0:00 [upbeat music] In the world of business, not all deals are what they seem. Fortunes rise, empires crumble, all with the stroke of a pen. Mergers, acquisitions, hostile takeovers. Welcome to Mergers She Wrote, where we examine strategies and stories behind the biggest deals in business. Because in M&A, the real risks are the ones you don't take. [upbeat music] Welcome back to Mergers She Wrote. I'm Paloma Goggins, your host and the owner of Nocturnal Legal.

0:40 Today, I have a special guest who will help demystify the Ps and Qs of bookkeeping, CFO fractional services, and things like that when it comes to preparing your business for sale, or on the other side, being a buyer and deciding whether a business is the right decision moving forward. Steven, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you for having me, Paloma. It's a pleasure. Yeah, likewise. Well, I'm gonna jump in. Today's episode is a little bit different from our usual take. Instead of it being just a traditional Q&A, we're gonna talk about a couple of case studies, and this will help us have a natural discussion about things like profit and loss, balance sheets, what could be a red flag if you're a buyer, and then also how to really weave a story as a seller.

1:25 So I'm gonna jump in. I'm gonna start with our first case study, and then we'll turn to Steven for some, you know, insights and some thoughtful conversation. So case study number one, a local pastry shop has... And I, I will preface this. Every example is based loosely on real-life experiences and multiple different situations that we've seen across deals. So these are not specific to any one individual. All right. [laughs] Jumping back in. [laughs] Gotta do my legal disclaimer. Uh, so local pastry shop, uh, wants to sell, owner-operated. Has an individual that comes in and is interested in buying this pastry shop. Super excited.

2:08 Culturally from a different country. So some individual differences, some communication differences. And as the deal progresses, the financial information is handed over to this buyer, and the buyer's advisors all of a sudden look at the financials and they say, "I don't know why you're buying this business. There's no money in it." And we all kind of looked at each other on the seller side and said, "What are you talking about? There's plenty of money in this business." And really what it came down to was the profit and loss statements, the balance sheets, everything made it look like there was just no capital because the owners were drawing everything out.

2:49 And so what ultimately ended up happening was the buyer completely spooked on the deal. We- they ended up pulling out from the deal. We couldn't get them back to the table. Some of that was culturally influenced. And, you know, generally speaking, you know, the deal ended up moving on with a different buyer. But I wanted to use this case study as an example of how it can be difficult when a buyer is not sophisticated and you as a seller don't see any issue with your current financial story, and how you could potentially mitigate or avoid this scenario where perhaps a buyer just simply doesn't understand. And if their advisors also don't understand, it can become even more insurmountable of a hurdle. And so I wanna pause there.

3:38 When looking at a profit and loss statement or balance sheet and, and seeing how potentially an owner has drained all of the financial, you know, all this additional extra income for their personal use, you know, what does that look like? Um, so if y- if I'm a buyer and I'm looking at something and it, and it just looks like there's just no money left over, is there some red herrings that you can say, "Okay, this is what it looks like when someone who's an owner/operator is taking cash out, and when I buy it and I change things around or perhaps keep more of the money in the business, it'll be financially, you know, successful," I guess is the way to put it.

4:19 I wanna know, is there a way for someone to see that up front and not be scared by it? Sure. It's a very interesting scenario and one that I think is pretty common in the viability and reliability and accuracy of the financial statements that you're looking at. When you're talking about the cultural differences, potential language differences, one of the things that I think is important to remember is that financials and numbers is a universal language. There may be difference between GAAP reporting, cash and accrual, or IFRS.

4:59 However, the idea being that once you understand the way that the financials are put together, then you can kinda make sense of them. So first you need to look at the financials and deci- determine the viability of the financials. So you need to look at the balance sheet is usu- the first thing that you look at and see if there's anything that's outlandish, if you're looking at negative liability accounts or asset accounts that could throw that off. I'll typically look at reconciliations to see when the last reconciliation was done to make sure that numbers aren't over- or under-inflated, make sure there's no variances. Because that's really what it comes down to, is ensuring that the assets and liabilities that are attached to the financials are actually reconciled to show true amounts of money that went in and out of these accounts and the movement of that money, to see if it's equity, if it was contributions or distributions from the owner.

