You Need to Accept That You’re the Boss

This week, in episode 193, Sarah Segal takes Paul Downs and Jay Goltz through her recent QuickBooks nightmare. Right before tax season, Sarah ran her P&L, and it showed a profit of $250,000—but she knew right away that that couldn’t be right. It then took a bookkeeping SWAT team to figure out what exactly had gone wrong. “I was literally on the verge of tears,” Sarah tells us. “How am I going to do this and not be late on filing my taxes? And credit to this woman, who, I swear to God, was like my therapist and my bookkeeper. She was like, ‘Don't worry, Sarah. We're going to figure it out.’” Which they did—and which brings an important reminder: Not every dollar that comes in the door should be counted as revenue. Plus: What do you do when a new employee isn’t working out? When is the right time to intervene? Do performance improvement plans actually work? Are grace periods a good idea? Also: Jay emphasizes a little understood reason why it can be important to fire fast. And Paul explains what he likes about the AI search engine Perplexity.

Om Podcasten

The 21 Hats Podcast presents an authentic weekly conversation with small business owners who are remarkably willing to share what’s working for them and what isn’t. Unlike many business podcasts, which tend to talk to highly successful entrepreneurs whose struggles are in the past, the 21 Hats Podcast features a rotating cast of business owners who are still very much in the trenches fighting the good fight. Every week, our regulars gather to talk about the kinds of important issues many owners won’t even discuss behind closed doors: whether their businesses are as profitable as they should be, whether they are willing to give up some control to an investor in order to grow faster, why they had to lay off employees, how they wound up with way too much inventory, why they don’t have a succession plan, and even why they are concerned about their own mental health. Visit 21hats.com to hear all of our podcast episodes, read episode transcripts, and learn more. The show is produced by Jess Thoubboron, founder of Blank Word.