Hire a Good CPA

I wouldn’t recommend our CPA to anybody. He was forever paying our sales and liquor taxes late – and that comes with penalties. Of course I made him pay the penalties, but still, I didn’t want our history to show we always paid late. Our CPA never communicated unless he needed something from us. He didn’t tell us to file an extension on our income taxes because he wouldn’t have our reports ready by April 15th. I had never filed an extension before. I didn’t mind doing it, but when you email someone over and over as April 15th approaches and they don’t respond, it’s very frustrating. And then you still don’t hear anything by September and your extension ends in October, you just want to scream.

Before we opened the restaurant, we had made the decision to use my home address for important mail, as we didn’t want to rely on the kids working the front desk to handle our mail correctly. And as you may have noticed in previous posts about the bad behavior of the rink employees, that was a good decision. However, I moved while I was running the restaurant. I sent my new address to our CPA. He didn’t update his records, the financials, or any governing bodies we needed to communicate with, like the State of Texas. I don’t mind taking care of these things, but he didn’t tell me I needed to. I didn’t find out until we weren’t receiving any notices and consequently didn’t pay for something. The notices were still going to my old address and some weren’t forward-able.

Pierre should have known not to use this CPA since he was Pierre’s CPA before we started the restaurant. Or maybe he was acting on Pierre’s orders to make things difficult for us. I don’t know. Pierre knows people in the restaurant business and could have gotten us recommendations. Or maybe this guy was the cheapest one – you get what you pay for.

The CPA charged us a monthly fee plus a Quick Books membership. For that, it was his job to do our payroll, our financials, and our taxes, including the business income taxes and the figures for us to file our personal income taxes. My mistake here was not asking for references and talking to them. I trusted Pierre to set us up. Trusting Pierre may have been my biggest mistake of all.

My Biggest Mistake

I violated the cardinal rule of business, never start a business in an area you have no experience. If I had worked in the restaurant business previously, I might have recognized Todd was blowing smoke a lot sooner, maybe even before we signed the contract.

Every time we talked to Todd, he mentioned he would set us up with all the adult teams so we could offer locker room setups of pizza and beer when they played. Robbie was young so he probably didn’t know that was BS, but Pierre had been involved with the local rinks for years and should have known this wasn’t possible without planning ahead.

Here’s how it works in Texas. When you apply for your liquor license you have to supply a diagram of the space governed by the liquor license. Todd gave me a diagram of the snack bar and bar, which included a partial diagram of the lobby. To license the entire building, including the locker rooms, we would have had to provide a diagram of the entire building. Pierre could have gotten a diagram of the building when he worked for corporate. I’m sure he knew we needed it because he drinks and you have to stay in certain areas of the building when you drink alcohol. It is against the law to serve alcohol outside of the licensed area. At the very least Pierre should have said something when Todd was telling us we could provide liquor in the locker rooms. I had no idea you couldn’t walk around the rink with your beer.

You can’t see the rinks very well from the bar in the McKinney arena. That’s why we wanted to put a camera in each rink and hook up to TVs in the bar. Parents like to watch their kids practice and play and we like to sell alcohol. If I had known Todd wasn’t going to allow us to put in cameras, I would have at least licensed the tables next to the snack bar in the lobby. That way parents could sit at the tables and watch one of the rinks.

This whole thing was one giant mistake. I broke the cardinal rule, I believed Todd when he said he was going to help us, and I trusted Pierre to lend his knowledge and expertise to guide our business to success. Pierre was the skating expert and he said nothing to let us know Todd was leading us astray.

I Am the Stupidest Person On the Planet.

While we’re talking about money, let’s go back to the beginning for a minute. Before we opened, I paid for the Hunt Brothers startup out of my own pocket – over $4,000 for the new oven and supplies. I also paid some City of McKinney fees, $500 to open the checking account, and some other needs itemized on an expense report with receipts.

I told Pierre and Robbie I planned to deduct these expenditures from my $12,500 seed money and deposit the difference into the checking account. Pierre suggested I talk to the CPA before I did that, as the CPA would probably want us to deposit the entire $12,500 and then get reimbursed later. I called the CPA and he said to put in all the seed money. So I did. And I reported his wishes back to Pierre and Robbie.

Robbie deposited his $12,500. Pierre put in NOTHING. Not one penny. Yes, Pierre bought the fancy coffee machine – which was under $5,000. Pierre also supplied the Keurig, but he got that back once the fancy coffee machine was hooked up and working.

So here I was, a few weeks into opening the restaurant. One of my partners has not deposited his seed money and had to be pushed to give us our unverified credit card money. Looking back, I am the stupidest person on the planet for staying. It’s embarrassing to think I still thought we would be successful and make some money. You will see as we continue on with the story, Pierre never did put in his seed money. He always had some excuse when I asked him for it. After about 1 year in business I told Pierre we needed money for payroll – it wasn’t the first time I told him that. He deposited $2,000 into the checking account. Two weeks later, he wrote himself a check for $2,000 and took his money back. I just feel so stupid for trusting him.

Some Employees Need to Go

Even though I’ve been fat most of my life, I’ve always been very active. I used to work full-time, and then go home and participate in all sorts of activities – tennis, softball, bowling, camping, horseback riding, etc. I was only home long enough to eat and sleep. It was great!

So, it’s no surprise I thought I could open a restaurant. I’m no stranger to hard work and was ready to give it my all. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize my all was somewhat less than it used to be. Getting old is hell. Your brain feels the same as when you were younger, but your body takes hard work a little more personally and punishes you if you do too much. I worked all day, 7 days a week. Some nights, I could hardly walk when I got home and still hurt when I got up in the morning.

We hired people of all ages and in the beginning we paid them way too much. The pay rates were set by Pierre and Robbie and I trusted them to know. With more experience, I learned our pay was way out of line. And the people we overpaid didn’t even appreciate it. Some that we overpaid even stole from us. I could tell you a million stories about employees. Once I figured it out, the starting pay was a lot lower. It was still good money compared to other restaurants because we paid regular minimum wage. Customers don’t tend to tip in a snack bar type environment and we compensated for that.

I lost 35 pounds while eating pizza everyday. So you know I was literally working my a** off. I needed employees I could trust to give me time off, as a snack bar can often be run easily by 1 person. It was very hard to find people like that and sadly I trusted the wrong person more than once. And I kept employees longer than I should have just so I could go home. My recommendation is to let people go as soon as you see they are not going to respond to your personal improvement talks. Keep everything in writing and count the money and inventory often.