Scaling Smart, Not Just Fast With Natalia Zacharin

In this episode of The Same Day Podcast, Yoni Schmidt talks with Natalia Zacharin, Founder and CEO of Zacharin Consulting, about scaling without sacrificing profitability or cash flow. Natalia explains why profit differs from cash, how forecasting supports smarter hiring, and why rapid sales can magnify broken systems. She also touches on value-based pricing, exit readiness, and property-level financial reviews.

Scaling Smart, Not Just Fast With Natalia Zacharin

Natalia Zacharin is the Founder and CEO of Zacharin Consulting, an accounting and advisory firm that helps growing businesses strengthen financial clarity, profitability, and decision-making. Natalia leads the firm’s strategic direction while advising service-based founders on fractional CFO strategy, forecasting, cash flow, pricing, and scalable financial systems. She draws on her experience building the company from a solo venture into a multimillion-dollar Inc. 5000 firm to help owners create healthier, more valuable businesses.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [02:22] Natalia Zacharin’s journey from an unexpected career setback to building a multimillion-dollar Inc. 5000 firm
• [06:41] Why profitable businesses can still struggle with cash flow
• [09:17] The silent cash leaks weakening growing companies
• [11:44] How revenue predictability and labor ratios support smarter hiring decisions
• [15:37] Natalia’s approach to forecasting future cash needs, profitability, and business capacity
• [18:40] Why rapid sales growth can magnify weak pricing, inefficient systems, and operational strain
• [24:59] Natalia’s case for value-based pricing over hourly billing
• [29:41] What buyers look for in a profitable, scalable, and less owner-dependent business
• [41:46] Natalia’s framework for evaluating profitability and debt across individual properties

In this episode…

Growth can bring more revenue and opportunity while exposing weaknesses in cash flow, pricing, and operations. How can owners tell whether expansion is strengthening the business or stretching it too thin?

According to entrepreneur and financial strategist Natalia Zacharin, the answer lies in looking beyond revenue to cash, profitability, forecasting, and the systems supporting expansion. Business owners should monitor where cash is going, avoid relying on high-interest debt to cover deeper problems, and use revenue trends and labor ratios to guide hiring decisions. Natalia also recommends forecasting several months ahead, reviewing variances regularly, and correcting weak pricing or inefficient processes before increasing sales. By treating financials as decision-making tools rather than historical reports, leaders can build companies that are more stable, scalable, and valuable.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Yonatan Schmidt on LinkedIn
• Mat Zalk on LinkedIn
• Keyrenter Property Management
• Keyrenter Property Management in Tulsa | Oklahoma City | Arkansas
• Keyrenter Property Management email address: [email protected]
• Natalia Zacharin on LinkedIn
• Zacharin Consulting
• “Investing in St. Louis Real Estate: Market Trends and Opportunities With Jason Jaboor” on The Same Day Podcast
• “Using the All-In-One Loan Strategy To Pay off Properties in Half the Time With Miles Thompson” on The Same Day Podcast
• “Invest Like a Pro in Oklahoma” with Joshua Heintz on The Same Day Podcast
• Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire by Dan Martell
• Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy
• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It―A Guide to Starting a Business in a Productive and Successful Way by Michael E. Gerber
• QuickBooks
• Slack
• ChatGPT
• Claude

Quotable Moments

• “Profit starts first because the more profit you have, the more cash you’ll have.”
• “Anything that is inefficient, ineffective, not working well in your business will be exponentially worse the faster you grow.”
• “As the owner, you should constantly be thinking about how to buy back your time.”
• “Bookkeeping is one of the most important foundational things that you can do for your business.”
• “Learn to read your financials, and don’t be afraid of it.”

Action Steps

1. Track profit and cash separately: Understanding where cash goes helps uncover debt payments, distributions, and other silent drains on the business.
2. Build and review financial forecasts regularly: Comparing projections with actual results helps identify problems before they threaten profitability or cash flow.
3. Hire according to predictable revenue and capacity: Using revenue trends and labor ratios prevents premature hiring while protecting current employees from burnout.
4. Fix inefficient systems before accelerating sales: Rapid growth magnifies weak pricing, excessive costs, and broken processes instead of solving them.
5. Prepare the business for an eventual exit: Accurate financials, documented processes, steady growth, and reduced owner dependence make the company healthier and more valuable.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management.

Keyrenter Property Management is a full-service property management company that helps clients buy, renovate, and operate real estate assets.

The team helps clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management.

That’s why, no matter what rental you have — single-family homes, condos, townhomes, or apartments — they can give you the management solutions you need. 

To learn more about their services, go to https://keyrenterpmc.com/ or send them an email at [email protected].

Powered by Rise25 Podcast Production Company

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:04

Welcome to The Same Day Podcast, where we discuss driving incremental business growth and other topics related to real estate, property management, and entrepreneurship. Now to the show at hand.

