You Don’t Need to Become an Accountant
I’ve spent a lot of my career teaching accounting to people who had no interest in becoming accountants.
Business owners. Entrepreneurs. MBA students.
People who needed to understand the numbers, but didn’t need another profession.
And I think that distinction matters.
You don’t need to know every accounting rule to run a good business.
You need to understand enough to ask good questions.
That’s a very different goal.
Your Financial Reports Aren’t the Finish Line
A lot of business owners get financial reports every month.
The income statement shows up. The balance sheet is there. Maybe there’s a cash flow report too.
But then comes the important question.
What are you supposed to do with it?
I’ve seen this more times than I can count. The numbers can be completely accurate, but the owner still isn’t sure what they mean for the business.
Should we hire?
Can we afford that equipment?
Why did sales go up while cash got tighter?
Those are business questions.
Accounting gives you information that can help answer them. But you need enough understanding to participate in the conversation.
You Need to Know Enough to Ask the Next Question
Years ago, when I wrote How Much Does It Cost to Make a Donut?, I wasn’t trying to teach business owners how to become accountants.
I wanted them to know enough accounting to be dangerous.
Not because they could prepare their own financial statements.
Because they could look at the information in front of them and ask:
What changed?
Why did it change?
Does it matter?
What should we do next?
You don’t need years of accounting education to ask those questions.
You just need enough understanding to recognize when a number deserves another look.
Your Accountant Knows Accounting. You Know Your Business.
I sometimes describe an accountant as the scorekeeper.
They know the rules. They make sure things are recorded correctly. They can tell you what happened.
But the scorekeeper doesn’t run the team.
You do.
Your accountant might see labor costs increasing. You know you hired two people because the team couldn’t keep up.
They might see revenue growing. You know one customer represents a large part of that growth.
Both sides matter.
That’s how we think about teaching at Nexagy.
We bring the financial experience.
You bring something we can’t replace.
You know your business.
Then we work through the numbers together.
The goal isn’t to make you dependent on us for every answer. It’s to help you understand enough to make better decisions yourself.
New Episode of Influencing Entrepreneurs
I recently talked about this from another angle on Influencing Entrepreneurs with Steve Rolle, entrepreneur, investor, veteran, author of The Future You Choose, and host of the Rolle with Steve podcast.
Steve has built businesses, including an e-commerce company that has generated more than $100 million in sales.
And one lesson he learned the hard way was simple.
More revenue doesn’t necessarily mean more profit.
We talked about product, margins, distribution, customer acquisition, and why understanding the numbers behind growth matters.
You don’t need to become an accountant to ask whether growth is actually making your business stronger.
But you do need to ask.
Watch the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEjgQhTq720
We’ll Be Talking More About This in October
I think there’s a gap for a lot of businesses.
They have someone doing the bookkeeping.
They’re getting reports.
The numbers exist.
What’s missing is a regular way to understand what those numbers are saying and decide what deserves attention next.
That’s something we’ve been working on at Nexagy.
And in October, we’ll start sharing more about what that looks like.
It won’t involve turning you into an accountant.
I promise.
It’s about understanding enough to ask the next good question.
Because you don’t need to know everything about accounting to make better financial decisions.
You need to understand what matters.
Then you can decide what to do with it.
Getting financial reports but still wondering what you’re supposed to do with them?
Let’s talk it through.