5:55 But the number one thing that everyone looks at, and even a Schedule C 1040 would look at, is the profit and loss statement, and that really starts with understanding what is income and defining that income and its sources and ensuring that matches to what you're seeing on the asset account. Then you gotta look at the expenses and determine what are actually true business expenses, what's cost of goods sold to get you to your gross margin. And then you gotta look at the other expenses that will essentially be your overhead, people like us, our accountants, our lawyers, the things that, uh, insurances, things that are necessary to run and maintain your business profitably and to put the proper protections in place.

6:36 But then there's this final area, and I have a few business owners that have intelligently done this ahead of time is you have other buckets in which you can separate some of these owner add backs that you'll see at the end of a deal is trying to determine what is an add back and what is not. And when you're working with a bank, the bank will have their own determination of what is an add back and what is not to let you know if you're gonna get financing and what they're gonna see as profitable business. So it's really understanding the reliability of the statements, I would say, first. And second, then understanding the communication between the statements of understanding how the P&L then flows to the balance sheet, but there's a statement in between there, and it's the cash flow statement which most people really don't have a good, strong grasp on.

7:23 Most people can understand a P&L and look at it and see what the net income would be, and they can look at a balance sheet and understand bank accounts and credit card accounts. And equity can be a little confusing for most smaller business owners, but it's the cash flow statement that really ties that question of, "Oh, I see that there's profit in my business. Why d- why does my bank account say less?" The answer is in your cash flow statement 'cause you'll see the movements of money for loan payments, paying down assets, um, and if you're seeing different, uh, equity partners that are doing contributions or distributions, this would also be a place that you'd wanna look at and understand that flow of capital.

8:05 I think you make an excellent point with respect to cost of goods sold, overhead. I think it's so common for business owners to, unfortunately, in some cases, use their business as their own personal piggy bank, right? Um, I think there's a good side of that and a bad side of that. I think the bad side of that inherently is the individuals who are just pulling everyday expenses out of their business account, which is a big no-no. [laughs] Steven- Steven's like, "Yes." [laughs] Um, and so I think, you know, generally speaking, one of the things that you had brought up was, you know, being able to look at the equity, the distributions, like how it makes sense and, and also to your point, cash flow.

8:50 I think looking at the bank account doesn't always show the big picture, right? Balance sheets are, are sort of just a snapshot at time. And so for someone who... I mean, I know a business owner, when they're looking to purchase a home or maybe refinance their home, right? It's, it's a bad idea to pull as much possible expenses out of your business because it looks like you're making less money, right? You have more expenses than you actually have income. Great from a tax perspective, horrible from a lender, a viability perspective. But I think on the flip side, you know, wondering from a seller's perspective, is it a bad idea, do you think, to run so much of the business through, you know, your own, let's say, owner's draws, right?

9:37 Maybe the owner is taking a salary, but then when there's a huge amount of c- cash just sitting around, maybe they take a huge owner's draw as additional income. And at the end of the year, it looks like the business is pretty lean. I mean, especially in a, s- like our case study, a pastry shop is pretty lean. Um, do you think it's a bad idea when someone is planning to sell their business to run it in that capacity, even though maybe they've run it in that capacity for so many years? Or do you think if you're able to explain your financial story well to a buyer or perhaps demystify the three statements you referenced, it's not so big of a deal?

10:20 I would say first and foremost is proper planning and understanding of what your goals are with a business. It's not easy to do, but when you're starting a business, once you get past that, uh, getting started phase, it's important to understand what the goals are, ultimate goals are of the business. And especially if you're getting into a partnership or something like that, that really has to be defined as, uh, you know. So from there, I kinda look at it in a perspective of maybe a young couple that's looking to purchase their first new home, right? And they go to their accountant over the past several years and they say, "Hey, I don't wanna pay any taxes." "Okay, we're gonna minimize that income, so you don't pay much taxes." But then when you go to get that loan for the mortgage, they're gonna be like, "Where's the income?" "Well, we just didn't wanna pay taxes." That's fine, but you can't have both.

