Resource Library - Decoding Your Business Financials

Summary

In this episode, Monica Roca-Quesada shares her journey from criminal justice to accounting, emphasizing the importance of understanding small business finances, leveraging technology, and planning for legacy. Discover how small business owners can decode their financial stories, automate processes, and prepare for future growth.

Takeaways

• Your numbers tell a story. Learn how to read them.
• Bank metrics and business metrics are not the same.
• Extra spreadsheets usually mean broken accounting.
• Revenue is vanity. Profit and cash flow matter more.
• Cash flow decisions quietly make or break your business.
• Outdated books lead to blind decision-making.
• Fear keeps owners from facing their numbers.
• Delegate bookkeeping as soon as it becomes a burden.
• Financial clarity helps businesses survive longer.
• Data without interpretation is not enough.
• AI will replace tasks, not real-world judgment.
• Plan your exit long before you need one.

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Transcript

Thomas (00:01.799)
Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Coyote small business podcast, a resource library for your small business. Today, we are very, very fortunate to have Monica Roca Cassata with us today because we're talking about, we're talking about, we're talking about books. We're talking about the books. We're talking about your finances and that financial journey for small business owners and

especially right now when things are so kind of chaotic that this is all the more important to know where how your books are translating for you. So Monica, welcome, welcome.

Monica Roca-Quesada (00:44.024)
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I love when we get to have real conversations about money. I'm really excited.

Thomas (00:49.863)
But before we do, I want to talk a little bit about your minor lego addiction.

Monica Roca-Quesada (00:56.814)
My minor Lego addiction, yes. You know, it's interesting as an accountant, I feel like I have a very analytical brain. this allows me, building Legos allows me to be creative while using my analytical brain. And it's quite relaxing. There's definitely, the running joke around the house is that my backlog.

is getting a little large. There's probably about eight boxes that haven't been built right now that are waiting for me, so...

Thomas (01:29.765)
Is there one in particular that's calling out to you?

Monica Roca-Quesada (01:35.654)
no, those will get done immediately. Like when there's something I'm really, really excited to build, it's like I become somewhat a little obsessed and I won't stop until I finish it. But I will say that as we're getting into Formula One season, there's some new F1 Legos that I'll be adding to my collection. So I'm excited.

Thomas (01:56.611)
There we go. Fantastic, fantastic. And does it translate into the way that you deconstruct and rebuild a client's complex financial systems?

Monica Roca-Quesada (02:09.83)
does it? I mean, there is, right? Because there's definitely, when it comes to finance, to your accounting, right? There's definitely a structure that you need to follow, right? Like, you know, there's, there's rules to this at the same time. I think where you get to think outside the box is when you get to know the business, right? When you get to know how the business works, I think.

Thomas (02:10.267)
Or is there no parallel to it?

Monica Roca-Quesada (02:38.69)
You know, years ago, there was all these steadfast rules, right? Like your profitability has to be X and your cost of goods should not be higher than X, right? We've seen that change, right? I'm always intrigued when I meet a business owner who wants to let me into their like Excel world of how they're tracking things, right? Because it lets me know that fundamentally, like fundamentally their accounting has failed them because they had to create something different.

Right. And so our goal is to get you to use that same logic and what you're you built in Excel to track your business in your accounting software. Right. So it's understanding that

Every business has different benchmarks that they want to track, right? And I think that that landscape is changing. And there's always gonna be things that are tested and true, right? Like, so if you're looking for a loan, the bank is gonna look at it the way they've always looked at it, right? But how you run your business may be different. How you look at your financials to make decisions daily may be different than what a lender may look at.

Thomas (03:51.239)
I love that you mentioned it like that, that they talked about it like that. because I, know, working at working with a real realtors, know, there's, there's also, you know, this is how you look at your house. This is how the bank looks at your house. And this is how, you know, the, the, the, the, the mortgage people will look at your house. And then it's like, and the image is like, you think it's a castle.

bank thinks it's a shack, you know, that's that sort of a thing, right? So it's kind of interesting that you're, you know, being able to talk about your financials, that it's kind of the same way that the banks look at it one way, whereas, you know, what you need to run your business is another way. But let's go back a little bit and because you didn't originally set out to do accounting. You originally set out to do be an attorney.

Monica Roca-Quesada (04:37.568)
No!

