56: What I Learned Last Quarter

In this episode, I share key insights from my experiences in the third quarter of 2025. I discuss the major impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on tax planning and preparation, emphasizing the importance of staying updated and proactive. I also delve into the challenges and strategies of effective delegation, including my journey to hiring an executive assistant. Lastly, I reflect on the benefits of building a business that operates smoothly in my absence, highlighting the value of trust, standardized processes, and setting client expectations. Join me as I navigate these significant lessons and prepare for the upcoming quarter.

Pedal the Cause: https://www.givesignup.org/cancercuringcar

Breaking Down the Big Beautiful Bill Part 1 for Businesses: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2320941/episodes/17660799

Breaking Down the Big Beautiful Bill Part 2 for Individual Taxpayers: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2320941/episodes/17697587

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Beth Whitworth
• 0:50 Reflecting on Lessons Learned
• 1:39 Impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act
• 3:03 Key Tax Changes and Their Implications
• 5:13 The Importance of Continuous Learning
• 10:12 Developing Delegation Skills
• 20:42 Building a Business That Works Without You
• 31:27 Planning and Budgeting for the Future
• 33:36 Supporting Cancer Research and Mental Health Awareness
• 37:07 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

 I am Beth Whitworth race car driving quilt making CPA firm owning wife, mom, and boss. I'm here to help you build a business you love by sharing all of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the excellent sides of working in this industry. It's not always easy, but after many years, I can finally say it's worth it.

Let me guide you on your journey to accounting with confidence.

Hi, and welcome to another episode of Accounting with Confidence. I'm Beth Whitworth, your host. And I am here today with another episode that is a little off the cuff, but it is definitely something that I just wanted to share. So in the past, I've done an episode or two about things that I have learned, um, starting with probably.

Episode number one, which was all the e the lessons I learned throughout my, my career as far as big mindset, shifting things that related to the industry. And then I've done the occasional, what I learned last month, which had some highlights of something that I didn't know in Excel, which is kind of normal.

Um, but. Today I'm gonna talk about some things that I learned last quarter. So last quarter was third quarter of 2025, so that was July, August and September of 2025. And I thought back to, wow, that quarter seems like it started a long time ago. And I say that because what it started off with was absolutely a giant.

Tax bill. So the one big beautiful Bill Act was passed in very, very early July, and with the passage of that act, it changed essentially where accountants and tax planners and tax preparers and tax payers, it kind of changed to what you were thinking about. What things were no longer expiring? What things got added?

What type of planning do you need to do? What does this mean for us in the future? What do so it, it was a big question generating event. I did a couple of episodes on that, I think, I can't remember which episode numbers they are, but I can have, uh, Becky link to those in the show notes that were the big beautiful bill for individuals, the big beautiful bill for businesses.

And at that point it was just really pulling the highlights of that act and. How it's gonna impact people. Now, I haven't gotten back to doing an episode that is more specific as more information is being released, which. They're still essentially developing the rules and the instructions and all of the, the guidance that is needed.

But what I did learn, just a quick rundown, you know, the a hundred percent special depreciation is back. Effective January 19th. So any assets purchased January 19th or later for a business can be a hundred percent depreciated. The qualified business income deduction is no longer set to expire. We were talking about only having that through 2025, and now it is extended.

There's overtime and tip. You know, there are some deductions relating to those that are going to impact how W twos may be issued, and so we are still waiting for guidance on what that's going to look like and what the reporting requirements for that would be. There's extra deduction for individuals who are 65 or over, depending on income.

It has some income limitations, the salt tax, which is the state and local tax. It was had been capped at 10,000, has been bumped up to 40,000 for starting in 2026, I believe, unless you have income over 500,000 for married filing joint. There's a new above the line charitable deduction. Which means that you don't have to itemize in order to take, um, if you're single up to a thousand dollars of charitable donations, if you are married, filing jointly, it's $2,000.

So you don't have to be able to itemize for that. And talking about itemized, the standard deduction that had been increased with the text, the job, text, whatever. The big tax bill from 2017 that expanded the standard deduction that is staying in place, that's not going away. And the 2025 tax brackets were are staying the same as 2024 now that means things are probably going to go up in the future.

