Building a successful business takes a lot of work. You've put in the hours, found your clients, developed your services, and created something that supports you and the people who depend on your business.
But as your business grows, the financial side can become harder to keep up with.
Maybe you have a bookkeeper, accounting software, and a collection of prized spreadsheets. You know money is coming in and going out, but you don't always feel confident about what the numbers are telling you. You might wonder which services are actually profitable, why certain expenses keep increasing, or whether you can comfortably afford that next hire or investment.
You have plenty of financial information, but getting a clear picture of what's happening in your business still feels harder than it should.
That's exactly why I created Tend & Balance (T&B).
I believe business owners deserve more than a set of financial statements that show what happened last month. They deserve financial information they can trust, understand, and use to make decisions about the business they're working so hard to build.
Here's a little more about how I got here, what inspired me to create T&B, and the kind of support I want to bring to established service-based businesses.
A Background in Understanding How Things Work
Before starting Tend & Balance, I spent eight years working in mechanical engineering, followed by another five years in analytics engineering across four startups.
While those fields might seem pretty far removed from bookkeeping, there was a common thread throughout my work: I loved understanding how things worked and figuring out how to make complicated systems work better.
A big part of my work involved collaborating with people to understand what they needed. I loved connecting with them not just about what they were doing but why they were doing it.
Based on the context I got from these conversations, I got really good at translating what people were telling me and what they needed into the data actually required to take action.
Of all the departments I worked with in my data roles, I was particularly drawn to how financial data shapes decisions.
For years I worked remotely in larger organizations and startups. While that experience was invaluable, I found I wanted to work with the people behind smaller businesses and feel more connected to the communities they served.
I realized that my experience in engineering and data could be especially valuable in bringing together the technical side of building reliable systems with the human side of understanding what a business owner actually needs to know.
And that's where the idea for Tend & Balance started taking shape.
The Problem Wasn't a Lack of Information
During my time working in analytics, I saw a problem that came up again and again.
Businesses would collect loads of information, build reports, and create dashboards, but the people who needed that information didn't always know what to do with it.
Sometimes the reports didn't provide the answers they actually needed. Or sometimes the information wasn't organized in a way they could actually understand.
When I started looking more closely at small business finances, I saw a similar problem.
Business owners might have accounting software, a bookkeeper, bank statements, payroll reports, and organized spreadsheets. They could tell you how much money came in last month or how much they spent on expenses.
But could they tell you if they have enough cash to last the next six months?
Or which services were contributing the most to the business?
Or why their expenses were increasing?
Or if they could afford to hire someone or make a larger investment?
Often, the answer was no.
The information existed, but it wasn't necessarily connected, organized, or explained in a way that helped the owner understand the business.
I wanted to change that.
When Your Business Gets More Complex, Your Financial Picture Doesn't Need to Get More Confusing
As a service-based business grows, there's naturally more to keep track of.
You might add new services, bring on contractors or employees, work with more clients, use additional software, or introduce new ways of delivering your services.
All of those changes affect your finances.
I kept coming back to three challenges that I wanted to help business owners solve.
1. Getting a Complete Picture of the Business
Financial information often lives in several different places.
You might have accounting software, payroll, payment processors, project management tools, spreadsheets, and other systems that each hold a piece of the puzzle.
Your accounting software may show your revenue and expenses, but it doesn't necessarily tell the whole story of how your business operates.
You may know how much money came into your bank account, but not how that revenue connects to the services you provided or the costs involved in delivering them.
When information is scattered across different systems, it becomes difficult to see how everything fits together. You end up spending time pulling information together instead of using it to understand your business.
2. Understanding What's Actually Driving Performance
Knowing your total revenue and expenses is important, but those numbers don't always tell you what's happening underneath the surface.
Maybe revenue is growing, but you aren't sure which services are driving that growth.
Maybe expenses have increased, but you don't know whether that's because of higher operating costs, additional contractors, or changes in how you're delivering your services.
You might even have a general sense that certain services are more profitable than others, but you don't have the information to understand the difference.
Without that visibility, it's difficult to know where your business is doing well and where there might be room for improvement.
3. Making Decisions With Confidence
Eventually, most established business owners reach a point where they need to make bigger decisions.
Should you hire someone? Increase your prices? Add a new service? Invest in a new tool or piece of equipment? Change the way you deliver your services?
These decisions can have a meaningful impact on your business and your personal life.
But if you don't have a clear understanding of your current financial position, it's hard to evaluate your options.
You might make decisions based on your bank balance, a rough estimate, or simply a gut feeling. Sometimes you put off decisions because you don't have enough information to feel comfortable moving forward.
I don't think business owners should have to operate that way.
I Believe in Strong Foundations and Sustainable Progress
A lot of my personal life probably gives you a pretty good idea of how I approach my work.
If you follow me on social media, you've probably seen some combination of garage gym workouts, healthy meals, post-surf pictures, walks with my dogs, and beach volleyball.
I've been an athlete for most of my life. I played volleyball in college and continued playing competitive beach volleyball afterward. At 5'5", I wasn't exactly built like the typical beach volleyball player, but I learned that success isn't always about having the most obvious physical advantages.