Monica Roca-Quesada (04:40.972)
Yes, I was a criminal justice major very early on and I actually worked at a, I had an entry level job, I was 19 and I was a receptionist for a company where the chief financial officer

used, he introduced me to accounting and we had like, this was very old school, like when I, when I tell you I'm going to date myself, smoking was still allowed in the building back then, right? Like we're talking about this, this was a long time ago. and so I got my foot in the door by actually starting to reconcile, deposits for lack of a better word. And they used to receive,

We used to, anyway, we used to fill out these huge green ledger forms and that like, was just intriguing to me how we had to do that to then put it into an accounting system and then reconcile that process. Like I really loved the information and the tacticalness of what I was doing. And that's really how I got started.

Thomas (05:47.175)
criminal justice sounds to be so much more sexy. What is it about old school green ledger sheets that made a 19 year old Monica be like, I like this better than telling criminals to go to

Monica Roca-Quesada (06:01.582)
Bye.

Monica Roca-Quesada (06:05.622)
Well, because the numbers tell you a story, right? There's a story in those numbers, right? And you do get to somewhat be a detective when you start figuring out where those numbers actually go, right? So I think that's the difference, right? There is traditional bookkeeping, right? Which is like, debits, credits, this is how this goes. But how you organize your P &L, how you organize...

how that data is interpreted is completely different. And it's interesting because we have this conversation with CPAs all the time. like, if people realize that the information on their P &L just gets consolidated into these 10 lines on your tax return. Because at the end of the day, that's a different metric. That metric is to see how much tax you owe. But when you're looking at your business, what you determine to be an expense or a cost of service is going to determine your profitability. It's going to be completely different.

Right? And this is again, the same analogy of how the bank looks at it versus how you look at your numbers, right? Whether you decide something is an immediate cost of service is going to change your pricing, right? Like it's going to change a bunch of different levers in your business that you're able to pull. And figuring that out to me is actually quite fun. You have to get to know the business owner. You have to get to know, right?

Thomas (07:15.035)
Mm-hmm.

Monica Roca-Quesada (07:31.438)
I know I say this all the time, I'm like, nobody gets into business to do their bookkeeping. Like nobody is ever like, I'm really excited to do that, right? But when I get to translate what the books tell me about how passionate you are about your business, that's a whole different experience, right? Like when I can look at your numbers and see where you were going, what you intended, what your purpose is and what you're doing.

then you have a completely different feeling, right? Most of the time we meet business owners that are scared to see what's under the hood and scared to actually have those numbers interpreted for them, right? Like this is what someone is telling me off these numbers. I think the difference is getting to know how the businesses work.

Thomas (08:23.237)
Right, right. And so 19 year old you was able was already able to start understanding the storytelling behind in the book in And amazing.

Monica Roca-Quesada (08:33.174)
Of course. Like, so, and I'll tell you how this picture gets put together. Right. So you're, in the middle of the business, you're answering phones, you're hearing what's happening, right? The top level people, this was a small business that you're talking about, maybe at that time, 10 to 12 people. Everyone is pretty much in the same space. So you're hearing the conversations about how sales translates, when the money's received, cashflow problems, right? Like all of that put together.

If you're actually paying attention, there is, there's a huge story always being told in every business, right? Like what are they most focused about? Like have you ever walked into an office and just gauged what conversations are happening, right? Looked at somebody's whiteboard, what are they working on? Right? Like all of that should be reflected in the numbers as well.

Thomas (09:11.857)
Hmm.

Thomas (09:20.032)
Amazing, So did you go ahead and change your major then at that point or did you stick it out with the criminal justice?

Monica Roca-Quesada (09:27.07)
I actually have, I have an associate's degree in criminal justice, but then I changed my major to accounting and ultimately ended up with my degree in business, right? In actually in organizational and change management. Because I just, for me, I love the way business works. I think it's another way to get to see

how creative people are in entrepreneurship, right? Like what they're willing to risk.

Thomas (10:03.751)
Absolutely. So when you finished your degree, where did you go from there? Did you go and join an accounting firm or what happened there?

Monica Roca-Quesada (10:16.782)
No, I actually got my first true accounting job working for a major cruise line. And that is probably what sparked my passion even more. To give you an idea, that's like working with 24 floating hotels at once, right? So these ships are basically floating cities is what you can call them and the amount of revenue

that comes off of these ships is incredible, right? And they're all separate departments. They get categorized differently. They all get fed into a major accounting system. You produce consolidated financials. I know like I've sound really excited as I say that, but if you like this type of stuff, you can really nerd out working with so much data, right? Like so organizing that data, it's massive. You also, that's how I got my foot in the door with systems, right? Like understanding.

the information we're pulling. Back then, it was a very manual process to be able to pull the data off the point of sale systems. But basically, all we were doing was interpreting that data to turn it into financial statements. And that's kind of what we do today when you think about it, right? Like, I often say that every business is an e-commerce business at this point. Everything is electronic that you do in your business, whether how you're signing contracts, receiving payment.

