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Should a Small Business Have a Budget?

Posted on December 8, 2013 by John F. Dini

“I know that my company is doing OK,” the old joke goes. “I still have checks in my checkbook.” Many small businesses run on a version of checkbook accounting, where anything that isn’t paid out at the end of the month becomes the owner’s income.

These small entrepreneurs usually know the daily (or even hourly) receipts of their business. They know exactly how much they have to take in to pay all of the bills. They can probably tell you off the top of their heads the margins on each item they sell, how much is in inventory, and the number of orders they received from their best customers.

When your business is small enough to keep the critical financial measures in your head, do you really need to invest the time and energy to prepare a written budget? After all, it probably is just going to be a regurgitation of last year’s numbers, perhaps with a tweak reflecting your plan to generate some additional revenue in the coming year.

Budgets are a major part of the annual process in large corporations. Legions of financial experts project market trends, currency fluctuations and competitive product introductions. All that means little to an owner who is principally concerned about the next sale. Budgeting may seem a waste of time that could better be spent developing a new customer.

But budgets are important, even if they are merely a retelling of the prior year’s results. They provide a benchmark for measuring ongoing results, a snapshot of progress towards you goals, and a diagnostic tool to help determine what needs changing in order to increase profits.

Making your budget useful is less about the numbers than it is about the percentages. Every bookkeeping program, from QuickBooks to the most sophisticated financial accounting system, allows you to print reports in common size, that is, with each line item calculated as a percentage of sales. Common sizing is a tool that is largely neglected in managing a small business, but it is one of the easiest and most effective devices for tracking your results.

Let’s say your business did $756,349 in gross revenue in 2012, and your shipping costs were $61, 822. This year you brought in $822,947, and your shipping costs were $69,539. Is an increase in $7,717 in shipping expense appropriate for an additional $66,598 in business? Perhaps, but if I told you your cost to ship had gone from 8.17% of sales to 8.45% of sales, you would know in a moment that you are less profitable, at least after paying for shipping.

Employee salaries, utilities, benefits, and transportation costs seem to rise inexorably. Managing the budget doesn’t mean holding them to a number, it requires holding them to a percentage of sales.

Try this exercise, called The Power of One. Start a spreadsheet with your prior year’s revenues, cost of goods (gross profit), and overhead (G&A) expenses. Now, using those prior year’s numbers, increase the price of your product by 1%. Then increase the volume of sales by 1%. Reduce the cost of goods by 1%. Finally, reduce your overhead by 1%. If you have a 30% gross margin and a 10% pretax profit, the net impact of these small changes will add up to about a 20% increase in your profits!

If you’d like a copy of a spreadsheet to make this exercise easy, just email me at jdini@mpninc.com.

Percentages are easily understood, and a quick way to know whether you are on track. If you aren’t, it’s simple to determine what needs to change. In order to get those percentages however, you need to start with a budget.

My new book, Hunting in a Farmer’s World: Celebrating the Mind of an Entrepreneur, is now available on Amazon in paperback, hardcover and Kindle. It is an ownership book, not a management book, and is illustrated with the stories of real entrepreneurs who faced challenges that apply to us all.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged business ownership, business planning, financial, management, small business advice | 4 Comments

4 Responses to Should a Small Business Have a Budget?

Carol Mansen says:

December 8, 2013 at 2:38 pm

I found in my consulting practice that the small businesses that have the discipline to create a budget also have the discipline to manage their business well. It is a way to the business perspective to pro-active instead of reactive.

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Brad Elmhorst says:

December 9, 2013 at 7:43 am

Extremely important if a business offers healthcare to employees. “Life changing events” include a spouse who loses coverage and now enrolls in your family plan.

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Zach @ Marketing NYC says:

December 15, 2013 at 9:07 pm

I agree, every small business must have a specific budget for their marketing campaigns. A successful business always start from planning to budgeting, to planning and implementation.

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Accountant Melbourne says:

January 11, 2014 at 8:24 am

In every business there should always be a budget.

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Employment as Video Game

Posted on December 1, 2013 by John F. Dini

In a recent survey of 20-something employees, the majority said that they expected a promotion in the workplace at least every two years. Most surprising to business owners, however, was that they did not believe that such advancement should be in any way attached to performance on the job.

My colleague Rob Konopaske at MillenialEdge360 calls this the “level-up” syndrome. The video game generation has been indoctrinated in the motivation of small rewards. Learn the moves, accomplish the tasks of a specific challenge, and you get rewarded with new skills, weapons or money, and move on.

I think video games have created another problem with young employees’ approach to work. No one in a game is merely Bob Johnson, cubicle dweller doing the same work as a hundred others with the same job. You are the center of attention, Dra’ag the Enforcer, doer of deeds and champion of good. Our culture of micro-celebrity, collecting Twitter or Facebook followers to whom you can broadcast the details of your life, is a quest to duplicate your fantasy world uniqueness in reality.

