The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

77 ⎸ What happens to your business if something happens to you? With Julee Yokoyama

December 07, 2022 Serena Shoup, CPA Episode 77
The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast
77 ⎸ What happens to your business if something happens to you? With Julee Yokoyama
Show Notes Transcript

In this interview episode, I chat with Julee Yokoyama, a small business operational consultant who specializes in helping small businesses create contingency plans and succession planning. She helps people answer the question: “if something happens to me, what happens to my business?”

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • the difference between contingency planning & succession planning
  • why both are still crucial for solo-business owners
  • what types of events you can plan for

About our guest:

Julee Yokoyama is a small business operations consultant. She’s a strategist with certifications as a Director of Ops, Project Manager, and End-of-Life Doula. Needless to say, she’s a planner who does her homework, and she helps service-based entrepreneurs do the same by organizing and protecting their business operations. The results? Peace of mind, operational efficiency, business growth, and overall life fulfillment. With 15 years of consulting experience in both corporate and small business settings, she guides and supports her clients through the tough conversations around risk assessment and contingency planning so the mission-critical aspects of their businesses are covered in case of emergency or extended leave.

Julee lives in Seattle, WA with her husband and two fur babies, Lucy and Desi.

Connect with Julee:

LinkedIn

YouTube

Instagram

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[00:00:00] Serena: Welcome back to the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast. I have yet another special guest for you. I hope you're enjoying these interview episodes to take us through the end of the year, but this one is super duper special and I think perfectly timed because a lot of us bookkeepers and accountants have a little bit of downtime at the end of the year and we should be thinking about some of these things.

 

[00:00:53] Serena: So I have Julee on here today and she and I met I guess the first time I met you was at the actual retreat, but we probably met via Zoom. 

[00:01:03] Julee: Yes. 

[00:01:04] Serena: Am I wrong there? Okay. 

[00:01:05] Julee: Yeah. 

[00:01:05] Serena: Uh, So , Julee and I are both part of the Speaker Society which is Heather Sagers community program for speaking. So we are both here working on our speaking skills. 

[00:01:18] Julee: Woo. Yeah. 

[00:01:19] Serena: Yeah. And uh, we connected in person at Heather's retreat. In October, I guess, right? Yeah, october.

[00:01:28] Julee: Yeah. Yeah. I think it was like mid-October. 

[00:01:30] Serena: Yeah. And when you introduced what you did as a business owner, which we'll get to in a second, I was like, I need to have her on my podcast because I feel like you could really help my audience and their clients. So like the ripple effect could be great. So without further ado, would you introduce yourself, who you are, how you help people? 

[00:01:52] Julee: Yes, hi. Hey everyone. out there in podcast land. I'm Julee Yokoyama and I am a small business operations consultant focusing on strategy and risk management within business operations.

I have a 15 year background as a certified project manager. I've worked mostly in consulting capacities, so in service businesses and also as a business manager in both corporate and small business settings. So I, yeah, I love being organized. I'm a planner. I'm a certified director of operations and so this recently I have been working in as an operations manager in small businesses, usually service based business as well, cuz that's my background.

One thing that I was finding in working through strategy with my clients was I started asking the question, what happens to your business if something happens to you? And this was like, this is a really good hook question because. Any entrepreneur, I ask like 90% of them don't have an answer to this question. So as I was not really getting much of a response from my clients, I started just asking if I was in like Facebook groups or just any entrepreneurs I could find. I just started asking this question and people started leaning in and being like, I don't really know. I don't know what to do about this. Sometimes I you know, stay up at night like thinking about like how I'd be kind of screwed if something happened, you know? But I don't really know what to do with that information. 

So then I was like, well, I could figure this out. I could figure something out to make this approachable and solvable for my clients. And so that's when I started just to transition towards risk management because I just, I have a knack for being able to hold space for people through difficult and challenging times and conversations and allowing them to feel comfortable to be vulnerable with these topics, with themselves and thinking through them imperfectly.

So I'm very passionate about it and excited about this conversation today and to educate your audience and hopefully spark, their interest in having these conversations with themselves in their own business. 

[00:04:07] Serena: Yeah i feel like having you connected to the accounting and bookkeeping community is going to be really amazing for our clients and for our bookkeepers and accountants because we already have built that trust with our clients because we see all the financial stuff.

[00:04:24] Julee: Mm-hmm. 

[00:04:25] Serena: so we are like the best person to be like bringing this up and being like, Hey, what happens if something happens to you? Like, pretty much, I can almost guarantee you that for any business owner that doesn't already have this stuff in place, the succession plan and all that. It's most likely gonna fall onto the bookkeeper because we have the most knowledge about the business, about like where things are, all the bank accounts, what, like who has access to what, like it's gonna fall on us.

So wanted to connect you with Julee, so you have a resource, but yeah, so we are, we are a great line of defense. in prompting this question with our clients and then providing them a resource like yourself of like, okay, now here, work with this person to get all these things in order because yes, could we do that as bookkeepers? I'm sure most of the stuff that, that you do like we are capable of doing as well, but like I like to. Stay focused in our lane. 