11:08 And the same thing pertains here to the business is, look, there's benefits to being a business owner, right? There's, there's a lot of benefits. The government puts a lot of things in place to incentivize that 'cause it creates jobs, it creates economy, it stabilizes economy, um, pr- provides goods and services to people, and, and creates innovation. It's one of the best things about it. So they incentivize that, but you also have to think about what your goal is. So if you're looking to sell your business, you need to start thinking about that as far into the future as you possibly can and understand what the goals are. 'Cause hey, maybe 10 years out, you might be s- maximizing your, your taxes and, and trying to pay a little less in taxes.

11:49 But as you get closer to that time period, call it three, four years, you're probably gonna s- start showing more profit and more income and retain more into the business. And I think that's one of the things with the balance sheet is I don't need to see a lot there, right? A- as a, with the exception of if it's a asset-intensive business with inventory, obviously that's gonna be there, and if there's any- Liabilities or loans that will transfer with the business, you wanna be aware of that. But it's really in the profit and loss statement, and you really- one of the things that we do initially is really try to define and understand what are personal expenses versus business expenses. Because as you know, it also pierces that corporate veil and leaves- Absolutely... the business owner susceptible to litigation and liabilities.

12:36 So the more you can prove that this business is a business and it functions on its own and isn't, and it isn't just a function of your ability to buy a Tesla or something [laughs] like that, which we see all the time, is- [laughs]... you know, these Cybertrucks, which are basically just that. Oh, yeah. You, you booking one going down the road, you're like, "Tax write-off. Tax write-off." [laughs] You know. You know how people are buying these. Um, I think it's just really important to think about if you're running a business and you're running it for a profit and you're running it to ultimately be sold, well, run it that way. Run it like a CEO. Think about that in that way. Take an appropriate salary, then take your draws. No one's gonna fault you for taking money out of the business. It's your business.

13:20 But as long as you're able to define that through an other expense bucket on your P&L and your cash flow statement that shows that that movement went to your equity, that's totally fine. That, that's, that's normal. You have to... You, you need to make an income. But what people are looking for is that viability and the rela- the accuracy and reliability in the P&L statement, and make sure that that's true first. If that's true and you can see that these expenses are separated out, then it makes it easier to fall back and understand that v- uh, the viability and, um, relying on those statements and puts you in a better position. So again, I mean, it's about having the right advisors at the right time. There's just certain things you've gotta have in place that it's worth paying good money for.

14:07 It's you get what you pay for, and with good advisors on your side, they're gonna help you understand. And that's why we at the front of our engagements are asking what the goals are and try to continually ask that to make sure that they're staying in line with that, because it's easy to get distracted, especially nowadays. So- 100%. Yeah. No, I think those are excellent points. And I think, too, thinking about the case study, not only is building a financial story that makes sense on paper important for the sale of your business, especially considering that not everybody is a numbers person. Not everybody is financially literate, right?

14:49 There are people who own and operate businesses that don't know really what their, and they should, what their balance sheet and their profit and loss statements and their cash flow look, you know, actually means. Um, I think it's if you're listening to this and you're like, "I'm one of those people," you should probably put that on your 2026 goals, is to get better financial literacy in your business, that you have a better bird's-eye view of what you have going on. But speaking about this case study, I think, too, is the perspective that even when your financial story is potentially clear based on your financial records, you always run the risk of there being some additional barrier to communication.

15:30 And I think it underlines the importance of perhaps having early conversations, early meetings, where the deal isn't always at arm's length. Like, I think it's horrible when individuals get a buyer that comes in, they submit an LOI. It's all through third-party intermediaries, right? There's a bunch of brokers, or the attorneys are talking only, and unfortunately, no one is talking directly. And by default, the only communication is through documents and red lines and, you know, it gets va- very ad- adversarial, I should say. And it's, it shouldn't be that way, right? And so I think in addition to the things that Steven had underlined in terms of, like, making your business make sense on paper, I think it can also be critical to the success of the sale of your business when you have clear communication of like, "Okay, let's sit down, and I can show you, like, in the pastry shop, okay, this is how much flour we buy.

