!

80-20 Rule – It means that 80% of your work has to be okay. Only 20% of your work has to be perfect. You can decide which are your top priorities and which are the things that need to be at 100% like bookkeeping. It really depends on what your business is. There is absolutely no one that is running things that are absolutely perfect.

Mike – Problems are good. They can be signs of growth. Imperfect action beats perfect inaction. You just need to move forward. It builds momentum. You got to make sure to get rid of the naysayers in your life. You are either going to gain positive momentum or negative momentum. We tend to be our own worse enemy. Keep yourself pumped up and motivated. Learn the Eisenhower Matrix and study it inside and out. The Eisenhower Matrix helps you decide what is urgent and important. You have to deal with those urgent and important fires. You want to spend most of your time where it is nonurgent, but important because those things will move your business forward. Often we spend most of our time putting out fires or doing urgent things that are not important like e-mails or social media.

If you just move forward with that imperfect action you will make progress.

If you have a Messy Back-end many times we try to solve all the problems by ourselves, but we don’t have the skill set to do that. There are people out there that know more than we do in certain areas. Reach out to someone who does.