[00:05:26] Julee: Mm-hmm. 

[00:05:26] Serena: so that people aren't spread really thin. So like connecting with other professionals that have expertise in these types of areas is really important. 

[00:05:33] Julee: Well, and I think to that, thinking about you know, a solopreneur that's slowly growing, you know, what is their most logical next hire you know, potentially it's a virtual assistant. If the business growing rapidly, maybe they get a business manager, but, Bookkeepers right up there. 

[00:05:50] Serena: Mm-hmm. 

[00:05:50] Julee: it's in either being the first or second hire in the mix, I would imagine. 

[00:05:54] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:05:55] Julee: And so, yeah. So you, you know, how this role would be key to starting to get the business owner thinking about thinking in this way.

[00:06:03] Serena: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:03] Julee: and thinking about how that they can be. Having their ducks better in a row and protecting the business, and also making decisions with a future vision of where they wanna go and how they can best set up these, these structures. 

[00:06:19] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:06:19] Julee: Appropriately. 

[00:06:20] Serena: Yeah, absolutely. And then, Us as bookkeepers. Like this is something that a lot of us and entrepreneurs, honestly too, a lot of us have go, especially service providers, have gone into business really to just like avoid being, working for someone else or working in corporate 

[00:06:35] Julee: mm-hmm

[00:06:36] Serena: and so you kind of like accidentally start a business. And so none of these things are really on your radar as far as having a succession plan.

I remember when I first started my bookkeeping business, it was more of like a side hustle and as a cpa, I have to do continuing education courses. And so some of the continuing education classes are on succession planning and risk management. Because if you own a large firm, that's very important.

[00:07:02] Julee: Mm-hmm. 

[00:07:03] Serena: But I was like, this doesn't apply to me. So could you talk to that person who is like, this doesn't apply to me because it's, you know, it's, I'm a solo business. I'll just shut, my business will just shut down if something happens to me. Like, can you talk to that type of person or mindset? 

[00:07:19] Julee: I talk, try to talk to that all the time because that is exactly what I get in response a lot. I get a lot of, when I ask that question I feel like asking the question, what happens to your business if something happens to you? It either gets people leaning in and being like, oh my gosh, I need to do something about this. Or it's like, Oh, now the business just ends. It just, you know, but my, response to that is the business doesn't just evaporate.

[00:07:43] Serena: Right 

[00:07:43] Julee: if you have started your business and you were working to a point where you are delivering services to clients, and clients are giving you money, then there are. Multiple, like components going on in the business or cogs in the wheel. And you need to dismantle all of that. Otherwise expenses continue to be incurred. You know, whether it be clients, team members strategic partners or just other people that are in contact with you in as the business, those people are gonna be left out to dry, unsure of what's going on. And so there's just all of these things that need to be addressed and accounts closed and, and et cetera to deal with. And so it's not just as simple as it just ends and with, with succession planning, it's, you know, it's just a thought process, you can go through of thinking about different scenarios of. You know of what is the future of the business? Should my role change, whether that be I'm going to take an extended vacation where I want to be offline some of the time, if not all of the time I want to take maternity leave. I want to, I need to go care you know, a sick loved one or my children. I wanna spend more time with my children. Or then we get into, More sudden and possibly catastrophic issues of sudden illness injury or death. 

And so in those cases, somebody else will probably need to be involved in the business affairs besides you to fill the gaps. And is there somebody designated for that? Do they know what to do? Do they know that they're even somebody that needs to do something? So if we take the most worst case scenario here of death, potentially that person that would step in would be whoever is your executor of your estate. And so that would be probably a spouse, a parent, a sibling or a child, adult child. And does that person know anything about your business? Do they know how to access anything? Is everything organized in only systems that you understand or can find, like is things are things like some things in your email? Are some things on your desktop? You know, or some things in Dropbox, you know, is ther any sort of like method to the madness? 

[00:09:55] Serena: Mm-hmm. 

[00:09:55] Julee: And a way for people to access what they need to get things done. 

[00:09:59] Serena: Yeah. So when you come across clients that are like, okay, I, I know I need to start getting all this stuff in order just in case, like, I know most people probably don't wanna think about the worst case scenario. So like, do you usually like walk it back and you're like, well, let's just plan for if you have a vacation. Let's start there. Like, what is your process for that? 

[00:10:27] Julee: Yeah, yeah. So what I look at is like if we just look at succession planning, so it's the-- and this can be looking at delegation or changing of responsibilities or delegation of responsibilities in the future. So you can do some proactive planning here of, you know, maybe taking a virtual assistant up to a business manager and passing off more responsibilities. Or if the bookkeeper has a limited scope, but they could take on more responsibilities, like starting to think through how that would look to. You know, cuz it's hard, it's hard for business owners to, we get so precious with everything and we oftentimes think that we only, we can do it or it's not gonna get done right. Or whatever the thing might be. And so to have to start to think about these things, we start to think about what the future possibility could be of starting to pass these activities off. And in thinking about workforce planning in the future as the, as the business, if you have a, a vision of growing the business in someway.