16:27 This is, this is how much our internet costs." You know? Like, and just kind of give some broad strokes, big picture idea of like, "Here's our biggest cost," right? Maybe it's not the flour in the pastry shop example, but, you know, maybe the lease. Like, if they're le- based in Scottsdale, Arizona, you know, "Here's our lease. This is the biggest cost for us," uh, which is probably pretty true besides any employees. But, um, no, I think that's super helpful, and I, I think before we move to case study number two, I wanna give Steven the opportunity to talk about why he's so knowledgeable about the profit and loss book, you know, the bookkeeping side of things. So Steven is the owner of Bookease, and I will s- I will spell that for you because Bookease sounds like, you know, it could be spelled a couple of different ways. So it's B-U-C-K-E-A-S-E.

17:17 And, uh, Steven, tell us a little bit about the services you provide through Bookease. Yeah, so Bookease is a monthly subscription model, bookkeeping CFO advisory service, and essentially, it's built on ensuring that business owners have access to clear, accurate, reliable financial data in the way of monthly financial statements, which becomes the basis of what we're talking about here. From there, we'd like to have regular conversations with our business owners for some of the reasons that we're discussing, which is goal-setting, helping them understand and demystify some of this. Because you know how to sell and market a product or service doesn't mean you have to be an expert in this. That's why you bring us on, and that's what we try to do, is we take that financial data.

18:04 Again, you did talk about communication, and that's the biggest part. And the initial whole idea of this was, "Hey, let's take-" A business and ensure they get access to clear, accurate, reliable financial data, and let's communicate it with them. Let's, let's not just make this a checkbox item of this is what we need to do monthly, but let's have regular ongoing communication to utilize this information to then look at proactive solutions, and that's where CFO Advisory comes into place, going into the budgeting and the forecasting and looking at other opportunities for growth, whether that's acquisition or looking at leverage and things of that nature, which is the, the name of our show, Leverage Ledger, uh, where Paloma was recently a, uh, a fantastic guest on, is one of the best things about owning a business is the ability to use leverage. That's the reason that the housing market, everybody loves to get involved in rental real estate because you can utilize the leverage.

19:02 You could do the same in a business, and there's good debt, and there's bad debt, and it's about using smart, good debt to help you continue to grow your business. Um, so we try to just take that financial information. We make it so that we can educate our business owners, provide other solutions and ideas, and even recently, we started working with some of these AI automation solutions of, "Hey, we see that you have this opportunity here, and if you were to increase it by this, this would be the ROI." We have some curated, vetted partners that we work with, like yourself, right, y- you know, on the attorney side and, uh, you know, with all these other partners. We work with other CPAs and EAs.

19:43 So we have these curated, vetted solutions and people and partners that we like to reach out to that we know, like, and trust, so our business owners don't have to spend the time doing it and sitting through sales meetings and all that type of stuff that is not fun for anyone. But when I look at your financials and I say, "Hey, this looks like there's an opportunity for this. Have you approached this? Have you looked at this? Is this on your radar?" I just like having, you know, a, a, a few different options for them to explore as well that I feel comfortable and confident, uh, providing to them. So yeah, the whole idea is to provide accurate, reliable bookkeeping services, provide it on a continual basis, on a monthly basis, and to have regular conversations with our vend- business owners to help them continue to grow their business.

20:28 And one of our favorite things is as our businesses grow and being a- being able, able to watch them grow into other industries and purchase more businesses and get into this mergers and acquisition side because I think that's where it gets really fun and people step out of that operator role and step more into that CEO investment type of role that I think is a lot of fun. Very true. And with that, I'd like to jump into case study number two. So this one is a hair salon, and I'm going to focus mostly on a buyer side instead of sell side with this pastry shop. So buyer was given the financial records of this hair salon, and it was quite a mess. Things were not categorized correctly.

