Trainor Media Network

Strombeck Relief Effort

Mon, 09 Sep 2019 18:56:15 GMT

In the wake of Hurricane Dorian, our Strombeck family partnered with other local businesses to provide immediate relief effort for the Bahamas. We banded together to deliver emergency supplies and critical aid directly to survivors on the island via helicopter. Even ahead of the formal mobilization of agencies on the ground.

To learn how you can donate to the ongoing relief effort in the Bahamas and help the island rebuild visit: bahamas.com/relief

What is Bitcoin?

Tue, 19 Feb 2019 22:13:57 GMT

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” -Albert Einstein

Would Einstein understand Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is one of a series of newly created virtual currencies. If it can achieve adequate acceptance, it can provide the same utility as your current electronic banking, but with a very important difference. No bank or government is involved, and transactions are entirely anonymous. For a more detailed description visit http://www.bitcoin.org .

While the block chain technology can likely fulfill Bitcoin’s original intended role as money (being a store of value and a medium of exchange), its price volatility makes that application an unlikely result. The creation of Bitcoin is a process akin to digital alchemy, which limits the rate at which it can be produced. But every drug dealer, terrorist, tax evader and libertarian (and probably some political leaders) across the planet were prepared to pay a hefty premium for the ultimate secret bank account. The supply and demand dynamics created a price trajectory that reflected what Mr. Greenspan would likely describe as “irrational exuberance”. The dollar price of Bitcoin two years ago was $571. It peaked in December of last year just north of $19,000 and is currently trading at less than $7,000.

So the question for entrepreneurs is “Does my long term business strategy need to include the coming impact of virtual currencies or block chain technologies?” We think the answer is probably “not yet”.

WingBug

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 15:37:44 GMT

Straight & Level Technologies is an aviation and aeronautics technology company in Orlando, Florida whose flagship product, WingBug, is making waves across the small aircraft sector.

The WingBug is a personal, portable, self-encompassed, pitot static precision measuring device, which is mounted to the wing of an aircraft and gathers true ADAHRS (Air Data Attitude Heading Reference System) flight information. This information is then transmitted for display to the pilot on an iPad, presenting him/her with an airspeed indicator, an attitude indicator, an altimeter, a turn and bank indicator, a compass, a vertical speed indicator, as well as an angle of attack and sideslip indicator.

Straight & Level had developed an innovative piece of hardware that would make flying safer and smarter for pilots, but they knew that for the product to be truly useful, the iPad app that the user interfaces with had to be clean, accurate, and user-friendly. Straight & Level had initially started development of their app by hiring freelance developers. However, they quickly realized that in order to make the software component of their product match the quality they had already reached with the hardware component, they would need to turn to professionals.

Breadboard and its development team were able to quickly learn the technical detail of an incredibly niche industry, and then move forward with app development for the WingBug. Together, Breadboard and Straight & Level successfully launched the WingBug app to the Apple App Store on April 9th, 2018. Breadboard continues to work with Straight & Level to develop new features and enhancements for the app as user demand grows.

Seller Notes for Acquisitions

Wed, 06 Feb 2019 22:10:08 GMT

“With the new automated process from Strombeck Consulting, I was able to get more data every week, and the numbers were 100% reliable. I saved significantly on labor costs and my team was able to use that time to focus on other tasks.” Mike MacKubin, retired CFO of DiPasqua Enrerprises, Inc., operator of 120 Subway stores in Central Florida ( http://www.subwaydipasqua.com )

Like many growing businesses, DiPasqua Enterprises had accumulated a series of inputs for its reporting and payroll that included programs and spreadsheets that provided data for manual inputs into the company’s primary accounting software. As the company grew, so did the errors that are a natural part of the human experience. The Strombeck team integrated the company’s data systems into a single platform that eliminated manual entries, improved data access for managers and reduced administrative payroll costs. The payback period for the automation project: less than one year. You can read about this and other success stories at http://www.strombeckpa.com .