But when I think about succession planning, if you start with what happens to the business, if something happens to me and then you're like, okay, well what kinds of things could happen to me? And then like I spoke to before of like, you know, vacation and da, da, da, da, da. So then you come up with each of these scenarios. 

Whatever feels valid to you, whatever you feel comfortable exploring for yourself, then okay, let's take the vacation. What needs to happen? What is your day to day involvement in the business that would need to be addressed? In your absence. So if you were gonna take maybe like a three week, two week vacation, which I feel like is a, feels like a lot for, for many entrepreneurs to consider to doing, then you're like, okay, well when does it strategically make sense to do a vacation? And then what are the activities that I absolutely can't either postpone or just kind of shut down for that period of time? What needs to get done, what can be proactively planned, batched, things like that. And then, you know, and just, and just going through these thought process and getting it all down on paper.

Because I find that especially when people are afraid of things or worried about things and then we'll get, we'll get into this a little bit more with contingency planning in a second, but when there's fear and you're just ruminating, ruminating, ruminating, and not doing anything with that information, then it you can't. You can't like put the fear to rest. So if you write it down and you think through the logic of it all, it starts to it starts to dismantle the fear and it's not something to be afraid of anymore. I was trying to think of like a clever analogy, but then it just wasn't coming to me.

[00:13:05] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:13:05] Julee: But I almost think of like shame, right? Like we. If anybody is a fan of Bene Brown, you know, a thing or two about, about the concept of shame and vulnerability. But shame is usually something that we hold within ourselves. We're not sharing with other people. So whatever we're ashamed about, we're afraid for other people to see it or know it.

But maybe some of you out there have experienced this, but you, finally get yourself to confide something that you're ashamed of with someone else and they turn around and respond to you with like, love and like seeing you and just like being like, oh, that's not a big deal. It's totally okay. Suddenly you're like, oh?! And it's almost like a weight's been lifted off of you. Yeah. And, and so that's, that's kind of how I feel about these exercises is like, it's just a, it's just a process of giving. Its, it, it light and space and just a way to get it off your shoulders. 

[00:13:58] Serena: Yeah, it's similar to like when we put together like a financial plan for a client. So a client is like stressing out about like how are they gonna get through the next year? How much money they need to make and what are they gonna have to do, blah, blah, blah. And it's like once we sit down and put. The numbers to paper, they're like, oh, okay. This is actually manageable. I can see that I've been doing this, this, and this already. So as long as we continue what we're doing and maybe add this one thing, we can hit that goal. Or like we, even if we don't change anything about the way we operated last year, we know that because of trends, we know that what happened last year will happen this year. Like if nothing changes. Right. So it's like it gives people that peace of mind of like seeing it laid out as a plan. So it's like they don't have to stress about it anymore. They just know like if we follow the plan, like things will go hopefully off without a hitch 

[00:14:55] Julee: mm-hmm. 

[00:14:56] Serena: Not always the way it works, but when you have that like to kind of. It's almost like a brain dump of ideas too. Like when you're like stressed about all the to-dos you have 

[00:15:04] Julee: mm-hmm.

[00:15:05] Serena: And you're just like, okay, well I'm just gonna write them all out so that it, they're not, Like stuck in my body anymore in my brain. Like I can just get it all out. And then when you start looking at it, you're like, oh, actually this is pretty manageable. But when I had it all held in, it felt very unattainable.

[00:15:21] Julee: Yeah. And I think that's why I'm, I've always been so drawn to project management. I grew up in a household where of dreamers, which I actually this is a whole other conversation, but. Recently have learned more about ADHD and actually how that affects not only myself, but my dad is severely adhd and my mom was dyslexic and on the spectrum herself. And when I think about our household, they were very creative and they were dreamers, but nothing ever got done. And when I think about any, you know, getting bills paid, it was always late. We were just always like in survival mode. And I just saw, you know, and, and then like as I started to grow up, in hindsight I'm like, a lot of this stuff could have been prevented with just some forethought, some planning, and just some, you know, strategy, having some sort of strategy. 

So I think that's why I was drawn to project management at such a young age. Cause I was like, it makes order out of chaos. And it makes it so that you actually can get **** done. 

[00:16:22] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:16:23] Julee: And so I, you know, and so then this has just been an evolution and I've experienced, and, and I think, and I, and I have to remember sometimes that I am very comfortable talking about death. Because I have experienced a lot of loss in my life. And so I've been bedside with a number of people. I'm a certified end of life doula too. So I'm like I have a lot of curiosity as a way to dismantle the fear within myself around that. So I think that's also where I come from with bringing this conversation to people. It's cuz I, I wanna stretch them a little bit to, to really consider their mortality. 

