Clean Books, Zero Fortune Telling w/ Pam Stocks | Ep. 209

In this episode of Biz/Dev, we talk with Pam Stocks, founder of On The Books, about the operational side of building a business that most founders only learn through experience.

We get into setting up finances the right way early, hiring ahead of the chaos, planning instead of reacting, and the small structures that keep growth from getting messy. 

Pam shares the patterns she sees across startups, the signals leaders should pay attention to, and how to stay a few steps ahead while you’re busy building something real.

LINKS:

Pamela on LinkedIn

On the Books LinkedIn

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] David: Obviously I've messed up in several ways. We've already documented that, so please don't audit me. It's no money. There's no money here anyway.

[00:00:06] Pam: I'm not an auditor. You're safe.

[00:00:08] David: Actually I have a friend who is an IRS auditor. That is the weirdest, like you wanna talk about a cooler at a party. What do you do for a living?

I audit people. Done. That's the end of that conversation. We are no longer speaking.

[00:00:22] David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the Biz Dev Podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, joined Per Usual by Mr. Gary Voit. What is that man?

[00:00:31] Gary: Hello? Hello. How's it going?

[00:00:33] David: It is good. It is good. I have no complaints. It's snowy here, which is lovely. But we got robbed like everyone else in North Carolina got 10 plus inches and we got almost nothing. 'cause most of the storm, you can't see my hands most of you, but it like two storms came together like right over my house.

And so for most of the day it was totally blank and I was very sad, but it's okay. I got over it. We did get three inches and my kids went nuts even though they're old. And that was funny. More importantly we are joined by Pam Stocks the founder of On the Books, which is an innovative accounting place that focused on startups, so it's very exciting.

Welcome, Pam. Thank you so 

[00:01:13] Pam: Thank you so much Appreciate it. Happy to be here.

[00:01:16] David: so we have met once before we chatted a we. A couple of years ago. So I know a little bit about your company, but tell me, tell everybody I suppose tell me about on the books.

[00:01:28] Pam: Yeah, so we are a bookkeeping and consulting firm working largely with startups funded startups in technology and life sciences. So we work with people who are raising money hopefully going to sell for a lot more money. And we put the systems in place, really help them build their foundation and put the systems in place to help them exit for Todd Baller.

[00:01:51] David: So if you are, okay, when you say startup, you're a little further down the road than someone just getting actually started. You're at that point. If someone's funded, most likely that means they're an up and running business of some form. They got a prototype out there, they're probably making a little bit of revenue.

Is that about when you come in?

[00:02:11] Pam: No, actually amazingly enough, most of our clients are pre-revenue.

So it, they can come to us anywhere in the startup journey. They can be pre-seed. Sometimes they've barely raised some friends and family money. They might have $25,000 in the bank and they're just giving it.

A good go and they want some help to make sure that they do it the right way. Other companies, they might be raising a Series A, so they've been around a little while. They do have proof of concept. They're actually have potentially some revenue coming in, but still in that r and d phase. Our life science clients oftentimes never have revenue. While they work with us, a lot of times they exit before there's actually any revenue coming in the door. The tech side, a lot of times they can bring in some revenue as they're growing and scaling. And that's where we see the most growth.

[00:02:56] David: So my dumb question of the day is, if I have no money, why do I need a bookkeeper?

[00:03:02] Gary: Okay. 

[00:03:04] Pam: Because 

[00:03:04] Gary: you don't have revenue yet, how do you already sell? 

[00:03:07] Pam: Yeah. Yeah. So having no money is, a lot of people think I have no money. You do, right? You still have to pay people, you have to pay your contractors, the people who are helping build your prototypes, the people who are building your website, there is money to be had. There is money being spent. There's no profit. So I think

that's the difference, 

[00:03:27] David: If you're pre-revenue, you, there's no revenue, right? You're pre profit, pre anything. So you're talking about managing the pile of money that you somehow found in the couch cushions and friends and family and stuff.

[00:03:41] Pam: Yeah. Or that you've raised, right? So some people have raised some money prese seed round by the time they get to us. And sometimes they do that really early and they really don't have a whole lot set up. We're still setting up their very first QuickBooks file. We're putting them potentially on payroll.

