Restaurant Businesses and Profit First - Kasey Anton Owner of Spark Business Consulting

Join me in one of my favorite interviews as I chat with New England entrepreneur, Kasey Anton, Owner of Spark Business Consulting. She's an expert on small business, Quickbooks, business models and restaurants.

Also check out her new book, Profit First for Restaurants, coming out end of June, 2023. Pre order now!

You can check out Kasey and all she's doing here!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

I one, I just was hustling, I can't say no, so I was getting a lot of referrals very early on, that it was really hard for me to say no. And because of that, I'm like, businesses really need what we do, and they tend to be gravitating toward my style of doing it.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Hello and welcome to the Career Yak Podcast, a show where we seek to discover what jobs, industries, and career paths are out there today and learn valuable lessons along the way. I'm your host, Christopher Goodwilly, and before we get started, our verse of the day is Psalm 118, 24. This is the day which the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. On today's show, I have Casey Anton. Casey is a fellow New Englander. Uh she is a big proponent of the Profit First model, if you have heard of that. She also wrote a book that is here coming out soon, depending on when you're listening to this, but um it can be pre-ordered uh prior to the release date as well. I'll put a link to all that in the show notes, but it's called Profit First for Restaurants. So Casey got her start in the restaurant industry and has since um started her own business called Spark Business Consulting. I'll put a link to that as well in the show notes. And they help all types of businesses in different industries, including the restaurant industry, um, to get you know their strategies, their books, everything in line, and so that they can become profitable and move forward and grow as well. So really fascinating uh talk with Casey, and I don't say this about everyone, but probably one of my favorite uh interviews I've had, at least uh in recent history. So I appreciate Casey being on the podcast. We also have a premium episode where we go behind the scenes of the conversation a little bit and dig into different financial benchmarks for the restaurant industry, and then Casey also goes into uh business models and what to consider and how she can help uh different companies that have different ideas or different individuals that have different ideas evaluate is this a good idea that should be actually you know brought to market. So check that out as well. Definitely worth worth a list in. The link to that will be in the show notes. And if you don't care about the premium episode but just want to be a supporter of the show, feel free to consider that. We appreciate it. And without further ado, here's my interview with Casey Anton. Well, Casey, thanks for jumping on the show. I appreciate you being a guest on the Career Yak podcast. And you know, we interview quite a variety of people, entrepreneurs and just different business professionals here. And I'd like to just start off by if you can introduce yourself briefly and tell me about your current role and your current business. What are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 3:14

