Today's Guest

Danielle Hayden is the CEO & Co-founder of Kickstart Accounting. She is a reformed corporate CFO who is on a mission to help rule-breaking female entrepreneurs understand their numbers so they can gain the confidence needed to create sustainable profits. After spending 10+ years as a corporate finance officer, she is now helping small business owners with bookkeeping, financial analysis, and education. Danielle stopped by the show to share a bit of her story and how she is helping empower entrepreneurs to win in business and life.

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Episode Summary

I was working as a CFO for mid-size businesses. I realized that the leadership teams I supported were able to make all of these informed decisions because they were using data to make decisions versus relying on emotion. Around the same time, I was volunteering at a local entrepreneurship hub. I kept hearing the same roadblock from several of the small businesses. They couldn’t get a loan or didn’t have confidence in the decisions they needed to make because they didn’t have good financial data. That launched us into our mission to empower entrepreneurs with the same decision-making data that I had seen played out in the boardroom. 

While we work with all types of entrepreneurs, we also work with a lot of women-owned businesses. Entrepreneurship is hard enough and when you add finances on top of it that can seem overwhelming. I often find that women entrepreneurs will tell themselves that they aren’t a numbers person and then they use that as an excuse to not deal with the finances of their business. That inspired us to create a safe space where entrepreneurs can ask questions and not feel judged or embarrassed if they don’t know.

When we work with clients, we have a few different levels of service but all of our packages include financial statements. However, we don’t just send over reports, we explain them and pull out the key performance indicators. That way the business owners don’t have to get into the weeds of the reports but still know what the important numbers are and how their business is doing. Then when the business owner is ready, we can dive deeper into the details. Our goal is to meet clients where they are at and expand our relationship as their business needs change.

When it comes to deciding between hiring someone as an employee vs. contractor, we tell clients if they are unsure that you should hire them as an employee. It is not worth the hassle of a potential lawsuit or penalties that could result from classifying someone incorrectly. If they report to work at a specific time, if you control how they get the work done, or if you provide them with equipment to do the job or give them feedback on their performance, then you have a lot of risk if you keep them as a contractor.  

Resources Shared

• Kickstart Accounting
• Profit Planner E-Book
• Entrepreneur Money Stories Podcast
• Thryv
  

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