The enslavement of the lower class or the unintended consequences of social engineering.

Do government programs meant to help the lower income worker actually make it more difficult for them to rise above government subsidies, thus thwarting their drive?

Conservatives and liberals are at the vocal polar extremes of public opinion. Most of us are moderates and keep our opinions to ourselves. Mostly  because there is no party to stand behind. I do fear that in the governments quest to save the lower class they have unintentionally built an economic system that further enslaves them. I'm a moderate so I give the government the benefit of the doubt. Liberals will say it's not true and conservative will say it is intentional.

Here's the makeup of the story. There are several moves the government has made that individually look like a good thing for the poor, but taken together it creates a spiral down system for their future. 

The government is trying to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.80 (or $10.10 based on who you are). That's a minimum 35% increase. On the surface that seems like a good idea, the lower income worker would get a substantial increase in income and maybe climbs out of poverty. There are some problems with it. The CBO (Congressional Budget Office) predicts that only 19% of the recipients of this wage increase are actually below the poverty level. 29% of the benefit would go to families already making over three times the poverty level. The projection is that the increase will be a net 3% to those below the poverty level. Add to this the negative real income effect of -.4% for the rest of the wage earners, the projected 500,000 lost jobs and the real net earnings is negligible. But this isn't the real problem. We'll get to that in a moment.

The second great idea for the lower class was subsidized insurance. Again, I am not being facetious, it was a good idea. But it did not address the unintended consequences. Low income people thrive on hourly work that is typically at or less than 40 hours a week. Under the new ACA mandate that limit will lower to 35 hours. The ACA also mandates taxes for employees in place of benefits, further raising the cost of employees that exceed the threshold. There is a lot of evidence that businesses will try to work around the requirement by limiting employment. One way to accomplish that is to hire more full time workers that will work in excess of 50 hours per week (and get compensated for it) and fewer hourly employees that work 30 to 40 hours per week. So the lower middle class or middle class will get higher quality employment and the lower class will be squeezed out. 

The combination of higher wages and higher ACA cost makes automation more appealing. The breakeven to replace employees with systems becomes more appealing. The jobs that will be automated are not the complex jobs that require analytical thinking, they are the repetitive manual jobs mostly populated by the lower class. McDonalds is already testing self serve ordering in California. This automation, much like self server check out and ATM's, further reduces job opportunities for the lower class. 

So where does the lower class find themselves. Well first, the job market for semi-skilled or no skilled employees is shrinking. The 500,000 jobs lost is part of it and automation of repeatable manual tasks is the other part. Add to that the natural limit of hours to avoid taxes and fees and when they do get a job it doesn't pay much. Here is another problem. When they get a job they pay taxes and they lose food stamps, welfare, and insurance subsidies. How much will they have to make to cover all of the lost income to taxes and the loss of government subsidies? Probably a lot more than $350 per week they would make at minimum wage and 35 hours. 

Now this isn't opposition to subsidies. You notice I didn't call them entitlements. In a prosperous civilized society there is a natural need to help other less fortunate.  I do see one of the unintended side effect of all of these programs is that the lower income group does not see a way off of subsidies through work. The inflection point it above their ability to achieve. So they are now locked in the lower class. The divide between a life on government subsidies and the life of the lower middle class is too great.  Society will eventually leave them behind.

Life Turns and Sprints Away

I run across a number of quotes that I think are worth remembering, not so much, because they are motivational, but because they are true. They remind me of basic truths that I must learn to live by.

I think of motivation as the match used to start a campfire. Once the match is applied, it takes effort and fuel to keep the fire going. The match is destroyed and no longer serves a purpose. Of course, you can start a fire without a match it’s more difficult and typically takes much longer. Motivational speakers don’t motivate they provide the match. Each of us must provide the effort and fuel for motivation to take place. The quote may serve as a catalyst for action, but it’s just a catalyst. It’s not a substitute for sustained effort.  

The quote I have been thinking about lately is "Life turns and sprints away, and what could you do but follow? “. It is from Dante "Gluefingers" Lavelli. Lavelli lived between 1923 and 2009. He originally played football for Ohio State but had to leave early to join the Army during WWII. We went ashore in France just after D-Day and fought in the Battle of the Bulge in 1945. On Christmas day of 1946 he caught the winning pass for the AAFC championship in New York City. He is now in the NFL Football Hall of Fame. He spent his years after football as the owner of a small furniture store in Rocky River Ohio.