You got it, Chris. It's so nice to be here, especially with a fellow New Englander. Yeah. Not that I'm some huge fan of New England, but that's just where I am. So um, yeah, my name is Casey Anton. I am a former restaurateur, so I used to own and operate restaurants in Boston. Um, so that was my first love, my first passion. But I um when I had my first child, got married, which was about um was that 16 years ago now, I had to get out of the business. It's just you know kind of chewed me up and spit me out and needed something else to do. I was like, come to find out when you're in the restaurants, um, you really need to stretch every single dollar as far as it can go. Most restaurants, I mean, and I by most I mean like 99.9%. So maybe not McDonald's, but like most restaurants, you know, money's tight. So that's what I learned. I learned about cash management, cash flow. I learned the numbers. So from there, I had people asking me, hey, I'm gonna open a restaurant. And okay, let me see if I can help you. Yep, turns out two plus two equals four in his restaurant too. So I helped him and he had a girlfriend at the time who was an interior designer. Hey, can you can you help her with her number? She's a mess. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know anything about interior design. Went over there. Oh, yep. Same math works there too. So, you know, worked with interior designers, contractors, law firms. From there, I grew Spark Business Consulting. So that's the company I have now. I've been doing this for just over 15 years, and I've grown it to about 250 clients. We work in a bunch of different industries, and I have 13 amazing full-time employees that support all those clients. And what we do is we do the bookkeeping, accounting, and then we consult. So I think that's what makes us different from so many other kind of bookkeeping or accounting firms out there is we not only do the data entry and you know, we we, you know, attach, please find your September, blah, blah, blah. We actually get in front of our clients, you know, through Zoom or or even in person sometimes these days, and we'll just say, hey, what's going on with this? Like, what happened to your costs here? Like, look what's happening. There's a trend happening here. You need to fix this. Look at this. Hey, you you did a great job with this, let's do more of that. So we interpret the numbers in a way as if we were a partner in the business. And that's how we coach with our clients or consult with them, coach, consult. I don't know. We need both. So we do that with our clients to really show them um how the numbers can help because so many small businesses really do kind of have their heads in the sand because they just don't get the numbers. And when you work with a typical accountant, you're gonna get that dry, attached, please find your blah, blah, blah. Like no one's gonna look at that. So we get we know we get up in their face with it, we we explain it to them in a fun kind of, you know, just a funny little humorous way that we do it. And we've just grown. Um, never advertise, we're completely word of mouth. We have a wait list now of clients that we can't even onboard until the middle of the summer. Um, so things have been great. And because I had mentioned I have this amazing staff that I work with, I am able to kind of step away a lot of the time from the business. And I wrote a book, um, Profit First for Restaurants, which is based off the best-selling book, Profit First. I wrote a derivative for restaurants because, as I had said, that's that's my love. Hospitality is my passion. And um, I put the two together, and that book's coming out in June.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Wow, that's exciting! That's super cool. So much to unpack there. So tell me about the beginning and getting it, uh, you know, you kind of said, you know, two plus two equals four in this business. Oh, turns out math works the same. I think that's a great kind of commentary to keep it simple. Are you so did you grow it, you know, when you had that life transition? Did you kind of just grow it on the side thinking, I'll just keep these couple clients, keep myself doing something um outside of you know, at home life? Or how did it grow into like a full-time wow, this could be something?

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Yeah, that's such a great question. Nobody ever asked me that either. That's a great question. Um so I want to I want to say at first, I did that because I tried to be a stay-at-home mom for literally four seconds. It just was not for me. I could not just stay home and stare at my son as much as I adore him. Well, I mean, now he's 16, I don't I don't adore him as much, but I adored him as, you know, as a baby. And um, you know, I just couldn't do that. I'm like, what can I do? So yeah, in the beginning, it was like, oh, I'll I'll grab a little small handful of clients and I'll just, you know, I'll just do their books between, you know, 10 and 2 every day. And, you know, I'll make a little bit of money and that'll be that. But I it just that was not well, number one, it wasn't enough for me. I just think that, you know, just coming from a restaurant or a background, you hustle. It's just what you know. It's just I'm a hustler, I'm a grinder. And it, and even having a kid, it just didn't come out of me. So I was just I one, I just was hustling, I can't say no. So I was getting a lot of referrals very early on that it was really hard for me to say no. And then because of that, I'm like, businesses really need what we do, and they tend to be gravitating toward my style of doing it, which is just no holds barred. Like, let me tell you the shit show that your company is in, or you know, let or let me celebrate you and high-five you on how amazing this is. And and so I also, because of from running a restaurant, knew that it takes a village. So I started building my team, but because what I do is like so you know, personality into it, like you can't I can't hire, you know, the 90-year-old CPA guy that's gonna be boring. Like I had to kind of find people who are passionate and and as enthusiastic as I am about what we do. So it did take time. We stopped taking clients for a while, but you know, over 15 years anyway, I've built up 13 employees who do do it in my mindset. I mean, everyone has their own flair, obviously. It's not, they're all not all mini cases. I mean, I'd love that, but that's up to date. They're all have their own flair, but we come at it from the same perspective, which is two plus two equals four. Numbers are not scary, but they're gonna tell you a story if you're willing to listen and look at it. And that's what we do. We we tell them the story and help them out and guide their business.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

That's cool. That's awesome. I currently sell accounting software, so this is interesting for me to hear about. Um, and just how yeah, I mean, I've I've run into that as well, where I think what's great about entrepreneurs is like they're so, you know, they're they're go-getters, but sometimes maybe they're uh, you know, they're a tradesman or they have a certain skill set, but maybe lack other business wherewithal, not to say they can't learn it, but you know, as far as whether it's staying organizing organized or reading the numbers or whatever it may be. Um so do you guys specialize still more in like restaurants and then have some other industries, or is it kind of all over the place?

