Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: The American immigrant show with Dr. Spert is a space where immigrant stories become American stories, challenges become inspiration, and real life experiences fuel, hope, opportunity and transformation. This show isn't just about surviving immigration. It's about thriving, contributing and redefining what it means to be immigrant American.
Welcome to the American immigrant show. I'm Dr. Dennis Burke.
Building a business in America often begins with an idea, a skill, and the determination to create something better.
But as that business grows, passion eventually has to be supported. Supported by financial discipline.
My guest today is Diva Gill, a certified public accountant, financial strategist and business advisor who has worked on both sides of the equation.
Before founding her own CPA practice, Divya served as an auditor, accounting manager and controller in organizations generating more than $1 billion in annual revenue.
Today, she helps small and mid sized businesses apply stronger financial systems, clear reporting and better decision making to the realities of entrepreneurship.
Diva, welcome to the American Immigrant Show.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Thank you, Dennis. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: You're so welcome.
The audience today has several questions for you that I think are very important and I'd like to get started by asking you, what did working inside villain dollar organizations teach you about financial disciplines that many small business owners do not see until much later?
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Absolutely.
A little bit about me.
So that you know, as an immigrant, I came to this country with $2,000 in my pocket and the goal was I would finish my schooling when I was about 17 years old and I would then go back to India and, you know, assist my dad in his business. Happenstance. My dad's business back in India tumbled and he was left with no choice but to immigrate here. And then we had to rewrite our story. I had to work two jobs to support myself through school.
And then at the same time, I was working towards my accounting career, my accounting debut. Once I graduated, I went into corporate like you had mentioned in the introduction, and I worked for billion dollar organizations.
It really comes down to the illusion of scale when you are inside an organization generating over $1 billion in revenues. The financial discipline is not a choice. It's baked into the operational DNA of that firm. You have strict monthly closing deadlines, you have rigorous analysis of the financials, you have multilayered internal controls, and you have departments that are dedicated to risk management, taxes, legal aspects. So when I transitioned to working directly with entrepreneurs of the smaller and mid sized firms, what struck me was how small businesses often survive on pure instinct and adrenaline.
They check their bank balances instead of reading their balance sheets. Working at the enterprise level taught me that minor operational leaks, unmonitored overhead, sloppy reconciliations can compound very quickly. Larger corporations do not wait till the problem unfolds. And looking at the numbers, when it's too late, they're using monthly tools to get that visibility. That's often these smaller and medium sized companies cannot get to. So that. So it's important to see it as bringing that mindset to a growing business completely changes its trajectory. The financial data is now telling a story which is more forward looking rather than looking in the rearview mirror.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: And when you move from large corporate environments into serving entrepreneurs directly, what financial gap surprised you the most?
[00:04:53] Speaker B: You know, that's a great question. And the biggest shocker was how heavily business owners relied on their tax returns and they waited till the April timeframe to do their books as well as to do their taxes. Many people have that mindset that because their CPA prepares their return every year come April, they have a handle on their financials. But a tax return is a historical document. You do not have a forward looking scenario. You do not have a budget or a forecast to know what the next 15 months or 18 months would look like. So it doesn't help you make those strategic decisions that are needed, like managing cash as an example, or whether the clients that you have are delivering the way they should. So these were some of the gaps that I noticed pretty instantly in the form of examples that I could give you. The second major gap that I noticed was commingling.
You have a person as an example come in who owns an S Corp. I was amazed how many times these founders would literally transfer funds or treat their business funds just like a personal wallet. And when personal and business expenses blur, yes, there's a compliance issue. It distorts your true profitability and it also creates massive red flags if you are getting audited by the IRS or trying to secure financing like lending options out there. So separating those two worlds was another one of the very first things that we have noticed that exist. And we always try to work with the clients to fix that at Giltax Group.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: And so for entrepreneurs trying to build long term future in America, what financial habits do you think they should establish much earlier than most people realize?
[00:06:50] Speaker B: One financial habit that I have built into my system and my generic DNA is monthly financial review is part of my DNA. I do weekly reviews because I like to stay on top of all my income expenses. Most entrepreneurs treat their financials like an annual visit. Hey, it's tax time. I'm going to look at what the business brought in and Then they get the shock of their life saying, I did not even make that much money. How do I have that much cash? How do I rake in that cash to pay those taxes that are due? So if you want to build that sustainable, resilient future, you need to sit down with a qualified person and look at your numbers for maybe two hours every single month at minimum. But build that into your rhythm. It should be part of maybe once at the start of the day. If you can add the end of the start of the month and the end of the month as a second review, that would be phenomenal. But at least get the process going. Treat it as the same priority as high stakes client meetings that you set up zoom calls for for immigrant entreprene.