Lavelli got an opportunity to play football at Ohio State, he followed. WWII started and life changed. Lavelli was drafted into the Army and left football behind. The war ended and life changed. Lavelli was back playing football but not as a college graduate. Lavellie went back to Ohio State between football seasons to earn his degree. Football ended for Lavelli and life changed again. Now he was a small business entrepreneur. Each time “life turns and sprints away” Lavelli followed. He didn’t hang on to the past hoping to prolong it’s existence. Good, bad or indifferent he embraced the future. Given a choice I’m sure he prefered Ohio States campus to the the French battlefield Ardennes. 19,000 soldiers died in less then 45 days. He didn’t live in the horror of those 45 days. He found a way to move on.

Just as I am sure he preferred the hurrah's of winning NFL Championships to the daily grind of keeping a small business running in Rocky River. He won seven championships as a wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns. But it was the furniture store that fed and housed his wife and three children.

The great truth in this quote is not it’s ability to light a match under my performance, but to clarify a simple truth. “Life turns and sprints away”, what else can I do but follow. When I chose to not follow it simply leaves me behind.

The Ripple Effect

Yesterday Rodney King passed away. His 15 minutes of fame came back on March 2, 1991. What brings this to mind is the tragedy of the situation. Rodney King was an ordinary man. Like many ordinary people he lived a life that put him in an extraordinary circumstance.  We see this quite often in life. People living their ordinary lives, then faced with a circumstance that they didn’t seem prepared for. Mostly we hear of heroism, these ordinary people pulling strangers out of wrecked cars or burning buildings.

Rodney King did not wake up the morning of March 2nd thinking that this day would be dramatically different than all of the others. He had no idea when events finally played out fifty-three people would lose their lives. Rodney’s part on this was very small. Through his actions, he simply made himself available. ( the same could be said for the police officers involved)

Rodney embraced a life of alcohol and drugs. He was defiant, living for today. He was on a trajectory of failure. He was convicted of armed robbery in 1989, serving one year of a two-year sentence. By the time he hit the lime light in 1991 he was 26 years old, twice divorced and the father of 3 children.  Just prior to his confrontation with police, his alcohol level was two times the allowable limit. Had this moment in his life not happened, we would have still read about him in the papers. We just wouldn’t have noticed.

On that March day, Los Angeles police overreacted to a simple situation they had been through many times. Their actions propelled Rodney into the lime light and a new trajectory. One that he was not prepared for and more than like would have liked to avoid. Rodney was driving a car being chased by the LAPD at speed up to 80 mph. When stopped by several police cars and at least one helicopter, his passengers surrendered without incident. Rodney started acting strange. He made a move that officers interpreted as aggressive. He later stated that he ran because a DUI would void his probation and send him back to jail. This was the extraordinary circumstance. This was the point that Rodney’s life and the lives of several people would be changed forever. This one decision, we all make them, most go unnoticed. 

 Rodney was tasered and struck at least 56 times with batons. George Holiday caught all of this on video. Video that would be used at the trial of the officers involved. The officers were tried in state court and found not guilty of criminal conduct. The outcome of the trial that ended on April 29, 1992 was the catalyst for the riots that started right after the verdict. Fifty-three people were killed in the riots. Twenty-three hundred and eight-three people were injured, there were around 7,000 fires and 3,100 businesses were damaged. It all happened in the very neighborhood of the rioters. They burned their own neighborhood down. Two years later, Lawrence Powell and Stacey Koon were convicted in Federal Court of violating Rodney King’s civil right and sentenced to 32 months in prison.

Rodney spent the next twenty-two years in notoriety, both a reluctant symbol of the civil right struggle and the catalyst of anger and rage. Our message today… when we get up tomorrow morning we will not know the ripple effect of our actions until they are complete. Are we living a life that could lead to positive or negative reactions? Are we one road rage away for notoriety?  Are we one text message away from multifactorial events that will change lives forever? The lives of people we don’t even know. Neither the police officers or Rodney knew the people lost in the riots, yet each had an impact on their lives and the lives of those who did know them.

Don’t Lie to Yourself

I look at literally hundreds of Income Statements for small businesses monthly. As a company, we do comparative analysis of these to have a better understanding of best practices for our clients. I find an extremely disturbing trend among many of them; I would even say the preponderance of them.

The core of our practice is not tax accounting. It is operational accounting, using accounting information to make better business decisions. Most of our clients are under the $5M range. Many of them have revenues below $1M. Making good business decisions is incredibly important to them. They generally don’t have the safety net of large amounts of collateral (inventory, receivables or capital assets) to leverage into cash during down times. Managing their business on a daily basis is mandatory. It’s not a luxury. There is no room for big or repeated mistakes. These will make their lives miserable at best and close them down at worse.