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Yeah, so we were literally all over the place for a really long time. Again, just because I can't say no. Problem I have, which uh they have to kind of keep me off the phone now because I can't say no. I I just want to help everyone because I because I know how to. Like to me, like that's my numbers whisperer in me. Like I just understand the numbers now. But we um we can't really scale that way and we can't go vertical, like deep in that way. So we ended up looking at our huge roster of clients and dividing them into their industries to see like where we were really making the most impact. And those turned out to be number one, you know, shocking was restaurants and hospitality, so restaurants and caterers. So we did that as our biggest division. And the second biggest division is our construction. It may be shocking, but contractors and trades and designers they need help in the with numbers. Um, so that's another big division that we still currently take clients in and are working in and is growing hugely. We we work in law firms, um, we have bridal, which encompasses like florists and a bunch of different ones, but again, people who aren't good with numbers that would enter enter the bridal industry right there. Uh, and believe it or not, our last major division is screen printers. We are very well known in the screen printing world across the US. We have so many out in um California and in Colorado, and they just get our names through the main software they use called Printavo. Um they refer us out, so we have really grown that one as well. Wow. And then the rest we call the bomb squad. And I don't tell I don't know how they got that name. It's actually probably got a name, but we just call them the bomb squad. So whenever if we have a restaurateur that wanted to open up some weird little thing on the side, some you know, I don't know, wants to be a realtor, you know, have VRBO properties or whatever it's we will we'll take on that as well because they're a client.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

No, that's cool. Well, we'll have to chat more. I uh yeah, I sell construction accounting software specifically, so that's super interesting. I did not realize you guys dealt with contractors. So that's cool.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Mostly in New England or kind of all over the place.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Let me think about that. I actually, you know, now that I think about, I want to say that almost all, if not all of our contracts are in New England or in the Northeast. I think we have one in North Carolina, but the rest are pretty local. Definitely New Hampshire, Maine, tons in Massachusetts. So yeah, I think they are.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

That's cool. That's awesome. So now, do you have like an accounting background? Obviously, you were, you know, in business for yourself, but what's uh yeah, do you have an affinity for it?

SPEAKER_00 12:30

No, I literally so I went to University of Rhode Island and I remember taking accounting. They didn't offer accounting in high school at that time. So I remember having to take it like accounting 101 as a freshman, and I it was the worst grade that I got that year. I'm not even sure what it was, but it was I did not even have a good GPA that year. But it was it was terrible. I was not good at it all. I didn't get it. Um so the only how I how I got into it was through the restaurant industry. And even before I owned, I was um managing and became general manager of a bunch of small, really boutique, but you know, higher end, high check average, but boutique restaurants in the in the back bay and in the south end. And what I as I got into really their books and kind of knowing the business, like we really had to learn how to stretch a dollar as far as it could go at times. And it there's just so many moving pieces. So I learned accounting from a real life standpoint. Like how I had to find the dollar that came in and I had to track it from every movement it went into the restaurant because I was trying to keep some of it, which never happened. It would always fly out the door, and then some. It would fly out the door, plus another 10 cents added to it called debt. So that's how I learned how to do it was just like I had to get really good at following every dollar that came in and where it was gonna go because there was never enough. So that's how I learned it. And then, you know, bring in the software of QuickBooks, and then after years of using that, I'm like, oh, now I feel like I write the software, I know it so well just because I've been using it for so long.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

So that's where I learned it. Like it's just it's real world accounting, which I find is very, very, very different from what they learn in school. Very different. There's some similarities, but overall, real world accounting when you're dealing with real money, not only is there just a different emotion behind it, it's a different everything behind it. So that's the type of accounting that I do.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Gotcha. No, that's cool. That's interesting. Do you do you do any um investing or is it mostly just consulting, guiding?

