Small Business Accounting: Samantha Besnoff's Story

[00:00:00] Sanjay Parekh: Welcome to the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast powered by Hiscox. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. Throughout my career, I've had side hustles, some of which have turned into real businesses. But first and foremost, I'm a serial technology entrepreneur. In the creator space, we hear plenty of advice on how to hustle harder and why you can sleep when you're dead.

On this show, we ask new questions in hopes of getting new answers. Questions like, how can small businesses work smarter? How do you achieve balance between work and family? How can we redefine success in our businesses so that we don't burn out after year three? Every week, I sit down with business founders at various stages of their side hustle to small business journey.

These entrepreneurs are pushing the envelope while keeping their values. Keep listening for conversation, context, and camaraderie.

Today's guest is Samantha Mittman Besnoff, the founder behind Your Financial Maven. Samantha is a certified CPA and independent life insurance agent with over 25 years of experience in the field. She also hosts the podcast, Your Financial Maven. Samantha, welcome to the show.

[00:01:16] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Thank you.

[00:01:17] Sanjay Parekh: I'm excited to have you on because money is the lifeblood of all businesses.

[00:01:20] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Absolutely. I'm excited to be here.

[00:01:22] Sanjay Parekh: I'm sure we're going to have a lot of fun discussion about your business and kind of what it took to get there, to the point that you're at now. But before we get into all that give us a little bit about your background and what did get you to where you are today.

[00:01:36] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Sure. I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, spent my time watching my dad who also is an independent life insurance agent, you know, running his own business, learning from him.

My grandmother actually lived with us. She lived with us for about 43 years, and she was all about tracking your money. You know, when we had checkbooks and bank statements that got mailed, she would, I mean until she passed away when she was 99 years old, she was diligent with her checkbook. So, my money skills and knowledge came from her.

You know, I joke with my mother because it was my parents, my grandmother, and my sister and brother, and my mother liked to spend the money. My grandmother liked to track it. And then there was my dad. But between him and my accounting high school teacher, I just fell in love with accounting. And so, I ended up at the University of Pittsburgh.

I have a Bachelor of Science in business accounting. I'm a certified public accountant. And I love working with numbers. People think I'm crazy, but I love it. My husband, my now husband, we met out at school. We moved to Lancaster, got jobs. We have two boys, young adults. And I absolutely, like I said, I love working with clients who are small business owners, entrepreneurs, helping them with their, you know, understanding their business.

I also love my fur baby Sasha. So, I'm a big dog mama. And the beach, I always, I need to get down the shore whenever I can. I need that, you know, the waves and the sun in that. And a fun fact, I scooter to work sometimes. It's really funny, my office is two miles from where I live in Lancaster, and I sometimes scooter to work and I love it.

So, I guess I'm a scootering accountant. I don't know.

[00:03:21] Sanjay Parekh: Scootering, at least when it's not super hot or rainy or snowy.

[00:03:25] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Yes. Or if I have use of the car because we're sharing it right now with the four of us and we have three cars. Yeah, a little bit of a juggling till the one goes back to college.

[00:03:34] Sanjay Parekh: So, is your husband also an accountant as well?

[00:03:37] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: He is not. He works in IT for a local company in Lancaster. He's been there 29 years. And he worked, you know, he's been home since COVID. Loves it. Loves working from home. And like I said, I have two young adults. My oldest just graduated from college in computer science. And he’s home, he'll be working from home also. Got a job in the area. And then the youngest, he's heading off to a second year of college soon.

[00:04:00] Sanjay Parekh: I think I get a sense of the reason why you're scootering to work and not working out of the home as well.

[00:04:05] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: That's right.

[00:04:05] Sanjay Parekh: Cause you got the dog, you got people.

[00:04:08] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: I actually don't mind it. It's great. You know, it kind of gets my head where it needs to be for work.

[00:04:14] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, that's good. Well, you already answered my other question. Were there other entrepreneurs in the family? So, it sounds like your dad was. Was anybody else in the family an entrepreneur?

[00:04:23] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: I mean, my sister did a lot of art stuff.

She's very artistic. So, when we were growing up — she's older than me, she's six years older — she would do like shoes and hats and paint them for friends, things like that. My niece does cookie baking and pastries and breads. So, it's not full out entrepreneurs, but they do that kind of side hustle, you know, kind of work.

[00:04:47] Sanjay Parekh: Oh, that's awesome.

[00:04:47] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: It is definitely in our blood.

[00:04:49] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So, so growing up when you saw your dad working on his business, you know, he was by himself. Did you ever get the opportunity to work with him or do things for him?

[00:04:59] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: A little bit, more so now. I actually work, I've worked with him now for the last 10, 12 years.

He sells a lot more insurance than I do, but I do try. It's not an easy business. But I do work alongside of him for some things now. When I was growing up, he did have a partner originally. Then that fell through and then he was all by himself. And there would be times I'd help him. Back then, it was a lot of mailing of, you know, postcards.