In particular, establishing clean corporate policies compliance habits is critical because the laws keep changing and it's important that they keep up to date with all of those laws.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: So could you speak for a moment regarding the ownership of real estate and the enormous tax advantages it has for people to help them save on their ordinary income?
[00:08:24] Speaker B: Absolutely. So the real estate ownership piece is one of my very close favorite topics.
It gives you the tangible ownership in terms of your assets. Okay. It gives you, on the other hand, leverage to be able to borrow against those assets and be able to build more. So what we see as a lot of our immigrant clients who come in, buying that first house is always the hardest thing. But once you get that first house and you start building that equity, you will be surprised how you could get a heloc, which is a home equity line of credit. You can then expand your whole real estate portfolio. You know, then there are companies that will help you get into rentals. You could build rental properties from the real estate piece. So investing in that real estate, it's not just for the immigrant side of the client base, but it's for everyone. I highly, highly recommend it. And the way we can make those as passive strategies. Say you have a rental and say we can put it in some kind of holding company and restructure it a certain way and we are able to qualify you as a real estate investor. We can then make you an active participant and offset some of those losses strategically with your current income. That will bring down your tax liability. Then there's an element of 10, 31, 12, 50 exchanges associated with that which will help you defer any gains to future years. Every time you sell a rental property, there are parameters you have to meet. Sit down with your CPA and figure those out. But absolutely, that is an option available out there to the viewers watching.
[00:10:08] Speaker A: And so maybe you can touch base on depreciation and cost segregation studies and the benefits that they provide owners.
Because real estate, the word suggests to people that it's buying and fixing houses. And the real estate industry is much more enormous than that because people are into owning shopping centers, apartment complex, industrial warehousing. And from an accounting and tax advantage, I believe personally and based on experience, that real estate investors have the best tax benefits in all areas, bar none, when it comes to saving on your income taxes.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Absolutely. Building on the example or the scenario we were discussing prior to this conversation, when you are able to qualify yourself as an owner of properties, who's renting, and if you can associate with the property management companies, depending on how big your portfolio is, if you are owning the commercial portfolio versus a residential portfolio, we can then look at depreciation options.
I feel like we can keep talking about this on and on, but this is one of those places where section 179 or the depreciation kicks in. So what that means is say you buy a home for a million dollars tomorrow, you invest another 200,000 in the upgrades. You could either flip the house around, depending on how soon you flip it, and you might be subject to ordinary taxes or capital tax rates, depending on how long you have held the property. Okay. However, if you choose to keep the property for long term tax planning purposes, then we have the option of taking the depreciation on it. What depreciation does is that million dollars you invested in that property and the 200 improvements you made. You can now combine that amount for 1.2 million and you can depreciate it on depending on the asset type, based on the IRS tables that are provided by the authorities, to be able to depreciate and write off the cost.
So you might have 50,000 in expenses for one year or one month and depreciation might add another 20,000. So now what you have done is as an active investor, you have been able to shift some of those losses up the expenses and offset more in liabilities.
There's a third aspect to this piece too of real estate investment, which is short term rentals.
You see a lot of clients now talking about Airbnb. If you are able to meet the definition of an active real estate professional, you then have the option to classify your real estate as an active rental. And you will then be able to write off those expenses against your liabilities that you might owe. So there's a lot of creativity there.
This is the fourth option that many people don't know about. There are funds out there like REITs, et cetera, that will let you pool in the money along with other investors. They'll do all the management for you, they'll do the maintenance for you, and they'll give you a piece of the operating income and expenses in the form of a K1. Now whatever you get on that based on the type of losses, be it active or passive, can then help offset some of your liabilities.
And you don't have to deal with the headache of managing properties, you don't have to deal with the headache of paying property managers, and so on. So all of this is going to help you no matter how you do it. So those would be some of my tips and tricks regarding real estate.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: I appreciate your expertise and knowledge of the subject and we now have to take a short break, but we'll pick the topics back up when we get back.
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[00:15:13] Speaker A: And welcome back again to the American Immigrant Show.
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I am Dr. Dennis Burke and I want to welcome back my guest Diva Gill, cpa, Founder of Gill Tax Group.