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Yeah, no, I just do um the consulting and the coaching, and then obviously now writing. I don't really do, I mean, I look into investing. I love the idea of it. I just nothing has yeah, nothing has come to me that I think is the right fit. But I'm always writing business plans. Like that's like a hobby of this.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

That's like a fun passage. This is a hobby.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

I probably have six or seven business plans that I wrote. Oh my god, I have this really great. I'm not gonna tell you what it is because somebody will steal it, but that's such a great concept. But I just like it's very location driven. I haven't found the right location, but I'm telling you, I'll let you know if it ever comes up and I do it because it's gonna be a home run.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

All right. Well, I'm gonna do uh I'm gonna scratch out some napkin math on some of the ideas floating around in my head. I'll shoot you an email if I if I I uh my wife is very much a realist, she was a business major as well, and um she's a good she's good, you know. I'll get all excited and she'll be like, yeah, that doesn't make sense. Kind of like whoa, whoa, but it sounds fun. And she's like, Oh, is that gonna gonna pay the bills? So that's funny. Um super cool. Yeah, I I I love the show The Prophet. I don't know if you've ever seen it.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Oh, I've seen every episode.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

Love it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

I am that guy in the female form. I swear, I agree with everything he says.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Yeah, he's great. He's a good he's a good people person, but I'm like, man, if I could get to that stage and kind of help small businesses, that would be sweet.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Yeah. I would love I would love that myself. That would be awesome.

Profit First For Restaurants

SPEAKER_01 15:48

So tell us about your book a little more. And I mean, you don't have to go into all the details and reveal everything, but what is kind of the gist behind obviously it's catered to the restaurant industry, but the profit first model.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

