Every small business owner knows the feeling: On the one hand, you’re full of ideas and ambitions, dreaming of a future where your products and services reach an ever-widening audience. On the other, you’re dealing with the very real issues that are in front of you right now – a shipment delay, a personnel issue, an IT problem, a looming tax deadline.

One of the unique challenges of owning a small business is the balancing act that has to be struck between managing all the details and maintaining a long-term strategic vision. This need comes into even sharper focus when you start to scale up to the next level. 

Scaling is a pivotal phase in your business’ trajectory that, successfully executed, can propel you to greater profitability. But if you get so mired down with the details that you miss the big picture, your efforts can end up setting you back to square one. So how do you keep sight of the forest and the trees while you scale?

Enter BradyRenner. As Maryland’s go-to small business CPA practice, we have decades of experience helping businesses like yours successfully scale for greater impact and profit margins. In this second article in our in-depth series, we’ll walk you through some key strategies for maintaining that all-important focus on your big picture, even as you manage the moving parts of your scaling business.

Take One Step At A Time

You’ve heard that the three most important rules in real estate are “location, location, location.” When it comes to scaling your small business, think “focus, focus, focus.” 

You may choose to scale by expanding into a new market, or launching a new product, or augmenting your staff so you can serve more customers, or partnering with a new distributor to significantly increase your inventory. But you probably shouldn’t do all of those things at once.

That may sound like common sense, but as a small business owner, you’re used to doing many things at once. You didn’t get to where you are now without drive and passion; however, while those qualities are major strengths, they also make it difficult to step back and focus on one thing at a time. A small business CPA can provide you with much-needed objectivity in evaluating which of your options is most likely to result in a higher and quicker ROI, so you know how to prioritize your ambitions.

Keep A Mission-Centered Mentality

What matters to you as a business owner? What are your company’s core values? When you make decisions about scaling, use your mission statement as a litmus test. Remember that the decisions you make now won’t just get you from Point A to Point B, but will help shape the company you are when you get to that next level.

A trusted CPA will help you steer a course that honors your values. Does your company have a commitment to social responsibility and environmentally sound practices? Then your CPA will help you allocate funds to source eco-friendly materials as you grow your product line. Do you have deep roots in your community and a passion for developing local talent? Your CPA will know that community outreach and local recruiting efforts are non-negotiables as you adjust your budget to accommodate your scaling efforts.

Monitor Your Financial Health

While there are many indicators of the health of a business, from customer feedback to employee morale, cultivating a comprehensive picture of your finances is essential to gauging your readiness to scale — and the success of your efforts.

CPAs are adept at maintaining a big picture view of a company’s operations by analyzing and keeping a running tab on all of the financial details. Small business CPAs specialize in maintaining and gleaning insight from a number of financial documents and metrics, including but not limited to:

• Your profit and loss statement (P&L), which tracks the revenue you bring in and the expenses that go out, showing an overall profit or loss over a given period of time.

• Your cash flow statement, which helps you budget your known expenses against your predicted income.

• Your accounts receivable, or aging reports, which show who owes you money and how long they’ve owed it to you.

• Your accounts payable, which tracks the debts you owe vendors and other parties.

• Your balance sheet, which shows where your company stands financially, including all of its assets, at a given point in time.

Take Advantage of Focused Support

Partnering with a specialized small business CPA means having access to an expert who is focused solely on helping you navigate your company finances. Because they are not bogged down by other managerial responsibilities, outsourced CPAs are able to provide you with an objective and focused viewpoint, making their advice invaluable to your scaling efforts.  

Benefit From Big Picture Guidance With Attention To Detail

The small business CPAs at BradyRenner are experts at assessing your big picture and helping you use it as a compass to steer financially sound decisions about scaling your business. Combining broad vision, extensive experience, and personalized care, our CPAs stand ready to help you take your business to the next level with minimal risk and maximum potential. 

Give the team at BradyRenner CPAs a call today to talk about your vision for scaling your business. And check back for our next installment in the series, where we’ll dive into how a CPA can help CEOs avoid overwhelm during the scaling process.