Millennial employees aren’t shy about asking for help and mentoring. The Boomers, tempered in a more competitive workplace (Supply and demand – lots of people were vying for the same brass ring), expect that figuring things out for yourself is a sign of competence. Millennials are accustomed to having the answers at their fingertips, accessing the World Wide Web for everything from the name of the drummer in that obscure garage band to directions on how to make a quiche.

Why memorize something when you have the answers on your smart phone? The educational system no longer teaches by rote, and why should they? I’m old enough to remember being forbidden a calculator in a math test, now that would just seem silly. When was the last time you did long division on a piece of paper?

Is it surprising when they expect success in the workplace to operate by the rules they’ve been taught? Learn the tasks of the position, and you will inevitably advance. If you forget the rules, look them up. Announce every success, regardless of how minor, for others to appreciate. Failure, even repeated failure to accomplish the same thing, is only to be expected. After all, how often did Dra’ag have to die before he breached the citadel?

It’s time for Boomer owners to stop waiting for the Millennials to figure it out. In a great Wall Street Journal article on Boomers this weekend, the humorist P.J. O’Rourke says “we’re the generation who insisted that a passion for living should replace working for one.” (The article is called The Boomer Bust, not to be confused with my work at www.theboomerbust.com) We raised our kids to know that they are special. Trophies for every player on every team. Now we have to live with those kids in our businesses.

The good news is that they are technologically savvy, fast to learn, and good workers when they understand what is expected of them. Give them electronic access to the information they need, and the ability to tap that information constantly. Recognize their accomplishments with incremental advancement or rewards. Let each one know that he or she is special, even if you have to relax your own standards for what constitutes “special.”

Boomers may forget how resentful we were of our parents’ expectations that we would work 30 years in the same job, and be thrilled to get a gold watch at the end. We wanted more, and we worked to get it. Now we’ve raised a generation that expects what we have, and doesn’t necessarily connect getting it directly with effort. It’s pointless to complain about what we’ve made them.

Picture Credit

Posted in Management | Tagged Baby Boomers, Boomer Bust, business ownership, employee performance, employees, leadership, management, small business advice | 1 Comment

One Response to Employment as Video Game

Brandon Cross says:

October 29, 2015 at 6:41 pm

Great points John. I have seen some significant software trends dealing with “gamification” of business process control systems to address this specific subject. “RedCritter Connector” is a notable example of this.

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Lots of Jobs – Where are the Workers?

Posted on November 24, 2013 by John F. Dini

The South Texas region has an unemployment rate of somewhere between 5.2% and 5.8%, depending on exactly where you are located. Employment in certain highly desirable professional technology occupations is officially over 100%.

Finding entry-level employees in South Texas is challenging. A few local anecdotes:

A home care agency, after working for years to develop referral relationships with discharge planners, is having to decline new cases for lack of staff. A week of interviewing and background checks culminated in offers to five new workers, all to start the following day. None showed up for orientation.
A subcontractor was discharged from a large construction project for falling behind schedule. He was unable to find sufficient employees to man the job. The chosen successor was terminated for the same reason after two weeks.
A manufacturer in the Eagle-Ford (petroleum producing) area receives a report each Monday morning on his no-show employees. If they call the employee’s home and get no answer, they simply assume he found another job.
A technology company, after conducting a salary survey, gives employees up to a 35% raise to bring them all up to 100% of the industry wage range. Nonetheless, their rapid growth is forcing them to open offices in other cities just to access additional labor pools. They have given up on getting H1B visas for Master’s degreed foreigners to work in this country.

With all this opportunity, why isn’t Texas seeing even more migration from the states that still suffer double-digit unemployment?

I had a recent conversation with an official of the Federal Reserve that shed some light on the problem. According to his analysis, we have all-time high unemployment levels nationally among recent college graduates, while simultaneously tracking a record number of help wanted ads. He has concluded that we are training a workforce that isn’t suited for the jobs being created.

Last year Texas universities bestowed just over 6,000 bachelor’s degrees in psychology. The statewide total number of want ads requiring a BA in Psychology during that year? Four. In the meantime, the average age of a Master plumber or electrician is now in the late 50’s, and is creeping up every year.

In an educational system that rates success by the percentage of students sent on to college, we have moved vocational education to community colleges to keep the statistics shiny. I don’t underestimate the educational requirements of a technical career, but no one really thinks that it requires 14 years of formal schooling to become a trade apprentice or a machine operator. Kids who need to support themselves are being graduated from high school qualified only to wait tables or punch a cash register, when many could be taught skills that would let them be self-supporting. (A current estimate is that about one-third of those under thirty are still living with their parents.)