We're figuring out how they can pay their bills other than their. Credit card that they've been using to, earn points and travel for free. We're setting up those kinds of systems. They've been spending money, but they haven't been tracking it, right? They haven't really had a reason to put financials together until they want to raise more money. And then a serious investor obviously is gonna wanna know that they've got their act together.

[00:04:21] David: So if I am in that state, and this is, okay, so let's pretend I have a startup that is in this exact position. Let's just pretend that maybe it's called Teela, maybe.

It's I don't know, hypothetically.

this is when I use my podcast as free consulting. We are pre-revenue and like really pre-revenue and we, our expenses right now, big pixel takes care of as the primary company even though it is currently a separate entity.

But my question comes from. I'm bringing on advisors and they are like, Hey, usually this is done with a little equity. Little thank you. Thank you. I am not set up for any of that stuff. I'm an LLC. That's a simple, it's just an LLC, no concept of that. It's me and my wife. We do it. When do you. Have I already messed up? That's my real question. Have I already messed up? Because I can't give equity in that sense, not in the real legal sense. We can talk about it, but it's not, I don't have shares. So should most startups in this scenario when I don't wanna raise money, that's a whole different thing.

But look, we're not trying to raise money. Maybe eventually we have to, but I wanna bootstrap it, right? That's my goal. Practice what I preach as it were. So I started as an LLC. 'cause I was like, I don't need shares. What do I need shares for? But I'm now thinking to myself, there might be a little snippets here and there of equity such as advisors or whatever that I might wanna give away.

So did I make a big boo? And it should be Teela Inc. Not Teela. LLC.

[00:05:51] Pam: I have to be very careful not to give tax or legal advice.

[00:05:54] David: Oh yeah. Could we put that little disclaimer? We should have a little AI voice come in and say this is not meant for any advice.

[00:06:00] Pam: What I will say is that anything can be fixed, right?

[00:06:04] David: Yeah. I didn't 

[00:06:04] Pam: not too far down the road that and there's lots of other ways that people can give you money and or services. There's safe notes that if it never actually goes anywhere there's no equity for them to. to. have, right? There's there's loans they can give you conversion convertible notes that would convert to equity later. Things like that. So there are lots of options out there. 

[00:06:28] David: If you were, let's say I, it was a blank slate and I'm coming to you and I'm like, this is my situation. I'm not I'm gonna do a little bit of stuff like friends and family. I'm getting my mom 5% just 'cause, but I'm not really doing the whole share thing. Would you say do a corp, is that the right way to do that? You start from the beginning as a corp. Generally 

[00:06:48] Pam: think if your plan is to raise funds, yes.

[00:06:52] David: then Corp is definitely the right way. Okay.

[00:06:54] Pam: I would say that's, it's where you're gonna end up, right?

So might as well do it from the beginning. Most people though, start just the way you are. They

start with an LLC, they decide, do I need to, should I take the s election?

Should I just become a C corp? And you figure that kind of stuff out with your accountants and your attorneys and

whatever, depending on what your end goals are. But yeah, I think. Ultimately if you expect it to scale really far,

[00:07:19] David: You hope it does, right? That's the goal of all this, right?

[00:07:22] Pam: then it's gonna be required at some point, right?

The investors are gonna say I'm not investing in an LLC. We've got to create a new entity or transmission your LLC to a new entity. However that happens.

[00:07:33] David: Now, are you involved in that or you just advise and then back off? Is that's outside of your purview typically?

[00:07:38] Pam: Yeah, we're not typically involved in a lot of that. We're just, we're keeping the accounting going to make sure that they have good numbers to talk about with potential investors. Or people who have already invested, right? If they have to report back to people. But we are really focused on making sure that all of their systems are set up in a way that they can easily. Past due diligence with an interested party either for acquisition or for additional funding. And they're audit ready in case they choose to be audited. In some cases, to get certain funding, you have to be audited or at least have reviewed financials. And then sometimes the IRS just decides you're gonna be audited and.

[00:08:16] David: Sure. Always a good time. Always a good time.

[00:08:18] Pam: We like to make sure that all of the systems are set up ready for all of that from the beginning, so there's no big rush to oh, no, what do we have to do now that we're thinking about an audit, or now that we're thinking about raising money, what's different? And with our clients, nothing's different.