But to come back to what you were talking to so contingency planning, if you don't mind me going into that a little bit cuz it's related to what you were just saying is it's looking at future circumstances or events and basically it's, it's coming up with Plan Bs and, and I like to call it if then planning and so, Looking at a scenario, you have a, you have a goal, like maybe your client wants to do a launch or, you know, or something like that.

And, and so they have a clear end goal of what they wanna do. They wanna make a certain amount of money in that launch. They want that launch to happen in nine, you know, in 60 days. So there's clear endpoint goals but they're, they're standing here. 

And so the default for us as. For entrepreneurs who are not very seasoned at planning or not, they're not project managers by nature or they're just kind of doing it, you're gonna come up with a plan that is the way the crow flies the shortest way across the best case scenario plan. And, and I like to say that if you're planning only planning for the best, you're gonna be blindsided by the rest.

And so, Being able to sit down and be like, okay, I wanna do this, but what can get in the way and thinking. And so it's similar to succession planning, it's kind of the precursor to succession planning. And it's like thinking about these scenarios of what could get in the way so that's the if, and then it's like, okay, well if that does happen, what do we do?

 And that's the contingency plan itself. That's your response plan. And so, and, and, and I think that, yeah, there's a lot of ways there. I I imagine you guys can bring that into your, into your work with your clients around Yeah. Around the financials. 

[00:18:41] Serena: Yeah. When I put together a budget for a company, I usually start with, We do multiple scenarios because of that. So there's always like, this is our stretch goal in what it would look like to fulfill on that stretch goal because there's always additional expenses with the increased revenue, right? But this is what we did last year. So what if like worst case scenario, we didn't grow at all from last year. This is like what we would do. And then there's usually like another scenario in there. Especially like times like these when there's like a potential recession happening or whatever. 

[00:19:16] Julee: Mm-hmm. 

[00:19:17] Serena: and you want to like, keep a, keep running a tight ship, but also like, you know, Still do. Okay. Right. So it's like, okay, we're gonna operate based on like a no growth or a downturn. Right? So that would be like a third scenario, kind of like a worst case situation of like, what if business drops? What would we potentially have to do, or how could we operate in that scenario. So that could look like downsizing team or decreasing certain expenses by just cutting them out completely or various things.

But is that something that, like just thinking of that, like I can walk a client through like the financial impacts of that, but like, there's so much more than the financial impact of that type of planning that requires Just kind of treading lightly, right? Like when you're dealing with potential layoffs or something like that. So is that something that you walk clients through as well? Or do you kind of just like, here's multiple plans and here's some resources in case you have to go down that path. ? 

[00:20:24] Julee: Yeah, so I when I work one on one in my intensive with clients, I map out their entire operation. So I take some information in and I map out the entire operation for them to visualize, like, what are all the kind of compartments of the business. And then we can start looking in each of those compartments to like, where are the potential gaps and weaknesses? As well as external threats and even opportunities. Cuz opportunities. That's a risk. That's a risk too, right? Yeah. Like you don't, you just, cuz something sounds great doesn't mean you just jump head first into it. So there's gotta be that exploratory investigation. 

And I think, you know, for a business. You know, is seasoned and pretty going, I think a lot the decision making is rooted in the financials, right?

It's rooted in like what is, you know, what do we, what can we afford? And, you know, and yeah, maybe it sounds great to hire another person, but like thinking about what is the realistic impact of that? Like the onboarding of the person before, how long will it take for them to be Ready to produce like a consistent results and looking at the average revenue is your business seasonal where, you know, especially for, I work with some engineering consultants that, you know, their business really is seasonal and you know, in some cases it picks up quite a bit at the end of the year because their clients need to burn through budget or whatever. And so it's, yeah, thinking about it from that perspective. 

But really I take them through the exercise of tr of teaching them how to do contingency planning and risk assessment. And I really kind of stay in the strategy of it all. And I think over time, like I'll, I'll probably evolve to being a little bit more of the consultant in those specific scenarios. 

[00:22:09] Serena: So we talked about succession planning. And contingency planning, but I don't know if we really like defined the two. So do you wanna like, kind of break down the differences between the two? We've gone back and forth between them a little bit, but could you break that down for listeners in case they're like, what in the heck is the difference?

[00:22:30] Julee: Okay. So. Let's start with contingency planning, because it's the precursor, right? So it's the, it's designing a, a course of action to respond effectively to a significant, significant, or it doesn't have to be significant, but to a future event or situation that may or may not happen. In my opinion, the contingency planning is the exercise of identifying what are the potential weaknesses, gaps, threats, or opportunities. Yeah. That are out there within your business landscape. And then going to each one of those and then being like, okay, is this preventable? What can we do to prevent this? Can we minimize the impact if it were to happen? And then, you know, contingency planning is the, like what, when the trigger event happens, what plan gets initiated. Yeah. What alternative course of action gets initiated. And so when I think of succession planning, succession planning is the contingency plan for some of these risks. 

