Your mid-year reckoning (it'll take you 7 minutes)

A note from Kika

Hi friend,

It's June in San Antonio, which means the AC is working harder than I am and the year is officially half gone.

I want to be honest with you about something. Every owner I know — and I do mean every one, the ones who look like they have it all together and the ones who don't — hits a season where they're flying the business on cash-in-the-bank instead of real numbers. I've been doing this work for twenty years. I've watched hundreds of owners sit in that exact seat. I've been there myself, more than once.

So today's letter isn't a tax tip or a checklist. It's the conversation I'd have with you if you sat across from me at my kitchen table at 9 p.m. on a Sunday, tired.

Let's get into it.

— Kika

Feeling behind and being behind are two different things

Here's what I've learned in twenty years of sitting across from owners in June.

Most of the time, when an owner tells me she's behind, what she actually means is “I don't know where I am.” Those are not the same thing. One is a problem. The other is just fog.

The fog is worse than the problem, honestly. The problem you can fix in an afternoon. The fog eats at you for months. It's the thing that wakes you up at 3 a.m. It's the reason you check your bank balance six times a day, because the bank balance is the only number you actually trust. (It's also, by the way, the worst number to run a business on. More on that in a minute.)

So here are the only two questions I want you to ask yourself today. Out loud. At your desk. Coffee in hand.

1. Am I behind — or do I just not know where I am?

2. What would I need to see by Friday to feel calm?

That second one is the one that changes things. Because the honest answer, for most owners, is not “I need everything caught up.” It's smaller than that. It's usually three numbers:

• What did I actually make last month? (Not what's in the bank. What I earned.)

• What's my gross margin trending — up, down, or flat compared to this time last year?

• Am I planning for taxes — or am I going to find out what I owe in January?

You don't need a clean set of books to feel calm. You need three honest numbers.

Most owners I work with can get to those three numbers in one focused afternoon — not the six-month catch-up they've been dreading.

The catch-up still matters. We'll get there. But the fog lifts the minute you can answer those three questions, and the fog is what's actually exhausting you.

If you read those two questions and the honest answer is “I don't even know how to start” — that's the easiest version of this to fix. It's most of what we do in a 20-minute mid-year review. No pitch, no commitment. Just three numbers and a plan for the second half of the year. Hit reply with “mid-year review” and I'll send you the next available slot.

An owner we'd worked with years ago called us one weekend, frantic.

He wasn't a current client, but we had worked with them years ago. Something was off with his books, and he couldn't shake the feeling — and when he picked up the phone, the person he called was us.

What we found was bigger than he feared. Money is missing. Bills he thought were paid weren't paid. Years of small problems that had compounded into a large one, all hidden in plain sight on his own books.

We are not done. We may not be done for a while.

But the fog lifted the day he made that call. He knows the truth of his business now. He has a plan. He has people next to him in the work.

What this means for you: Trust your gut. The person you trust to tell you the truth about your numbers doesn't have to be the person currently doing them — but you should know who that person is, before you need them.

 Hit reply with what's on your mind this month. I read every single one.

Talk soon —

Kika
kika@sbsofsa.com | San Antonio, TX

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