We've always had systems that are compliant with the things that investors and auditors are looking for.

[00:08:39] David: So if I am bootstrapping, I'm a, I should say this, I'm a firm believer in. And bookkeeping and accountants, because unless that's your thing, dude, you cannot mess with that stuff. I'm I'm used to that. We have all that, right? I am not saying you should ever try to cheap out on your bookkeeper, but I think in a startup's life, there is a time when you're just counting pennies, right? So what could a new startup do? To prepare themselves for you in the future, let's say, I don't wanna bring you on right now. I want to, I'm counting my pennies. I'm trying to, what could I do to be a smart founder? It's just me probably in this situation

To be ready for when that I do pull that trigger for you or someone else.

[00:09:21] Pam: Yeah, so I think don't wait until you're ready to gather all your documents.

[00:09:27] David: Define that. Define God documents. What does that mean? Documents.

[00:09:30] Pam: All of your documents, whether it's your your company documents, when you formed your LLC and all of the, your EIN document that you get back from the IRS when you register for that, all of those things, usually end up in a file somewhere and they don't. Know even where those things are, let alone, once they start having transactions and then things like invoices and receipts and all of those things that become so important later on, it's ah, they're in a folder somewhere, or they're in my email. I can get 'em back out later. Later. You don't have time,

you don't have time to dig all that stuff back out.

So I would say be super, super diligent about, about, number one, keeping your business and your personal finances completely separate. The fact that you said that one business is funding the other, the best way to handle that is take the money out as one lump sum and then pay out of the other businesses bank account.

All of the expenses.

Don't pay the expenses out of one. On behalf of the other, just do a straight draw, take it

[00:10:28] David: yeah,

I, 

[00:10:29] Pam: and then do it. 

[00:10:30] David: that's one of the things just for me personally. I don't know, like Teela ex became its own thing in November but it had existed before that as an idea. It wasn't anything real. And so then I was like, big pixel fine, just pace things, whatever. We had expenses hosting, small things, nothing major. But now that it's a real thing, I don't know. Like how much more diligent now I'm supposed to be. And I feel like I've, I'm not doing that so I think I, I need to go and count my pennies on that. 

[00:11:01] Pam: Because you wanna be careful that you're not setting a big pixel up for being at risk for liabilities on behalf of the other LLC, 

right? And once you pierce that veil the financial, they call it piercing the corporate veil, right? Once the financials are going through big pixel, you're treating them as one. So if you had, if you were sued in one or had a liability in one, they could come after the assets of the other Potentially. If there's, if they're functioning as one bank account. 

[00:11:30] David: Yeah. Yeah. No that's 

[00:11:32] Pam: The limited liability part of the LLC is negated when you're not keeping it separate.

[00:11:39] David: Yeah, it's the whole piercing the veil thing. I heard a thing you being a bookkeeper slash accountant, are you officially a CPA and all that good stuff?

[00:11:46] Pam: I'm not a CPA, but in

North Carolina you don't have to be a CPA to call yourself an accountant.

[00:11:51] David: I've never, I heard the best one. The CPA is can't predict anything. That's 

[00:11:55] Pam: Oh 

[00:11:56] David: for because every time I ask my accountant, Hey, we're, we're having a good year. Do I need to prepare for anything or whatever? I don't know. Whatever you think is best. I'm like, dude, no, that's not what 

[00:12:06] Pam: oh, that's not a great answer.

[00:12:07] David: That's not a great answer buddy. I don't have a clue what I'm doing. Or my favorite thing. And this just happened, we had to get some lawyer stuff for Teela. And it's the same thing for accounting. It's, you pay for it. They do the thing here you go, make sure it's right. I'm like I paid you to make sure it's right.

I'm an idiot. I have no idea what I'm looking like. I just got my tax returns back. And they're like, just double check everything. It's 50 pages long, this big pixels thing. I have no idea what half these words mean. And I'm so like, I just 

[00:12:38] Pam: That's

what your bookkeeper's for.

[00:12:40] Gary: No, you just check your social security number and you're like, ah, that's good. Address is good. All right.