So this was kind of a stop gap for this year, which. Coincides with having kind of a high inflation year with costs going up across the board, so that's probably somewhat helpful, but you cannot rely on those to stay the same. Those, the taxes are going, going to have to go up. But what did I learn from this other than all of those facts and having to do that research is that you need to always be learning and you need to always be ready for changes.

So we didn't have a big tax bill that we had to address since the. Legislation during the pandemic, and that was some massive changes that was really working towards keeping small businesses in business during a time when you were being regulated not to work. And so those were different types of legislative bills that involved having to research and learn and interpret very quickly.

So this we have a little bit more time on, so it's not a, we're gonna put this in place and you need to be working on this, you know, like immediately this, most of this some is going to take effect in 2025. Some of it's retroactive, but most of it is going to be moving forward, which gives us plenty of time.

So to be, to prepare for those changes, to get into the mode of needing to learn and absorb tax rules again. And I'm happy to say that after all of these years, I can still understand and learn tax laws. So preparing tax returns is not my favorite thing in the world anymore. It used to be something that I really wanted to do and dig into, and I have moved into some more creative types of avenues that I like better, but I still enjoy learning.

The new stuff and how it's going to impact people. So it's very important to me as I am presenting and teaching people and or just discussing these new tax laws. For me it is to stay neutral. It it is what it is. They passed it, and we need to work on the compliance of it, whether we agree with it or don't agree with it as a steward of.

Kind of generating those tax returns for people. We are compliance officers. We're making sure we're following the rules that are put in front of us. And so I don't really state opinions necessarily on what I feel about the politics behind any of it, any of that because, but I will say that, yeah, at some point the tax rates are gonna have to go up when I don't know, but they will.

So the other thing I learned is we have to be proactive. We need to get the information out. And so I spent, I believe I probably got those out by early August when I was doing the podcast episodes on those, the act, and it was, you know. Quick that for, for the fact that the legislation had just been passed, it was, you know, eight or 900 pages worth of legislation guidance hadn't been out yet and is now starting to trickle out here in early October, and we're hoping that, you know, we get a whole lot more guidance before the end of the year.

Will we? I don't know. We already know that we will probably have a late start to the filing season, meaning typically we are able to start filing returns electronically in late January. I'm guessing it is going to be closer to mid-February before they have that ready, because there's so many changes that every single, you know, so the guidance has to be there, and the instructions have to be there.

The form changes have to be there, and it has to go through all the checkpoints, every software that is used to prepare tax returns from the IRS's site down to all of the various vendors that we use for preparing it in the industry. So it's a huge endeavor when there's a big tax law change, and that does tend to make it start later.

Now, what they're not going to change is the due dates of the returns, I'm sure. So March 15th for businesses, April 15th for, uh, individuals and C corporations. So. That's a big one, so I, I learned about that. I'm sharing that with you now so that, you know, sometime this quarter, if you haven't yet, you need to check in with your tax repair or, you know, check in on doing your research to figure out how any of these new changes may impact you and get ahead of it before filing season so that you know what to be looking for, you know, all of the ins and out.

Of what is coming and stay tuned to be learning from the new guidance that comes out. That's the first thing I learned last quarter, and I, I started with that one because that happened so early in the quarter and it feels like so long ago, and it really wasn't. It was three months, three months ago. So the next thing that I'm gonna talk about that I learned this quarter is that delegating is a skill that can be developed.

So, as you know, I have a firm, I have six to eight people at any given time that I am working with on my team, and. I know that when I first started in business, my go-to method of delegating was to drop and run. And what I mean by that is I'm like, Hey, could you work on this for me? Let me know if you have any questions.

Boom, I'm out. And that wasn't necessarily the most efficient or effective way to delegate. And what that developed into was things like, well, people aren't getting the information back to me accurately the way I want it. I didn't really question myself as far as, well, did you give them the parameters? I just decided, oh, I can just do that myself.