Yonatan Schmidt 00:20

Hi there. Yoni Schmidt here, hosting today’s episode of The Same Day Podcast where we connect with top business and entrepreneurs, business leaders, real estate leaders, and so on and so forth. Past guests include Jason Jaboor, who’s a former co-worker of ours, Miles Thompson, an investor, and a lender. Joshua Heintz from lending one and many, many more.

Today’s episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management. At Keyrenter Property Management, we help our clients build wealth by removing the headache of owning real estate assets. Whatever property you have, we have the management solutions for you. Go to keyrenterpmc.com or email us at info at [email protected].

I’m very excited about today’s guest because today’s guest is Natalia Zacharin, Founder and CEO of Zacharin Consulting, an Inc. 5000 ranked accounting and advisory firm that helps seven and eight figure service businesses scale with clarity and confidence as a fractional CFO and profit growth advisor. Natalia has built her firm from a solo operation into a multimillion dollar business in just five years by helping entrepreneurs transform their financials from backward looking reports into forward facing decision making tools. Her philosophy is simple, but very powerful. Profit doesn’t equal cash, and more sales will not fix broken systems. Today, we’ll explore how business owners can eliminate hidden cash leaks, make smarter financial decisions, and build businesses that are not only more profitable, but are also more valuable. Welcome to the show, Natalia, and thank you for being here.

Natalia Zacharin 01:58

Thank you for having me. I’m excited to chat with you.

Yonatan Schmidt 02:01

Likewise. I’m very excited to learn, dig into this, you know, for our listeners to learn from you. Let’s start with just like your story. So, you know, you, you built your consulting firm from the ground up into an Inc. 5000 company in just a few years. Tell us a little bit about the defining moments that shaped your entrepreneurial journey.

Natalia Zacharin 02:22

Sure. So the first defining moment was I was working for somebody and they were demoting me. They were getting rid of my position, supplying into all different jobs. I was turning 50 soon, single mom, and couldn’t find another job. And I started dating someone really early on in the relationship and he gave me the original idea.

I never thought of being an entrepreneur, so he had owned several accounting firms in the past and he said, hey, you know, why don’t you start your own accounting business, your own bookkeeping business? And I thought, that’s crazy because I’ve never done anything in my life. Yeah, but I figured, oh, you know what? I can probably learn bookkeeping. You know, we’re in the best time you could ever live on this planet because you can learn anything and do anything.

We have so much access to so much information that we didn’t have when I was younger. So I was like, oh yeah, I’ll just, you know, I’ll learn some bookkeeping, I’ll get some clients. And that was in September 2018. He sent me actually a little eight week program on how to start your own business that he just sent to me. And I just worked through it in the evenings, on weekends.

And in January of 2019, I landed my first client who is still my first, who is still my client. And I had no idea what I was doing. So I sold just bookkeeping for him. And I did a lot of work for free. Yeah, I was selling it and learning and, and then it just started building from there.

And if anybody’s starting out, I just wanted to tell them. It sounds like it’s simple, but here we are. We’re in 2026. I have 17 employees. We just landed actually on the ink a second time.

So that’ll be announced next month. It it’s not that easy. And it doesn’t feel like it’s happening that quickly. When you look backwards, you’re like, oh wow, it actually wasn’t that bad. But when you’re in it and in the first year is brutal of getting, you know, figuring things out and getting new clients and doing all the things.

It is brutal. And so you’re not necessarily doing something wrong. You just have to keep doing it.

Yonatan Schmidt 04:32

Yeah. It does. It definitely does not feel like things are happening fast when you’re, when you’re starting out. So that’s awesome. And I hope that that person is still in your life because they sound like they give you some good advice.

You often say that your background gave you a different perspective on, you know, business ownership. How has it influenced the way that you serve your clients today?

Natalia Zacharin 05:00

So I don’t have a typical CPA background. And I think I think more like a business owner and entrepreneur, but I’m also very numbers oriented. And it’s actually been a huge benefit for me because I have to understand my own numbers also, to build my own business and everything that I learn for myself or anything I learned from my clients, it crosses over and it’s really helpful. And one thing I’ll say also is being a fractional CFO, and I have my own book of clients that I still see. Also, in addition to I oversee the entire team.

I get to start seeing patterns of what works. And, and I think that the fact that I wasn’t a CPA and I didn’t have the, the original training and I had to learn it all on my own while being a business owner, I learned to be a business owner first, and I know what it feels like to be a business owner rather than just being an accountant. And I can speak with very simple terms that are very understandable. I don’t hide between the accounting language or hide underneath the accounting language language because it’s just not necessary.

Yonatan Schmidt 06:08

Yeah. And it doesn’t, it doesn’t help people who don’t have business degrees. So that becomes more, more confusing, I think. Let’s talk a little bit about financial clarity, right? That’s one of the main things that you do as a fractional CFO is help business owners obtain financial clarity, where chief financial clarity, one of your core messages is that profit is not the same as cash.

It’s not the same thing. Why do so many successful businesses struggle with cash flow despite being profitable?