[00:12:45] David: the big pixel is almost 13 years old. If I'm still using my social security number, something has gone horribly awry, which I'm not, but it's okay that, that's good advice. I need to think about that. I'm getting close to the point where I probably do need you

Have no idea what you're talking about. I don't want taxes. I got no money. What are we talking about? But they're like, you gotta do all this stuff. And I'm like, okay, sure. Take taxes out.

is 

[00:13:07] Pam: that's where we come in, right? 'cause we

can answer those questions for you as they come up in these different platforms, making sure that you're not building your systems one platform at a time that don't work well together. We can make recommendations.

Talk about the things this platform, this is what doesn't work well in this platform. This is where it works better. But this platform where this works better has this downside, right? Because we've worked with 'em all. So whether we're talking about an accounts payable system, a bank that we like or don't like, Stripe versus a native payment processor to whatever software you're using, QuickBooks versus zero. All of the things, right? We've tried them all and we know what we like, we know it works well. And we can give you that advice. And the things that we can't say or do we know people that we can put you in touch with to make sure that they can be that resource for you.

[00:13:57] David: So where. Where do people, obviously I've messed up in several ways. We've already documented that, so please don't audit me. It's no money. There's no money here anyway.

[00:14:08] Pam: I'm not an auditor. You're safe.

[00:14:10] David: The actually I have a friend who is an IRS auditor that is the weirdest, like you wanna talk about a cooler at a party. What do you do for a living?

I audit people. Done. That's the end of that conversation. We are no longer speaking

[00:14:21] Gary: I was gonna ask like friend.

[00:14:23] David: She's the sweetest lady ever. What's really funny is I've known her for a long time, pretty much since I've been in Raleigh, so almost 20 years. And you see her at church and she's just this sweet lady.

But then you'll ask her a question 'cause you find out what she does and it's like she goes into tax mode and like she's just a totally different, like she's serious. It's go time and whoa. She's very sweet anyway.

[00:14:46] Pam: Yeah, auditors can be a little intense, but they're not always bad. They can help you. They

can help you get to where you need to be, right? To

raise money or to get certain funding

[00:14:54] David: What are you finding that is the biggest mistakes that startups are making when they've come to you? Are they, I, the obvious one is they didn't keep any documents. We heard that one. But outside of that, what else?

[00:15:05] Pam: So I think one of the biggest things that we see is that QuickBooks makes everything seem really easy, right? They take out Super Bowl ads that says you can do it all on your own. So easy, right? So people think I can do this, and they get into QuickBooks and they start fumbling around and they do it and they have no idea what a reconciliation is.

They have no idea what, double-sided accounting is right. They don't know anything, right? Other than, okay, it's coming in and I see a list of transactions and I think I'm coding it where it should go in my system and I'm good. And then the revenue's overstated because they haven't matched a payment with a deposit.

They've added both separately or their expenses are, overstated or sometimes understated, sometimes they miss things, right? Your bank feeds sometimes disconnects and you miss some transactions. And if you're not reconciling at the end of the month, you don't know if you have extra transactions or not enough transactions. And so that's really the biggest thing that we see is the people doing it themselves. They don't know the whole picture, right? They know their bank feeds, they know that they're coding it, and they think that's all that they really need to do. And they don't really know how to check to make sure that what I'm seeing is accurate, right?

They get a transaction that says payroll salary, and they code it to salary. And then there's another one that says payroll and taxes, and they code it to taxes, but half those taxes is actually really salary. And that's very specific, but that's so common that people don't get their numbers right.

Just because QuickBooks makes it look so easy.

[00:16:31] David: So one of the things I've learned by running my company, my wife does all of our bookkeeping. She's not an accountant. She's very clear to tell me that, but. She tells, 'cause I do this wrong all the time. And I imagine everybody, when you've started a company, you do this wrong for a long time, I'd still do it wrong. I'll say, oh, we have X dollars in the bank. And she's like, where did you get that number? And like the bank. And she's no, you need to look at QuickBooks because that's what's real. The bank is not real. Stop it.

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[00:17:35] Pam: So sticking with QuickBooks is great. For your gl my, in my experience, once you start using the other things that QuickBooks now offers, it used to just be a GL and they connected with all the other things. Now they're trying to bring all those other things in-house. And so that's where they're getting people is the bill pay and the payroll, the accounts receivable and all of the fees associated with all of those things and all of the, changes that they make mid-year, mid-quarter, sometimes. It's a lot to keep up with and as they make these changes and they're raising prices and breaking the features that work really well, and for somebody who's not in it every day like we are, it can be a lot. It can be a real challenge. And so we use outside vendors for everything except for the actual general ledger, which QuickBooks does very well.