Before the break, Diva, we talked about the difference between business and building, financial disclosures and disciplines required to sustain each other. Now I want to focus on the information owners need in order to see what is really happening inside the company.
As you know, revenue can grow while cash gets tighter. A company can be busy while margins deteriorate and financial statements can exist without the owner knowing how to use them. I find it fascinating that many people don't know the difference, for example, between a balance sheet and a profit and loss statement. They may not even know the difference between a profit and loss statement and an income statement, which are exactly the same thing.
Financial clarity therefore begins when the numbers become a management tool rather than a year round obligation.
This leads me to a series of questions. Diva, if you could put only a few financial reports in front of a business owner every month, which ones would you want them to understand and why
[00:17:38] Speaker B: you Know, that is one of my favorite questions and one of the first points that I make with the clients when we start reviewing their monthly reports.
If I could give one answer, it would not suffice or satisfy. Here we have three reports that should be part of your financial review. The dashboard, as I would call it, you will need to start with the statement of cash flows. You know the thing we talked about, profit on paper doesn't necessarily mean profit in bank. That's where the cash flow statement comes in. You might have as an example million dollars in revenues for your top line. After expenses, all you're left with is $50,000. Now you might flatter yourself going, wow, I had a great year and this is where I am. But then when it comes to tax filing time, you're shocked because of how you're structured as well as how the financials are flowing and mismanaged. You owe all these monies in taxes, which you never planned for because you never had the cash flow for. So first and foremost, start with your cash flow statement. Because profit and paper, like I said, doesn't equate to paying your payroll, cash does. A business can look profitable on an income statement while quietly bleeding that cash through different options. Your payroll might be a little too high, your payables might be draining, or your AR might not be delivering on time and might be slow to collect.
Next thing would be your income statement.
You should have your income statement and I almost believe in having it. Income statement budget to forecast to actual budget is something I'd use for my firm and many of our clients to expect what or to see what to expect in the next year. Okay, Forecast is something I like to do every six months based on the trajectory of the past that I've seen past year, past six months in the year that I'm in. And then readjusting my forecast based on that, that will give me my new starting point as to what to expect with what's in my pipeline. So that's looking at your income statement in totality with the budget to actual and budget to forecast. Actual to forecast comparison. That shows you if your expenses are creeping up against your plan or if you have some leftover monies from maybe more expansion, new hire, advertising to build more. Ultimately, you look at your balance sheet. A lot of people don't know what to do with a balance sheet. Balance sheet will tell you your true financial health at any given point.
That's like checking your cash on a certain day. It depends if your cash is reflecting correctly on the balance sheet. If it is, you should know what your financial health is. You will know what your assets look like, you'll know what your liabilities look like. So together, these three reports tend to give the viewer a 360 degree view of everything, so that you are never caught up by surprise.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: So that's amazing information to give the audience.
However, where do compliance and internal controls fit into the growth conversation, especially as companies add employees, vendors and more transactions?
[00:21:05] Speaker B: So compliance is one aspect of the things, internal controls is other side of the story.
When you start hiring employees, compliance is more of making sure their work papers and papers are in order, making sure you have their W4s on file, you have their state documents that are needed for the payroll companies on file, making sure all of those items are taken care of. When it comes to internal controls, now that has to do with your processes. What you need to do is look at the internal workings. And it's a huge audit that we do for many companies where we look at their internal controls and look at what exactly is the environment these companies are operating in.
The intent of having internal controls is to mitigate any risks that you might run into with your firm, with the employees that you have hired. As an example, segregation of duties, which sounds like a very heavy term, is a big one when it comes to employees.
Hiring employees, and then also implementing internal controls in small to medium sized businesses is often a challenge because you have one person possibly and probably doing more than one job. They probably have their job broken up into pieces where they touch different aspects of a process from a compliance perspective. But then from an internal control perspective, you have to make sure that there are enough mechanisms in place.
As an example, I have seen that where one employee will be responsible to deposit the checks and the cash in the bank, the same employee will be responsible for cutting those checks. And then there might be another person or like an owner they go to to get the signs and signatures done on the checks. Now it's okay where you have a reviewer of the check who's separate than the preparer of the check. The problem happens is when the same person who's depositing the check is also writing the check. Because now you do not know if the cash actually made it to the bank. If the cash made it to the bank, then the check, who it's being written out to, is the right vendor or a legit vendor. So these are small examples of internal controls that we often help companies, especially the small and medium sized ones, to bridge. Now you don't need to hire a new employee for every internal control in place. But the idea is to protect you from the risk, the inherent risk that exists whenever your employee is turning on the computer and starting to work and do their job.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: And so as a former restaurant owner, I understand clearly what it is you're talking about because cash just does appear and disappear and you have to, you have to be on top of it and you have to have a system and the owner can't be there 24 7.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: And so you know, financial clarity is not about turning every entrepreneur into an accountant. It's about giving the owner enough visibility to ask better questions, stop risk earlier, and make decisions before circumstances make the decisions for them.