Natalia Zacharin 06:41

Yes, a lot of the times the first thing someone says to me when we get started is, I don’t understand why my panel is showing that I’m at $300,000 in profit and I have $30,000 in the bank. And they’re like, I don’t know where it went. And there could be several reasons why. One of the reasons is if you have old credit card debt, that’s not going to show up on your profit, but you’re still paying that down. If you have loans and you’re paying principal payments on those loans, that’s also not part of your profit.

And if you’re taking any distributions or personal expenses or going through the business, that’s not going to be on there. And there might be a couple of other reasons, but those are the three main ones. So that’s cash. And especially in a business where you have loans because you have equipment, you might have trucks, you might have, you might have bought a business and you have an SBA loan. Maybe you have an idle loan from, you know, from the Covid years.

But there’s a lot of reasons why you might have debt. And debt isn’t bad. As long as debt is, you know, something that helps you to reinvest back in the business, that’s what we call that leveraged debt. So debt is not necessarily bad, but debt is still cash that’s going out of your business on a regular basis. So you need to take that into consideration.

So profit could be higher. But if you subtract out everything they still have to pay down. That isn’t an expense. That’s actually your number right?

Yonatan Schmidt 08:06

Yeah. Yeah. So just a lot like death by a thousand paper cuts. Not noticing where your money is leaking and, and just getting a grip on that and understanding where cash is going.

Natalia Zacharin 08:18

Yes. And you know what? If as business owners, the business is really fluid with your personal life, there’s almost barely any boundary for for many people, there should be a stronger boundary, but there usually isn’t. And the business flows through you. No matter what type of corporation or LLC or anything, it’s still flows through you.

So having a budget, understanding what you’re pulling out of your business, not just payroll, but if you’re pulling out personal expenses or distributions, having a budget and doing it on a schedule and knowing how much you’re going to pull and why really, really helps to get control over it. Because we all tend to just pull money when we need it, and then we have no control. We actually don’t know where it went when we do that.

Yonatan Schmidt 09:01

Yeah. Let’s dig into that a little bit deeper. You know, aside from what you mentioned, can you think of any other big silent cash leaks that you see inside growing businesses? And how can owners identify them before they become a serious problem?

Natalia Zacharin 09:17

Yes. So let’s talk about debt first. Be very, very careful about credit card debt or any high interest debt. Not worth it. And usually when people are taking or using that kind of debt, it’s because something else isn’t working out.

Usually you don’t have enough cash or you don’t have enough profit. And profit starts first because the more profit you have, the more cash you’ll have. So so if you are in a situation where your credit cards are increasing in in amount, in the amount that you have, or you keep adding more credit cards, or if you are considering getting a high interest loan, fix the problem first because just getting an influx of cash or helping you to sustain that business is just going to get you into deeper trouble because there’s something else that’s wrong. So you don’t really want to do that. Now if you already have that, the way to get out of that is to stop using debt and get profitable first and get enough profit.

So you can cover all of that to other cash leaks. What we see a lot is as businesses grow, their expenses grow exponentially, and they’re not really keeping track of the expenses. We were talking about this a little bit earlier. One of the biggest expenses is labor. And I’ve seen businesses go from 200 000 and be more profitable than when they made it to a million in sales.

And I’ve actually become unprofitable because they started just spending more. So when there’s a lot of cash going through the business in and out, in and out, you’re thinking about all the cash going in and you see a lot of cash, and then suddenly you can’t make payroll. That’s going to be a different problem. So labor costs, you have to make sure that you’re charging enough. You have to make sure that everybody on your team is doing the work, that they’re productive, that they’re efficient, that they’re skilled, that they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and that they know what they’re supposed to be doing and making sure that they’re the right fit.

Because as a small business owner, you can’t carry the weight of someone who’s not productive or not skilled. And that’s the unfortunate truth. And a lot of us, I see business owners sometimes hiring friends and neighbors and, you know, the girlfriend of an employee and feeling bad for people because they need a job. Please don’t do that. Hire someone because they’re the best person for that job.

Yonatan Schmidt 11:33

Yeah. Yeah, we definitely see that a lot. What would you say to business owners who are saying, well, I’m hiring ahead of the need? Right. That’s something that I hear often.

Natalia Zacharin 11:44

You can hire ahead of the need, but you have to understand and create some kind of predictability in your revenue. So I would take like, if you have recurring revenue, that makes it a lot simpler, right? Like if you have a subscription type model, obviously that makes it a lot simpler. You don’t have recurring revenue. If you could just at least understand your seasonality and your trend and your growth, like, are you growing?

You know, maybe you grew 15% or 20% last year. Are you on track to do that again this year and kind of understand what that number looks like? Then you can start adding people a little bit more in advance, because you don’t want to burn out the people that you have. I’ve done that before. Yeah.

Actually, I just got a Slack from one of my managers. Please, we need to hire three people. I’m like, I know I’m working on it. So, you know, sometimes it just it happens, but you don’t want to burn out your people and you do want to hire a little bit in advance. There is a metric that really helps most businesses.