He would do this thing for mortgage insurance. So, you can sell life insurance to help cover your mortgage. And my grandmother and I would sit at the kitchen table, and we would stuff all the cards. We'd seal the envelopes, you know, put the stamps on them. My grandmother would type, on the typewriter, all the cards out.

So, yeah, we were a part of the family business. You know, we joked that he only had kids to help him with the business.

[00:05:49] Sanjay Parekh: Oh, there's more reasons than that to have kids. To be IT support for you. Like, I mean, there's multiple reasons, actually. Go get the remote. I mean there's a bunch of other good reasons.

So, when you were kind of thinking about doing this, like how did you start your business? Did you go straight in from graduating college or were there steps in between?

[00:06:09] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: There were steps. There were a lot of steps in between. You know, when I went off to college, my dream at the time was to work for the big six accounting firms, you know, go in there, do my internship, get the job, get the CPA license.

And that didn't quite go the way I expected. I ended up graduating a semester early and worked for an accounting firm proofreading. I did a lot of proofreading. I learned financial statements and tax returns from that. And then I moved with my husband to Lancaster when he got his job, and I ended up working for the state of PA auditing school districts.

So, I did government work, I went into public accounting for a few years. I went into corporate accounting. I did tax accounting. I was an executive director of a non-profit organization, and when I was the executive director, it was part time, and I just, I started helping people with their taxes, and I thought this gives me more flexibility to be home with my young kids, to make my own schedule.

And so, yeah, it was kind of a weavy little path to having my job and creating my business almost 11 years ago.

[00:07:10] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. I think that's the story of almost all entrepreneurs, a weavy little path and we somehow find our way. Very few that just kind of set out from the beginning, when we reflect back. Was there something in that path that you now reflect back and realize like, oh, that was a key moment or key learning that has helped you in launching the business?

[00:07:33] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: I think I have always known I wanted to work for myself. I think there was something in there that said I need to get experience, but I really want to work for myself. And I think I just started getting tired of answering to others. I mean, don't get me wrong. I do work with my clients. I answer to them when they have, you know, tax questions, but I wanted to have more control of what I do, what I can provide to my clients, without somebody else telling me it just has to be this way.

You know, I always questioned why do we have to do things this way? There's got to be other, you know, paths and things like that. And I also came across some board members when I was the executive director who were entrepreneurs who did very well for themselves, and I learned a lot from them too.

And I thought, yeah, I need to do this for myself. You know, my son, my younger son suffers from a rare migraine disease. So that was also a reason why, to do things for myself so that I could have more flexibility.

[00:08:28] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. What, was there anything that made you nervous when you decided to go in? Like, cause you were in government and corporate, like you had steady paycheck. Like, was there anything?

[00:08:39] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Yeah. The steady paycheck wasn't the nervousness. I think it was the getting the clients, the marketing. You know, that kind of stuff. And how do I get out there and let people know that I have experience, you know? And when I started 11 years ago, the internet was there, but the social media and the reaching out to people wasn't as prominent as it is now.

You know, the networking, the going out and being part of a chamber or women's groups, things like that. So, I think more of the marketing and getting the clients than the actual work. I'm very confident in doing the tax work.

[00:09:13] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So how did you overcome that for yourself? Because you know, you're mostly a finance person talking about marketing. That's a challenge, I think, for a lot of people – figuring out how to market yourself effectively.

[00:09:24] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: It is. A lot of it was word of mouth. When I first started out, I put a few ads, like we have like a local little newspaper you can do free press releases. But really just word of mouth and then I started to get into networking groups and just talking to people and a lot were friends and family initially, who then talked to other people and said, hey, you know. And social media, I would say about two, three years into it, Facebook, I really started to get into posting a business page and really getting out there.

I work — well, now I'm 100 percent virtual. At the time, 60, 70%. So, I do have clients from all over. Some of them I got through different, you know, online job search kinds of things. But I would say in the last five years is where I've really been pushing, you know, to gain the clients. Kids are older. I have more time to focus on the business.

[00:10:19] Sanjay Parekh: When thinking about that, when you were doing kind of word-of-mouth marketing, was that accidental? Was that intentional?

[00:10:29] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: I’d say a little bit of both. I mean, you have to be intentional if you really want to get a client base, you have to put yourself out there and that's not always easy for me.

I mean, I say I'm an introvert extrovert, so I can be all extroverted when we're doing this, you know, talking to my clients, but then when I get to networking events, I sometimes like, Ooh, I don't know, should I talk to this person? I'm going with friends, you know, going to events with friends and having them kind of nudge me. So, a little bit of both and a little bit of it is organic.