We will take a short break and be right back. We'll pick up these topics in a few minutes.
[00:25:07] Speaker C: Search for NOW Media Television on the App Store or Google Play Store, download our free app and enjoy live streaming of all NOW Media TV channels along with on demand content anytime, anywhere. NOW Media Television, the first bilingual media network.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: And welcome back to the American Immigrant Show.
We are continuing our discussion today with Adiva Gill, an expert in accounting and taxation.
Her corporate background exposed her to the systems and financial controls used by organizations operating at a significant scale. While her current practice works directly with small and mid sized businesses that need disciplines without unnecessary bureaucracy that balance matters. Growth creates opportunity, but it also creates new rules, new risks, more money moving through the company, more people making decisions, more compliance obligations, and more chances for the owner to lose visibility if the system does not grow with the business.
My questions therefore Diva are what financial system should a small company begin building before growth makes them urgent?
[00:26:57] Speaker B: You know that's a great question there and the answer is very simple. Look for cloud based system, something like QuickBooks Zero or Zoho. A lot of these systems will give you that dynamic cloud based setup and infrastructure.
They'll give you a closing calendar, they'll give you processes. They'll make life easy by giving you options to reconcile your cash to the bank before you actually start looking into higher end systems. So start with small, small and easy. Too many founders wait till tax season or unless they need some lending from a bank to organize the books, start doing it on that monthly basis. Have that cadence where you will do your books at least once a month. If you can do it more often than once a month, that's even better. So by implementing integrated billing system within the same accounting cloud based system, which a lot of systems offer that these days by having an expense management system, which means being able to upload your receipts to a system like Quiz QuickBooks. So it has your real time depository of all your receipts and records gets you audit ready and a standardized monthly close process where you create a muscle memory in your business. Going by the 10th, I am going to bill everybody that I need to build to by the 20th. I'm going to collect and follow up on whatever collections are needing follow up. So having some kind of process in place will help you trying to clean up your books once a year. And you'll be surprised how many business clients come to us with that as one of the key projects. It's so messy, it's so expensive that now you are too late in the game.
Great, you're making that effort to get tax ready. But you could have signed that major contract or deal knowing that you have that cash or the bandwidth, you could have passed up on that key hire because thinking you don't have enough money or cash for it. So these are certain business decisions or opportunities that are called missed opportunities that you would then miss if you did not make that cloud based system your high priority. So invest in a cloud based system.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: And that's excellent advice because too few people don't do that and they end up exactly as you described. When they're getting ready to file for the taxes.
Everything is a mess. It takes them weeks to put everything together and they still don't get it right.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:29:35] Speaker A: So how do you know when the founder of the business has become a bottleneck? Because too much financial knowledge or approval authority still lives with that one person.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: You know what, Dennis? This is very typical and a typical problem. The founder is almost always the bottleneck. Or you have that one person who has all the sales contracts and if that person was to exit today or fall sick or something happens, the entire company, the entire shop stops running.
With a founder, you will be one of the first bottlenecks. Because guess what? When you started the company, you were the one person who was used to doing every aspect of the firm till you grew. And you were able to hire the experts who were able to focus on their areas to help you ease that pressure. Right? You know your bottleneck when nothing happens without your signature or your personal text approval. If every vendor payment, every PO that goes to the firm or every client contract has to cross your desk, you have now become the anchor that's dragging down the ship. The speed of your own company is how I look at it. Founders often hold onto the financial control for all understandable reasons because they are afraid of losing the grip. Their thing is this is My way of controlling it. I'm not saying give away the control completely, but as you scale the micromanagement should not be stalling that momentum. The transition point requires setting up delegated financial authority backed up by clear budgets and guardrails. Have somebody else sign off on the check after you see the check or get a check report or a register. There are ways to do that. When your team has clear spending limits as an example, or automated workflows in that cloud based system we were referring to, they will function without needing you all the time. And then you could step out of the weeds to focus on doing what you do the best. Spewing growth, building that business and getting into that high level strategy for your business from every aspect so that you can add even more money to your top line and bottom line so that now you are maybe 2 million, tomorrow you can grow to that 5 million mark you're aspiring to go to.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: And so part of the problem with startup owners and entrepreneurs is that accounting is not their expertise. They're not maybe even don't even love financials. They just the they're more about creation and imagination and they thrive on the building side of the business and bringing their baby to life.