It's about understanding the game, developing your strengths, and consistently working on the fundamentals.
I want to do this sports thing for as long as I can. As such, I've always been drawn to a balanced approach to fitness and nutrition. I enjoy eating well and staying active, but I'm not interested in extreme routines or approaches that are impossible to maintain long term.
For me, it's about finding a rhythm that supports the life I want to live.
I think about business finances in a similar way.
You don't need to obsess over every number or create an overly complicated financial system. You need a strong foundation, the right information, and a consistent way to understand what's happening in your business.
A Different Kind of Financial Partner
I didn't want to create a bookkeeping service that simply recorded transactions and sent over reports. I wanted to build a practice that combines bookkeeping, financial systems, and business-specific financial insight.
My approach starts with understanding the business itself.
What services do you offer? How do you make money? What does it take to deliver those services? What are your biggest expenses? What questions do you wish you could answer about your business?
Those questions help shape the financial systems and reporting that will actually be useful to you.
At T&B, the work generally falls into three connected areas:
Establish: Build a Reliable Financial Foundation
Before you can understand your financial performance, you need information you can trust.
This means getting to know your business, understanding how money moves through it, and making sure your financial systems are set up to capture the information that matters.
Depending on where you're starting, this might include cleaning up bookkeeping, setting up or improving accounting software, organizing income and expenses, and connecting the systems that hold important financial information.
The goal is to create a foundation that supports the way your business actually operates.
Understand: See What's Happening in Your Business
Once the foundation is in place, the focus shifts to understanding your financial performance.
This includes ongoing bookkeeping, reconciliations, financial reporting, and regular reviews of what's happening in your business.
But it's not just about sending you reports.
I want to help you understand what the numbers are showing, investigate changes, identify trends, and look more closely at things that deserve attention.
You should be able to understand how your business is performing, where your money is going, and what's contributing to your results.
Decide: Make Informed Business Decisions
Understanding your financial performance is important, but what do you do with that information?
Maybe you're considering hiring someone, changing your pricing, investing in the business, or introducing a new service. These decisions can have a meaningful impact on your business and your personal life.
By looking at your financial history and exploring different scenarios, we can evaluate what those decisions might mean for your business. You'll have a better understanding of the potential costs, financial implications, and tradeoffs involved.
This isn't about telling you exactly what to do or predicting what will happen. It's about giving you the financial insight to weigh your options, understand the implications, and make decisions that align with your business goals.
Together, these three areas connect the dots between your financial foundation, understanding your business performance, and making informed decisions about what's next.
It's About Understanding the Business Behind the Numbers
One of the things I've always enjoyed about my work is getting to understand how people think and how their businesses operate.
I like asking questions, connecting the dots, and figuring out why something is happening rather than just addressing the surface-level issue.
At one of my previous jobs, coworkers told me that working with me was like having someone "in their brain."
I took that as a pretty great compliment.
It's important to me that the people I work with feel understood. I want to know what they're trying to accomplish, what's frustrating them, and what they wish they could see more clearly.
I also believe that understanding a business means understanding what the owner actually wants from it.
Not every decision needs to be about maximizing profit.
Maybe one of your services brings in the most revenue but takes significantly more time and energy to deliver. Maybe another service is less profitable but gives you more flexibility and fits better with the life you want.
Those details matter.
Financial information should help you make decisions that support both your business and your goals. It shouldn't make you feel like you need to chase every possible dollar at the expense of everything else.
My role is to help you understand the financial side of those decisions, explain what the numbers are showing, and give you information you can use to evaluate your options.
You're still the one making the decisions. I'm here to help you make them with a clearer understanding of the financial picture.
The Kind of Future I Want to Help Create
I want to see more small business owners who feel confident about their finances and the decisions they're making.
Owners who aren't constantly piecing together information from different systems or wondering whether they can trust their reports.
Owners who understand which services are supporting their business, where their money is going, and what their financial position means for the decisions ahead.
I want financial information to feel less intimidating and more useful.
I want business owners to have the freedom to focus on the parts of their business they enjoy, knowing that the financial side is being taken care of and that they have someone who can help them understand what it all means.
One of the most encouraging pieces of feedback I've received came from someone who was considering working with me. Before we even had our first conversation, I had the opportunity to look through their financial information and share some initial observations.
Their response was:
"I finally feel optimistic."
That really stuck with me.
It reminded me that having someone take the time to understand your business, look at your numbers, and help make sense of what's happening can change how you feel about your financial situation.
That's the kind of experience I want T&B to provide.
Not just accurate bookkeeping. Not just another report. A clearer understanding of your business and a financial partner who wants to help you make sense of it.
Let's Make Your Numbers Make Cents
If your business has grown, your financial systems and support should grow with it.
You shouldn't have to become a financial expert to understand how your business is performing. And you shouldn't have to make important decisions without knowing what the numbers are telling you.
You deserve financial information you can trust, insight that actually relates to your business, and support that helps you feel more confident about what's next.
That's why I created Tend & Balance.
If you're ready to get a better understanding of your business finances and build a financial foundation that supports where you're headed, I'd love to talk.
Let's get to know your business, talk about what you're trying to accomplish, and see how we can make your numbers make cents.