[00:18:26] David: So are you like doing gusto and all that kind of stuff for payroll and.

[00:18:30] Pam: Yeah, we use Gusto a lot. We use ramp quite often for bill pay. They also have credit cards and expense reimbursements and it. By far gets the best compliance out of all of our client employees, 

so it makes our life easier. As opposed to a bank bill pay that doesn't have an approval system, that doesn't have an audit trail, that doesn't have all the things that we can set up in ramp we use bill.com, that's another accounts payable vendor that we use. We'll use. use a lot of things. Payroll's probably the one that's most diversified because people come to us sometimes already with payroll

[00:19:03] David: Sure. And you're not switching 

[00:19:04] Pam: to just be like, actually no, we're not gonna do that. 

[00:19:08] David: We just switched to 

[00:19:09] Pam: with it. 

[00:19:10] David: and my wife is still mad at me. And it's been a while. 

[00:19:14] Pam: Switched from which to

[00:19:15] David: we, so our accountant was doing it but he was using Quick Roll, QuickBooks payroll behind the scenes. So he was just but the weird thing about Big Pixel, a little TMI, but we are. All in the US but our people are all over the US So we're a small company, but we're in like seven states.

And when Jen was doing that's my wife. When she was doing that, every time we'd hire someone, they were in a different state, she'd start throwing things. 'Cause it's a lot, every state is weird and like when we added New York and California, 

[00:19:48] Pam: Oh yeah. those are tough. 

[00:19:50] David: And so she's, yeah, she's still mad at me at that and it's been like four years, but, 

[00:19:53] Pam: don't like those, don't hire in Washington state.

[00:19:56] David: Have we done that one yet? I don't think we've ever had a Washington state one, but but it's been really interesting. So when, so he, our accountant's just a small accountant and a local guy, and he was really overwhelmed with all the states and he did it, but it was painful. And he'd be like New Jersey might need something.

You might wanna go check. And Jen had to go and do all this. She was like, what? So we switched to Gusto in theory. We haven't done it yet. We haven't hired since we switched over. In theory, it should be much easier. We haven't seen that in practice, so I can't say that with any definitiveness, but so far 

[00:20:30] Pam: tell you that Gustos using a third party to do all of those registrations.

[00:20:34] David: Perfect,

[00:20:35] Pam: It's not great.

[00:20:37] David: Jen needs to skip this part. She always listen to the podcast. And now you get it. Now I'm gonna 

[00:20:40] Pam: sorry, Jen, so 

[00:20:42] Gary: got more ammunition now. 

[00:20:43] David: Oh man. If she wasn't mad at me enough, here we 

[00:20:46] Pam: So here's what I recommend. If you're curious people who hire in lots of different states and they're going to continue to hire in lots of different states, you're a perfect candidate for a PEO. Professional employer organization or employment organization. So basically your employees work under their accounts. So they have accounts in all of the states and it's almost like you're leasing your employees from them. Their W2 will actually come from the PEO, not from you. But they are your employees, but they help with things like hr, hiring, fir benefits. You have a much bigger pool. To get benefits.

So a lot of times you can get better options, sometimes lower costs on your benefits. You pay higher fees in exchange. But a lot of time it works out. The pain of keeping up with all of those different states and what the rules and guidelines are for all of those different states, it's not just payroll.

Let's say you let somebody go in California, you have to pay them on their last day period in their bank account. Done.

You don't have time to be like when do I have to pay them? No. If you're firing them that day, they get paid that day.

[00:21:53] David: Wow. Yeah. It's each one has been so different. New York has, we have to have special, what is it? Is it workers' comp? We have to have a 

[00:22:03] Pam: paid family medical leave and disability insurance. 

[00:22:07] David: That's just unique for them because they're in New York and that's just that's so strange. I get they're trying to protect the workers and that's great.