Seller Notes for Acquisitions

Wed, 06 Feb 2019 22:06:15 GMT

“It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.” - Warren Buffet

Growth through acquisitions is a common occurrence for business owners. But judging whether the company to be acquired will meet Mr. Buffet’s definition of wonderful can be difficult. When circumstances are somewhat uncertain, some of the risk of the future performance of the acquired company can be shifted to the seller. A portion of the purchase price can be paid by issuing debt to the seller, and those notes can have special attributes, such as:

*“Earn out” provisions which can reduce the final loan amount if the acquired business fails to achieve predefined hurdles in sales or profits.

*“Standby” provisions that permit the buyer to cease making payments of interest or principal for a specified time if certain conditions are met (the loss of a major customer, for instance).

*“Waterfall” provisions that require the note to be paid more quickly if the acquired business cash flow exceeds a specified threshold.

Seller debt can also be helpful if the acquisition is being financed by an institutional lender. It will generally be counted as part of the lender’s required equity injection for the transaction if the debt is on full standby (no payments of interest or principal) until the lender’s note is paid in full.

Perhaps most importantly, buyers can likely gain confidence in the seller’s assertions about the target company when the seller will have a continuing interest post sale.

Strombeck’s Big News

Mon, 05 Mar 2018 15:52:09 GMT

If you’re familiar with Strombeck, you’ll know we go far beyond typical CPA work to actually help business owners eliminate barriers to their growth and financial success. And surely you’ve experienced the bold, yet big-picture approach that our seasoned advisors embody.

But perhaps you didn’t know that we’ve helped several industry-leading companies achieve award-winning success. Or that we’ve recently announced some big news that could positively affect you and your business.

Read our Official Press Release:

“Ultimate CPA” Firm Behind Inc. 500 Companies uBreakiFix and US Aluminum Launching New Brand, New Website, New Services

Terra Mango

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 16:51:21 GMT

Terra Mango is an immersive and complex, location-based strategy game that pushes the boundaries of what's been done before. The game brings every building in the real world into the virtual world. This means the entire, real world, and every building in it, is the game’s battlefield.

About Terra Mango

Will you defend your race from the intrusion of your enemies as a Human? Will you exact revenge on your creators as the IO? Or will you conquer the blue marble for the honor of the Aurayu? Collect resources, conquer enemy territory, and build towers to ensure victory for your race. Be the first to claim your neighborhood, town, and city!

FEATURES

Choose your race. Are you a Human, an IO, or an Aurayu?
Build combat, research, and resource towers to claim real world territory for your race and to grow your empire.
Deploy troops in the real world to destroy and conquer enemy territory.
Collect gold, ore, energy, and IPG in the real world.
Did we mention it’s in the real world?
Team up with other players to defeat your enemies together.
Earn XP and level up to expand available tower and troop types.

Check out: Terra Mango

Earnest Products

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 16:06:26 GMT

“Strombeck is constantly looking at measurements of success and opportunities for change.”

Founded by Bryan Earnest in 1994, Earnest Products provides high-quality sheet metal fabrication and other related services. They operate out of their 240,000 sq. ft. facility in Central Florida, where they fabricate custom metal parts for a multitude of industries.

Having been through a number of accounting firms and firing their CFO, Bryan was introduced to Rick Strombeck. “What struck me about Rick right away was his confidence and boldness,” says Bryan. “He asked questions about my business and my goals… much more than what an accountant would ask or be concerned with.”

In the past 4 years, the company has doubled in size and has increased their manufacturing capacity from a 60,000 sq. ft. operation to an enormous 240,000 sq. ft. warehouse. Strombeck played a key role in Earnest Products’ growth through the Ultimate CPA and Flexfit CFO services, including guidance on important business decisions and assistance with the warehouse purchase negotiations.

“Rick is so much more than an accountant, he’s more of a business advisor, but even more than that–he understands small business and that owners wear a lot of hats,” says Bryan. “I have recommended Strombeck to quite a few other business owners. If they don’t know how to get funding or don’t know how to develop a family business, then they should contact Strombeck.”