No one is getting cash. Well, not no one, but very few of us are getting cash or checks. Right. The most common form of payment right now, I feel is Zelle. So organizing that, right? Like all the different ways people get paid, how you sell, you you may, you may invoice, you may, you know, there's that all of that to me is extremely interesting and how you choose to

process your sales and payments.

Thomas (12:18.279)
Now I remember when we were speaking previously that you were 24 at the time when you were at the cruise line and you were managing a team of 12 and they were all like about a decade or so, you know, longer in the tooth than you were.

Monica Roca-Quesada (12:27.65)
Yes.

Monica Roca-Quesada (12:38.23)
Yes, and they were also more experienced. They had also been in the cruise industry way longer than I had been, right? So most of the people at that time had been there 10 plus years and were definitely more seasoned than I was at the time.

Thomas (12:57.671)
Was there any pushback? mean, I remember when I became a very young national sales manager and all my sales reps were 10, 20 years older than me. And they would say things to put me in my place. We've always done it this way or, my kids are older than you. That sort of a thing.

Did you experience any of that? Was there any pushback or was it pretty smooth sailing? They accepted you for the role that you had.

Monica Roca-Quesada (13:31.075)
There was definitely pushback in the beginning, but I think that changed when I was able to interpret the data in a way that helped them. When they needed help with understanding why something didn't match, right? Because again, we're talking about multiple systems feeding into one accounting system. So the margin for error here is large. When I was solid,

on my footing of being able to figure it out, then there was no longer any pushback, right? But the first few months, definitely. I mean, did I get teased a lot for being young? Did I have the leadership skills that I probably needed at that point? No, for sure. Did I learn a lot? Absolutely. But it wasn't, it was actually a great experience for me. I do look back on that time and think they were a little crazy considering I was so young.

But I think it was the right choice for them and for me at the time. I pushed boundaries that no one had pushed because they had been there so long. I remember we went through an audit that I was literally in trouble for, for finding ways to circumvent the system and do things we should not. Or they thought we were blocked from doing, and I was consistently doing that. And it wasn't from a place of malice, but just from a place of being efficient.

Like, is there a faster way? How can we do this? The people that were there longer than me were so used to doing things the way they always were, they didn't push the boundaries. They didn't push the envelope on how to get things done. So it was refreshing for them as well.

Thomas (15:13.723)
Right. No, that's fun. That's amazing. And I don't know why I have this in my notes, but I have down here and I don't know if maybe it makes sense to you. I, and we'll move on if it doesn't. I I have down here Lotus to Excel.

Monica Roca-Quesada (15:27.694)
Oh my god, yes, that's why I was hired. I was hired because back then at the cruise line, they only used Lotus and they were moving over to Excel. back then, I mean, I'm truly dating myself. Back then, you know, if you knew how to do a pivot table, like you were an Excel guru, like if you knew how to do a V lookup, like, oh my god, that's what I was hired for.

I remember I hadn't finished my degree yet and they actually made me like submit my grades in GPA to be able to get this job. Like the things I would have done when I was young for like, like if somebody asked me for that now, I'd be like, no, no way. but when you're young, what you'll do.

Thomas (16:02.384)
hahaha

Thomas (16:10.151)
That's fantastic. Yeah. Um, I remember, I remember Lotus one, two, three. That was better. That's a, that's a little back in the day now. Um, do you mention that a couple of times in our conversations, um, that on a couple of times in your career that you automated yourself out of a job? Can, can you, can you walk us through like that? Those moments where you realize that being, you know, highly unemployable.

Unemployable is because of your efficiency.

Monica Roca-Quesada (16:41.582)
Right. So most of the time I was always brought in to fix a problem, right? So their books are a mess. They're sys, they don't have the right system, right? So I was brought in to be a controller, a staff account and whatever the role was at that point, right? And then I would find ways to either implement a third party software. We would set up SOPs. We'd get through all of this. And then I would strategically

get myself out of the role where I had to do the actual work, meaning I wasn't the one that was reconciling transactions. I wasn't the one that was doing that anymore. And then you're in this weird flux of like, we have all these systems. She's the one that architected it, but now we've replaced her with either a software or a person to do that role, right? And that's how I would pretty much.

get myself out of a position. it happened to me twice in the span of, in the span of like three years, happened to not maybe, maybe four years. It happened to me. And I, that's really how I decided to open up my own company. was like, there's clearly a need for this. Companies need someone that can jump in and bridge that gap for them, but they're not a full-time employee. They might be, we might work on a project for three months, six months. Some projects may be a year or longer, but

There is an exit. There is full stuff at an exit point. And I think that that probably, even for the first few years of my business was what was most challenging, right? Because you could help so many businesses, but no one really knew that a service like ours existed. know, now it's a little more mainstream with APIs and things of that nature. Like there's a lot of different software integrations. People will look for connectors.