And so. I've been called out as kind of being a task hoarder where I keep my tasks because it's easier for me to do them than delegate them. And as you grow in a business in a firm or trying to to increase your own capacity, if you don't delegate and delegate well, you really can't grow because you are not.

Getting rid of things on your plate that are not the, they're not moving the needle or they're not filling your cup, or they're things that you like to hide behind instead of doing the hard stuff. So, I am telling you that I can be taught. So when I was at scaling New Heights this past summer, there was a, essentially a, a course, a session that was on.

Effective delegating and I did pick up some skills there as far as needing to make sure when you delegate that you are delegating the whole thing and, and what the outcome looks like. That was the biggest thing I think I took from that class is what does the outcome look like? What point do you want that task to get to before it's back to you or before it's considered complete?

So those types of things are things that I have to think about and work on routinely because I have figured out that really this delegating is. It's a mindset, it's a control issue and for me it's really hard to ask for help and it's hard to determine what kind of help I need. So I am A DHD probably to the extreme, and I.

It has gotten worse. I would say since that, my routine is not as structured since my daughter left for college and, and then has since moved out on her own where our household is just my husband and I and our dog James, he's laying over there and, and that's it. And so I have a whole lot of. Opportunity to set my own schedule to do what I wanna do when I wanna do it.

There's nothing that is telling me this is I, I have to stop because I have to be here by a certain time. I have to do this by a certain time. And so it's all up to me to put those structures and kind of guardrails on my day, and I'm not very good at it. And so then I get overwhelmed and then I don't know what help I do need.

So I kinda shut down and I, I don't delegate anything. So what I have decided is that I really need to. Be a proponent of not being behind. And what I mean by that, you've heard me say before that I just hate it when, especially accounting professionals, but really any business person wears the number of hours they work, like a badge of honor.

So one of those things is, I worked 60 hours this week, and somebody else will say, oh, but I had 75. Okay. That's for me, I think that is not healthy. But now I look at it and go, okay, well. Is that am am I doing the same thing with just constantly being behind on my tasks? And I've determined that being behind should not be a permanent state of affairs.

So there's my new, my, my new tagline here. You know, being behind should not be a permanent state. So in order to get out of this feeling like I'm permanently behind, I have to develop that delegation skill to the point of it becoming a habit. And I will admit I am not there yet. I am so not there yet, but I am starting to recognize, and I will give you an example, just from yesterday.

I know that it's, so, it's the beginning, oh, it's kind of already a couple weeks into the beginning of the month. So it's the middle of the month and bank statements always come out at the beginning of the month. And one of the things that, you know, I can go down a a rabbit hole of is just going in and downloading all the bank statements we need for the various businesses that we run personally.

So my husband's business, my business, there's a couple of other kind of multiple accounts for each business. And so I started to go do that and. I literally said to myself, I might've said it out loud, stop. This is something someone else can do for you. Put it on the list to delegate it, and I, so I stopped because there was no reason that yesterday when I was working through some big tax returns, getting, trying to get things finished for the last tax deadline of the year that I should be downloading bank statements.

And so in getting kind of on board with this delegation process, it really pushed me to hire an executive assistant slash personal assistant, and that I, she's only been on board a couple weeks and I was outta town for some of it. But that she's the one that I can say I'm gonna, you know, she can go download those things.

She can go take care of these things for me, and I need to stop getting lost in the, I don't wanna call it minutia, but it's more of the administrative, the clerical, the things that are keeping me from getting things. Off of my task list. So while those are on my task list, they can go to somebody else's.

Or what's also happening is some of these things aren't on any task list, and so they're just in my head. So if I delegate them, they're outta my head, they're on somebody else's list. They're no longer something that is taking up brain power for me. So in hiring Kirsten, I'm able to say, okay, I know that.

The state of chaos that I sometimes feel like I'm in, not all the time, but sometimes is on the personal side, and that impacts the business side and vice versa. The chaos on the business side can impact the chaos that is created on the personal side. So having someone who is. Just responsible for me and, and keeping me between those rails is great, but what I know I have to do is make sure that I am delegating appropriately and completely and giving the outcomes I want the timeline, I want the decision making level, all of those things.