Eventually some of those psychology majors will take jobs as apprentice electricians. The shame of it all is that they will have borrowed tens of thousands of dollars to pay for an education they won’t use, and the economy will continue to lose their productivity until they figure that out.

Posted in Thoughts and Opinions | Tagged business planning, business strategy, employees, hiring, management, small business advice | 8 Comments

8 Responses to Lots of Jobs – Where are the Workers?

Ray says:

November 24, 2013 at 2:46 pm

John,
Interesting article, same sort of thing is happening in the UK. Check this book out as it sheds some light on the issue: The case for working with your hands by Mathew Crawford.

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Ken Fowler says:

November 24, 2013 at 3:06 pm

This has been happening in Australia for a while John. We have the whole new situation of rising unemployment combined with increasing skills shortages. The new catch cry is that we are ‘warehousing’ our youth in educational facilities that don’t produce workforce-ready employees. To make it worse, out minimum wages here are US $16.37 an hour. Plug that into the payroll of a USA small business and see what happens!!!

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alfredo lozano says:

November 25, 2013 at 9:57 am

Unfortunately, businesses will have to look outside their country and possibly bring in entry level employees. As a small business, you have to find the way to get the work done and this can be accomplished with H-2B Visas, a Visa that was scarce in 2007 when the U.S. had a boom. Large companies have always relied on these Visas, now small businesses are also taking advantage of them. We hate to have to hire outside our country, but, when a business cant find the workers in the U.S., they have no choice.

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- Travis Ehst says:
  
  November 25, 2013 at 10:44 am
  
  The Colleges and Universities have an extreme disconnect with the business world. We are looking for programmers and the schools are investing 4 years in these students and they still don’t have the skills. It still takes us 6-12 months of training before they are ready to work on their own. I could probably take an average Joe with no experience and invest a little over 12 months and be in the same position. It is a shame.
  
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Edwin says:

November 25, 2013 at 11:34 am

You can add this one to your anecdotes, we have been trying to get “decent” workers to offset H2B visa workers. We scaled down to decent as we love to have experienced workers, due to the lack of applicants able to pass a drug screening test or background test. Of all efforts of posting available positions in the “decent” category, we were able to interview 10, hire 6, of which 3 showed for first day of work.

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Christi Brendlinger says:

December 9, 2013 at 4:10 pm

For those of us with children in college, this is a fairly depressing realization. I am not surprised by it. I think that the writing is on the wall. Even Harvard is now offering deals to incoming students because it is getting harder and harder to determine if the price of higher education is really going to pay off in the end. For now, I am hopeful that engineering majors will remain in high demand… somewhere beyond MacDonalds.

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John Hyman says:

December 3, 2015 at 6:56 am

Lastly, I read John Dini’s recent post about the challenges SMBs in Texas are having filling jobs in areas like construction and manufacturing. His assumption is it’s because there are too many people with degrees in Psychology and an insufficient number of technically trained people to fill these positions. No where in his, or your, posts do you consider what all emerging middle class societies experience- young people don’t want to perform menial jobs. Our youth are growing up with technologies and conveniences our parents thought was the stuff of science fiction.

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- John F. Dini says:
  
  December 3, 2015 at 2:22 pm
  
  I have to contest your response John, unless you replace “menial” with “manual.” I agree that younger folks have little attraction to working in noisy, dirty, hot or cold environments, but I wouldn’t characterize a master electrician’s, plumber’s or machinist’s six-figure income as menial.
  
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“We’ll Just Agree to Disagree”

Posted on November 17, 2013 by John F. Dini

A CEO was having a discussion with one of his top executives a few weeks ago. He felt strongly that the executive needed to take a certain course of action as soon as possible. The Vice President explained that the situation was well in hand, and that no action was necessary at this time.

As the meeting ended, the CEO finished up with a strong plea for action. “I really feel that you need to do something immediately,” he said. The Vice President parted with the comment “Well, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.”

The CEO sat mentally reviewing the meeting. After a few minutes, he dialed the Vice President’s extension and asked her to return to his office.

“Saying that we agree to disagree is not a satisfactory outcome to our discussion,” he said. “It means that you either are not going to take the action that I feel is necessary, or you will do so reluctantly and without expectations for its success. Either approach indicates that you aren’t on board with the plan, and will give it less than your very best effort.”

No one makes the Vice Presidential level in this CEO’s company without considerable talent and expertise. The executive argued that she was the resident expert in her field, and frankly was better qualified than the CEO to make decisions in this specific area . She felt that her experience wasn’t being recognized in the decision process. Quite simply, this is what she had been hired for, and she thought that overruling her preferences was a mistake.

We all hope to find talented employees who make decisions, and who are willing to challenge us when they disagree. Clearly, the CEO has the ability to direct her action, but when does that direction cross the line between guiding the company and disempowering the employee?

It’s when the employee doesn’t understand why.