Yeah. Have you um have you ever had anyone from Profit First on your show yet? I have not. Okay. So I'm gonna so I'll start there. So Profit First um is a very well-known book. Um so if anyone reads business books on regular, if you just go on Amazon and put in business book, it'll probably be one of the first that shows up. So Profit First has been around for about 10 years. And really what that is, it's just it's a very simple cash management system that you implement in any business. And it's it's the genius legit legit, the genius behind it is that it works with our natural tendencies as business owners, which is um when it comes to money, our accounting is our bank balance accounting. Like we, you know, we log into our bank account. Oh, I got 10 grand in my bank. Great, I'm gonna pay rent, I'm gonna pay this dude, I'm gonna pay that, I'm gonna do this, that. And we spend all the 10 grand because when we look at our bank account and we see that's our balance, we're like, oh, great, that's what I have to spend in my business. But most business owners don't realize that that 10 grand represents a lot more than your expenses. They represent it represents your profit, your owner's pay, God knows your owner's taxes. I mean, it represents so many other things that aren't expenses, but you don't think that when you see that 10 grand, you think I'm just gonna go pay my bills. And what happens when you do that is you're creating a cycle of spending the 10 grand, whether you needed to or not, didn't matter. You just saw the number and said, Oh, I have this to spend, and therefore you spend it. It's based off of Parkinson's law, which I won't get into, but it's part of Profit First, and in my book as well, is basically that you we consume what we see. It's just a natural tendency that we do. So instead, leveraging that habit of logging into your bank account, looking at your account and saying, Oh, great, I have that much money to spend. Instead of it being 10, we're gonna take that 10 and we're gonna set aside a percentage to profit, and that percentage is based on your business model, so it's it's unique to everyone. So we're gonna we're gonna first set aside some money for profit in an account called profit, and it's gonna sit over there. Then we're gonna put a percentage aside for owner's pay, owner's taxes, and then the rest of it is gonna be for your expenses. And then guess what? Go to town and go spend the whole thing. It's fine if you go spend the whole thing because we already set aside the most important stuff, which is profit, owner's pay, and certainly the taxes to cover it, because now we're creating a taxable event, which is a good thing. You want to pay taxes, it drives me nuts. I mean, you want I mean, it's we live in America, so it's like get over it if you don't. Like you, you're gonna pay taxes. The the game is to pay only what you absolutely need to, but if you run a successful business, there is a taxable event there. Sure. And and you want it. So that's profit first. I wrote a derivative specifically for restaurants. So I took that model and then I just I brought it a few steps further. So for restaurants where cash flow is legit, you know, it's very king and it's very, very uh, I don't know, it's just very weak at times that you I wanted to break the money out even further. So instead of having like five basic accounts, you know, the profit owners pay, I added in your vendors' account, so your food and beverage vendors. You know, for example, if you believe you have a 30% food cost, then if you set aside 30 cents on every dollar into an account and call it for food cost, then you should have enough money to pay your food vendors if you're really running that cost. And here's the thing if you pay all your vendors and you still owe more and you don't have it, guess what? You're not running 30% food cost anymore. And that's a problem. And you need to either raise your prices or look at your menu, look at your look at a lot of things. But without this system, you would not necessarily know that until your books are closed and somebody sends you the financials that you actually look at and pretend like you understand. So this is like live, live in person budgeting. It's a living, breathing budget as I discussed it. So I have I break out even more accounts so that restaurateurs really can see and keep guardrails up around their money and where it should go based on their business model. I talk about how to design your business model if you don't already have one. Because if you don't think you have one, trust me, you do, it's just probably not working for you. So you need to design a new one. Um, and then I just weave in stories throughout the whole book, my stories and other restaurateur stories of like before and afters of before profit first. Yeah, I was I was chasing Saturday night every night of the week. There weren't enough Saturdays for me to get through. And then the ones that did profit first and implemented it for a while, and how it literally changed our lives because it adjust, it just puts everything in its proper place, and now you have a full direction on how to run your restaurant. So it's just it's just great. And there's a lot of great stories, and it's a fun read. I say so myself.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

Super cool. No, so is it out?

SPEAKER_00 20:36

So it's available for pre-order, but it actually launches from the publisher on June 27th. So we're gonna have a huge launch day that day, but it is available for pre-order through um my website or even on Amazon.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Wow, that's cool. So website or Amazon is where the best place to find it.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Cool. No, that's super cool. I'll have to check it out. That's awesome. Always looking for good business books. I forget if I've read Profit First or I listened to like a summary on it, but yeah, definitely it's uh it's bringing me back a little bit. So that's cool. Um what's uh so what's next for you? And uh obviously you've written the book, you're gonna get the word out. Um on a business side, you know, what's next for you and and your ventures going forward?

Future of Kasey's Business

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Yeah, so let's see, right now we are in an interesting position um for Spark for my for my main consulting business, right? So we are at um just over, we're about 1.6 million and um in gross annual revenue. And what I'm finding, what I read about too, but what is I'm learning to be true is that as soon as you breach the 1.5 mark, it's a whole new ball game that's gonna take you to that next mark, whether it's gonna be 3 million or 5 million. I mean, for me, the goal is three million, and but you you have to change so many things about how your business runs because what took me from a dollar to 1.5 million is absolutely not what's gonna get me to that next level. So it's fascinating, but so true. Um it's just it's about scale and systems and efficiencies, and really it's always about team, but in a very different way when you're dealing with you know massive amounts of clients and people and data and just so that's really where my focus has been um with my director of operations and my division directors and making sure that we're poised for that. So that's kind of where my focus has been on that and on changing kind of the inner structure of our business because we are about to grow to that next level. Plus, with the book coming out, which in a book launch I'm learning is in a whole separate, like a full-time job. So we have that, and then in July, I actually take the month off. I've been doing that for a few years, but I think it's so important that every business owner designs their business to be able to step away away from it from a full cycle, which is usually about four to five weeks, right? Just step away and let it run without you. It needs you to step away from it if it's a real live business. So I do that in July. And I think in July, of course, is when I'll know, like, all right, what's next for me when I can actually take that time apart and just figure that out. It might be investing in another business. Um I don't know. I don't know. I might be in teaching. I just started teaching a course at the high school in entrepreneurship, so maybe it'll be that. I mean, there's no money in it for me, but it's kind of fun.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