Thomas (18:10.426)
Right, right.

Monica Roca-Quesada (18:36.436)
in their accounting software and whatever system they're using, right? But 10 years ago, that didn't exist.

Thomas (18:43.344)
And actually that's what I wanted to get into next because as a kind of a boutique firm, I don't hear very many people having a software engineer on their team.

Monica Roca-Quesada (18:55.17)
Yes, yes. It's really, it's an interesting, to me, this is where the accounting world is going to, right? Like the FinTech space is pretty large, particularly now with AI and everything else, right? Like being able to connect to other systems and be able to architect how that data is going to come over into another system is incredibly important.

Right. think, one of the reasons we started to build our own financial operations platform was because there's plenty of connectors out there. There's plenty of third-party apps that will connect one thing to another, but you are somewhat boxed in and how they do it. Right. So as the person on the other side, as a person receiving the accounting information, we don't have much control.

As to we have to make a choice. can connect with this connector or this connector. And these are the options that it gives us. What I've always been a fan of is let me get the raw data. Let me get the data. Let me interpret the data. Let me figure out how I want to do that. And in order to do that, because I am definitely not a software engineer, I needed to have someone on staff that was able to pull that data and somewhat translate it for us.

Thomas (20:20.455)
think that's a lot of foresight on your part. Congratulations on that. think that's fantastic and amazing. you guys are, I'm remembering it certainly correctly, you guys are in your 13th year now? Is that about right? Yeah. I know you've talked about financial resilience for small business owners. Has that evolved since from when you first started your career or

Monica Roca-Quesada (20:34.924)
Yes, yes.

Thomas (20:50.651)
Has it morphed into something else or is it still about the same?

Monica Roca-Quesada (20:57.39)
I think it's definitely transitioned into something different than when it first started, right? When it first started, it was more about making sure that people understood what was already happening, right? So understanding what their transactions actually mean. Now it's more about making sure, like what we're passionate about is making sure that businesses stay in business, right? Like the SBA still says that

one in five businesses will close by year five, right? That number would be drastically lower if people understood their numbers, if people really got comfortable with understanding what's happening, right? A lot of particularly, and when I say small business, right? Because small business can technically be classified as anything under 50 million, but there's a lot of micro businesses, right? Like there's a lot of

To me, when I say small business, I'm talking about the businesses that are between one and 10 million that probably have less than 10 people. Those guys are, in my opinion, working really hard and struggling because they're still owner operators and they're still putting out fires in their business. So if they're able to work with someone that can translate what's happening and make that

easier to digest, they're not making and truthfully, I think most business owners like we're entrepreneurs, right? Like we fly by the seat of our pants for the most part. We're risk takers. You have to be able to manage that energy in a way that helps them make better decisions, right? And that's understanding the story of what's happening with you. You know, that's really what, you know, and this happens all the time. We talk to business owners and they're like,

Thomas (22:45.541)
Right, right.

Monica Roca-Quesada (22:53.92)
I know that I'm making this amount, you know, and I'm like, you're not, let me show you, right? Because when we organized it in a way that matched what you were thinking, your margins are actually lower. Right? Like, and again, you know, we have that all the time where we see people think they're, excuse me, not spending as much as they actually are, right? They have this number in their head and I'm like, but let me actually show you what's truly happening.

Thomas (23:07.759)
Right, right.

Thomas (23:22.107)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Monica Roca-Quesada (23:23.18)
Right? Like that's a different, there's things that people will selectively forget that they.

Thomas (23:27.685)
Right, right, Now you, you mentioned just now that I'm going to butcher the way that you had said it, but essentially, you know, owner operators are slaves to their business. and you had mentioned before also that there's like 16 different drivers, in a business, from, you know, metrics, revenue metrics and cash flows, things of that nature. Are there some top drivers?

like maybe two or three that an owner operator are maybe ignoring that might give them some of their freedom back.

Monica Roca-Quesada (24:06.154)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it depends on the type of business for the most part, but one of the things I think people don't or we see a different push to understand is something like days of sales outstanding. Right. And that just sounds like when I say that, it's like, I feel like I'm saying something really fancy. And what I'm really trying to say is like, are you financing your client sales when you're giving them terms? Right. People don't realize they want to make the sale.