So I did. Learned this quarter that I needed help and that I can learn to delegate and that it needs to become a mindset. So one of the things I learned in Woodard, and they use it as one of their main phrases that they help business owners with is. Only do what only you can do. So if you look at your world and you say, okay, there's someone else on my team that could do this, then that is not something that has to stay on your plate.

So what has to stay on my plate? Is this, you know, there's nobody else on my team who's going to record a podcast. What has to stay on my list is the coaching. I work with clients on entity selection if they want to purchase another business. I work with clients on getting their businesses ready. To be sold or acquired or set up for succession planning.

I worked with clients on cashflow and coaching them to reach their own goals. Can somebody else on my team do that? Not yet. I mean, Sarah can, but Sarah does. So much of our process work and our onboarding. Getting all of our clients into a really good state of getting their financials on a timely basis and understanding and learning, and they, she does all of that.

I love the coaching part. So when we look at only do what only you can do, I need to free up my task list of all of those things that someone else could do. That's what my EA is gonna help me with. That's what our office administrator is going to help me with. That's what Sarah's gonna help me with, and we will work on the delegating and we will work on.

Not wearing that task list length as a badge of honor. 'cause it should not, I should not be in this permanent state of being behind and not being able to get things done and then not being able to reach, you know, the goals that I wanna reach. So that was the number two thing that I learned this this quarter, this past quarter.

Now the last thing is something that I. Knew I was working towards and had been seeing in my results, and that is to build a business that works without me. And what I figured out this past quarter, what I learned is that is amazing. I was away from home 35 days out of the 91 total days there were. Last quarter.

Now some of those were weekends, but not all of them. 'cause there's, I mean, 35 days, that's more than a month that I was away from home in July, August and September. And that was a combination of racing events. It was, I had a girls trip, we had nationals, and then that doesn't count. And just a few days ago, I was outta town again.

That was already in the fourth quarter. And. While it's, it's amazing. It's not always sunshine and rainbows. You know how it is when it's like people have radar for when you're gonna be gone, and that's when they have something they think is urgent or an emergency, and. It used to be when we maintained a whole bunch of servers in our office that every time we left town was when there would be some sort of technical, technological it glitch, and we would be spending time trying to navigate getting a server up and running again while we're out of town.

So everything's in the cloud now. We're not server based, so that's not it. But when I say that it's not always sunshine and rainbows, it's because. Sometimes it's really hard for clients to understand or your team to understand that when you're taking time off, you're taking time off. And I will work from the road a lot of times, especially on long trips, um, where we are driving across the country, driving for long and our, and our trips average anywhere from.

I would say five to 12 hours depending on how far away we're going. Um, but I'll work from the truck. I've got my laptop and my extra monitor that attaches and all those good things. And I can work from my mobile apps very easily. And so I will sometimes get a lot of work done in the truck. But it's still one of those things where it's different.

It's not my, my business doesn't need me to be at my desk or in my office or answering the phone or communicating with everyone every minute of the day because I'm not that kind of manager and. The work keeps going. I've automated all the billing, so when I'm gone, the bills are still getting out. I'm, I'm about to delegate our payroll so that I'm not the one processing, pulling the hours and, and putting them into the, the payroll system.

And it's really works out that by being able to be away from work. On the road that much, it really works out to, I end up having a part-time job and I have worked really hard on not having to then cram when I get back where I am having to put in a whole bunch of extra hours or before I leave. I've got, yes, there are things I need to get done, but it's not something where I have to worry about that.

I can't leave until this, these things get done. Because I can do the work from anywhere really. And so that has was eye-opening for me when I saw that I was away from home for that many days, 35 days. 35. It's great. I love being able to be flexible like that. Now does it add to, back to number two, where I have trouble setting my own schedule that keeps me on track?

Yes. Sometimes it does because it's not routine and for me, routine is probably I'm, I'm just like my dog. You have a good routine. Your dog's probably pretty good. When I don't have a routine, I'm not as productive, and so I'm working on that. But to help you understand how I got to that point, how did I get to the point where I could be away from the office and kind of out of communication for that long?