In spite of this urgency for creditable information, most provide only lip service to their accounting. I won’t get into the challenge of getting timely and accurate answers today. This is an ongoing problem for busy business owners. But I do want to address the incredibly inconsistent and sometime illogical approach used by most small business when it come to capturing financial business information. All small business people inherently know that there are certain expenses that happen every month. There is rent, utilities and payroll. If you are a franchisee, there are royalties and national advertising fees. Whether you have actually paid these bills or not, you owe them. They are a drain on your profitability. They will eventually be a drain on your cash. Not posting them to your accounting system doesn’t make them go away. That liability still exists and needs to be dealt with. Not posting them distorts the view you have of your performance. It hides problems that will come back to bite you. Just do it and do it every month.

This is the obvious part and it still happens, what about the less obvious business practices that skew your financial view? Your Chart of Accounts (the way you itemize revenue and expenses) doesn’t match the way you do business. What do I mean by this? Most small businesses use the Chart of Accounts that came with the software and made simple changes. For example, Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is unique for most businesses. A business may start with the Chart of Accounts for their industry and modify it for their particular business. You don’t want to start with the Chart of Accounts that came with the software because it doesn’t fit the way you do business. It actually doesn’t fit any business, it’s just an example to get you started. This is true for labor cost, inventory and other items you manage on a daily basis. If you have a service business, you really should go to some level of job-based accounting so you know what jobs are profitable and which aren’t. You can’t sell at a loss and make it up with volume.

The bottom line is that we have seen very few new clients that didn’t think their accounting was at least in the ball park. We have had very few new clients that we didn’t have to perform extensive re-coding. We’ve had clients that we had to go back as much as 18 months to clean things up. These good, intelligent people run good businesses. It’s not about their intelligence, drive or commitment to their businesses. Their forte is not accounting. Their accounting never told them anything about running their business so they didn’t expect it to. They wanted to make sure they didn’t overpay taxes, that was about it.

I can’t help to improve some of the businesses I talk with because their numbers don’t make sense. We had a client that sold more products then they brought into inventory every month for as long as they were clients. We’ve had clients that’s COGS exceeded sales. We’ve had clients that posted negative payroll during periods. We helped them identify the problems and in most cases solve them. Some of them decided they didn’t want to fix the problem for personal reasons. They’re not clients today. That’s a liability we weren’t willing to accept.

If I can leave you with one message….Never lie to yourself…. You deserve better…. Understand the truth about your business. Initially it may be uglier then you thought, but it is the only way to get better. If you don’t feel you have either the objectivity or skill set, bring in a third party. The truth will set you free…..

Exactly How Do I Put a Value on Outsourced Accounting?

This is a stream of consciousness concerning the value of accounting for small businesses. I’m not an accountant, I’m a business guy trying to understand how to put a value on what I should spend for accounting. I am concerned with the adage that a man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client. Should I do my own accounting?

Aside from the obvious need to file taxes, it is stated that accounting provides four essential services to a small business. First, it records revenue obtained through the sale of products and services. Second, it provides an accurate record of the expenses associated with the sale of those products and services. Third, it keeps a record of monies owed in relationship to those expenses and finally it is a record of what the company owns.

This is very succinct. So what? Running a company is about cash. Knowing your profitability is important in the long term. However, staying in business in the short term is about cash management. Cash based accounting helps the owner understand their cash position more clearly in the short term, but makes it difficult to determine if the company will be profitable in the long term. There are four types of taxpayers that cannot use cash based accounting; Corporations over $5M, C Corp Partnerships, tax shelters and taxpayers with revenues over $1M requiring inventory. (You might want to talk with your tax preparer about reporting inventory if you are using cash based accounting). Accrual accounting is great for accessing the financial health of an organization over time, but tells you almost nothing about your cash position on a real time basis. Mid-size to large organization use accrual accounting with cash projection reporting. That is they run a separate set of books that keeps track of cash sources and cash uses.

Therefore, it would seem the best approach would appear to be accrual based accounting with a cash projection worksheet. Sounds like double work. I don’t have the time to do this myself. The way I save time is using summary data as opposed to detailed data. The problem with summary data is that it tells me almost nothing about how to run my business better. If I hire someone to do this thing for me, how does the effort pay for itself? I’m a guy that believes you don’t invest in a business expense that won’t pay itself back with profit. So how much net profit will I generate by having a bookkeeper or accountant? That’s a tough one….