But the accounting side, by and large I figured out, is not what they thrive on. And this is why accounting becomes a mess inside of a lot of companies. Don't you agree totally?
[00:32:24] Speaker B: Absolutely. You'll be surprised how many times it's pushed on the back burner and you ask them that, hey, the question why did you not look at this? Oh, I was too caught up closing this one deal and I didn't have the time or I had to put a fires related to the operations. I didn't have the time. I thought you would handle it. Come to ask time I could hire a person like you. But then the issue there is Dennis, we are too late in the game. The damage is done. We cannot go back in time and repair it. We have to learn from it as a historical lesson and move our strategy going forward.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: And so I'm sure you'd agree that the strongest financial systems do more than prevent mistakes.
In fact, they create confidence.
Confidence for the owner, the team, lenders, investors, partners and anyone else evaluating the health of the business.
Would you agree with that?
[00:33:18] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Clean reconciled transparent financial statements backed by solid documentation with the ability of the owner to be able to understand how those books are working and be able to understand the lessons they have learned from the past and adopting maybe a 12 month forecast, departmental accountability and things of that Nature will only help that company spring forward.
You know, going back to large corporations, they just don't look at history, they look forward continuously updating their projections every single month based on market shifts. Mid sized companies can also adapt that by breaking their profit and loss down into little accountability centers. Redo your chart of accounts in QuickBooks. If you haven't done it, sit down with a qualified professional who can help you look at different departments. Break down your chart of accounts in QuickBooks or Zoho or whatever system you're using and be able to identify, you know, your profitability by departments, profitability by product line, even by customers, your top 10 or 20 customers and service offerings rather than looking at this one big packed number for your business as a giant block.
So when you review all these aspects at the management level, when you're delegating it, you're doing all these things right, you could start performing a little better. You'll notice the first month and by six month it will be part of your DNA, right? And you can immediately spot where performance is lagging or where the vision is outperforming expectations. It shifts your leadership style. These are certain nuances that will help you build from being a reactive person in that firefighting mode continuously to a person who is being very proactive about the business decisions, be it adding a major business line, hiring employees, expanding into a newer state location, be it whatever you choose it to be.
[00:35:22] Speaker A: I think you have great insight, by the way, into how business operate from the inside and out and I appreciate that.
We need to take a short break and we'll be right back.
[00:36:07] Speaker C: Search for NOW Media Television on the App Store or Google Play Store. Download our free app and enjoy live streaming of all NOW Media TV channels along with on demand content anytime, anywhere. NOW Media Television, the first bilingual media network.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: Welcome back to the American Immigrant Show.
Stay connected to this show and every NOW Media TV favorite live or on demand, anytime you like.
Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in English and Spanish.
You on the move? Maybe. Okay, catch the podcast version on ww.nowmedia tv.
From business and news to lifestyle culture and beyond, Now Media TV is streaming around the clock. Ready whenever you are.
I am Dr. Dennis Burke and we will close out today's show with Diva Gill, expert accountant, CPA and tax advisor.
We have talked about financial reporting, cash flow, profitability, controls, compliance and systems for growth.
In this final segment, I want to bring those pieces together around the reason they matter. Helping business owners make better Choices and build organizations that can support the life and future they are working towards.
For entrepreneurs, including people building businesses while learning the financial and regulatory system of a new country, clarity can create confidence and confidence when it is grounded in reliable information can change the quality of decisions in later decision making.
Diva. Perhaps you could answer how challenging it has been for you in making the shift from large MA companies that do a half a billion or a billion a year in revenue over to mom and pop Main street businesses that do maybe from 500,000 to 2 or 3 million a year.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: You know, that's a great question. It's almost like looking at my entire career and the trajectory of the career. Yes, I started with those billion dollar organizations working in different roles and learning systems, internal controls and what an ideal or could be an ideal environment look like when it comes to your financial statements and overall financial health of the company and how you run a company, how you handle internal controls. The biggest challenge was when you shifted gears. Small and medium sized companies, they have to do more with less. Okay. What it comes down to is bigger companies have more in terms of financial opportunities to them and they are able to spend more on different aspects when it comes to managing their financial processes. They have their own AR department, AP department. They might have a whole different department just for marketing and scoping of sales. Guess what? When you come to a small business or a medium sized business, this owner needs to wear multiple hats.