I'm not trying to not protect my workers, but it's just weird. The government comes in hard in some of those states and some don't even care. Like we have Texas. They're like, eh, whatever. You wanna work, you wanna not work, 

[00:22:23] Pam: Yeah. Yeah. But if you have, 

[00:22:25] Gary: way.

[00:22:26] David: Yeah.

[00:22:26] Pam: yeah. But

If you have a an employee handbook, you should talk to your employment attorney about what riders do I need to have for the different states that I'm employing in, because. There are things you need to be

aware of in 

[00:22:39] David: is getting heart palpitations from this episode. I can smell it from here.

[00:22:43] Gary: Employment attorney. We got 

[00:22:45] David: Oh, yeah. 

[00:22:46] Pam: Yeah.

[00:22:46] Gary: Yeah. 

[00:22:47] David: she's saying big words that we have no concept of. Wow. Yeah.

[00:22:52] Pam: Yeah. Because here's the thing, nobody wants to think about HR and all these things until you have a problem, and then it always costs more later. When you have a problem

If you don't do it the right way, right? So it's way easier to pay somebody, 500 bucks, Hey, can you review my, my handbook for these particular states and let me know if there's anything that goes against the rules in that state or that I need to be aware of because of what state they're in. And a lot of times you have to put riders in there for those different states.

[00:23:27] David: Oh, that sounds painful. I'm sorry, Jen. It just, 

[00:23:31] Gary: I think luckily for us, the employees that we do have scattered throughout the us. Probably don't know what's required in their state, so

[00:23:39] David: Oh, they have no idea. I love them

[00:23:41] Gary: we could just be like, Nope, nope. We consulted our employ employment attorney. Yeah. Yeah. And you're wrong. Don't do that, everybody. It's just a joke.

[00:23:50] David: I learned that if you don't have 15 employees, that most of those federal laws don't actually apply because they, you're too small, which is very interesting. 

[00:24:02] Gary: Pam, with all your experience and with some of the advice you've already given us, what would you say would be your top three pieces of advice for a startup when it comes to their finances?

[00:24:13] Pam: So I think it's a good question. 'cause if it's just financially related, my answer's

[00:24:17] Gary: It doesn't have to be just financially related, but that is your wheelhouse, 

[00:24:22] Pam: Yeah. Yeah. I think one, some of the things I've learned over the years are hire before you think you need to, and fire before it's your last option. I think entrepreneurs don't like to fire people.

They don't like that feeling. They deal with a lot of stuff that they shouldn't deal with for far too long. And it, it's, it spoils it for everybody else, right? It's like a cancer that spreads for the rest of the team. I think fire before it's your last option. I think holding your boundaries as an entrepreneur is really important to protecting yourself from overwhelm and burnout. and if that means I don't work past a certain time, I don't send emails after a certain time. I don't, I'm not, only you can say what you're available for and what you're not.

And if you don't hold those boundaries, nobody else will. I think that's super important. And I, from a financial perspective do it right the first time because it's so much cheaper than having to fix it later and having somebody that can guide you that kind of has been down that road before, who knows what questions to ask is so much. You're gonna get such a better result than trying to piecemeal things together and trying to save a buck or a little bit of headache now, right? We find people wanna maintain that kind of startup culture as long as possible. But as they grow and they have more employees and more things, they really need structure around things like performance reviews and raises and bonus calculations and handbooks and travel policies and all of those things.

And nobody wants that in the beginning. They're like, oh no, that's too much red tape. We don't we're just gonna, we have a good group of people. They're not gonna take advantage. We're just gonna, it'll be fine, right? Until it's not.

[00:26:08] Gary: Yeah,

[00:26:10] Pam: And then it's oh, no, now we have to create some policies.

And now I, it's so much easier to do it from the beginning. And be intentional.

[00:26:17] Gary: those are really good visas advice. Not all financial, but definitely really good. The hiring and firing one I've never heard before, and that makes total sense.

[00:26:26] Pam: Yeah, I think entrepreneurs you, again, you don't wanna spend the money. So you wait for that first hire. I can do it, I can do it, I can do it right. Whether it's somebody to do your bookkeeping, whether it's somebody to do some of your sales, whether it's somebody to take on some of the product development, right?