Now, some industries are really, really different. Like if you’re a pharmacy, if you’re a restaurant, if you are, let’s see what else is in that. Pharmacies, restaurants, they have a lot of cost of goods sold to that. So their metrics are going to be completely different. But if you are a service based business, if you are like a landscaping company, for instance, or even like a marketing agency or Hvac or anything like that, what we’re looking for is approximately anywhere between 200 000 and 300 000 in gross revenue per full time equivalent employee.

I’m going to break that down. That’s a lot of language, right? So you could go a little lower, but a full time equivalent employee, what does that mean? That means 8000 in salary approximately. So if someone’s making 40,000 that’s a half of an employee.

Someone’s making 120,000. That’s one and a half, right? So you kind of break it down. If you have someone at 65, just count them as one. But so you have one for every 200, 000 or so in gross revenue.

So if you’re at $1 million, you’re talking about 4 to 6 people, including the owner, because the owner is also taking a salary or a draw, right? So including the owner, because you’re still wearing a lot of hats, possibly. And if you’re not, you need to replace yourself. So that’s still going to be a person. You don’t want to go too far below that because you won’t be able to afford people.

And not everybody on your team is going to be revenue generating. You’re going to have admins and assistants and other people. But that’s a really good metric for most businesses. And that brings us into a labor to revenue ratio of between anywhere between 25 and 40%. And the minute it goes higher than that, you’re going to get you’re going to start getting in trouble Unless you’re very labor heavy business.

And there are some that are like that. But like therapy practices would be very labor heavy. But most of us can like a 35% type of a 35% labor to revenue ratio is actually perfect for most of us. Yeah.

Yonatan Schmidt 14:53

Interesting.

Natalia Zacharin 14:54

That’s one way to track it. So if you see I’m going to make 500,000 in more revenue in the next six months in three, like about two months time, you can start hiring that person because it will take a month to find a good person. And that is actually almost like the best way to do it because it’s before anybody gets overwhelmed, but you know, you’re going to really hit that capacity also.

Yonatan Schmidt 15:19

Yeah. That’s great. That’s a great tidbit to remember. Let’s talk about financial statements. You describe financial statements as a forward facing GPS instead of a rear view mirror.

Right. What does that mean in practical terms for business owners?

Natalia Zacharin 15:37

Yes. So I am a big fan of projections. Forecasts. It is a crystal ball. And I’ll tell you why, because we can kind of see from the historical data, you know, of course, obviously the foundation of every business is accurate, timely bookkeeping.

It’s really, really important. And most business owners unfortunately don’t know if their bookkeeping is correct. And almost anybody with a computer these days is saying they’re a bookkeeper. So just be careful, but make sure that it’s correct. So accurate, timely financials is really important.

They are still backward facing, but they give us a lot of data. So we take the historical data especially the last 1 to 2 years. We can start seeing trends and seasonality if there is any and growth. And then we build out. So if you’re at $1 million and you want to make it to two and that’s your goal and it’s a very reasonable goal.

Like, we don’t want to do something that’s so extravagant that it’s never going to happen because then all the numbers don’t it won’t make sense. But if it’s a reasonable goal, then we’ll build out. If revenue grows over this time period, over this percentage each month, what else would change? Well. Supplies and materials might have to increase.

If that applies, labor would have to increase after a couple of months, right? You know, payroll, if you have, you know, rent might increase if you’re growing and you have to get a new rental space. So there are a lot of different things that will be impacted by the increase in revenue. And what we want to do is plot it all out. And then we can see if we’re on target.

We can see in six, 9 or 12 months, are you going to run out of money? Are you going to if you keep going in this direction, because finance is a trend. So it’s not where you are now, it’s where you’re headed. And if you’re headed in a direction, it’s slow and you can’t even tell because it’s kind of gradual, but in nine months you might be unprofitable. So it gives us a crystal ball of if we’re in alignment every single month, what’s going to happen in the future?

And also if we’re not in alignment, why that’s also how we can improve. We can systematically tweak different pieces and get better and better each month to increase profitability and cash each month. And so we can see, are we on track? This is the projection. This is what actually happened.

And then if there’s a variance, if, if it didn’t match up, why. And that’s a discussion. And it’s really it’s not even the reports. It’s the discussion and the reports give us a piece to discuss of like, why aren’t we there? And it’s a discussion that’s the most valuable because now we can really dig in and see what’s going on.

Yonatan Schmidt 18:18

Yeah. Interesting. Let’s discuss a little bit about scaling businesses, right? Many entrepreneurs believe that, you know, the answer to every problem is just Generate more revenue, more sales, more marketing that generate more sales. Why do you believe that more sales can actually make a struggling business worse?

Natalia Zacharin 18:40

So I love sales. I originally a sales person from a million years ago and I’m I did all the sales up until last year. Now I have a sales team. I love sales, sales fixes a lot and sales will get you. It’s kind of an ego number two, because we’re like really excited.

Everybody on the Inc. 5000, that’s a sales number. They don’t look at your profit. So yeah, they only look at your sales, your revenue. But sales is great. It fixes a lot.

