The Virtual CFO

Staffing a Growing Entrepreneurial Business – A Good Dilemma to Have

“If your company isn’t growing, it’s dying” (Old business adage)

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had conversations with several of my Virtual CFO clients about the growth of their businesses. One of the main topics of discussion has been how to maintain the culture of the business while adding staff to meet the demand caused by growth. In most cases, the culture of the organization is the reason the company is experiencing growth. This is why you have to be sensitive to your firm’s culture during its growth.

To me, this dilemma isn’t just theory, but rather circumstances I have faced at both of the entrepreneurial businesses I’ve owned.

In the 1990’s, I owned a logistics company that experienced substantial growth in its first year of operations. As a result, I made the decision to add staff and train them how perform all the functions I performed, including customer facing activities such as sales and customer service.

Now I am faced with the growth of my public accounting firm, CPA for Small Business, LLC. Last year, my company’s revenue was more than double that of the year before. As a result, I am on the cusp of not being able to personally handle all the work in need to perform for clients. I know I will have to add staff if I want my business to continue to grow.

As opposed to the staffing choices I made for my logistics company, I decided to add staff that will perform the functional level work at my public accounting firm and I will continue to handle the customer facing activities as well as high-level work such as reviewing and signing off on tax returns.

The growth staffing strategy scenarios I described above demonstrate the two basic choices that you, as a small business owner, have for staffing growth. They are:

1. Add customer facing staff who will carry out duties similar to those you, as the business owner, perform; or
2. Add functional level staff and continue performing the customer facing activities yourself.

Over the next few blog posts, I’ll address these two choices and discuss my experience with each. I’ll also talk about problems that can result from each of these choices as well as what can be done to successfully implement them.

Hopefully, after reading this blog series you will be able to choose the best alternative for staffing your businesses growth and while at the same time maintaining the culture that made the growth possible.

At the end of the day, deciding how to staff your company’s growth is a good dilemma to have.

After a Break, The Virtual CFO Blog is Back

I just looked at the Virtual CFO Blog and noticed that I hadn’t posted anything since April 6th. Well, that’s about to change. But I want you to know that there are several good reasons I haven’t blogged in almost two months.

The first, and primary reason, is that I had an extremely busy tax season. CPA for Small Business will be four years old in June and the volume of work I have is a sign of a growing and healthy practice.

Corporate (i.e., C- and S-Corp) taxes were due March 15th and personal and partnership taxes (including LLC’s) were due on April 15th. In this period, I prepared or filed extensions for approximately ninety clients and their businesses. It was a sprint for me from the middle of February through April. However, I am very grateful for the volume of work I had.

I have the coolest clients in Middle Tennessee and it’s an honor to serve them (or you, if you’re a client reading this <grin>).

The second reason is that on April 22nd (a week after April 15), I traveled to Haiti on a mission’s journey with Brentwood Baptist and Sweet Sleep . I am very glad I made this journey and I plan to blog about my experiences in future Virtual CFO Blog posts. I was honored and blessed to get to meet several entrepreneurs in Haiti. Hanging out with small business owners in Haiti showed me that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in that country.

Third, I haven’t been in the office much since I returned from Haiti. Before and after returning (and for two clients, while I was in Haiti <vbg>), I scheduled a number of field work days outside the office. This has been a potpourri of field work: financial statement preparation, CFO services, assisting clients with their accounting systems, helping create and document administrative and operating policies and procedures, budgeting, short-, medium-, and long-range planning, etc. There was a bit of pent-up demand for field work created during tax season.

And finally, in May I had several clients who had the opportunity to present their company to venture capital firms and outside investors. This type of work is always pressing and I don’t mind making time in my schedule to support clients with these activities.

But now the seasonal rush is over, so it’s time for me to start writing regularly again on the  Virtual CFO Blog.

Thank you for reading this blog and I hope you enjoy the posts I will be writing in the future.

BTW, I have some blog series in mind, but please let me know if there is a small business or entrepreneurial topic you want me to blog about. Many of my previous blog series and posts came from suggestions, correspondence, and inquiries from readers.