21:13 There were estimates in terms of how much each hair treatment process, whatever you wanna call it, cost. There was some itemization, but it seemed like things were sort of estimated and not really truly from the records of the company. And in addition, like, the year over year really wasn't there, so we got kind of, you know, mostly the last year in terms of any sort of legitimate financial record. But nothing where you would expect in a traditional sense. We always wanna see a couple of years at a minimum, maybe three. Now, I know that this tends to be an issue not just with potentially a hair salon, but other businesses that can be very cash heavy.

21:56 And so it can be complicated, especially in, let's just use automotive repair companies, um, you know, body modification type stuff, things like that where a, a car repair or maybe a ser- oil servicing company, like very mom-and-pop style, right? Not Jiffy Lube. Like some- someone who's maybe very cash forward or cash heavy. Um, sometimes nail salons can be this way too, right? They always offer a discount if you give them cash because they don't have to incur the credit card processing fees. Well, with cash-based businesses, it can be exceptionally difficult to know what the truth is, and I think in the hair salon case study, that was very true. And so what ended up happening was in this scenario, the buyer decided to continue forward with the purchase, and then post-purchase, it came to light that the financials were really just very loose numbers.

22:46 It wasn't very accurate, and ultimately, that impacted the buyer's ability to pay their loan, right? Because for most people buying anywhere from a half million to $10 million small business, they're buying the business through a small business administration loan or some sort of financing. And so the financial, what would I say? The financial capability of the business really does play a role in your ability to repay that loan, and I think a lot of people are a little disconnected there. And so for someone who's a buyer, Steven, I would like to know what would be, like, if you are gonna give a checklist as a buyer to a seller, um, obviously, we talked about the balance sheet, the profit and loss, the cash flow statements.

23:33 Like, is there additional information or records that we should be asking for as a buyer? And, and if the P&L and other stuff is just kind of weak or, you know, not clear, what are some things that you could ask potentially as a buyer to try and get more clarity without over- overstepping your boundaries? It's a good question, and it's a, a common scenario. A- a- as we talk about, there's a, there's a large transfer of businesses right now from your traditional blue collar mom and pop or just, you know, generally all of our parents are getting older, and they have a lot of businesses, uh, in, in, in that generation, and now they're coming back to This generation and people are looking to purchase businesses and to instead of creating them, which is an ETA and entrepreneurship through acquisition type model, which works.

24:26 Now with the SBA administration, they have a really good success rate, right? They do a really good job of vetting out the financials and the viability of everything like that. Now, some things that can still be an issue is looking at the reconciliation. So we get the PNLs. I love to see month to month. I want to see some regular purchases. I want to see, I should see the same internet bill every month in that category and the same with all of it. And I would ask that everything be broken out because you can tie. One of the things you can think about is like statistics. Statistics can be manipulated to show one thing or another, depending on your side of the story, right?

25:09 So the same goes with financial data because it's essentially just blown up statistics is you want to be able to look through every piece of that data. So you want to verify all the income that came in with cash logs. You want to ensure that there's some type of reconciliation and countdown process. So we do that with a lot of our business owners is we create these sheets that are protected, that have these checks and balances to ensure that that are reconciled regularly, that are counted the cash regularly, because you need to know the ins and outs. If you have an expense and you have an income coming into that, it should balance at the end of the day. If it doesn't, then there's either an issue in the transactions or there's an issue in how much cash is there. And cash businesses unfortunately have a lot of theft. Now, the other part that I would say is it's important to get the reconciliation reports because you can get that per account.

25:57 So you want the credit cards, you want the bank accounts, savings accounts, all of that. There should be reconciliation reports that you could see to see if there was any adjustments made via journal entries that could throw that off. So it's really important to look at that because a journal entry that comes in after reconciliation is done can completely throw off that reconciliation. And if you're not knowledgeable on that, then you could miss that and it could easily overstate income and understate expenses and show that a business may look more profitable than it really is. So it's important to, I think one of the main things is that your business, especially when somebody's buying it, it's a very emotional thing for both sides, right?