Both the companies are looking or both sizes of businesses are looking at one aspect that's key. That's one thing I found that was really important. No matter how we looked at it, no matter the size of the company, how many employees you had.
Every entrepreneur at the end of the day or every big or small company needs to understand that financial literacy is your ultimate freedom. The thing I found in big organizations was they chose financial literacy every day. What that meant was we had a clear process where we came to the table. By the fifth, certain aspects of the tasks were done for month and close. By the 10th, the books were ready for the partners to review. By the 15th, we locked the period and nobody could go back and make any changes. And those were the bigger systems like Oracle, SAP and so on.
Now when you have small and medium sized businesses that are working with limited personnel, limited resources in a cloud based system, you might not have like that perfect structure, but then the cadence you could keep or follow is making sure you have those monthly reports that come your way where you could look at your numbers, you could look at these numbers not just As a scorecard for the IRS or for admin chores to check off your list, but as a language, a native language of your business. Business. When you take the time, no matter what size of a company you are to learn that native language, you stop working in your business just to survive on a daily basis. You start leading your business as a leader to build that lasting legacy. We want you to build. The financial clarity I'm referring to here, Dennis, gives you the power to protect what you have built, make confident decisions and create the kind of long term stability and freedom that brought you to build your American dream in the first place.
So what's the difference between the big companies and the small ones here? It's the resources and availability of the resources. However, one element that's very common through and through is the perspective and knowing financial literacy.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: Would you agree that in a smaller business, say 500,000 to 5 million in revenue, it's lot easier to get decisions made and to move at a more rapid pace than in the billion dollar company where there's lots of layers of management and bureaucracy and you have to get a lot of approvals to be able to take actions. Therefore things take longer.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: I believe in that statement to a limited extent because the challenges that the big businesses will face might be that layered approvals in the bureaucracy we are talking about.
But the small businesses might have their own challenges, which might not be the bureaucracy point or getting multiple approvals, but the availability of the resources.
So yes, it's easier to move things when you have maybe two owners and maybe 50 employees. Those people have clear direction. But then do they have the resources, the manpower, the financial aspect of things to be able to move forward with those decisions strategically is the other challenge.
So yes and no would be my answer and depends on what the resources available to those companies are who are small and medium sized, as well as how they navigate through their environment with those resources. That's key too.
[00:43:40] Speaker A: One of the other questions I have is that we spoke earlier about financial literacy, especially in smaller companies, what we call Main street businesses. That's generally in the revenue range from about 500,000 to maybe 2 or 3 million dollars.
And the question I have for Diva is, you know, how important is financial literacy in order for a business to be more successful or in fact less successful?
[00:44:21] Speaker B: Absolutely, Dennis, and that's a great question because oftentimes we see businesses in our profession fail because they do not have that financial literacy or the cadence to have the financial literacy. Financial literacy is knowing what your income statement, your balance sheet, and cash flow say numbers will tell you that story, like I tell everybody out there. And if you don't understand your story, you're not going to go very far. You will fall short on making smart decisions, strategic decisions that will help you boost the growth and the success of your company, your business portfolio, your personal portfolio, your employees growth, and so on. Because financial clarity will give you the financial confidence. What does financial confidence look like? It looks like calm, strategic decision making instead of emotional reactions. A confident owner who has that financial literacy under their belt. And they will not panic when an unexpected economic shift happens out there, which is inevitable, given where we live, the times we live in.
With the tariffs being the latest example, I had some clients in that manufacturing, retail area who did suffer a lot. So it was a matter of making sure that if they had the literacy on hand, the knowledge of how things work and how different margins work on different products, they could have made better decisions.
On the other side. I had a whole bunch of clients who knew their books and knew what to do with their books when it came to extra tariffs and how to up their margins, even in that scenario. So people who have that access sleep better at night because they're not hoping the numbers will work out. They know their numbers and they're going to work the numbers to their advantage. Clarity will give them the courage to grow, invest, and navigate through an uncertainty with a steady hand.
[00:46:13] Speaker A: So I think that's the perfect answer right there. I do appreciate your knowledge, expertise, and your contribution today to other immigrants on our show, the American Immigrant Show. Thank you very much.
[00:46:27] Speaker B: Thank you so much.
