Hope everyone is having a good week and ready for the upcoming holidays. This time of year is a unique one, which means that these next two weeks fall on holidays. Because of that, we won't have regular issue next week, as it'll fall on Christmas Day. I want to wish you a Merry Christmas in advance and hope you all stay safe in your travels!

On January 1st I'll have a lighter issue, where I talk more in-depth about my upcoming cohort 5 Days to Financial Clarity, so be looking for that.

That cohort will run Jan 19-23 and the sole focus is getting you, the business owner, a:

1. Deeper understanding of your financials
2. Actionable plan to improve profits and cash flow within 90 days

If we don't achieve those, and you don't get an ROI, there is a 100% money back guarentee.

Enrollment is open, so if you want to go ahead and snag a spot, use the code SMBFOS for 40% off.

Below there are 2 notes and 1 article/video, so I hope you enjoy.

"BOOKS ARE CLOSED"

“Books are closed.” Three of the most dangerous words in business finance.

When a bookkeeper says “the books are closed,” I’ve learned to ask two questions:

1. Do you still plan to make changes?
2. Who approved the close?

Too often, a close just means “I finished what I've done to this point” or I've reconciled the bank account. Then, 100+ changes follow.

But "closed books" means something very specific in accounting. And from my experience, few businesses are truly closing the books.

This isn't a post to say one way or another specifically how it goes, but when communication is not clear about what that means, there are consequences.

The changes after "close" sow seeds of distrust between accounting, the CFO, and the business owner.

And when those seeds of distrust are there, it's easy to get frustrated about changing numbers, which in turns results in a business owner not trusting the numbers.

Not trusting numbers leads to uncertainty in decision-making.

Here’s the fix: define what “closed” means in your company. Who approves it? What are the rules? Who can reopen? And how do you document post-close changes?

It’s not about being rigid. It’s about clarity. Financial leadership starts by protecting the decision-making process.

"The more valuable you are, the less valuable the company is"

I was recently listening to the podcast My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.

They had Ryan Deiss on, who is building the Scalable system and has been building businesses for decades. In the episode, he talks about a problem most founders eventually run into, but rarely name.

He summed it up with one line that stuck with me: “The more valuable you are, the less valuable the company is.”

In other words, being the hero feels good. Your fingerprints are everywhere. You make the big decisions. But that same dynamic makes vacations impossible, delegation painful, and selling the business incredibly hard.

In the episode, Ryan walks through his simple operating framework, mapping how a business makes, sells, and fulfills. You visualize the process as it actually exists, find the real constraint, and solve that problem. From there, you build scorecards and assign clear ownership, documenting only what actually matters.

For me, it forced me to pause and ask the uncomfortable but necessary: what would have to change for your business to work without you?

We often think the path forward is more ideas and working harder and harder. But instead, the answer often is better systems, clearer ownership, and intentionally making yourself less essential.

TAX WRITE-OFFS ARE NOT FREE MONEY (STOP FALLING FOR IT)

It happens every December.

You’ve had a good year. Profits are strong. Cash is solid. And then the CPA calls:

Suddenly, every expense feels strategic... new vehicles, laptops, gear, prepayments. Hey, it’s deductible, right?

But here’s the hard truth: A write-off isn’t a win. It’s just a discounted expense (and even that's not true, as we'll talk through).

In this issue, I unpack the real (and rarely talked about) consequences of tax-driven spending:

• You’re still spending real money
• You may trigger future cash crunches
• You’re likely financing things that reduce future flexibility
• You speed up replacement cycles that compound long-term cost
• You train yourself to optimize for taxes over strategy

I also walk through when year-end spending does make sense, and give you a simple 4-question filter to keep you from trading long-term clarity for a short-term deduction.

If you spend your whole career avoiding taxes, you’ll probably end up poor.

Not because of the IRS, but because you made decisions for write-offs, not return.

This is the tax season reframe most owners need.

​Read the article >​
​Watch the video >​

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Thanks for reading–see you next week,

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Work with me

Need more than this newsletter? You may not know, I have other ways we can work together. Check them out:

1. ​Join the 5 Days to Financial Clarity Cohort: Find profits and cash or get your money back.
2. ​Hire a Fractional CFO: We help businesses between $1-30 million in revenue use their numbers strategically.