26:40 Especially in the small business market, but your business is only as good as the financial data. You have to think about it. If you are listed as a fortune 500 company, if you're on the S and P 500 index is the viability and reliability of that financial data. So you got to ensure that you are doing regular categorization and reconciliation for someone that knows what they're doing. And then there's two ways to utilize these financial statements. And there's really two goals. And I think it's important to know that is the classification is for one to taxes, right? You want to make sure that you're filing your taxes. So when you're putting these line items in that it matches and it makes sense and you have all this. So you're maxing out your deductions and you're not overpaying on income.

27:22 But the other side is utilizing it to grow your business, to understand where there may be some leaks or maybe you're overspending. I think today it's really easy to hop on like 20 different subscriptions. People make businesses out of decreasing these subscriptions because I'm like, oh, I want to try this service. And then before I know it, like, oh man, I'm still paying for loom. I haven't used that in a little bit. And you're just watching that come out. And if you're not watching it and at least spending a few hours a month to look at that financial data, then you're going to totally miss that. So for a buyer, I think you want to get the financial data that makes sense. And then you want to ensure it's validated by somebody that has the background. If you're not knowledgeable in this, it's important to get the right advisors and partners.

28:02 So we take a look at a lot of these businesses first on the front end of helping business owners get the right information to ensure it's accurate so that when a buyer does approach them, that they're not getting pushed on their value, right? Because it's easy for somebody that's buying to say, well, this doesn't look right. And if you're the seller and you aren't strong in that financial data, then it's going to be easy to pull back some value and you're going to be losing what you're going to get at post-sale. On the same token is on the buyer side, you got to vet out and make sure that what you're buying is correct. So you want to get your vendor contracts. You want to make sure that those things are going to transfer. You want to look at the client list. You want to make sure that there's no large, one large client that can easily, if they go out of business or something changes or tariffs or something like that, that it doesn't throw off the whole business.

28:48 So these are some of the things that you want to look at and you really want to work with partners like Paloma and myself to vet out some of these things. Now, one thing I will talk about too is audited financial statements. Audited financial statements is different. Now we are not CPAs. I've did everything except sit down for the CPA exam. I got into medical device and I finally came full circle back to this. I'll eventually take the exam. I got all my credits. I just, I got two little ones. So when I get time, but the idea is that at a certain point, at a certain revenue point, you need audited financial data. And that's what a CPA does. They provide audited financial data. So we partner with a number of them to make sure, because you can get an audit on that data, a higher price tag, but it's important, especially at certain levels, you get to that $10 million point.

29:37 If you're not willing to pay a few thousand dollars to get some audit, the statements audited, then what are you really investing in? So you got to be careful with that. And especially on the smaller mid-market side of my side of business, I validate that data all the time. It's not audited, but we do our due diligence and also help the buyers and the sellers understand exactly what the numbers mean. And also if there's any ambiguity in those numbers that we're pointing that out. Before we close out this episode, I want to go back to something you said earlier, which was journal entries. And I think if someone doesn't know what you're referencing, what is a journal entry?

30:19 So a journal entry is basically transferring value from one account to another. Um, a lot of times, especially nowadays, and this is why when we talk to a lot of people, we do f- these free audits, especially this time of year of, "Hey, give me 15 minutes. Let me look at your statements and make sure this looks good." Now, i- a lot of times what we'll see is that things could be misstated easily because of payment aggregators like Stripe or POS systems like, you know, Orchid or Jobber or one of these. Because you'll see deposits come in. That's not exactly income. That's just a movement of money. That may not make up, if you have a consignor and that's payables to consignor, that may not make up sales tax payable or tips payable if you're a restaurant. There's all these things.

31:01 So journal entries help reconcile information to the proper accounts afterwards. So you might see in a clearing account $10,000 at the end of the month, but that clearing account might... Some of it's gonna be income. Some of it's gonna be sales tax payable. Some of it's gonna be merchant fees. Some of them, if you're a consignor, the, the, uh, just thinking of someone [laughs] we're working with this morning, that you wanna make sure that that's matching and they're, they're getting paid, and that sits properly in a liability account on your, on your balance sheet, and that's reducing over time. So a, a journal entry just really re- It just shifts the income buckets to balance sheet items or vice versa to make sure that the data is accurate.