You don't wanna let go of that money, so you keep doing it the expense of something else. So that's why I say hire before you need to, and

[00:26:51] David: say 

that is so hard to do because you don't realize the opportunity costs. You don't realize what you're not doing right? You're doing, say for instance, payroll every month and that's taking, let's just say 10 hours a month. That's probably way too high, but let's just say it is. You don't realize at 10 hours what you could be doing with it. And, but you do realize that a thousand dollars or whatever, $10,000, whatever it costs to get your accountant and all that set up like that becomes money out of your pocket. That's real versus the maybe over there. That's what, that's hard.

[00:27:29] Pam: But the flip side of that is if you've got somebody doing your accounting how much more time can you spend bringing in revenue?

[00:27:35] David: You're assuming that I'll be successful at it, but yes, that is the 

[00:27:39] Pam: I am assuming that, 

yes.

[00:27:40] David: There's a lot of assumptions being 

there around for 13 years, right? With

[00:27:44] Pam: big pixels.

[00:27:45] David: That's just luck. No, I'm just kidding. But I, no, that's it's just really interesting 'cause, when you're starting something new and you have, it's all hopes and dreams and maybe one or two clients when you're just getting up and running, spending money becomes such a huge deal.

'cause cash is everything. Cash is oxygen early on. And so you're like my time is included, so I'm just gonna spend more time. And that's where you get the. 80 hour weeks and all of that because your time is free and not valuable. It is very hard to flip that switch to say, my time is not worth something. I'm not giving that away for free anymore. 

[00:28:23] Pam: and that's what I meant by boundaries. 

[00:28:25] David: Yeah. That bound Well, yeah. 

[00:28:27] Pam: 80 hour weeks don't sit well with your family,

right? There's an

opportunity cost for everything, and one of them is your family and the people who support you. And if you are just all business all the time, working crazy hours, when you're not working, you're thinking about work, you're just, you know all in, that's great when you're at work, but it's not so great for the people around you.

And so when those, when. The opportunity costs of spending those hours affects more than just work. And so when you're burning the candle at both ends, you're hurting both. And there are ways, right? You don't have to go all in with a huge accounting package from the beginning, right? You could have somebody who checks your books over quarterly. Am I doing a good job? Can you reconcile for me? Can you just give me some oversight so I make sure I'm doing it the right way? Can you help me set up some systems? There are ways to ease your way into it until you have. Enough where you're like, okay, I just, I don't need to be involved anymore. You can

just have it 

[00:29:22] David: That

goes back to our old thing of my job is to give away my job. Yeah.

[00:29:26] Pam: Yeah.

[00:29:27] David: I'm a big fan of that, but that's really hard to do.

[00:29:29] Pam: It is hard. I will grieve you there.

[00:29:32] Gary: Pam, if anybody wants to reach out and learn more about you or on the books, where's the best place to find you? 

[00:29:38] Pam: the books.com is our website. It has tons of information on there. I'm also on LinkedIn. Both me and the company are on LinkedIn, so both great places.

[00:29:47] Gary: All right, and we'll put the links for both in the show notes.

[00:29:50] Pam: Cool.

[00:29:52] David: Thank you so much, Pam. This has been a lot of fun. I appreciate. 

[00:29:55] Pam: you. If we need to talk after, let me know.

[00:29:58] David: Yeah, there it is. That's soft. That soft sales pitch.

[00:30:01] Gary: You'll get an email from Jen probably.

[00:30:04] Pam: Yeah I don't know if it'll be a nice email. She'll

[00:30:06] David: Yeah.

[00:30:07] Gary: It. It'll just be Help me. Exclamation point. Exclamation point.

[00:30:11] David: He's on the couch again. I need help.

[00:30:14] Gary: All right.

[00:30:15] David: On that note, we are out. Thank you again for joining us. We'll be back next week. Everybody have a good one.

[00:30:20] Pam: thank All right, 

[00:30:22] OUTRO: That wraps up this episode of the Biz Dev Podcast, and this time you get me, Jen Baxter, co-owner of Big Pixel and David's Wife. Yep. I finally took the mic or rusted it away from David. Biz Dev is a production of Big Pixel, a US-based provider of UX design strategy, and custom software. This podcast is edited by Audio Wiz Matt McCracken and Christie Pronto marketing guru for Big Pixel.

Want to connect, shoot us an email at hello@thebigpixel.net. Or find us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.