And they're like, we'll give terms and I'll let them pay. And they're, looking at that as revenue on the books, but it's not cash in the bank. Right. And so that's one of the metrics that will affect cashflow the most. Right. days payable outstanding again, not a fancy one, but how you pay your vendors, how you choose to, hold on to cash or not is going to, you know, we, we meet business owners that like, I don't want to have debt.

I'm going to pay everybody. I like to pay the minute I get the invoice. I'm like, but what's that doing to your cash flow? Do you have enough cash in order to do that? Right. If we change that 10 days, 15 days, what are we doing with your cash? Right. Like all of these numbers are correlated and what we choose to do with them matters. I don't think that everyone puts the pieces together in the same way. And the other thing I would say as far as metrics,

We do talk to a lot of people that are so focused on revenue, which, you know, to me is a, it's a vanity metric. Like people want to say I grossed X million, right? And that's great. But what we really want to talk about is how, you know, how profitable are you? Like how much of this cash are you keeping? you know, people will, we see this all the time. They're like, okay, well this year I want to buy a house. And I'm like, well, we needed to have that conversation two years ago.

to make sure that your financials were in order to support that, right? Like we need to make sure that we're organizing the data. Most of the time we'll meet business or not, not most of the time, but they're like, I don't want to pay tax. And I'm like, I get it, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, know, paying tax means you're profitable. And so let's figure out a different way to mitigate that versus trying to show that there's, that your business is in profitable. Cause that's going to impact your lending opportunities. It's going to impact.

Monica Roca-Quesada (26:32.588)
what you're able to do. One of the things I'm always really, really, really big about is the bank doesn't give out umbrellas when it's already raining, right? So try to line up that funding before you need it. In order to do that, your financials need to support that, right? Like we'll get businesses that are in like a ripe or prime state to be able to scale, but now their financials don't support that, right? So we need to really start aggressively looking at that before we need it.

Thomas (27:02.885)
Yeah, and when it does start pouring the banks is the first ones to take that umbrella back.

Monica Roca-Quesada (27:08.972)
Yeah, absolutely.

Thomas (27:10.823)
Now you mentioned that you had a client spending $50,000 on ads with a $275 conversion cost.

Thomas (27:26.503)
Is is do you like, can you give us a little bit more depth because you were talking about and again, memory is a little fuzzy for me because you were talking about how like a good revenue number was actually hiding a dangerous reality.

Monica Roca-Quesada (27:40.207)
Right. So in that case in particular, they were spending a lot of money. Their ad spend was really, really high. So they had a product that they were selling that was less than $50 yet their conversion cost was upwards of $200 on certain days. they would celebrate the fact that they were having good sales days, but not really understanding what that conversion rate was costing them. And we see that a lot in the pay per click market because there is

Thomas (28:04.049)
Mm.

Monica Roca-Quesada (28:08.738)
There is an understanding that you're going to be upside down for a while, right? But it is so imperative to actually monitor that spend, right? And at what point do you right the ship? Again, you're not gonna see that if you're not tracking that. You're not gonna see that if, you you'll see that your marketing spend is high, but if, again, if it's not all correlated in a way that makes sense for you.

In this particular case, they didn't notice because their bookkeeping or, know, their stuff was about six months behind. So they weren't seeing the impact as it was happening in real time on their financials. They were just seeing big wins for sales and then getting a marketing spend bill later, not attributing that to the actual sale.

Thomas (29:01.125)
Right, right. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I think, you know, in marketing, we see that a lot too. And, you know, for, for, cause we deal with a lot of small businesses as well. And we keep saying, why are you spending that on, on play pay per click? Like that's, that's money that you can better be used elsewhere. because pay per click, a lot of times it's the moment that you stop paying for it. It stops working for you. so we try and, we try and find ways where we can try and get some.

get some value out of their dollar spends. yeah, I love that story. Now, you also mentioned, you've also talked about how the role of the junior bookkeeper might be phased out by AI within the next five years or so. How should small business owners be upscaling their current teams to act more like prompt engineers or analysts rather than data entry clerks?

Monica Roca-Quesada (29:59.983)
That one's a tough one. It's one of the things that scares people in this industry a lot. I think, I don't feel that we should be scared. I think we need to be aware and we definitely need to leverage AI to help us, right? I don't think, I mean, the bottom line here is I think most entry-level jobs are gonna be phased out. mean, think about the fact that we no longer have cashiers.