And so what I think is the most relatable way to start, for those of us that are entrepreneurs and you know, have very tiny teams, if any team at all, it's to look at you are the key knowledge holder in the business. You are the linchpin-- in most cases, unless you're pretty rooted in like digital course and product sales. You are likely the linchpin of being able to make money in the business and do business development activities. And so if something happens to you in any way, that's gonna gum up the works quite a bit, if not halt operations completely. So really understanding what does that mean? And what would, what would you, 

cause it's also thinking about like, what is the succession going into succession planning? It's what is the business owner's intention for the future? and if their role changes or they leave. And that can be for a number of reasons. And that can be for like we already talked about the illness injury, caregiving, those things. It can also be divorced. Like if you are married and you are an owner in the business, like that's gonna have an impact because even if your spouse and I don't know about all states, but in many states, if you're, you know, because you are legally bound together, even if they're not part of the business at all, they still have a say.

[00:24:47] Serena: Yeah,

[00:24:48] Julee: And they still have some entitlement with the business. And so especially if you have business partners that have equity in the business personal life situations like that can have an impact for everybody involved. And so starting to kind of think through like, well, what if this happens? Like, oh, you know, I'm potentially in therapy with my spouse and it's not looking great. I should probably, you know, consult a lawyer and start thinking about like, what is that impact gonna look like? 

But You know, if we're not going through these exercises of thinking about these things, then you're, we're gonna be blindsided. You're gonna be blindsided. You're gonna have a lot fewer opportunities available to you in the moment when you're all up in the chaos of, of the actual event in progress, versus if you had taken the time to think in advance. 

I, I liked, like, an example that I'll bring up is a team, you know, for me as a team member, Pregnant and she's gonna have a baby in the next few months, and so, Thinking about, you know, yeah, we have a, timeline of when the babies do, but that's not necessarily guaranteed. And she ideally would like to only be out for a week, maybe two weeks before coming back and being able to fully participate in the business, but that's not guaranteed. And so, Really looking at what does this team member do in the business? What is their, you know, their weekly or daily deliverables. Is anything documented? Is everything that they do, do you know how to do any of that? Are there any standard operating procedures documented? Is there any easy way to transfer knowledge to somebody else, should that be necessary? And then thinking about like if there was an interruption in their ability to do work, can I step in and do it? Do I have time for that? Is there another team member that I can potentially get to do that? Or do I need to think about sourcing like an alternate? Another external freelancer that can come in and I've even in the past, like in corporate, I've been hired to come in and stand in as a business manager for people that are on maternity leave. So, You could find somebody and you could get them onboarded and have them on standby in the case that you need to initiate them to come in and step in for that role. And whether that be, you know, maybe that person does customer fulfillment, and that's not something that can be batched in advance before the baby comes, right?

And so if you're not thinking about these things ahead of time, you don't have some of these options available to you at all. Yeah, 

[00:27:16] Serena: I agree. It's like , A very simple example is when like, if you do the like couple hours a week it takes to plan out your meals and do the grocery shopping and all that, like you are able to find all the things that you need at your, on your grocery shopping trip, or make the tweaks that you need to your menu if you can't find something. But if you wait until like you're starving to then go and like, go grocery shopping, , you're, you're not gonna end up with the same result. 

[00:27:49] Julee: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:51] Serena: So yeah. So what did I, I felt like I was gonna ask you a question, but you. We're about to say something, so go ahead. 

[00:28:00] Julee: No, well, I mean, I was gonna flip the script on you since we were here, if that was fine with you. 

[00:28:05] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:28:05] Julee: Because you know, having a bookkeeping professional here and that being such a key and important role in any business I wanted to ask you a few questions around the lens of risk management and a lot of my clients and we'll take the risk management question first, but I'll also ask you about just hiring and onboarding a bookkeeper, because I feel like that's a lot, that's a hesitation a lot of clients have just fear of hiring wrong and that kind of stuff. But first would you just kind of talk about what gaps and risks that you and your team commonly observe when you're coming into a client business? 

[00:28:45] Serena: I would say in the smaller businesses, it's like, One of the bigger things is that it's, yeah, it's like a solopreneur because we are one of their first hires, right? Probably like anything below $500,000 in revenue. Honestly, like, that's one of the bigger issues is that they're a solopreneur. They're kind of like holding all the knowledge and they might not have things very organized or easily accessible. But yeah, I would say. That's a big one.

And then they get into, like when they're hiring us, they're usually at the point where they also need to hire another role in their business, like to take some more things off their plates. And so yeah, it's like documenting processes and finding, like being able to trust someone else to do certain things. I think that's something that, All business owners struggle with. It can be a big hurdle for them to even hire a bookkeeper, but for the most part, it's like one of those things that everybody knows they need and so they're like, It's, it's a little easier to hire especially if we came recommended, right?