My friend Larry Linne talks about the outcomes of employee’s decisions. No matter how well meaning, a bad outcome may or may not be the employee’s fault, but its consequences are always all yours. There are four reasons why an employee doesn’t understand your why for making a decision.

You can’t afford a mistake. The employee either underestimates the risk of the decision, or is overconfident of his/her ability to overcome the obstacles. You see potential outcomes that could be disastrous.
It doesn’t fit your strategy. The decision isn’t bad per se, but it goes down a road that will require resources that you have planned to allocate elsewhere.
It doesn’t fit your team. The decision will create a need for other employees to shift or accommodate new challenges, creating ripples that the employee is either ignoring or unaware of.
It fails the Third Eye test. As I discuss in my new book (linked here and below) the Third Eye is your ability to see where you want your company to go. You may not be able to see it clearly, and you may not be able to fully describe it, but you instinctively know what fits your vision and what doesn’t.

Using your authority to overrule an employee who legitimately disagrees is the worst way to solve the problem. His or her decision may not even be wrong, it just doesn’t fit what you want for your business. Explaining why you chose another course of action may take some time, and may even require that you go deeper into sharing your thinking with that employee than you had planned, but it’s a lot better than mere reluctant obedience.

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Management | Tagged business ownership, business strategy, employee performance, employees, entrepreneurship, leadership, management, small business advice | Leave a comment

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Turning a Competitive Advantage into an Entitlement

Posted on November 10, 2013 by John F. Dini

The Affordable Care Act is here to stay. Although Republicans have voted to repeal Obamacare dozens of times, the “debate” over its implementation has taken on a sense of theatre. The Federal behemoth continues to chug along. Cancelled policies, the Healthcare.gov website disaster and increasing premiums for private coverage are all just hiccups in a process that appears to be unstoppable.

One facet that has received little attention is the effect of “universal” care on the employer/employee relationship. I know many small business owners who take great pride in their decision to fund health insurance for employees. They see it as a differentiator, especially in industries where employer-provided coverage isn’t the norm. If everyone has insurance, what will take its place in the quest to attract good workers?

The full impact of ACA will take years to be felt by individuals. The Internal Revenue Service does not currently have the capacity (or the mandate) to follow up on those who are uninsured. Technically, they have to pay a penalty and sign up for one of the exchanges, but enforcement has been postponed, and will require a much larger IRS and a massive database before it can really happen. For those workers who do seek out coverage, subsidies will ameliorate the pain of actual premiums, at least for the first few years.

Employers who have traditionally provided health insurance are accustomed to it being an expensive but underappreciated benefit. Healthy employees generally ignore the thousands of premium dollars being spent on their behalf. Those who need care are more appreciative, but copays and deductibles give them the impression that they are carrying a large part of the burden themselves.

The rapid inflation in US health care spending is in part due to this disconnect between the consumer and the payer. Physicians treat patients, but bill insurance companies. Those companies in turn submit their costs and coverage models to government agencies who approve their rates. Since those rates are expected to carry a profit margin, higher costs often lead to greater profit dollars. Attempts to control expenses are perceived by both the provider and the consumer to be indicative of the greed of the carrier, so most have given up on strict controls.

Insurers pass on the higher costs to employers, who hold the actual checkbook in the final analysis, but have little say in the rates, the coverage or the usage of the product.

The decision to cover employees is becoming a Hobson’s choice among unpalatable options. A small business can pay the employee’s premium (say $300 a month), and face questions as to why they can’t just add that sum to the worker’s paycheck, since the worker could purchase subsidized individual insurance for much less. They can share the pain of premium increases up to the limit of the law (9.5% of the employee’s gross salary) and force their workers out into the subsidized government market. In the employee’s eyes, that makes the boss both stingy and uncaring. Finally, they can offer no insurance and stop thinking of themselves as a “better” employer.

Regardless of the option chosen, the halo effect of paying for employee coverage is going to lessen. It isn’t a differentiator if everyone has it.

Posted in Management, Thoughts and Opinions | Tagged business ownership, employees, health care costs, health care reform, small business advice | 1 Comment

One Response to Turning a Competitive Advantage into an Entitlement

Jonathan bailey says:

November 18, 2013 at 5:32 pm

A agree that it will cease to differentiate in the small-medium size business market.
Recently I have been dealing w the issue if health care w my clients even though it isn’t a focus of my services, they are truly in the dark as to what is the best method to employ going forward.
I fully believe the new standard will be for owners to push the employees to the exchanges. Pressure to provide insurance (in the past) had been from two points directions; 1- the desire to benefit the employee and 2- competition for the better employee. What we see larger size companies taking advantage if lower hours eliminating the required costs for a all vs the providing for the ones owners deem worthy.
New world will be where small to medium size employers will cease providing insurance as a benefit because as you have said it no longer sets them apart and there is no residual value.

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