And if you don’t have recurring sales and you don’t have a pipeline and you’re not growing, you’re probably dying slowly. Yeah. Because in turn the economy costs going up. So you definitely want to keep growing. The problem with growing and not having any data behind it is your expenses will also be increasing, and they might be increasing at a faster rate than your sales.

Because if you’re not plotting everything and planning everything, what if your processes aren’t efficient? That if that inefficiency is going to get even worse, the more sales you have, the more customers you have. What if you are spending too much or not charging enough? So if you’re not charging enough for all the costs that you have, that’s going to be a bigger problem the bigger you are. So anything that is inefficient, ineffective, not working well in your business will be exponentially worse the faster you grow.

So you have to fix those problems.

Yonatan Schmidt 20:10

Yeah. So those problems will just be exacerbated by the added sales.

Natalia Zacharin 20:15

Yeah. And that’s an added strain also. So if you’re like I have a client right now. They grew we started working together. They were at 2 million and they’re going to hit 20 million this year.

Yonatan Schmidt 20:26

Wow.

Natalia Zacharin 20:27

And he told me recently. Yeah, it is awesome. He told me recently that he was going to have a heart attack at his desk. And I was like, well, that’s a problem. You can’t you can’t do that to yourself.

You can’t do that to the team. You’re still very much needed. And so but that’s a fixable problem. So let’s fix it now, and work on that. And usually that’s if you’re feeling completely overworked and you, and especially if, if you’re not showing for in profit, but if you feel completely overworked, that might be a problem where you don’t have the right people surrounding you.

Maybe your pricing is incorrect. So you can’t get the right people around you. Or maybe you it’s not a pricing issue. You just you need another person to take some more off your hands. And as the owner, you should constantly be thinking about how to buy back your time.

There’s there’s a lot of great books. Buy Back Your Time, I think is actually the name of a book. I think that’s Dan Martell. There’s Who Not How by Dan Sullivan.

There’s a lot of books out there on how to structure that, but it’s always trying to buy back your time so that you can be the innovator and the visionary and really build the business and keep scaling and working more on the business than in now. We’re all going to be stuck and getting, you know, working on in the business. And it’s going to, you know, we’re going to be out of the business and back in the business and out of the business back in depending on, on growth and depending on who, who’s, you know, what’s going on and who’s there. And, you know, maybe someone leaves or doesn’t work out. And so it all falls back on the owner and that’s okay.

But the goal is to get you out of that so you can keep being the innovator and the visionary.

Yonatan Schmidt 22:09

Yeah, that’s a perfect segue to my next question, which is, you know, at what point, you know, a business should a business owner stop, you know, thinking like an operator and start thinking like a CEO and what does that transition even look like financially.

Natalia Zacharin 22:25

So I think you start thinking about that as soon as possible and start thinking of what does that look like? And if you start, there’s a great book I love. I read a lot about business and, and finance and how to build a business. And it was really helpful. One book I read that I remember is TheE-Myth by Michael Gerber.

It’s like, it’s a classic. And he wrote that the CEO of, gosh, I can’t remember now the name of the company. It was a huge company. He would think about like, what would he feel like? How would he act and how would things, what would it look like if he was at a like $100 million business?

And so he kept thinking of that strategy, thinking of that vision the whole time, from the very beginning of becoming the CEO of starting this business, IBM, it was IBM. So just beginning at the starting of the business. And I think that we all need to think about that now financially. What does that look like? You have to look at your PNL.

You have to see can you afford to hire someone? You know, use that goal of, you know, about 200,000 in gross revenue per employee and keep thinking if you don’t know who you need to hire next, maybe write down everything that you’re doing. Do a time audit. Write down every task that you do and then put it into buckets. These are the tasks that maybe an admin would do.

These are tasks that, you know, like a field manager would do a foreman. Maybe these are the tasks that someone else would do, put them into buckets of jobs, you know, some because not everybody’s going to be a unicorn. The owner is always the unicorn that does everything. But everybody else is really good at their lane. So put them in lanes and then put them also into priority.

This is what I like to do. This is what I want to do. This is what I don’t like to do. And it burns me out and I don’t like it. And then you can kind of see as the tasks add at it.

Who is that next person you’re going to hire? Sometimes it takes time. Right now, I’m back in the weeds because I just lost an employee. So I took on that responsibility. And I’ll be back out probably in 60 days.

So it happens. It goes back and forth.

Yonatan Schmidt 24:35

Yeah, I’m very familiar. I’m in the weeds too. So we just lost someone as well. Yeah.

Natalia Zacharin 24:41

Yeah. But start thinking about that right away, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yonatan Schmidt 24:45

Let’s talk a little bit about pricing and profitability. You advise companies to move away from hourly billing. Why do you believe the productized or value based pricing creates healthier businesses?

Natalia Zacharin 24:59

So it depends what industry you’re in. And sometimes you have to bill by the hour. But if you can bill more flat rate, that actually is a lot more helpful. The problem with billing by the hour is that, first of all, it’s really easy for your client to not like the bill? They’re like, why did it take, you know, ten hours instead of value based billing?