Well for one thing, I know inventory consumes cash. Increasing the velocity of my inventory (that is the inventory turnover rate) will help me hold on to my cash longer. In my business, it won’t earn me much interest, but it may help avoid a late penalty on a payment due. Having a detailed analysis of how much I buy verses how much I sell, by item, will help me conserve cash. It might also help me identify waste, spillage or theft.

Knowing the profit margin on each product I sell could help me set pricing better. The market is going to drive many of my prices, so I might end up discontinuing products I can’t make money on. This could help me pay for help.

If my accounting could tell me how much profit-per-employee I make it might help me manage my labor cost more closely. I might also be able to assess how much I really spend on marketing if I can include all the ancillary expenses like meals and give-a-ways. Knowing how much I spend will help me understand its value better. All I really have to do is find a one per cent reduction in expenses or a two percent increase in revenues. With the right help it might be there…. There might even be more…. However, I’m going to have to find someone who understands both my business and how I manage my business… they need to understand both accrual based accounting and cash projections to really be useful..... what I don’t need is another employee to manage….

Sustainability is the Key to Success

There are three key areas that most business owner under-value when it comes to driving sustainability in their business. It is safe to say that many small business owners never even think about sustainability in relationship to operational issues. But, sustainability is the key to success.

Three areas that a lack of sustainability will kill a business

Labor

Many managers think that high turnover is an issue of bad hiring practices. Generally, that is not always true. High turnover is attributed more to mismanagement after they are hired than making a bad decision during the hiring process. What does high turnover cost you?

Your employee never achieves optimum productivity. The longer someone does something the more productive they become doing it. They stop thinking about what they need to do next and start thinking about how to do it better. When they leave, you lose that productivity. You also lose some of your productivity as you go through the hiring process to replace them and the training and mentoring process to make the new employee productive. During the hiring process you are down two employees not just one.

Here is another important point to remember. People do business with people they like and trust. When there is no continuity in your customer facing employees this customer/client-employee bond either doesn’t mature or becomes broken. The emotional tie between your customers and your business is weakened. Referral business is the cheapest and most profitable lead generation any company can have. A lack of continuity can adversely affect referrals.

So what can you do from a management perspective to keep employees? First, understand that motivators and demotivators are not linked. The elimination of a demotivator does necessarily motivate. Providing a motivation does not always overcome a demotivating characteristic. You can give a person a promotion with more responsibility, which they crave, and they will still leave you because they don’t like the corporate culture. Removing excessive overtime might remove a demotivator, but it won’t motivate anyone to work harder. Understand what works and what doesn’t work. Create motivators while removing demotivators. Don’t assume that work is called work because it is work. Life can be better than that.

Everyone is different; learn what works for each one of them. People are not robots that need to be treated uniformly. Don’t let the lawyers convince you that everyone should be treated like a clone. Be fair with everyone, but create programs that reward people in ways that are unique to their needs. This takes knowing them, not a pleasant task for some managers. This also takes time to build programs that are more flexible. This might require too much thinking for some people.

Lead Generation

The second area that businesses waste a lot of time and money because of a lack of sustainability is lead generation. In this world of multiple electronic channels, which many seem nebulous at best, there is a tendency to try anything once. It takes time to fine-tune a new lead generation process. Owners need to take the time to fully understand the details of what they are trying to achieve before they start. They need to fine-turn their idea of a prospect. They need to fine-tune their idea of an offering. They may even have to fine-tune their perception of the buying process. Marketing is changing. People don’t buy the same way they did before. They have access to much more information. They have less geographic constraints to whom they do business with.

Plan on going through several iterations before you see results. Using a start-stop approach will only burn cash, confuse your employees and produce limited results as best. I don’t know how many times I have heard an owner say “We tried that and it didn’t work for us.” Did they have a plan for sustainability before they started, or were they just hoping to find something that might work?

Cash is King

Spend money only when you know, or reasonably expect, it will make money. Everything you do must have a tangible return on investment. Even branding strategies must have a payback somewhere out there, or why do it? Track what you spend against what you get back. The only way to sustain a program is if it generates as much income as expense. Otherwise, it will die a slow death as the cash runs out. Don’t throw money at something just to see if it might work. There is no such thing as discretionary income to a business, it’s all critical to the operation. You can’t bet money you can afford to lose, there isn’t any.

The key is to fully fund a program before you implement. Most businesses plan on using cash created by the program to fund the program. That is a recipe for disaster. Use the cash generated by the program to fund another program. Then you will see growth.

Think about sustainability. Think about how you will use what you are planning to do it replenish the resources you use to accomplish it. Ideally, it should pay you back more than what you use.