But I have, even in that case, I have had conversations like on discovery calls where like their biggest concern is like, I've never shared my numbers with anybody. Like, I've never like given this type of access to anybody to just even see, it's not like we even have access to like, transact anything. It's just the access to see all the numbers and everything under the hood. It feels like a very vulnerable thing for them. 

But yeah, I would say the, like one of the bigger risks is that they are the only person doing everything and then another kind of risky thing that I, think exists in a lot of businesses is that especially for partnerships, but a lot of people go into business, like I said before, like kind of accidentally and they don't think of the business being its own entity that can live on 

[00:30:54] Julee: mm-hmm.

[00:30:55] Serena: And they don't really set things up in a way that would make it easier to wind down or to sell or to whatever, right? And I see that happening with like partnerships a lot too, where they just kind of are like, let's go into partners and, and you know, like just create a business together. But it's, it's almost like. You kind of wanna like plan your breakup before it ever happens, so that it's not a disaster. 

[00:31:22] Julee: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:23] Serena: Sort of like a prenup. I guess that's what a partnership agreement is like as a prenup. Like you should imagine the worst case scenario and what's gonna make it the easiest to part ways if you ever decide to. So I see that as a another risky area especially when it comes to partnerships. 

[00:31:39] Julee: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I, I would almost say business partnership can be even more contentious than a marriage, you know, cuz in a marriage you could potentially have your finances be separate 

[00:31:51] Serena: mm-hmm. 

[00:31:51] Julee: You know, and just have like a joint bank account for bills or something. But when you're like, when it's the business and that's like the livelihood of both partners, families, or, you know, whatever. And like, then it gets really into like, how are decisions being made? And, and then yeah. And then if you get opportunity to explore selling the business. You have to get agreement on both sides and yeah, there's a lot there.

[00:32:14] Serena: One of the things that, like, I've been slowly kind of like doing all of this work, like it's not something that happens overnight, obviously. But one of the things that I recently did is whenever I separated my two businesses, cuz initially both my businesses were under one LLC because I was kind of like, I wasn't dabbling in course creation, but it was small enough that it wasn't like a huge portion of my income, but it got to the point where it was about equal to my bookkeeping income. So I decided to separate the two businesses. 

[00:32:46] Julee: Mm-hmm. 

[00:32:46] Serena: And what I actually did is I had operating. Even though I'm the only owner, , I had operating agreements created. 

[00:32:55] Julee: Mm-hmm. 

[00:32:55] Serena: so that when, or if I decide to step away from one of the businesses, it is structured in a way that is gonna make it easy on me. Like the result that I would want is going to be easy on me. So that's one thing that like, Very simple. It wasn't very expensive. Like I hired an attorney on Up Council and I told him, this is my end goal. I wanna make it easy if I decide to sell off one of the businesses. And he helped me do an operating agreement. And it's kind of funny because operating agreements are one of the things that I ask for from new clients, even just in LLC. And most people don't actually have one. 

[00:33:35] Julee: Yeah. 

[00:33:36] Serena: And they're like, why would I need an agreement with myself ? 

[00:33:39] Julee: Absolutely. Yeah. And if you get any questions from the IRS and even opening business bank accounts, like those are all places where, you know, that might be one of the first things they ask for from you.

[00:33:51] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:33:52] Julee: And you know, even if you are a solopreneur that has, and not having that puts you at risk. So you created the LLC to protect yourself, to create that separation of liability away from you personally. But if you don't have these small pieces in place, just like a, you know, this operating group, it can be a single page that you just sign.

[00:34:12] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:34:12] Julee: Like, if you don't have that in place, you are potentially opening yourself up to personal liability as, as a representative of your business. 

[00:34:19] Serena: Yeah. So yeah, that would answer your question. 

[00:34:22] Julee: Yeah, that's a big one. And, and I'll just throw out a resource for somebody who doesn't feel like they have a lot of budget or or is not sure that they want to explore hiring an attorney directly legal website Warrior. Heather Pierce, she is a lawyer and she focuses on the online business space, especially like coaches, consultants, and service providers and things like that. And she has a lot of template bundles that I personally have purchased and have seen. They're pretty good and there's usually a lot of resources included with them that really can educate the business owner on how to, especially like newer business owners on how to protect themselves from the start. 

But yeah. So thinking about hiring, so in on, in onboarding a bookkeeper-- my clients, they wanna hire, they're busy. They have figured out how to do the bookkeeping themselves. They're in QuickBooks, but, and they really shouldn't be doing it anymore. Like they're doing a lot of the invoicing and all that stuff. They shouldn't be doing it anymore, but they can't let go cuz it's like the money and then they like, trick themselves into thinking, well it's kind of like, meditative to work in the spreadsheets and da da da da da and to look at the money. And I'm like, yeah, but you need to be doing other things. You have limited time and there's somebody else that can be better suited for that role. So, but then, you know, when you dig a little deeper, it comes into fear. It's fear of doing it wrong, fear of like bringing the wrong person in and things like that.