Creative Signs

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 15:56:43 GMT

“Strombeck was the one of the best moves I ever made in 36 years.”

Tony and Cheryl DiSalvatore own and operate a fast-growing sign business in Orlando called Creative Signs, Inc., along with their four (out of five) adult children.

Although wary of an external consultant, Tony sat down with Rick Strombeck in 2012 to hear what he had to say. “Rick’s attitude was confident, bold and enlightening,” Tony explains. “He was so direct, it concerned me and attracted me at the same time.”

“Within months of hiring Strombeck, our sales figures began climbing more rapidly than they had since the 80s,” Tony says. Before becoming a Strombeck client in 2012, Creative Signs’ gross revenue was approximately $470K. In 2016, their gross revenue climbed to $1.5 million. Their 2017 goal is to grow the business to an incredible $4 million gross revenue.

“Running a business takes intense focus, and it blinds you to things on the horizon and other needs that aren’t being addressed,” says Tony. “Strombeck offers foresight, intelligence and experience, and the wise counsel we’ve received has been paramount to our company’s success.”

Tony and Cheryl are working with Strombeck towards their ultimate goal: to leave the business in great shape for the next generation. “We are currently structuring the business to one day pass down to our children. Strombeck’s very familiar with family businesses, especially the complicated dynamics of family members who work together.”

Universal Roof & Contracting

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 14:04:04 GMT

“Strombeck saved us thousands in labor costs and greatly improved our customer service.”

Universal Roof & Contracting is a thriving family-owned business specializing in residential exteriors, roof repair/replacement and premium windows in Orlando, Florida.

Jared Mellick, president of Universal Roof & Contracting, Universal Contracting commercial division and Renewal By Andersen windows division, has been a Strombeck client since 2014. Since that time, the Strombeck team has streamlined a number of Universal Roof’s processes, which has not only saved the company thousands of dollars, but also has greatly improved their customer service. Initially, Jared hired Strombeck for their CPA services, and eventually Rick Strombeck and his son Ben Strombeck stepped in CFO and CIO roles to help Universal Roof & Contracting improve their operations, processes and overall financial health during a season of rapid growth.

Strombeck uncovered a number of opportunities for game-changing improvements in time, quality service and costs:

Digitize the Sales Process Prior to Strombeck, Universal Roof had a lengthy 1-3 week closing process, which was causing them to lose customers. Ben Strombeck and the team developed a custom application for the sales team to use an on iPad at the initial sales visit in the potential customer’s home, where the salesperson could input customer information, generate real-time quotes and collect payment instantly. This resulted in a significant increase in sales as the closing ratios surged.
Dynamically Generate Contracts & POs Strombeck also developed a dynamic contract, which is instantly created from the information entered in the sales app mentioned above. This digital contract is signed and paid by the customer on the iPad, then the information is automatically sent to production outlining the exact list of materials (with specs and quantities) needed for the job, eliminating the costly mistakes often made when manually entering this information. Then the information is imported into QuickBooks for purchase orders, once again eliminating the need for repeated data entry.
Automated Insurance Claim Follow-ups Prior to Strombeck, the team at Universal Roof would have to send multiple emails and wait for an email response from insurance companies regarding projects. Strombeck developed an automated email follow up process to dramatically reduce labor costs.
Automated Invoices Strombeck also worked with Universal’s vendors to get them to send their invoices for materials in a predictable CSV format that could be automatically imported into QuickBooks as Bills. This again eliminated the need for repeated data entry, saving time and costly mistakes, as well as putting their A/P department in a position to handle double or triple the volume without adding personnel.
Job Costing Strombeck bridged the final gap for P&L’s by Job by developing an automated payroll process to work with QuickBooks. Now, time is automatically applied to each employee for each job, enabling the company to clearly review the true labor cost of each job and better plan future estimates.
Outsourced CIO As Universal Roof’s outsourced CIO, Ben began overseeing all aspects of the company related to technology, including all existing and new software purchases, with a focus on streamlining and improving all internal processes.