That starts with a team that you trust. Now, that is key in my opinion. You have to have people that you trust that are showing up, doing the work. They care about your clients as much as you care about your clients. They are not saying, oh, well, she's never here. You know, they're helping. When somebody calls, they say, well, you know, Beth's not available, but I can help you.

That's the kind of stuff that. Makes it easy to be gone knowing that I have a trusted team that is going to do what they can to get. The job done. Now, the other piece of that is getting to those standardized processes and tech. So like I said, billing is on automatic at this point. I do not send out any invoices.

I do not collect any checks. So that piece alone in the standardized processes has made it. It has taken a huge chunk of time away where I don't have to be worried about the money coming in. It's automated. It's everybody's on a CH or credit card, and it just happens all month long and it works without me.

The other piece to getting to the point of being able to be away and essentially working yourself into a part-time job is in setting client expectations, setting client expectations of your availability of. When you'll be able to get back to them. I will do, when I know I'm traveling and my schedule is tight at the front of the week before I'm leaving, I will schedule a call and have it in the truck on our drive.

I will have some flexibility during that time where when I'm here, when I'm actually at my office, I have some days of the week where you can't book an appointment with me, but when I know I'm traveling, I open up some flexibility. So that is something that if you can communicate to your clients of, you know, the easiest way to get ahold of you, who they're.

Designated team member is when you are not available, what is the expectation of how soon you will get back to them via email? All of those things, and being a little proactive on when you know a client is looking for you. Hey, let's get a call on the books. Let's schedule a time. When's a good time? Can I call you at Wednesday at nine o'clock?

Or whatever so that it's pre-scheduled. You explain that you know, you like to have calls scheduled so that you can be prepared and that you can give your undivided attention to that client. And if you set those expectations, it does make a lot of sense. Now, if you. Never do, and your clients feel like they can never get ahold of you or there's nev not somebody backing you up.

You feel like you never get a vacation, that you never get that time off, that you have to answer the phone when you're on the road and. That, that's why I've always had a team. I don't wanna be the only one doing this. I want some people to help me, one, on the areas that I'm not strong in, and two, so that the clients are served, even if I'm away.

Now as a firm, one of our biggest values is learning. So that is the other how of how I've gotten to this point is that we value learning so that everybody on the team is up to date on the rules, the text laws, the software, the software certifications when deadlines are so that anybody on the team can support the client because we have provided the education and support.

For them to be able to do that. Now the last piece I should say is back to number two, delegating not just the task. You have to delegate responsibility. You have to de delegate decision making authority. You have to be able to grant control of something to someone else and trust that they will get it done.

And I am working on that and I in a lot of. Ways I am absolutely hands off. I have no say, no direction, no anything on a lot of the client work that is, is leaving. It is highly supervised, it is standardized, it is being reviewed, all of those things, and it's because I've delegated the responsibility and the authority, and by doing that, I'm able to step away.

So that is definitely a big thing that I learned this year when I went back to look at how many days I've been gone. It will be interesting when I go back and look for the year, how many days I've been gone because I know second quarter I had a whole lot of trips and I even took a trip during first quarter.

So there's gonna be a lot of days. I've got one more trip scheduled in. November of this year, so got one more outta town. But overall, I would say if I was gonna give last quarter a score, a grade, a letter grade, I would give it a b. I definitely have room to improve on my delegation and clear communication of outcomes.

And I need to improve on looking at that task list and say, do giving the question, is this something only you can do? If not, it needs to go and it needs to get moved onto somebody else's task list. So I loved being able to travel and I really enjoy traveling with my husband and spending time. We do racing and we have visited friends and we've done, we just, we do a lot of stuff together and.

Being able to work while he's driving. And he, you know, he's always a good sounding board at those times. He's kind of my management committee, you know, he, he doesn't know it, but you know, he helps me stay between the rails just like everybody else. So now this coming quarter. Is fourth quarter, so this is the fourth quarter.