And so when you think about hiring, What do you recommend, what would you say there as a bookkeeper to kind of dissuade those fears as well as what can business owners do to set themselves up for success in in looking to onboard somebody? 

[00:36:05] Serena: Yeah, I would say like, and this is, this is kind of what I, how I approach it for, with other bookkeepers too, who are at that point where they want to hire and like, Often comes down to them having had already a bad experience hiring of like, oh, I hired before, it didn't work out. Like I'm just not a leader or like, I'm not a good manager. I, it's just gonna be better if I do it myself. It like, we really have to like, It can be kind of different for each person. Like some people, their major pain point is actually that they really do need more time back in their day. So like I will dig into that pain and be like, well, what could you be doing instead of this? Like, if you weren't spending three hours a week doing your invoicing, what would you be spending three hours on? Like getting more clients, making more revenue, blah, blah, blah. And then we'll like, Show them how much money they're actually losing by, by not hiring someone in that role.

And then to kind of like quell the fear, I guess, of getting it wrong is having them like reflect on like, okay, so what is it actually that you're worried about? And getting it wrong. Are you worried about someone stealing from you? Are you worried about someone not staying on top of the invoicing? And then things like taking longer to get paid, and then we'll dig into like kind of like with you, like what you were saying earlier, like, let's identify the risks and then can we avoid any of these? And so that's what I would walk someone through is okay, well if you're afraid of someone stealing from you, just don't give them access to the bank account or give them access to writing checks, only give them access to pulling statements or whatever, right? 

And it really comes down to being like really clear on the expectations of the role. So if you are hiring someone to do your invoicing, and that is the most important part of their role, that needs to be at the very top of their job description. And you need to have a metric tracking that, like checking in with them. Like, okay, you're responsible for the invoicing. I expect to see five invoices per day going out, or whatever metric you need to have to like know that things are being followed 

[00:38:16] Julee: mm-hmm

[00:38:17] Serena: and make them track their own metric and report back to you. So yeah, there's things that you can put in place, but yeah, definitely, like if that's the key aspect of their role, it needs to be in the job description. You need to talk about it during hiring. You need to let them know that success in this role looks like X, Y, z . 

[00:38:35] Julee: Yeah. 

[00:38:35] Serena: And if you're not doing that, then, then worst case scenario, you let them.

[00:38:40] Julee: And I think people get, like, they feel bad about like contracts. Like, you know, people try to do handshake deals and they try to keep it really like informal and flowy and friendly, but you're creating a lot of risk in not meeting each other's expectations. Yeah, and you're setting up the failure versus like if you initially just go in like here's an agreement, a contract that lays out exactly what I want, which is a good thought exercise cuz you might be, I need to hire a bookkeeper, but why? As a business owner, you need to be very clear in why you wanna do it, like you were saying. and then getting those expectations written down in, a contract. Having the person you're hiring sign that and mutually agree to that and then off to the races from there, is gonna Yeah. Set you up for success.

[00:39:27] Serena: Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:39:29] Julee: So then onboarding, so they pulled the trigger. But they're looking to, like, maybe they're onboarding somebody in a couple weeks. What should they be thinking about doing to get ready for that? 

[00:39:39] Serena: Yeah. I, my most successful onboardings are when I actually slow way down and like really thoughtfully think about like, okay, what are the things that are going to set this role up for success? This person in this role, like what can we provide them? What information could we have them like read through or what courses are gonna. Set them up most for success and give them like some, like give them a ramp up period of like, I'm not gonna expect any really real work out of you during this time because I want you to go through this training and that training, and we're gonna like, you know, piece it together.

And then like consistent check-ins with them. So like, with a new employee, I would say it's, it's tricky in a remote environment. I would say meeting with them at least once a week during their first few weeks. And like however long it, takes to make sure that they're comfortable in the role.

I think my last hire, we did one on ones weekly until maybe a couple months ago, and it's, he's been with me almost a year. 

[00:40:50] Julee: Mm-hmm. 

[00:40:52] Serena: When you switch into that like leadership role of like hiring, like more of your time is actually gonna go into, pouring into the team than doing other stuff. If you want high performers anyways yes, there's always people that are self-starters and that's great, but the reality of it is like there's still, you're still gonna need to give your time to your team to make sure they're successful in the role. 

So we actually. Have like a little onboarding training for our new employees where we take them through like for two weeks. Basically they are going through this training and we're like starting to sprinkle in like actual work or kind of like shadowing or whatever too. But we go cuz we are all remote, right? And there's all these systems that we use and we have a certain way of using them. So these are the expectations around how we use these certain systems. So they go through like, Personalized trainings through it. Basically, I recorded videos cause I'm course creator of like how we use Asana and how we use Slack. And this is, you know, we check in in Slack, we're communicating like daily with each other in Slack. It's an expectation and things like that. So whatever you can think through, like what is gonna help set this role up for success? 