As far as high school kids are fun.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Yeah. Yeah, it's you have one, right? So you know for sure.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

You don't love them or hate them. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

That's super cool. So, what what parting piece of career advice or entrepreneurial advice would you give to someone listening today, looking for inspiration, whether they're, you know, early career, getting into the workforce or even mid-career?

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Yeah, so for I, you know, I would I could speak better to the entrepreneurial advice. And I I love entrepreneurs, obviously. I've dedicated my life to helping them. So I love entrepreneurs. I would say if you if you have an idea and you and you have a passion for it, I think one that's obviously huge, but dive into the model. And if you're not sure what I mean, you could definitely pick up my book and look into it. But the model really is simply it's almost like your set of projections come to life. Like, what is it that you're selling and what's it gonna take you to actually sell it? And then what are all the other expenses? And then how many do you need to sell it to make this work? Like, have it could be on the back of a cocktail napkin, it could be that simple, but have that, have that written out, be able to visually look at that. I think that is so so important because you'll know from that napkin, from that chicken scratch, like, okay, this could work, or this is just a pipe dream, or I'm not ready yet. Like that will that alone, that exercise, will answer so many questions. So I love, like I said, I love entrepreneurs, I love new businesses, but I shoot them down a lot just because they're not there yet. Like their their idea, their plan, it's not there yet. It's not, it's the if they were to open it today the way it's at, they're gonna be in a whole lot of debt and a whole lot of misery working 24-7 to get nowhere. So I don't want to see anyone do that. So have a plan, have the numbers, make it work, and then go after your dream. That's the best I could do.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

No, that's awesome. I think we skip the business model and revenue model a lot in uh American society and they're as I I enjoy Shark Tank because it's it does dig into things like that. Yep. I think sometimes there can be a almost uh uh uh false hope that comes with it as well. Like, oh anyone can just whoa have an idea and boom, five million dollar business, you know what I mean? So it's it's important to have both sides of the coin and not to like limit yourself and over-analyze and analysis by paralysis, but yeah, uh, or I guess I said it backwards, paralysis by analysis. But yeah, it's uh it's good to dig into all facets so you're not digging yourself out of debt later on. So well, that's cool. That's awesome. So again, where can people find you? I know we you mentioned it briefly earlier, but what's the best way to find you?

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Yeah, so to find actually you can find everything that I've been doing at my website, which we just created. So my name, Casey Anton, that is k-a-se-y a-n-t-o-n dot com. And from there, um, there are links to my Profit First for Restaurants website as well as my Spark Business Consulting, where we work with all different types of industries. There's a ton of information there, but everything stems from Casey Anton.com, and they can reach me right through there. I love to hear from people, so they can email me right through there.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Awesome. I'm gonna shoot you some emails. I got some ideas.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

So my god, I can't wait. I can't wait. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

Awesome. Well, thanks, Casey. It's been a joy, and I appreciate you being on the show. And um, yeah, it's thanks for sharing.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Anytime.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

Hey everyone, and thanks again for listening. I really enjoyed chatting with Casey, and who knows, maybe I'll uh take her up on her offer to email her over some business ideas I've had in my own life that uh it would be good to vet and uh you know get some opinions on. So um hope you enjoyed this. Uh feel free to check out her and her business and her new book coming out in the show notes. I'll put all that and definitely uh check that out. And if you like what you heard today, share it with a friend and thanks for listening. We will see you next time.