31:43 Um, and at year-end, you'll typically see journal entries for things like depreciation on, uh, your assets or amortization the same way to make sure that the true value of the assets is stated at the end of the year. That's super helpful. I think for anyone who was wondering what a journal entry was, hopefully that was helpful, helpful for you. And I think, too, one thing before we close out the episode, I wanna say Steven hit on something super important in business that I think a lot of us lose sight of. It's kind of like the, you know, decentralization of cable television. We've all got Netflix and Disney+ and Hulu, and we thought we were, like, you know, saving money by getting rid of- [laughs]...

32:27 cable television, and now our, our cable television costs us, like, five times the amount because we're paying for all these individual subscriptions. And so same concept. And I love that you mentioned that, Steven, 'cause I actually, I just audited my own last year at the end of the year 'cause I was like, man, especially if you're paying annually instead of monthly, it's so easy to forget until the annual payment hits your bank account, and you're like- [laughs] ... "How did I forget to end that before it renewed?" And some of these software companies have some really strict cl- uh, terms and conditions. And so if you miss and it renews, too bad, so sad. So it is good to be on top of your subscriptions and to also audit them, to Steven's point, that you don't necessarily need Loom if you've been paying for Loom and not using it for the last six months.

33:10 So I appreciate that insight. Um- Yeah. Well, Steven, um, how can people get ahold of you if they would like to reach out for your services? Yeah. So we are, as you spelled earlier, The Book Ease, but not the kind that's breaking legs for the one that's fixing your books. [laughs] And it's, uh, The Book Ease, so T-H-E B-O-O-K E-A-S-E.com. That's our site, and you can get ahold of all of us. Our socials are at thebookease.com. And, uh, on our site, we've really worked hard to make it a curated database of information for small businesses. There's all kinds of financial calculators, rental calculators, commission calculators, W-2, W-4, 1099, W-9 information and calculators, templates, how-tos, all kinds of things.

33:58 Our goal is really to create a, um, storage of data for small businesses to utilize, uh, free of charge whenever they need it. And when they need help, that our number's right there, and they can call or reach out to us. We're local here in Phoenix, and, you know, we're just, uh, doing anything and everything we can to help as many business owners as possible. And, uh, we're doing 15-minute, uh, reviews of data where you just open up your QuickBooks. I'll take a look, and I can give you the yay or nay and let you know if it'll be... If there's a cost to fix it, and, you know, it's easy as that. This time of year, it's that important. And I'd be remiss if I didn't say you've got about 13 days to get your 1099s out, so make sure you're doing that.

34:40 And then, uh, you know, we're January 20th on the recording, but, uh, gotta make sure you're getting those out to avoid any penalties and issues like that. And then obviously your returns are gonna be due March 15th for the corporations, and then S corp or for, uh, sole props the, the normal April 15th. But figured I'd just throw that disclaimer out there. [laughs] But if you want a review of the data, feel free to reach out. We'd be happy to do so. It's a good reminder for everyone of the, the deadlines. And also, I can attest to Steven's comment that the website is full of, uh, information and resources, 'cause I personally have been on it, uh, just poking around for my own curiosity. So it's a great place to start if you're looking for additional resources. And Steven, thank you so much for being on today. Oh, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, of course.

35:24 Thank you again for tuning in to Mergers She Wrote. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our channel and drop us a comment on YouTube or one of the other stations where you can provide a comment. And we're happy to answer any questions that you might have. Look forward to seeing you another week. Thanks, and tune in again. [upbeat music] In the world of business, not all deals are what they seem. Fortunes rise, empires crumble, all with the stroke of a pen. Mergers, acquisitions, hostile takeovers. Welcome to Mergers She Wrote, where we examine strategies and stories behind the biggest deals in business. Because in M&A, the real risks are the ones you don't take.