Let’s look at how 3 of those 5 types of women entrepreneurs are likely to respond to a bookkeeping crisis: Go Jane Go, Merry Jane and Tenacity Jane.

Go Jane Go is a highly successful woman entrepreneur. She loves what she does, and tends to be taking home the biggest paycheck of any of the five types. However, she’s often doing so at the expense of her personal life, working long hours as she tries to keep up with all of her many professional and personal commitments.

Because Go Jane Go is such a successful entrepreneur, chances are good that she already has systems in place to deal with her business accounting. However, Go Jane Go also has a tendency to take over tasks she has previously delegated – especially when things go wrong. Which means that this type of entrepreneur may to respond to an accounting crisis by trying to figure out the problem herself, rather than requiring someone on her team to figure it out. To compound things, because she’s so busy, she may let the problem “sit” until she has time to address it – and create needless extra stress for herself as she worries about when she’ll get to it.

A more strategic response for Go Jane Go would be to sit down with her bookkeeper and/or accountant and work out the issues together. This will keep her from falling into the trap of doing everything herself, and working even longer hours.

Our second type of entrepreneur is Merry Jane. This entrepreneur tends to be building a business [often part-time] as a “labor of love” – in addition to a day-job, or a focus on family or other pursuits. She may not have a high personal income from her business, but she loves both her business and the freedom it affords her.

Merry Jane is the least likely of the five Jane types to be using a bookkeeping service. She’s also the one who is most likely working the fewest hours. Because of that, a strategic course of action for Merry Jane would be to invest in hiring a qualified bookkeeper or accountant or get herself trained on an accounting system that works for her business and schedule.

Although implementing that new system may take a few more hours at the outset, in the long run it will help her to make better use of the focused time she has to dedicate to growing her business. And it will create a step-by-step system – something this Jane loves because it keeps things simple and streamlined.

The third type of entrepreneur is Tenacity Jane. A small business owner driven by passion and commitment, Tenacity Jane nevertheless tends to be struggling with cash flow and finances. She tends to be feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or worried, and as a consequence is working longer hours than she wants in an effort to get the company on the right track.

As in almost any type of crisis, Tenacity Jane is likely to be the hardest hit, because she’s already in the most difficult position. If she already has a bookkeeper, she’s likely to consider saving herself the expense by taking over the books herself – and if she’s not using a bookkeeper, she’s likely to be reluctant to take on the added expense, even though it may be what her business really needs.

If so, the best course of action for Tenacity Jane would be to continue working with a bookkeeper or accountant – or, if she’s doing the books herself, to hand it over to a professional, in order to save herself the more substantial expenses, later on. Although it may feel like a pinch in the moment, taking this step will free Tenacity Jane to work on bigger things in her business – activities that will drive revenue to be able to pay for the expert help. At the same time, Tenacity Jane might benefit by looking at her bookkeeping crisis as an opportunity to take a big-picture look at her income and expenses, and to consider new ways that she might be able to increase her income and lower her operating costs

Let’s look at how 2 of those Janes would deal with a bookkeeping crisis: Jane Dough and Accidental Jane.

Jane Dough is an entrepreneur who enjoys running her business and is comfortable and determined in marketing and selling. She tends to be working longer hours, but she doesn’t mind because her focus is on growth. (Jane Dough is five times as likely to hit the million-dollar revenue mark as other Jane types.) She’s clear in her priorities and may be intentionally and actively growing an asset-based or legacy business.

Because Jane Dough’s focus is on growth, she’s interested in systems that will help create leverage in her business. So when faced with a bookkeeping problem, Jane Dough will probably look at the system. Where in the system did the breakdown occur? And what can we do to fix it in the future?

Jane Dough will most likely sit down with her accountant and bookkeeper to dissect what happened and then to work on the system to prevent it from happening in the future.

Now, while it’s good that Jane Dough is focused on creating systems, she may be setting them up too quickly so she can move to the next item on her to-do list, thus implementing incomplete systems. This may be what has caused the problem in the first place. Jane Dough should take a step back and make sure those systems she’s putting into place are done right the first time.

Our second type of entrepreneur is known as Accidental Jane. Accidental Jane is a successful, confident business owner who tends to be making good money — despite the fact she never really meant to start a business. She’s the one who will say things like “I never set out to start a business” but she did because she might not have been happy with a previous employer or discovered a gift and wanted to share it with the world. There’s no question Accidental Jane is very good at what she does and her business tends to grow organically through word of mouth.

Accidental Jane is most likely doing her books herself, so when she discovers a bookkeeping crisis, she’ll probably start by going through the books herself to fix it. While she’ll be on top of the problem, Accidental Jane should really be focused on her gift – her brilliance. That’s what she’s good at and that’s what she loves to do. Accidental Jane’s first task should be to go out and hire a good bookkeeper. That will free up her time so she can keep doing what she loves to do.

Next week’s issue will explore how other Janes handle these challenges. Stay tuned!

Because Merry Jane has such a unique approach to business, she presents a number of lessons of interest to anyone considering starting a business in their spare time.

Lesson #2

Do more with less using systems and leverage.

When you want to grow a business without pouring in tons of hours, your best bets are to put systems in place. Each system you have will save you time because you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. And, when you document your systems, it’s even easier to bring other people on board to leverage your time because it’s very clear to them what they need to do.

Merry Jane is very focused on fitting her business into an allotted amount of hours – so she’s smart about using systems (whether her own or someone else’s) wherever she can. Take a page out of her book and start creating a systems manual, complete with checklists as you have time. This will help you streamline your time and put you in the best position to help employees and contractors be successful in achieving the goals you set for them.

<– Read Part 1 ………… Stay Tuned Tomorrow for Part 3 of 3 Important Lessons from Merry Jane