Yeah. Value based. So billing by the hour doesn’t take into account your level of experience. You can increase that cost, but then it starts looking really weird sometimes. So for instance, it might take me 30 minutes to do something that takes someone else 2.5 hours to do.

I have more experience in it. Does that mean I should be penalized by being getting paid less? No, I should actually get paid a lot more, right? So usually people that are more experienced are actually faster and more productive. So you want to make sure that you are charging for that.

And I would just take what you’re doing. How many hours are you charging? What does that look like? And then kind of average it out. You’re not always going to be right.

I still don’t always price things correctly. So because we’ve always done value based pricing, sometimes we price really well and I’m happy about it. Sometimes we don’t price as well. And I’m like, oh, that was not very profitable overall, it’s profitable. So it really helps because now it’s not a it’s not a conversation about cost.

It’s a conversation about value. Did you do the job? And if someone fights back, say, look like, you know, if you want us to charge you by the hour, we can work a lot slower or we can work faster, get it done and do it correctly and do it even better. But it’s going to be this cost.

Yonatan Schmidt 26:40

Yeah. Interesting. What’s one pricing mistake you see almost every business making?

Natalia Zacharin 26:46

One is pricing according to competition and not pricing according to what the business needs. So yeah, I would not price according to your competition. Who cares? You’re different. People are going to buy from the company the values of the company, their experience, what they do, maybe even their reviews.

I’m an accounting firm. I don’t have a lot of reviews, but I have some. Yeah. But, you know, it’s but depending. Depending on what?

You know, like the people still buy from people. We are not the least expensive. In fact, I had a client once a prospect come to me and say, can you do this cleanup of two the accounting cleanup like no bookkeeping done for two years. Can you do these two years for two different entities? So I quoted him, he had a conversation, apparently with his banker, and the banker said, that’s so expensive.

I could find you someone at $300 a month. We’re going to be a lot more than $300 a month. And this was like a multi-million dollar business. And I back, I said, well, taking advice on accounting from your banker is like taking advice from your dentist. When you have heart disease, like there’s no match there.

First of all. And second of all, why stop at 300? You can, I’m sure you could find someone for ten because like now we’re talking about quality at that point. And he hired us. So.

Yeah. Yeah. So don’t price according to your competition price according to what you need. What you need is on your PNL. If you’re not profitable.

And the other problem is we’re not increasing pricing because we feel scared, especially we have an economy the last two years since 2025 because of the tariff talks and now the Iran war. It’s been a little bit weird for the economy. So sales flatter than normal. I’m seeing pretty flat sales across the board. Expenses are going up.

So now we’re all getting crushed. Our profit is getting crushed because fuel is up, insurance is up, labor is up, supplies materials are up. But we’re feeling, you know, our revenue might be a little bit flat or down and we’re afraid to increase prices, but you’re going to have to because it’s going to eat away at your profit. So at some point you’re going to have to have a price increase. And honestly, everybody’s doing it right now because all prices are increased.

So it’s actually normalized to do that. But according to your competition price, according to your PNL.

Yonatan Schmidt 29:17

Yeah. Great advice. Let’s talk a little bit about business value for those who, you know, maybe thinking about an exit in the future, even, even those owners who aren’t thinking about an exit or planning to sell their business should build businesses that are sellable. What are the characteristics that make a company valuable in the eyes of a buyer?

Natalia Zacharin 29:41

Yes, great question, and I would hope I want everybody right now, today to start thinking about their exit, even if they’re never planning an exit, because you are going to exit one way or another, either you’re going to die or you’re going to sell. Yeah, you are going to exit. So let’s be realistic and start thinking about it because you actually build a healthier business. If you plan your exit, even if you stay in the business forever. What we all want to do as business owner is as business owners is to make money, build wealth, improve the lives of our employees and our customers or clients, and maybe even the community.

And to not have to work so hard that we die of a heart attack like the other guy was, right? So, and all of those are very honorable, valuable things to want. And there’s nothing wrong with making money. In fact, you can do more good in the world if you have money. So I’ve been both.

I’ve been in poverty and I’ve and I’ve been here with a multi-million dollar business. I like it here a lot more, and I can help a lot more and support a lot more people in the community. And, and, you know, everything. So always thinking about the exit means profitability. You have to be profitable.

So when, when a buyer is looking at your business, they’re looking at several things. They’re looking at growth sales. Are you growing on a regular basis? You don’t have to have a massive growth trajectory. You just have to show that you’re not shrinking.

So as long as you’re growing, even if it’s just 10 to 15% a year and it’s stable, that’s what they’re looking for. And they’re going to look back 3 to 5 years. They want to see what’s been happening. So growth is one of the things that they’re looking for. Does the growth depend on the owner?

So in the beginning it’s always going to depend on the owner eventually. You don’t want it to only depend on the owner. Maybe you start doing ads or you have some marketing, or maybe you even have a sales team or a call center or something else. But eventually you want the owner to be out of that growth, right? So you can still be the brand.