You know, you go to Walmart and you are now checking out your own stuff or you go to McDonald's and you're speaking to an automated screen, right? Like those, and I think the same thing is going to happen in accounting at some point. We're going to have so much data that we'll be able to take most of the heavy lifting of categorizing, reconciling. Right now you can give Claude a bank statement and an export from your bank and it can tell you what doesn't match, right? Like so.

those type of things are already happening. I think what's important here is to know that what you won't be able to do is get the 30 years experience that a human being has, right? The different industries, what you see. It'll be a lot easier to get information on what to do and what to look for, but the nuances of how to manage that might not be as clear cut.

Thomas (31:27.887)
Yeah, that's actually a scary thought because,

That insight and that wisdom comes with experience. And for the younger generation, they're not going to get that experience. And hence they're not going to gain that wisdom. In which case, they're stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Monica Roca-Quesada (31:48.719)
Absolutely. Like I think about, wouldn't know. You know, and it's interesting, right? Because we are in a space where we work with so many different industries, right? And over the last 30 years, I mean, I can tell you that a diaper manufacturer can make 50 diapers in less than three minutes, right? Like who knew, right? Like these, you know, I've had the privilege of working with so many different companies, right? And that's all.

baked in my own knowledge of how I will attack or address a scenario, right? For people that would be coming into this field later on, they're not going to get that. They're not going to get the story behind why they did something X-Way. It's just going to be, this is how it's done.

I think that's gonna be a huge, it's gonna be a lot harder. I worry about our youth is what I'm saying right now. Like what will their jobs be? I think we'll definitely have some challenges there.

Thomas (32:50.459)
You and me both. My daughter's only four, so I'm at a point where you know what? I'm just gonna, you go and do your thing and just grow and become a well-rounded human. because things are changing so fast, can't, you know, back a few years, people were like, we've gotta get our kids in STEM. They've gotta get our kids in blah, blah, blah, right? I don't even think that we can do that now.

So it's like, for us, it's like, OK, let's just make sure you're well-rounded and we'll see what shakes out in a few years.

Monica Roca-Quesada (33:23.746)
Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, like even, you know, I have adult children and what they went to school for one of them, you know, might not be around in the next 10 years. Right. Like it might all be, I mean, people are not learning how to code, right? Like, so again, we have a stuff, a software engineer on staff. it's very easy now with vibe coding to be able to create something. However,

the 30 years experience that he has in understanding code, he can see where their logic didn't meet the right test, right? But 10 years from now, who's to say where that will be?

Thomas (34:02.949)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Anyway, we're getting a little off track. Let's, let's come back to, to this. now you mentioned just now, and I really liked, and cause even you even mentioned it before we started, we hit the record button, is that a of business owners are afraid to look under the hood. is that something you find quite common?

Monica Roca-Quesada (34:31.552)
Yeah, most of the time, particularly, like it's interesting because people don't want to look under the hood when it's bad and they also don't want to look under the hood when it's good because they don't want to see, you know, the reality of what could be happening. I think when it comes to when it comes to people's finance, finances, it is a very personal thing. It is a very emotional thing. And we all have a money story, right? Like

If you talk to people that have immigrated to this country, they'll, you know, they came from other countries that were impoverished. They're the way they handle money is going to be very different than someone that was like born here. Right. and all of that comes into play. So, you know, it, to me, it's, I wish we could destigmatize money and just make it data, right? Like that's all it is. It's, data. It's giving you information on what's good, what's bad, what we can change, what we can make better.

If we take away the emotional component, I think it would be a much better experience. But I do understand that it is very emotional for a lot of people.

Thomas (35:41.306)
Is it?

Is there a sense of kind of like, if I hand the books over to a bookkeeper that like, I'm kind of letting people in to see my, you know, my dirty laundry.

Monica Roca-Quesada (35:57.583)
Of course, of course, the messier it is or people don't, we get a lot of that where they feel bad that they didn't understand what was supposed to be happening, right? And I think, again, people don't go into business to do their bookkeeping. That's not what you started out to do, right? So I totally understand. There's an excitement when you first start your business. My first invoice, I'm receiving payment.

Thomas (36:10.887)
Mmm.

Monica Roca-Quesada (36:26.318)
You know what mean? But if that's not your zone of genius, the faster you can get out of there and have somebody else do it for you, 100 % recommend it. And as your business grows, having those real conversations of understanding what's happening, right? And even having sessions of like, where do you want to go? What's your one year goal? What's your three year goal? What's your five year goal? And how are we planning for that? Because most of the time,

When we first started business, we're flying by the seat of our pants, right? Like we're probably, mean, most of our stories are going to be similar. You work with the wrong client. You take anything because you need money to come in, right? All those things. But as that storyline changes, your finance should also change, right? As your business grows, that's probably where you want to start investing in having a team and thinking about, and that doesn't mean you need to have somebody in house. You can outsource it.