If you're talking employees, obviously it's gonna be a little more in depth. But if you're hiring a specialized contractor like a bookkeeper, right? Ideally that bookkeeper should not need any training other than like a couple conversations with you on how your business operates. Right? And like giving them the access that they need to pull bank statements and do the bookkeeping and things like that. But yeah, if you are hiring for like a real crucial role inside of your business, like in a daily operational role, like their onboarding is gonna look a little different. 

[00:42:43] Julee: Yeah. And I, to your point about making videos, like they can tend to get outdated, you know, quickly, but I think creating short, like screen share videos or whatever is a great way to accommodate different learning styles, especially if you add captions. So you, and offer transcripts, so you're, you know, you're catching the visual learner. You know, the person that learns by hearing and then the person that learns by reading all in one swoop. Which I think, is really helpful. 

[00:43:12] Serena: Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:43:14] Julee: Yeah. So, yeah, I think I think that that's awesome. I don't know where I was going with that. I thought that I was gonna say something else, but I didn't have anything. So here we're, that's great. 

[00:43:24] Serena: Yeah. So if someone listening is like, I know I need to put some sort of like succession plan in place, or I know I want to hire like a key role in my business and not be the only knowledge holder of everything in the business, where would you recommend they start if they wanted to work with you, what kind of resources do you have there? 

[00:43:46] Julee: Fundamentally what I do is, is a hybrid of contingency planning and succession planning. And so I have this I have my one-on-one intensive work where I get more into strategy and looking at the business holistically and you know, a little bit more handholding with the clients. But I also have what I call project CYA essential. Which is a at the core of it is this handbook, and it's like this 32 page handbook, which is not as intense as it sounds, but it basically walks the business owner through documenting all of the critical affairs about the business. 

And and so it's actually, it's actually kind of fun and like it's a like kind of a dopamine hit to fill it out. But you're getting everything do, you're basically taking all of the affairs in your business and you're putting it in one central location. You're thinking through password management strategy. You're thinking about how is my documentation actually stored? 

And you're getting that, kind of like folder, structure that aligns with the document You're thinking through like, who's my business emergency contact? Like who is, who are the people that we need to step into these certain activities should I not be around for whatever reason. 

So I recommend people start by pulling, getting organized, and starting to pull information together in a way that is intuitive and makes some sense. And can be shared with others when needed. And making sure that when they do that kind of organization, they are not the only ones that know, cuz you could get, you could organize all day long, you could plan all day long, but if you're the only one that knows about it, it's as if you never did. 

And then, you know, and then thinking through delegation, like if delegation sounds scary, like as part of essentials, it's like an exercise of thinking through delegation, but you're not really sure what you would delegate or what's possible. I recommend you time, you know, time activities. You know, maybe time out like and document activities in your business for a week and what you're doing and then thinking, you know, into, going back to the bookkeeping is like how much time are you actually spending on invoicing? And you know, you may have a false sense of time around how some of these activities are basically sucking you away from like more vital activities like business development and being with your clients. 

And so it brings that awareness again and getting it down on paper and seeing the reality of what's happening is, is a good first start. And then that opens up the idea of like, wow, I really shouldn't be doing this. And so what would need to happen to get somebody else in there? Again, then thinking through, like documenting that role. So Essentials is a way to just get that all done in a way that's guided and you don't have to really like be Googling like how to do it all, how to get it together. You just need to pop in and just like complete the steps.

[00:46:25] Serena: Awesome. 

[00:46:26] Julee: Yeah, so I will include in the show notes a link to that. 

[00:46:29] Serena: Perfect.

[00:46:30] Julee: For people to, to learn more. And yeah, and I have a YouTube channel, so , I'm, I'm starting to share you can find me at Julia Yoko Yama. So starting to share more about these concepts. And I'm available on LinkedIn, so I'm, I'm, I'm down to chat. Be friends and talk about this all day long. 

[00:46:49] Serena: Awesome. I'm super excited. So Julee is spelled with j u l e e . 

[00:46:56] Julee: Yes. I have never been able to buy a souvenir that has my name on it. 

[00:47:01] Serena: Yeah. Same. So we will link all of her information in the show notes so that you can connect with her. And if you have any clients that, you know, need this kind of help, please send them her way. It's one of those things that like, I think deep down everybody knows they need, but they are putting it off for some reason or another. Generally it's like the feeling that nothing bad is ever gonna happen to me. 

[00:47:24] Julee: Yeah. And well, and just remembering that like the essence of life and for everybody breathing on this planet, whether we're animals, plants, or whatever, it's changing and impermanence. The seasons change. You know, there's just, it's just constant evolution and, and we can't grip too tightly to our expectations of anything and we can't grip too tightly to things staying the same. So it's all rhythms and we just need to open ourselves up to being able to pivot and be agile.

[00:47:52] Serena: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us today and I'm looking forward to connecting against you. 

[00:48:03] Julee: Yes, thank you so much for having me, and I look forward to connecting with you and anyone else I hear from. Thanks. 

[00:48:09] Serena: Awesome.

 

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