The results? Universal Roof & Contracting’s sales have more than doubled every year since 2014, and is now one of the fastest growing residential roofing and exteriors companies in Central Florida and has received several notable awards including:

2016 OBJ Fast 50 Award - fastest growing companies in Central Florida
2016 Orlando Sentinel Top 100 Companies
2016 OBJ Golden 100 - list of Central Florida’s top privately held companies

Dipasqua Enterprises

Thu, 14 Dec 2017 13:48:01 GMT

“I completely trust Strombeck’s highly competent team, which makes it easy to work with them.”

The DiPasqua family founded DiPasqua Enterprises, Inc. as Subway’s first Orlando-area franchisee in 1977, and is now into its fourth generation of family-run sub sandwich restaurants. It’s also one of the largest franchisee groups in the nation.

Prior to hiring Strombeck, DiPasqua CFO Mike MacKubin and his team would collect data from all 120 stores to be assembled into one database, in order for them to generate weekly reports. Mike saw three main issues with this process:

The data from all 120 stores were delivered in two different sheets, meaning Mike’s team would have to manually input 240 sheets of data into their database, which on average took 4-5 hours every week.
Because the data was input manually, errors could and did sometimes occur.
Mike’s team did not have enough time to capture all data, such as inventory counts, which resulted in it being omitted from the reports.

In an effort to reduce labor costs and improve accuracy of the weekly reports, Mike hired Strombeck to develop an automated way to collect data from all 120 stores, which would be organized into one central database, where DiPasqua could create custom reports through written queries. Mike recalls, “With the new automated process, I was able to get more data every week, and the numbers were 100% reliable. I saved significantly on labor costs and my team was able to use that time to focus on other tasks.”

The automation project paid for itself in the first year, and now each year it saves DiPasqua Enterprises approximately $5,000 in annual labor costs, is more data-rich than before, and is 100% accurate.

After the successful automation project, DiPasqua again hired Strombeck to develop automation to streamline their payroll process for approximately 120 stores each month. Once again, the new automation has decreased DiPasqua’s labor costs delivers 100% accuracy.

“I know Strombeck will do it right, or if anything is not quite right, they are happy to make it right, every time,” says Mike, who retired from DiPasqua recently. “I completely trust their highly competent team, which makes it easy to work with them.”

Uncle Sam Offers Help

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 16:57:23 GMT

Congress passed some bi-partisan tax relief recently – things of which you may be able to take advantage:

Casualty losses deductible for more than $500 are more readily deductible, and can be taken against your 2016 or 2017 income – i.e. use it against the highest rate
Up to $2,400 tax credit (even better than a special deduction) of wages paid to workers unable to come to work when the business was closed (“rendered inoperable”) due to the hurricane
50% limit on individual contributions and corporate 10% limit of taxable income suspended
10% penalty on retirement plan withdrawals is waived
Up to $100,000 can be borrowed from retirement plans

And more. If you were impacted by one of the hurricanes and took some sort of special action, be sure and call us to discuss how this may apply to your situation.

Succession and Transition Planning

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 16:53:27 GMT

The Boomer cycle is winding down and Boomer business owners are more and more preparing for the time when they will, by necessity or intention, take leave of the thing they built. Whether transitioning to the next generation, or to another owner, the best intentions are well thought through and planned. As Stephen Covey put it, “Begin with the end in mind.” What are YOU thinking about endings? We can help.

Business Process Automation

Thu, 20 Apr 2017 17:17:17 GMT

Are you leveraging technology to maximize productivity? (see HBR article above) One of the fastest growth areas of helping you “manage, grow and enjoy your business” is in the area of business process automation. From automating a sales process with integrations to Sales Force, to improved inventory management, to better information dashboards – a little bit of coding to connect your systems can go a long way to driving revenues and productivity. And if you’re not doing it, your best competitor probably is. Don’t let the tech revolution leave you behind. Contact us for more information.