What I do think people need to be careful with is putting people in the wrong seat, right? Because we see a lot of like, I have an administrative assistant that does the bookkeeping and that's fine, but that's only going to take you so far, right? Like that's going to get the information processed, but maybe not give you the information you need. That's when you need to start looking under the hood. That's when you need to really have that conversation, right? We hear a lot of bookkeepers say things like, I'm sorry, we hear a lot of business owners say,

I know I'm making money, but I don't know where it goes or I know something's not right. What I would love to see change is people addressing that sooner than later.

Thomas (38:06.639)
makes a lot of sense. And you just mentioned just now that beyond the one year, three year, and five year goals.

Thomas (38:17.477)
I think.

Like is there is there something about

you know, looking at, looking at 15, 20 years in terms of like, build, you know, having scalable legacy, like, is there something there that is there, is there like a hidden opportunity or something that, that, that, that, that owner operators are missing, beyond just the clean books.

Monica Roca-Quesada (38:47.384)
I think I want to answer that in so many different ways, but I think what happens is we're not thinking when you're an owner operator, you're not always thinking about legacy. You're not thinking about an exit strategy or what's going to happen at that point. I think the bigger disservice is you're probably not thinking about what it looks like when you want to retire from your business, from being the owner operator. think what happens is that people get burned out.

because they didn't have a full plan of what this looks like. There's a lot of people, there's a lot of businesses that are under, it's a business, but under the hood, they just have a job that's paying them less than what they would have out in corporate. They have more freedom, they may have more time, they're making that decision. However, they haven't set it up in a way that makes sense and they're not.

You know, like, we talk to business owners, they're like, hey, I've been doing this for the last 10 years. I don't have a retirement plan. I don't know what that looks like. I think that's part of having the conversations of how long do I want to do that? How long do I want to, I mean, like, I love what I do. I can't imagine not doing what we do, but I know I don't want to do it every day for the rest of my life.

and have to rely on it to pay my bills, right? Like there is an exit at some point. I think those conversations need to be happened. They need to happen sooner, right? Like we met with a business owner the other day that was like, I'm pretty sure my son is going to take over the business. The son wants nothing to do with the business, you know? But they never had that conversation prior, you know? They were like, no, this is your baby. I help you. This isn't what I want, right? So I guess having those real conversations is really important.

Thomas (40:36.295)
Right. So tell us a little bit about agile partners, agile planners, and kind of what services you guys provide.

Monica Roca-Quesada (40:46.378)
Yeah, so we are what I would describe a accounting technology firm. We are pretty selective in the type of client we can work with in the sense of they must have multiple systems. Like we would be way too much overkill for someone that was just like invoicing like a brick and mortar or something along those lines. Every client that we work with right now has one or more integrations.

into their accounting system. We are, we're really passionate about getting the heavy lift of the accounting off of the owner operator, right? They can go back to building the business and doing what they do best. At the same time, making sure that they're informed and making the best possible decision they can about how they run the business from the financial aspect. So we won't get involved in like,

what CRM they should use or things of that nature. But when it comes to the backend of how they are processing payments, how they are invoicing clients, how they are planning for the future, absolutely that's something that

Thomas (41:59.515)
amazing. beyond that, you also offer like, what other services do you offer?

Monica Roca-Quesada (42:08.046)
So currently, biggest, what we're really pushing right now is the advisory services, right? We do also have bookkeeping services, but at this point, we're only working with clients that we can do advisory and bookkeeping for. What I've realized recently is that it has to be a full package. It's one of those things where we have to completely be in alignment with.

what's happening in the data data of the business in order to help them make better decisions, right? Another vertical that we have in the business is that we'll do implementations and integrations with third parties. So tomorrow, you have a specialized software that you want, that you're gonna use in your business and you don't know how to integrate it, then we can create that workflow process for you, document it and get you up and running.

Thomas (43:01.287)
That's amazing. is, mean, there are a lot of accounting, different types of accounting services out there. some are doing just bookkeeping. Some are doing just tax planning. Some are doing just, you know, or just taxes. Some are doing what you guys are doing in terms of having that advisory. How, how does a small business owner choose? Like what level of service do I need?

at this point or yeah.

