Maria Sinatra

Run a small business for any length of time and you will notice something: there is no shortage of numbers. Sales reports, bank balances, invoices, bills, a dashboard here, a spreadsheet there. It can start to feel like noise, and when everything feels important, it is hard to know what to actually pay attention to. Here is the good news. You do not need to track everything. After years of helping owners make sense of their books, we have found that almost the whole story comes down to seven...

Summer is the season we all promise ourselves a real break. The lake weekend. The week away with the family. The Friday afternoon when you finally close the laptop and step outside. For most small business owners, though, that break comes with a quiet little stowaway: the part of your brain that never quite switches off. You know the feeling. You are at the cookout, but you are also wondering whether you can really afford that new hire. You are on the beach, but you find yourself checking the...

Growth is one of the most energizing things that can happen to a small business. A new contract that changes the revenue picture. A market that is opening up. A team that is finally hitting its stride. These are the moments owners work toward — and when they arrive, the instinct is to move quickly and capitalize on the opportunity. But growth events — especially fast or significant ones — have a way of exposing what was already underneath the business. Infrastructure gaps that were survivable...