EP456: Nancy Gwynne-Vaughan - Overcoming Small Business Challenges

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Nancy Gwynne-Vaughan, president of Graham Consulting and Training, Inc., is back — and she arrives with hard-won wisdom for bookkeepers who want to make this year count. In this honest, wide-ranging conversation, Nancy and host Michael Palmer dig into how she plans for the year ahead, how she keeps her business running when life throws curveballs, and why surrounding yourself with the right people changes everything.

Chapters

• [00:00] Introduction and New Year Check-In
• [03:18] Small Business Is Like a Toddler
• [08:00] Systems That Make Hiring Easier
• [11:30] Nancy's December Goal-Setting Process
• [17:30] Clarity, Specificity, and Revisiting Goals
• [22:00] Balancing Life Goals With Business Goals
• [27:00] Navigating Software Shifts and Uncertainty
• [32:00] Run Your Business — Even Under Pressure
• [37:00] Building Your Team and Community
• [45:00] Comparing Progress and Staying Inspired

Goal Setting Starts in December — Not January

Nancy's planning process begins well before the calendar flips. She sits down in December, reflects on what went well and what didn't, and then — a tip she picked up from Mark Wickersham's Value Pricing Academy — she places herself mentally at Christmas Eve of the coming year and writes out what she wants to feel and have accomplished. "I write it out as that's already done," she explains. From there, she builds quarterly action plans, keeping them in a physical binder she can return to throughout the year. Getting specific early means she can hit the ground running in January rather than spending the first weeks of the year just finding her footing.

Clarity Over Volume

One of the most powerful moments in Nancy's year came unexpectedly — two weeks off in December after having her wisdom teeth out forced her to pull together every goal she'd scattered across folders and documents. "I went through all of the little folders and things that I had stored different goals, and I pulled them all into one place and had a whole week to really think about what I wanted my goals to be for next year. And that brought tremendous clarity." The lesson: it's not enough to set goals — you need to be specific, keep them visible, and revisit them regularly. Goals buried in a laptop folder might as well not exist.

Running Your Business — Even When the Work Is Piling Up

Nancy is candid that one of the hardest things in a small bookkeeping firm is staying in the owner's seat when deadlines are pressing and staff are out. She draws on a striking image from The Checklist Manifesto: a pilot's emergency checklist that, a few items down, simply says "fly the plane." "You can get so engrossed in the panic of the situation that you forget to do what you're supposed to do," she says. The work is a comfortable hiding place — familiar, concrete, urgent. But the business still needs to be run no matter what is happening around it.

Build Your Team — Including the Unexpected Roles

Nancy's advice on handling uncertainty is rooted in one principle: don't try to do it alone. She credits a business coach, a reliable IT person, staff with good systems behind them, and — in a surprisingly powerful example — hiring someone to clean the office. "I used to come into the office and I think, oh, I've got to get in here and clean the office. And it would weigh on me… And now I don't even think about that. And it gave me huge bandwidth." The takeaway: look honestly at where your time and energy are going, and ask whether those are the highest-value things only you can do.

Comparing Progress — But Only to Your Past Self

Nancy is thoughtful about the trap of comparing yourself to peers who seem further ahead. Her reframe: compare where you are now to where you were ten years ago. "Ten years ago, I was still working at home with my friend who used to come in once a week and work in my basement as my staff… And now I have my own office." She also notes that once you hit a goal — even one you chased for years — there are always new ones waiting. "I'm a lot of things. I'm overwhelmed. I'm stressed. I'm over the moon when we have success. I'm all kinds of things. But I am never bored."

Links Mentioned

• PureBookkeeping.com — the system Nancy used as her first roadmap for building her business
• Pure Workflow — workflow software Nancy uses for task management and CRM
• E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
• The E-Myth Bookkeeper by Debbie Roberts and Peter Cook
• The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
• The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks
• Mark Wickersham's Value Pricing Academy
• Lisa Campbell's A2A Program
• Kelly Parks / Workflow Watering Hole
• "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost — recommended reading for entrepreneurs

About the Guest

Nancy Gwynne-Vaughan is the president of Graham Consulting and Training, Inc., a firm that provides practice management and bookkeeping services exclusively to law firms. A long-time member of the Pure Bookkeeping and Successful Bookkeeper communities, Nancy brings decades of small-business experience and a refreshingly candid voice to every conversation. She has been a returning guest on The Successful Bookkeeper podcast for several years.