Recruiting

Mon, 30 Jan 2017 18:32:10 GMT

For years Strombeck has been an active part of many client’s hiring of key financial staff. QuickBooks and Excel abilities, personality and intelligence profiles and background checks were part of our standard process. Recently we’ve joined forces with myStaffingPro to better post to top job boards, process candidates and deliver people solutions. If you’re filling a need in your financial staffing, talk to us today!

Your Brand – More than a Name

Tue, 26 Jan 2016 12:27:01 GMT

Client Kudos to Kennan Burch of Brand Catalyst Partners for recently being featured in I-4 Business Magazine’s December 2015. More than kudos, we’ve included below some thoughts from Kennan, a friend, client and 20-year brand building executive with Darden. Check out the article: I4Business: Your Business – More than a Name ( http://www.brandcatalystpartners.com/about-bcp/i4-business-magazine-featuring-kennan-burch.html ) – and Kennan’s comments below as you think about your 2016 branding efforts.

Strombeck News: Marketing – Investment or Expense in 2016? We continued the march through the end of the year of another year, 2015. If we take the high school graduation model, we’ll really call this “commencement” — a look forward. After all, that year’s done. You hopefully spent it continuing to define and build your brand. Have you committed to an assessment of 2015 and plan for 2016?

Looking back, some of you may need to revisit your brand strategy and ensure alignment due to changes in 2015: * New leadership — are our new key people bleeding and breathing the brand? As compass setters, they can have a huge impact on where we end up in 2016. * New team members — was our on-boarding effective in building brand buy-in and understanding? * Market shifts — have we taken into account the changes in the who/what/where/why of the need we look to fill? * New circumstances — do we have any non-market changes in our context? * Lack of focus — have we ourselves chased shiny objects for fear of missing that ‘golden opportunity” that can define us?

Looking forward at your 2016 marketing budget, you’ll want to make sure you’re investing in what’s necessary to reach your destination. Some things you should consider planning for/spending money include:

Customer research – how are we doing from our customer perspective?
Employee engagement research – how are we doing from our employee perspective?
Visual brand identity upgrade (colors, fonts, website, logo, etc).
Culture Guide & culture development
Creating your brand essence video
Making sure our marking dollars are actually communicating our intended message
Coaching and mentoring your team
Adding a board member with brand strategy experience

Best brands don’t just happen. Don’t fail to plan for the needed investment of quality thought, intentional time, and the financial support those require.

How Sellable Is Your Company?

Fri, 07 Nov 2014 13:20:58 GMT

Strombeck is pleased to provide a new tool to business owners – the Sellability Score report. It is based on the book Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You by John Warrillow – an Inc. Magazine “Best Book for Business Owners.” The report evaluates 8 drivers of value in a business so you can focus on what will build your business’ value. Take 15 minutes and get a 28 page report. Your CPA/Advisor will meet with you to go over it. Feel free to tell your business owner friends about it as well.

Taxes Taxes Taxes

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 13:28:44 GMT

Election results are in – and we’re back to the future. Split control of the government – which means no control by any particular side, and slow deliberate change. With this election we can be pretty sure that the tax policies enacted in the last several years that were leading up to 2013 will not change in the near term. Plan accordingly.

Based on current law, here are changes effective January 1, 2013 that you need to be thinking about. Be sure and talk to your CPA Advisor about these – the clock is ticking:

Estate taxes back to 55% on anything over $1 Million
Medicare taxes of an additional 3.8% now on the passive investment income and capital gains of high income people
Capital gains tax rates increasing to 20% (or 23.8% with the Medicare add-on)
Capital Expenditure (Sec 179) limit cut to $25,000
Top income tax rates increasing to 36% and 39.6% (39.8% and 43.4% with Medicare add-on)
Increasing FICA rates
Increasing Medicare rates for high income people
Changes in personal exemption and itemized deduction phase out levels
Personal deductions for medical and dental expenses get harder
Dependent care tax credit is reduced
Student loan interest will be phasing out