Articles • Wanderwell Consulting & Bookkeeping

3 Things to Review Before the End of this Sh$%show Year

This is the month that I’m most elbow deep in numbers with clients and myself — time to look back on the financials and see what worked and what didn’t, and also what to tweak for next year. All the normal stuff: how was profit? Can I hire? Except… this year was a shitshow of unexpected horrors, and maybe a few delights depending on your circumstances. There are a few extra things I’m looking at with clients and with Wanderwell that I want to pass along to you: 💸 Look at Revenue changes directly due to Covid: What was the […]

Rest as Resistance

I’ve been a bit quiet over here as I took my first vacation of 2020 for the last couple of weeks of August. If you’ve been following along for awhile, you know I take breaks seriously: usually a week quarterly to step away, get off email, and rest. We’ve built Wanderwell’s work culture to prioritize engaged productivity and healthy boundaries, rather than a constant grind. Among many other things, 2020 is the year all my best-laid rest plans went to shit. My one attempt at a break in the spring was overtaken by PPP applications, and perhaps like you, dear […]

How To Do More Good With Your (business’s) Money.

This article is an expansion of a talk and workshop Kate Strathmann presented as part of the What Work’s Networks conference on Money & The New Economy in June 2020. Let’s start with money itself. Money is an inert substance, part of the collective imaginary invented by humans. It moves by the actions, channels, and energies of people in relationships. And we imprint on money our own ideas about power, values & value, and worth. Businesses are entities that exist to make money. Often in the context monetary exchange, meaning, we exchange money for goods or […]

Resources for A Global Pandemic & Economic Crisis

Below are a number of links to resources that Wanderwell has been creating through the Covid-19 Pandemic. An ongoing list and resource for financial relief options. We’re continuing to update this list as new opportunities for funding are launched. Includes national, government, PA & Philadelphia, NY, and other resources. Federal Relief Program information. in depth information on federal Payroll Protection Program (PPP) and SBA EIDL loans, as well as tax credits available. A group for People that Employ Other People So many of us are figuring this out day-by-day. How do we balance care for our people and care for […]

The problem with “Charge What You’re Worth”

Steps Towards Building an Equitable Business. Lately I’ve been thinking more than ever about pricing, access, and the assumptions we are, often unconsciously, baking into our business models. Particularly for those of us who have high-priced consulting or coaching services as all or part of our business, I’m thinking about how these models intersect with unearned privilege, and, for our (we, meaning earth dwellers) current place in the most economically stratified time in modern history. There’s a high stakes question that I’ve been asking since beginning my business, that continues to help guide my vision (with a touch of […]

An Opinionated Overview of Financial Services for Your Business

We get asked all the time to explain the different players on your business finance team. It can be confusing at first, because the roles can overlap; there are CPA bookkeepers and bookkeeping strategists. Below is a rundown on the three key pieces to seek out as you grow your business: Accountants, Bookkeepers, and Consultants/Strategics. Accountant / CPA – What they do: Primarily taxes! Federal, state and any local taxes. Most will approach your business finances from the perspective of taxes, rather than day-to-day operations. Your accountant will help you stay on the right side of the IRS, set […]

The Purpose of Profit

I was walking to the grocery store a couple days ago and happened to run into a client and friend who runs a business in Philly. We chatted on the sidewalk, and then, as often happens in this line of work, they dropped a, “Oh, weird question for you….” on me. “How do I get rid of profit?” Now, I’ve heard this one before. Me: raises eyebrow. “Taxes?” Them: “Yeah.” My cheese buying mission temporarily on hold, we chat a bit longer while I gently steer them away from tax evasion as a primary financial driver. Look, I get it, […]

Shared Interest: An experimental business loan

Shared Interest: A business loan, amongst friends, that funds a community grant. Shared Interest was a grant available to the local creative community, made possible through a collaborative with our friends at Little Baby’s Ice Cream. The Story In 2016, we extended a short-term, low-interest loan to our friends at Little Baby’s Ice Cream, in order to help them expand operations to Baltimore (now open!). This loan represents not only an all-too-rare demonstration of hyperlocal cooperative capitalism, and a way to offer access to quick capital through existing business relationships, but it does not end there: we agreed that when the loan was […]

Controlled Burn, or the Importance of Composting Your Business

You’ve been there, on your worst days: muttering (yelling?) the phrase “Burn it all down” about your business. We’re here to tell you we think you should. The college I attended, in a small town in Minnesota, is home to one of the largest Prairie restoration projects in the country. There was a good stretch of time when I lived in a community next to the nearly thousand acres of land. Our house was further from the main campus, and the last stop before the woods. It wasn’t odd to come downstairs on a Saturday morning to find […]

4 Common Cooperative Pitfalls

When was the first time you encountered a cooperative business? Chances are, it was a food co-op, maybe a with a hippie or punk edge to it; or REI, the outdoor goods empire, a member-owned cooperative. As the movement grows, and more folks seek out more equitable and social justice-oriented ways of being in business, we need more education and conversation around the particular stumbling blocks that show up in these models. Because any business can be worker-owned, co-ops aren’t just for selling granola.* Below are a four common pitfalls and misconceptions particular to cooperative and democratic business models (that […]