This is planning and budgeting season. So if you haven't started planning and budgeting, now is the time to start it. And what you need to do is gather up what has happened so far this year. Put a projection on where you think you're going to finish this year and start planning for next year. What are your goals?

Is it a revenue goal? Is it a profit goal? Is it a number of client's goal? What? What is your goal? Start working on it. What things could you do that will move your needle? You know, do you need a marketing plan? Do you need to hire someone to be in management? Do you need what? What do you need? So this is the time to start thinking about that and to.

Start figuring out what it is you want to get accomplished next year. So. I would say start focusing on that. I'm guessing I will have some more planning and budgeting type episodes. I know I'm getting ready to go to Woodard Summit in November, and so I am working on my strategic plans and I will be interested to pull some of that, those techniques that we are using to prepare for that and share those with you because I think that it is an interesting.

Exercise and it is important if you have goals, which I think if you have business, if you're in business, you should have goals. Then it's important to plan for them. Okay, so I think that's all I really have. I mean, we, we talked about what I learned, I learned about one big, beautiful Bill and I learned about delegating and how it is a skill that I need to work on developing.

And I learned that I can be away from the business and it survives without me. In those three things are important. They're important. They're all important in different ways, but overall, I believe it is something that is important to just look back and reflect on what you do for the last three months, what stood out to you as things that are lessons that you might have learned?

Okay. I have two more asks for you today. I'm gonna put a link in the show notes every year. Some of you may know, some of you may not, but I don't ride anymore. But I do do a virtual ride for Pedal. The cause, which is an organization here in St. Louis that is raises money for cancer research. And the research stays within our community as a cancer survivor and someone who has had.

Many, many family members and friends be impacted by this. Research is something that is truly important to me. So, 13 years running, we have been raising money and it's mostly been a team of my husband and I. So on September 21st. Dave rode a hundred miles for pedal. The cause he rode it during the event.

So he was with a, a group that, that did a hundred miles in the St. Louis area. I was on a girl's trip, so I missed it. But it's one of those things that we believe in. Wholeheartedly, and we raise money for it every year. And we have until October 31st to raise funds for this year. And I would love it if anybody would be willing to donate to Petal.

Cause like I said, it is a hundred percent of the money goes to research everything else. You know, any of the donation dollars are not used to fund the jerseys, the event, the food, the anything. All of the money raised goes straight to research and impacts research on childhood cancers on breast ca on all the cancers here at Siteman in St.

Louis, which is a world renowned site that helps with cancer treatment and. Cancer research. So I would ask that, you know, if you can give anything before October 31st, there will be a link in the show notes to my link, which is the Cancer Curing car, and I would appreciate it. And then the second thing I ask is that if you haven't already subscribe or like, or follow anywhere that you are listening to this.

So if you're on Spotify or. Apple Podcast or YouTube please like or subscribe. I would love to increase the number of followers. A lot of times that gives me access to more visibility so that more people can hear what I have to say. And then finally, my last thing, I'm wearing my, oh, can you see it? Mental health is health shirt.

So for mental health awareness. So I would love it if more people realize that mental health. It is health. It's not a stigma to talk about it. It's not a stigma to be treated. It's health. You have to treat your mental health just as much as you have to treat your physical health, your emotional health, your spiritual health, all of those things.

And so I'm wearing my, my mental health is health because I want everyone to recognize the fact that. It should be something that is normalized and with a daughter who is working in the industry of mental health. As a nurse, I am just passionate about people. Um, removing that stigma and recognizing that everybody has mental health that they need to be aware of, and that's just part of everybody's world, and it should be something that is normalized.

Okay. That is all I have for today. I hope you enjoyed learning the few things that. I learned last quarter, and if you have any suggestions for additional topics, please click the link below that says, send Beth a text and give me an idea for any topic that you would be interested in. That is all I have for now.

Talk to you next week.

Thanks for listening to another episode of Accounting with Confidence. My hope is that my experiences can help you navigate the realities of owning and operating your business. Please subscribe or follow the podcast on your favorite podcast listening platform so that you never miss an episode. Feel free to leave me a text by using the, send us a text message link in the show description and let me know how I'm doing.