You can, you can be the face of the business, but you don’t want to be in charge of the growth necessarily. So that’s the top line that they’re looking at. Then they’re looking at the expenses and they’re looking at the profitability. Has the profit gone down? It has it gone significantly?

Is there a reason for it to go down? Does it make sense? As we grow, our profit will go down because sometimes we’ll invest heavily into something like advertising and marketing and sales. So we might invest into that. It doesn’t always work out immediately.

And so the profit will go down, but then you want it to go back up. So you want to have a reason why the profit is going down and show that it goes back up. So those are, you know, a number of different things growth, profit, cash in the bank. Does the business have a healthy amount of cash? How much debt does the business have?

Is it bad debt like credit cards and high interest? Or is it debt because you have, you know, equipment and trucks and things that you need that give you an ROI, a return on investment, and they help you do your business. And then lastly, they’re looking at how much is the owner involved in the day to day because your business is not sellable. If the business is you. So a buyer is looking at your business and thinking, if I buy this business and the owner steps down, can I take it over without any trouble?

So those are the main things that we need to work on is growth, profit, cash, not, you know, not having bad debt or even a lot of debt and being more and more of the shareholder and rather and a business owner rather than an employee of the business.

Yonatan Schmidt 33:27

Yeah. And if someone wants to exit their business in the next 5 to 10 years, what are the financial decisions that they should be making now?

Natalia Zacharin 33:36

Start now. Don’t be like, I want to sell my business next year. You’re too late. You’re not going to get a good deal necessarily. Start now and be always ready, always ready to exit your business or or working towards it.

So first of all, I definitely have a great financial team. You want to make sure your bookkeeping, your finances is spotless. Spot on. Correct. Doesn’t have any gaps, doesn’t have a lot of personal expenses mixed in.

And, and that it’s accurate and that it’s been done well. And you definitely don’t want to be caught off guard and have like no financials when someone’s interested in a conversation with you, because then you don’t have any, any leverage there. If you don’t have the financials, having good financials is the difference between selling a business and on multiples of what it’s worth, and then selling it just to get rid of it. We had a business owner. It’s he’s actually a franchise owner.

And he had a buyer that was interested in him. We provided the financials because we know how to the buyer is interested in different financials than a regular person would be. So we pull out information as a benefit to owner that doesn’t pertain to the sale of the business. And we sent it and they offered him 11 times his gross revenue.

Yonatan Schmidt 34:57

Wow.

Natalia Zacharin 34:58

His other the buyer wanted to buy like a group of them. The other ones, they only offered 1 to 2 times. So. Wow. Great.

Financials are extremely sellable valuable. So get a financial system in place. Get the right financial people in your life. They don’t have to work for you directly. You can, you know, have them fractionally as well.

Make sure you’re getting out of all of everything. Oh, and start, start getting all of your statement of, of, of work, your, your, your processes, all of them, all of your operations and all of your processes have them all documented.

Yonatan Schmidt 35:38

Nice.

Natalia Zacharin 35:39

Does what and everything and everything just start talking. Just talk into Claude or ChatGPT and have them write your essay op SOPs for you.

Yonatan Schmidt 35:48

Yeah. Perfect segue looking ahead and, you know, bringing AI into the conversation, right? It’s AI is changing accounting and forecasting, financial reporting as we know it. How do you see the role of a trusted financial advisor evolving over the next five years? And where does the human element, you know, remain irreplaceable?

Natalia Zacharin 36:11

Yes, a really good question. You know, of course, none of us know if you ever listen to Alex Hormozi. He’s saying that all, all entrepreneurs, they feel like they’re running a race, they’re getting in shape while they’re running the race, and they have no idea where the finish line is, if there’s even a finish line. So none of us really know. However, I still think there’s going to be a really big place in human, a place for humans in the accounting industry.

The lower level positions will not will not be necessary. Their data entry. A lot of the data entry is gone already with, you know, QuickBooks and, and then, you know, it draws down most of the data entry. We just have to make sure it’s correct. However, a person that doesn’t have really good financial background will still not really be able to do well because they won’t be able to review the data and make sure it’s okay.

So I think we’re the bookkeeper position is probably going to be gone, and the controller level and CFO level will be even more valuable. Even the controller level is kind of starting. It might not, you know, eventually might go away. But right now you can ask ChatGPT or Claude or any, any of those systems. You can create an agent and you can ask them to be your CFO.

The problem is that you don’t know how to prompt it because you don’t know what to ask. Just like I’m sure ChatGPT, ChatGPT can tell me how to do heart surgery, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to do it successfully. I just read that right, because I don’t have the experience. So one of the things that CFOs do is they don’t just look at patterns, but a lot of the analysis is actually also about mindset, about how the owner responds, how the what kind of an owner or business owner they are for their business. And there’s a lot of the human element.

So for instance, we had an issue where the numbers didn’t make sense, the data didn’t make sense. It was an IT firm and they weren’t getting any new sales. And I kept asking for the information from the sales manager and the data didn’t make sense. He was like, I’m making 400 calls. And, and I’m like, but there’s no leads.