Monica Roca-Quesada (43:34.553)
That's a really interesting question. I want to say that because these services are so in tuned with something that is personal, most people don't want to talk about their finances with just anyone. You have to make sure that you're in alignment with the people that you are working with, right? Like, are you going to take their advice? Do you believe that they are the right people to work with?

One of the things that we tell clients when we onboard them is that we are ridiculously annoying. We are going to ask you for information, get you to be involved. You will get familiar with reviewing those numbers. And I'm going to ask a new client, are you willing to do that?

People say, you know, like we've experienced that where we've worked with people that say they want help and they don't want to meet with you. They will dodge your calls. We want to work with people that are proactive about working on these processes in their business. It is a very high touch point. It's not the kind of thing where like you only talk to me once, you know, like once every few months or that that's the difference, right? Like

Most of the time you hear stories where it's like, but I only talk to my bookkeeper when I'm going to get my taxes done before they send it to the tax accountant. Or I only talk to my tax accountant once they've processed the return, but the tax accountant didn't have any feedback or information on what you were trying to do. And then they're wondering why they got the result they received. It is an interactive process. You are getting a team to work with you.

Thomas (44:56.645)
Right.

Monica Roca-Quesada (45:18.156)
Right. So you have to be responsive to the emails. You have to answer our questions. You have to meet with us. We have to know where you're going. Right. Like a lot of times, not a lot of times, sometimes we'll, you we're the ones that were like, Hey, we just saw there's a new credit card. We just saw there's a new loan. Like what's going on here. Right. Like after the fact, they're not leveraging us before they make a decision. Right. And so I think that's the difference in working with someone like us is we're going to ask consistently. What's the next step? Where are you going? What you working on?

Thomas (45:38.929)
Mm-hmm.

Thomas (45:48.783)
Is there a point at which, you know, cause you mentioned that you, when it comes to the financials, the earlier that within a business that you can offload that, the better, because most of us are not, we didn't get into business to do accounting, right? Cause then so, you know, at what point should we be looking at a bookkeeper? At what point should we be looking at, you know, the different levels of services that not only, not just agile planners, but like in terms of

your average accounting firm might provide.

Monica Roca-Quesada (46:26.274)
The minute that it starts to be too much for you to handle, right? The minute that you start dreading the fact that you have to do it would probably be the time that I would start looking to outsource it. I think the needs will drastically change based on where you are in your business, right? I think working with a traditional...

Thomas (46:50.609)
There's no benchmark in which way it's case like which you would say, you know what, at this point you should look for more than a bookkeeper at this point, you should be looking for a fractional CFO at this point, you should be hiring the CFO or,

Monica Roca-Quesada (47:08.214)
I wouldn't say that there's absolute benchmarks. No, I think there's processes that are happening in the business that will let you know. Right? Like when you start to have to look for people to work in a process that isn't accounting, you probably want to work with someone to find whether you need an outsource service or, actual human capital. and I think when you get to a point where you know, you want to grow in scale or you know that you have.

a profitability issue, don't necessarily have a sales at those points, right? It depends on what situation you're having, who you would want to work with, right? I think the most important part though is building a relationship with that person, right? Like not having that just once a year conversation.

Thomas (47:58.431)
makes a lot of sense. We talked a lot about a lot of different things today. Is there anything that we've missed that you think that small business owners should really think about or they should be aware of that we've missed?

Monica Roca-Quesada (48:13.236)
No, actually, I we did cover quite a bit. I mean, the one thing I would say is...

We should definitely approach these situations with curiosity, right? Have conversations. If there's something that's keeping you up at night, when it comes to your business finances, find someone to talk to about it that specializes in that, right? Sometimes all it takes is one conversation to give you clarity and we hold onto that longer than we have to just because it's not something we want to do, right? I would say just rip off the band-aid and have the conversation.

Thomas (48:49.863)
Thank you so much for this. And if people have any additional questions, they're able to reach out to you. What's the best way to do

Monica Roca-Quesada (48:57.038)
The best way is on the website, if you go to agileplanners.com. I always invite everyone to just have a right fit call, just have a conversation. Let me know what you've been thinking about or what's been keeping you up in your business. Those are things that we love to have conversations about.

Thomas (49:15.175)
And especially for those of you who are Lego lovers as well. So thank you so much, Monica. This has been amazing. Really appreciate you giving just not just in generosity of time, but also in terms of your in terms of your insight as well. So thank you. Thank you.

Monica Roca-Quesada (49:18.486)
Yeah

Monica Roca-Quesada (49:30.509)
Well, thank you. Thank you for having me.