hey it's patti scharf CPA and co-founder catching clouds the leader in e-commerce
accounting welcome back to Saturday slow down Saturdays I like to remind you all
to take a step back and start thinking strategically about your business and
not just get all washed away in the day-to-day operations of working in your
business today I want to follow up with the YouTube video that I recorded last
week or earlier this week about how to scale your business and I wanted to give
you some concrete examples of how we've done that in our business some of the
pitfalls we've run into and things like that so so let's get started
there are really two ways that you can help scale your business and your scale
your business doesn't need help to scale you need two things one is going to be
technology the other is going to be people you can have a different
combination of those maybe all technology usually not all people but
maybe sometimes usually both okay so some of the technology that we use to
help scale our business one has to be 0 it was it's the base of everything we do
another one and this is the one that I remember from early on I think it was
2014 we were using a payroll tool I do it yourself payroll tool that I just
won't name because we don't use it anymore and no need to beat them when
they're down but but the the issue with them was they weren't pulling the money
for taxes for our clients at the time that payroll was processed some people
like that because then you're not paying the government into the very last second
but we were what we were running into is some of our clients might not have cash
available at the time that the payroll taxes are due and that's not okay and
other problems were it wouldn't prepare the State returns that we needed or
local returns that we needed we'd have to like print stuff out and mail it in
it was just pain and it was there there was a lot of
room for error in that system so we switched over to what is now Gusto
Gusto used to be called ZenPayroll when we first started using it and when
we switched over to that it was just night and day we didn't have to worry
about a lot of the things that we had to worry about with this other system and
it just fixed a lot of problems for us another software that we ended up using
that just was kind of a game changer for us as A2X and I've got at least like
seven videos I make A2X I just love them they're like my favorite tools so go
check that one out if you are an e-commerce seller for sure
if you're selling on Amazon use A2X but also if you're looking at scaling and
creating some automation in your business the first thing that you need
to be checking out is a cloud inventory tool there's some that are actually
watch this video on the cloud inventory tools the next thing you need to be
looking at is sales tax the Supreme Court just passed a ruling that's making
it harder for e-commerce sellers you need to be aware of the rules you need
to hook up with somebody who's informed about that so but to scale your business
you're gonna need somebody else doing the sales tax returns instead of you
it's it's just a fact so so take a look at that and and hopefully that will help
you out all right next let's talk about people people has
by far been our biggest challenge over the last four years as you know from the
time that we started hiring actual people and not just my parents and there
are a few reasons for this I think part of it so let me let me start this by
saying that over and over I hear people saying that it is so hard to find good
people and what I've learned over the last several years is that it's a lot
easier to find good people when I am being a good leader so when I am giving
them the resources they need to be able to do their job when
I am setting really clear expectations when I am training them properly so that
they know exactly what's expected of them so that they they they can do the
job you know I can tell you our so 2014 was our oh we need people you're like we
just needed help and we just needed them to get in there and everything was in my
brain everything was in Scotts brain but we didn't really have a documented
process the the next year we started documenting the process but we were just
so busy just trying to train people and get things together that it was just we
were still kind of in that mode the next year 2016 was our Oh nobody knows what
they're doing so what ended up happening because we
were in this chaotic state and we didn't have training like formalized training
and we didn't have really this this enough structure for the people who are
coming in people are getting really frustrated people were leaving or they
were staying but they were unhappy and this person was teaching that person who
is teaching that person and the training although it existed it it was being
communicated poorly and so it was just like one big game of telephone so it
kind of felt like nobody knew what they were doing even though they were
everybody was doing their best you know then 2017 became a whole year of just we
completely retrained everybody top to bottom did a whole bunch of the
equivalent of YouTube videos training our teams so that there was consistency
across the board and then by the end of 2017 we were up to 22 people in our firm
and we realized oh we have the wrong people in our firm and not all the wrong
we just had a few of the wrong people for the most part we had great people
but because we were so clear about what our firm was how we approach things
we handled this that or the other thing the ones who didn't fit really kind of
stuck out like a sore thumb and now we've right-size down to 18 people and
the whole firm is just humming along and I feel like we've scaled up we've gotten
to that next level so if you're in that middle part where everything's chaotic
and you can't find the right people and everything's just not good I would say
take a step back figure out exactly what your process is figure out exactly what
you expect of your people communicate it to them over and over and over like
don't hound them like you know people don't like to be micromanaged but you
know give them give them the tools that they need to be effective and your whole
company will scale up the way you want it so I hope you found this video
helpful if you did please like comment and share if you haven't already please
subscribe and catch you later