Like there’s nothing. If you’re making 400 calls every couple of days, you would, you would sell you would, you would.

Yonatan Schmidt 38:30

Your phone should be ringing nonstop. I mean.

Natalia Zacharin 38:32

Yeah, that’s just a numbers game at that point, right? Yeah. Even like the worst sales person will eventually sell if they’re, if they’re putting enough effort in, right? So no sales, no sales. And so finally we went back and forth and finally the owner had a conversation.

The sales rep or sales manager was faking all of that data he was putting in wrong. He wasn’t doing it. And I don’t think that AI could catch bad data. So if someone is inputting bad data, it just it might say this doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t really know why. And a lot of times it’s understanding human psychology and having conversations that makes it more important.

And to be honest, you know, a CFO or CFO work is part strategy. It’s part mindset, and it’s part therapy because it’s really hard to be a business owner.

Yonatan Schmidt 39:20

Yeah, it really is. Okay, I’m going to try something new on this podcast because we don’t really I don’t normally do this, but I’m calling it the lightning round. I’m going to spit fire some questions at you and let’s see, you know how this goes. What’s the single most important financial KPI every business owner should know without looking it up?

Natalia Zacharin 39:39

I would say profit. Profit percentage profit.

Yonatan Schmidt 39:43

So gross profit. Net profit.

Natalia Zacharin 39:46

Yeah. Net profit. I would say net profit and cash because those are two separate numbers. So you can actually need to look at both. Okay.

I’m going to actually even say if you only want one, one, one is if you don’t have cash, it doesn’t matter what you have. You don’t have a business if you don’t have any cash. So cash is probably number one.

Yonatan Schmidt 40:03

Okay. Thank you. What’s one financial report every owner should review every Monday morning?

Natalia Zacharin 40:09

I, I would look at the PNL. I’d look at it month to date, year to date. If you don’t have it every single Monday morning, look at your panel and look at your forecast. Are you on track to make the numbers that you said you would this month?

Yonatan Schmidt 40:26

Cool. What’s the biggest accounting myth you wish would disappear?

Natalia Zacharin 40:33

I wish that people would understand that accounting. Bookkeeping is one of the most important foundational things that you can do for your business. Don’t cheap out on it. Don’t hire your mom or your sister to do it or your office manager. Hire a professional and it makes all the difference.

Yonatan Schmidt 40:54

Yeah, it is the language of business. Yes. If you could give every entrepreneur one financial habit, what would it be?

Natalia Zacharin 41:02

It would be to learn to read your financials and don’t be afraid of it. Money, taxes. It’s all really triggering for most people. It’s still there. Just because it’s triggering doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t change anything, but you actually will start seeing patterns in the data and it’ll make a lot more sense to you.

So don’t be afraid.

Yonatan Schmidt 41:19

Awesome. Thank you. Okay. One scenario question that I wanted to bring up is imagine if you had a financial. Imagine I hand you financials of a typical property management company doing $12 million in annual revenue without meeting the owner.

What are the first three things that you would look to determine whether that business is healthy or quietly headed into trouble?

Natalia Zacharin 41:46

So property management, do you mean like short term rentals.

Yonatan Schmidt 41:50

Long term single family, just like a Keyrenter.

Natalia Zacharin 41:53

Okay, okay, so long term rentals, I would say, let’s look at it’s really important to look at each property separately. You have like a separate P&L per property. That would be really, really important. That’s one of the key things to look at because you don’t want to have one property carrying the weight of the other. There are some other metrics.

Are you planning on flipping or selling or are they just rentals?

Yonatan Schmidt 42:19

Just rentals?

Natalia Zacharin 42:20

Yeah, I would say look at profitability by property and then look at your debt ratio per property, because every month it should be getting better and better and better.

Yonatan Schmidt 42:32

Nice, awesome. To our listeners who are investing in real estate, take that advice and implement it. I know it’s easier said than done, Natalia.

Natalia Zacharin 42:43

Tax strategies is to invest in real estate.

Yonatan Schmidt 42:46

Oh yeah. Take that depreciation. It’s addictive. Yes. Natalia, thank you so much for being here with us, educating me about your world, about your firm helping our listeners and other entrepreneurs just become more familiar with growing successful businesses.

Natalia Zacharin 43:07

Thank you so much for having me. We do have a special page for your audience where they can get a link to the podcast. And also there’s a download for 7 Ways To Find Money in Your Business Now and the Ultimate Checklist for a Financially Successful Business. And that would be under www.zacharinconsulting.com/sameday.

Yonatan Schmidt 43:25

And it will be in the comments below. So you can just click that and you’ll find it.

Natalia Zacharin 43:31

Thank you.

Yonatan Schmidt 43:32

Thanks so much.

Natalia Zacharin 43:33

For having me.

Outro 43:37

Thanks for listening to The Same Day Podcast. Tune in to a new show each week and be sure to subscribe to get future episodes.