Mission Driven Business

By: Brian Thompson
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  • Summary

  • Diverse entrepreneurs share their experiences, strength, and hope to help mission-driven businesses thrive. In a series of intimate conversations, attorney and CFP Brian Thompson and his guests provide practical steps to create businesses with impact and profit.
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Economics Leadership
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Episodes
  • The Mission Driven Business Podcast Episode 90: Your 6-Step Checklist To Close The Books On 2024

    The Mission Driven Business Podcast Episode 90: Your 6-Step Checklist To Close The Books On 2024
    Dec 24 2024
    Ready to end the year with a gift to your future self? In this special episode, Brian guides you through a six-step process to close out 2024 and set yourself up for success in 2025. You’ll tidy your finances, get a jump start on thinking about taxes, evaluate your business performance, and set strategic goals. Your Year-End Business Review Checklist Step 1: Close Out Your Financials Closing out your financials may sound dry, but it’s imperative to get right. Review your books -- Review your profit and loss for the year for any discrepancies, outstanding invoices, or payments that need to be paid. Make sure you have the correct categories for your transactions to save you a headache when you prepare next year’s tax return.Reconcile your accounts -- Every month, but especially at the end of the year, you should reconcile your financial accounts, including bank accounts, credit cards, and loans, to reveal unaccounted expenses or hidden fees.Analyze your cash flow -- Review your cash flow to see what you owe and who owes you. You can also get a clear picture of whether you can defer income to next year or incur more expenses this year to save on taxes.Review your payroll -- Ensure wags, taxes, and benefits are accurate and that Bonuses are accounted for with proper tax withholding. Step 2: Evaluate Your Tax Position Once your financials are in place, it’s time to shift to taxes. Consider year-end tax deductions -- Incur expenses for purchases like office supplies, software, professional services, and equipment you will have in the coming year.Review your retirement contributions -- Don’t miss your opportunity to make employee contributions to your Solo 401(k) before the December 31 deadline.Plan for next year’s taxes -- Project what your tax liability might look like next year, plan for potential quarterly tax payments, and evaluate whether you might qualify for tax credits or deductions. Also, start gathering important information for tax forms, such as 1099 NECs and W2s. Step 3: Reflect On Business Performance Once the numbers are in order, it’s time to review the past year of business performance and make meaningful adjustments. Review key metrics -- Identify the key metrics for your business, determine whether or not you hit them, and analyze why or why not.Analyze client data -- Come up with your ideal client profile but remember that high paying isn’t the same as high value.Employee performance reviews -- If you have a team, conduct an annual performance review to acknowledge achievements, identify areas for improvement, and set clear expectations for next year. Step 4: Refine Your Vision, Mission, and Values Let’s dig deeper into your mission, vision, and values, which are at the heart of mission-driven businesses. Reassess your mission and vision -- Ask whether your mission or vision has evolved or shifted and update your mission and vision statements if necessary.Clarify your core values -- Just like with your mission and vision, reflect on your core values and update them if necessary. Step 5: Set Strategic Goals For 2025 After reflecting on the past, let’s look forward by setting achievable, flexible goals. Set SMART goals -- Aim to set goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.Break down goals into actionable steps -- Know the next, right step to make your goals less overwhelming and chart a clear path forward.Build in flexibility - The market, economy, and client needs are always evolving. Build checkpoints into your plan and make course corrections as needed. Step 6: Tidy Organizational Processes Don’t overlook the operational side of your business to save yourself headaches and hours in 2025. Audit your systems and tools -- Review the software, apps, and systems you are using, take note of the tools you aren’t using, and automate repetitive tasks.Organize digital files -- Organize digital files in clearly labeled folders to easily find essential documents.Review contracts and legal documents - Check that your contracts and legal documents with vendors, clients, and employees are up-to-date and compliant. Resources + Links Brian Thompson Financial: Website, Newsletter, PodcastFollow Brian Thompson Online: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Forbes About Brian and the Mission Driven Business Podcast Brian Thompson, JD/CFP, is a tax attorney and Certified Financial Planner® who specializes in providing comprehensive financial planning to LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs who run mission-driven businesses. The Mission Driven Business podcast was born out of his passion for helping social entrepreneurs create businesses with purpose and profit. On the podcast, Brian talks with diverse entrepreneurs and the people who support them. Listeners hear stories of experiences, strength, and hope and get practical advice to help them build businesses that might just change the world, too.
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    11 mins
  • The Mission Driven Business Podcast Episode 89: Building Systems For Change with Davey Shlasko

