Profit First For Minority Business Enterprises

by Susanne Mariga, Mike Michalowicz (Foreword by)

Overview

It's time to level the playing field!

You are accustomed to being the first-the first to go to college, the first to start a business. You often enter rooms where no one else looks like you. You're a trailblazer on a mission to create a new legacy for your family.

And yet, despite your success, you still work too hard for too little cash.

In Profit First for Minority Business Enterprises, Susanne Mariga, CPA, shows you how to implement the proven Profit First cash management system that has lifted thousands of entrepreneurs out of the struggle and into success. This book is designed to give you the mentorship you need to scale smart into an independent, seven-figure, minority business enterprise.

In this book, you'll learn:

• How to apply Profit First to improve cash flow, reduce debt, and grow profit
• Strategies for revenue generation, target pricing, and margin maximization
• Expense prioritization techniques
• Power alignment and team building tools
• Secrets of-and common illusions about-successful government contracting
• Tax strategies designed to build generational wealth while maximizing business profitability
• How to make an impact in your industry when no one else looks like you

We have committed a percentage of the proceeds from this book to send girls to school in Zimbabwe. So, when you purchase Profit First for Minority Business Enterprises, you contribute to an education that will alter the life of a Zimbabwean girl. By allowing young women to receive an education, not only do you alter their future, but you pivot the future of their offspring for generations to come. Thank you for being part of our mission of changing legacies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781735775906
Publisher:	Avant-Garde Project, LLC
Publication date:	05/25/2021
Pages:	238
Sales rank:	641,933
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.54(d)

About the Author

Susanne Mariga is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and Certified Tax Coach specializing in business and personal tax planning. Over the past two decades, Susanne worked for Big 4 accounting firms and, in her own firm, has helped thousands of clients achieve their business goals. A Certified Profit First Professional (PFP) at the Mastery Level, she is also a Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA), as designated by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). She is the host of the Profit Talk Podcast. Find the podcast and more at susannemariga.com.

MIKE MICHALOWICZ launched and sold two multi-million dollar companies and is co-founder of Profit First Professionals, a membership organization of accountants, bookkeepers and business coaches who teach the Profit First method. He is a former columnist for The Wall Street Journal, is a popular speaker and has shared his insights on business and entrepreneurship at TEDx, creativeLIVE, INCmty and others. He is the author of The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. His columns have appeared in Entrepreneur Magazine, Open Forum, and Harvard Business Review.

Table of Contents

Ndatenda! Thank you

Foreword By Mike Michalowicz

Introduction

Chapter 1: A Better Way

Chapter 2: Take Your Profit First

Chapter 3: Profit First: Target Allocation Percentages

Chapter 4: Live Your Truth

Chapter 5: Define Your Outcome

Chapter 6: You Decide Your Worth: Revenue and Pricing

Chapter 7: The Illusions of Millions: Government Contracts

Chapter 8: Expenses = Stewardship

Chapter 9: Eat the Frog

Chapter 10: Build a Powerful Team

Chapter 11: Enter New Rooms

Chapter 12: Increase Profits Through Tax Strategies

Chapter 13: Embrace an Environment of Continuous Improvement

Chapter 14: Create a Bold, New Legacy

Acknowledgements

Editorial Reviews

06/07/2021

Upbeat, practical, and written with persuasive power, Mariga’s guide to achieving profit and success as a minority business owner expands upon and refines the approach laid out by Mike Michalowicz in Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine, the 2014 book that proved essential to the success of Mariga’s own minority-owned business (MBE). Mariga—a tax accountant, entrepreneur, and first-generation millionaire—reintroduces Michalowicz’s insights and precepts, such as his insistence that business owners prioritize their own profit and escape the trap of “entrepreneurial poverty” (poverty “of mind, money, time, and life”) that so often overwhelms business owners.

The “Profit First” system centers on business owners paying themselves first rather than living on whatever scraps of revenue are left over. A central insight: Toss out the classic equation that states Revenue minus Expenses equals Profit in favor of Revenue minus Profit equals Expenses. Mariga supplements clear-eyed, pragmatic advice about how to achieve that goal (you need at least five bank accounts!) with accounts of her own success story, enlightening interviews with other owners of MBEs, and consideration of issues specific to minority business owners, such as how to approach it when you “enter crowded rooms in which no one else looks like you.” Her advice is that of an accountant and a first-rate coach: “If you are invited into that room, then you belong in the room. So, you act like you belong in the room and you own it.”

Mariga offers wisdom on staffing, on when to turn down business, on the urgency of paying down debt and not living above your means. Even passages on familiar topics like setting achievable goals pulse with fresh insight. She’s an inviting, memorable writer who will make readers laugh with an on-point aside about dining at the Golden Corral and then, just pages later, drop truths about mentoring, target allocation percentages, and the 1919 Elaine massacre.

Takeaway: A standout guide to profitably running a business, aimed at minority entrepreneurs.

Great for fans of: Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine, Carla A. Harris’s Strategize to Win.

Production grades Cover: A Design and typography: A- Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A

BookLife Reviews

"....invaluable to entrepreneurs of all kinds. A vigorous and highly readable plan for building the finances of a new business." ~ Kirkus

"Anyone, Mariga counsels, can change the legacy they have inherited and become the first-generation financial success story in their family.

Highly recommended for fans of Michelle Singletary, Patrice Washington, Tiffany Aliche, David Bach, and Suze Orman" ~ blueink Review

From the Publisher

2021-04-07
A program of cash-management techniques for aspiring entrepreneurs, aimed at a minority readership.

At the beginning of this business book, Mariga reflects on the birth of her daughter, Florence, and on the depressing prospect of returning to her corporate job and missing some of her baby’s early moments. She realized that she “wanted to show Florence…that I could, that she could, that anyone could be anything they wanted to be in this world.” To that end, she wanted to start her own business, and she “wanted to help entrepreneurs build successful businesses that provide opportunities for others.” In a sentiment reflected by others she’s interviewed, she says that she wanted to strengthen her family legacy, so she founded her own accounting firm. She paints a vivid picture of the hardscrabble early days of other minority business owners like herself, the child of an African American mother and a Chinese father who also had a family accounting business. She and others were “all hustling to acquire clients and build our businesses…and most of us had absolutely nothingto show for it.” She was inspired by Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First money management system, and the bulk of her book is devoted to an explanation of how to make this system work for minority business enterprises. (Michalowicz provides a foreword to the book.) One of the primary goals of Profit First is to build “a self-sustaining, debt-free company,” so a large part of Mariga’s work deals with the details of managing finances, building and abiding by budgets, and handling the swings of emotion that occur every step of the way. As sharply focused as these insights are, the author’s recollections of her own experiences are more rewarding, as when she tells readers of her brief time as a cut-rate accountant and learning that it was a mistake to try to compete on price. These stories, as well as financing specifics and clear encouragements (“Small changes and adjustments accumulate. Over time, they will lead you to your goal”), will make this book invaluable to entrepreneurs of all kinds.

A vigorous and highly readable plan for building the finances of a new business.

Kirkus Reviews