    The Mission Driven Business Podcast Episode 89: Building Systems For Change with Davey Shlasko
    Dec 10 2024
    Brian Thompson chats with Davey Shlasko, founder and CEO of Think Again Training and Consulting, a company that helps align business actions and values. With more than 20 years of experience in adult learning and organizational development, Davey specializes in driving systematic change with a focus on equity and inclusion. Davey shares practical tools for aligning internal practices with external values, discusses strategies for fostering accountability and transparency, and offers hope for navigating uncertainty in today’s climate. Episode Highlights Mission-driven businesses put purpose before profit. Rather than benefiting the owners or leaders of a company, Davey says a mission-driven business benefits the broader world or a specific community. That means an organization’s mission must guide decision-making, even when it involves trade-offs. “Mission has to sometimes come before profit,” Davey said. “Usually having a positive purpose can align very well with making a profit, but sometimes there are trade offs.” Align your company’s internal and external values. Davey emphasized that a mission-driven business’s values should be reflected externally and internally. Through Think Again Training and Consulting, Davey works with mission-driven organizations to ensure their internal culture, operations, and systems align with the values they promote externally. “It’s not always as obvious how those same values might apply to your own operations or internal culture, even if it’s clear how they should apply to the programs or services you provide,” Davey said. Be accountable to your stakeholders, including your employees. It’s essential to identify who your organization is accountable to and ensure those stakeholders have a voice. If leaders of a mission-driven business don't hold the organization accountable to its values and core stakeholders, you can have mission drift. “Part of my responsibility is to hold us accountable to our values that we’ve agreed on,” Davey said. “No matter what we hope our positive impact on the world will be, it’s likely that the greater impact we’ll have is on the people we’re working most closely with: each other.” Transparency is non-negotiable. Part of the work of Think Again Training and Consulting is providing companies transparency, which Davey defines as opportunities for informed input. Being transparent balances mindfulness of individuals' privacy with honesty about feedback the organization needs to hear. “In smaller organizations, anonymity might not be possible, so we have a conservation about what piece of information we could share that would not make you vulnerable,” Davey said. Inclusiveness shouldn’t be overwhelming. While it’s great when leaders of a company want to make sure all voices are heard, sometimes they can take their intentions too far by trying to get a consensus for every decision. Asking employees to give too much input in the decision-making process can be overwhelming and ineffective “You need to design a decision-making process where employees can give input without overburdening,” Davey said. “I want our decision making to be inclusive, but I also want it to work.” Resources + Links Davey Shlasko: LinkedIn Think Again Training & Consulting: Website, Facebook, Instagram Brian Thompson Financial: Website, Newsletter, Podcast Follow Brian Thompson Online: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Forbes About Brian and the Mission Driven Business Podcast Brian Thompson, JD/CFP, is a tax attorney and Certified Financial Planner® who specializes in providing comprehensive financial planning to LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs who run mission-driven businesses. The Mission Driven Business podcast was born out of his passion for helping social entrepreneurs create businesses with purpose and profit. On the podcast, Brian talks with diverse entrepreneurs and the people who support them. Listeners hear stories of experiences, strength, and hope and get practical advice to help them build businesses that might just change the world, too.
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    39 mins
  • The Mission Driven Business Podcast Episode 88: Reclaiming Your Time with Conrad Ruiz

    The Mission Driven Business Podcast Episode 88: Reclaiming Your Time with Conrad Ruiz
    Nov 26 2024

    Brian Thompson chats with Conrad Ruiz, the founder and CEO of Well Aware, a company dedicated to helping business owners reclaim their time. With a background in biomedical engineering and consulting, Conrad blends technical insight with an entrepreneurial spirit to help business owners simplify complex operations and master time management. He shares his personal journey into entrepreneurship, which started with a medical crisis, and offers practical advice on creating efficient systems and finding balance in business.

    Episode Highlights Mission-driven businesses start with why.

    For Conrad, a mission-driven business emphasizes the "why" behind the work. Once a business has a clear sense of its “why,” it can use its resources — time, money, and systems — toward fulfilling that mission.

    “Being a mission-driven business is recognizing wholeheartedly why you’re doing what you’re doing and what that impact is for,” Conrad said.

    Your why is your compass.

    Conrad explained that having a clear “why” is like having a compass to direct a business’s decisions and actions. By staying focused on the mission, entrepreneurs can avoid distractions and stay aligned on their goals.

    “The why is the compass north,” Conrad said. “If you find yourself going in a million different directions, you’re ultimately going nowhere.”

    Buy back your time.

    Conrad’s business, Well Aware, helps very busy people buy back their time. He encouraged business owners to invest in affordable solutions, such as virtual assistants or scalable systems, to free up time.

    “We decide with them how they want to approach this mercantile equation of money versus time,” Conrad said. “Let’s go ahead and make the equations easy.”

    Audit your time in 3 key areas.

    One of Conrad’s key recommendations is to perform a time audit to identify where your time is truly spent. He suggests looking at three key initiatives: time spent marketing, time spent selling, and time spent delivering services. Once you see those three, then you can look at how finance (money) and administration (time) unpin them.

    “I love auditing on the basis of time,” Conrad said. “There’s a three-legged stool of marketing, sales, and service delivery, and from there, the underpinnings are finance and administration.”

    Resources + Links

    • Conrad Ruiz: LinkedIn

    • Well Aware: Website, LinkedIn

    • Brian Thompson Financial: Website, Newsletter, Podcast

    • Follow Brian Thompson Online: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Forbes

    About Brian and the Mission Driven Business Podcast

    Brian Thompson, JD/CFP, is a tax attorney and Certified Financial Planner® who specializes in providing comprehensive financial planning to LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs who run mission-driven businesses. The Mission Driven Business podcast was born out of his passion for helping social entrepreneurs create businesses with purpose and profit.

    On the podcast, Brian talks with diverse entrepreneurs and the people who support them. Listeners hear stories of experiences, strength, and hope and get practical advice to help them build businesses that might just change the world, too.
    Show More Show Less
    40 mins

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