[00:10:58] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, I think events are probably like that even if you're an extrovert. It's one of the hardest things when you're walking into a room with people you don't know, right? I feel that too. I'm extroverted as well and then you know, sometimes you feel like, uh oh, I don't know anybody.

Everybody is already talking to people. Like, what do I do? So, do you have any strategies for yourself? Like, other than going with friends, if you don't go with friends, like, what do you do?

[00:11:22] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Well, I started doing some with friends. I actually had a girlfriend who introduced me to another chamber in Lancaster.

Lancaster has several chambers, which is great. I'm part of two of them. And so, the Northern Lancaster Chamber, she introduced me, and I just started to push myself and go, I’ve got to go talk to somebody. You know, you’ve got to walk over and just stand there with a drink in your hand or a plate of food and just start talking, introduce yourself.

And I've been doing that more and more, I'd say the last six months, than over the last 11 years. Just forcing myself to talk and it's still awkward, but you have to do that. And then getting into groups on Facebook or social media, a lot of little different kinds of networking groups. I'm also part of CPA groups, you know, just really connecting on LinkedIn and Facebook have been my bigger areas. And Threads, Threads is growing.

[00:12:08] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, that's great. Okay. So now you mentioned before too, you've got a podcast. Why did you decide to start doing that? In addition to the business.

[00:12:18] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Yeah, I always have loved talking to people about money. Financial literacy is huge and we're not doing a service, especially to women and young adults, you know, and our kids.

And I've always told my kids, like, I will talk to my boys about everything. People think I'm nuts. I will tell them what was our mortgage, what do we make, you know, because they have to learn. How else are they going to learn? So, I started to do little vlogs and podcasts and blogging for my clients. And then I ended up coming across this contest to be one of the next up and coming women podcasters with Seneca Women and iHeart and thought, I'll just send my stuff in.

Didn't think anything of it, you know, and I was one of 10 women that became winners of the contest out of 500. So, through that, I learned how to do more podcasting. And when I launched in 2023, you know, it was pretty good, in a good spot, you know and getting that word out and I love doing it.

And I do webinars too. I do local basic taxes, one on one at a local college. And I just, I love to talk about it. It's weird, I know. Taxes are weird.

[00:13:24] Sanjay Parekh: You kind of touch upon this, you know, it's one of those funny things. And I see this all the time. And some of the things that I do as well, that people like, oh man, that’s courageous to make that ask out of nowhere.

And I'm like, well, right now, if I don't make the ask, it's already a no. If I do make the ask, there's at least a chance it could still be a no, right? That's like the same approach that you took of, well, let me just send this in and see what happens, right?

[00:13:47] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Yeah.

[00:13:48] Sanjay Parekh: Maybe you are one of the top 10.

[00:13:49] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: You know, it was in the middle of tax season.

I don't know what I was thinking. And I did this and literally two weeks to the end of tax season, I get the email and I was like, no, this can't be true. And I sat on it for three days because I just, my brain was, April 15th, April 15th. And then I just, I couldn't believe it. But I do, I love to talk about this.

I talk to my clients. I don't talk above my clients, you know, yeah, I have to use accounting and tax terms here and there, but my clients have always said, I'm so easy to talk to. And I just, yeah. I love to share my knowledge because people need to learn, at any age, really.

[00:14:28] Adam Walker: Support for this podcast comes from Hiscox, committed to helping small businesses protect their dreams since 1901. Quotes and information on customized insurance for specific risks are available at Hiscox.com. Hiscox, the business insurance experts.

[00:14:49] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, let's switch gears a little bit. You've been doing this for 11 years now. How do you manage the stress of doing this kind of full time as well as then family and you know, all the other stuff that's in life?

[00:15:04] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: It is a balance. I mean, I don't always get it right. Tax season is my hardest. January to April, my family knows. I work seven days a week. I might not be working on return seven days a week, but I am in the office working. My hours are long.

A lot of stress, a lot of stress with that. And I just have to do some self-care. I will set boundaries with my clients during, you know, tax season, they know they can get ahold of me every day, except from like 10 at night till like six in the morning.

I don't answer texts. I don't answer emails off tax season. Monday through Friday only, with my clients. So, setting boundaries and taking care of myself, having to say it's okay to put everything away, go out to dinner with my husband or the kids, or go with a girlfriend, get a glass of wine somewhere, go to the beach. Sometimes I'll do that in the winter, go down to the shore. Go to a movie, go work out.

You know, I try to work out a couple times a week. I could do more, but there is stress in it, right? I mean, being an entrepreneur, you are on 24/7 because your brain is always like, ooh, I should do this. I should do that.

But you have to set your boundaries. Or you're going to go nuts and I didn't do that initially. When I first started I didn't. I was answering clients at one in the morning, and I shouldn’t have done that.

[00:16:15] Sanjay Parekh: This is the bad affliction of being an entrepreneur, me and this dumb brain that keeps thinking all the time and I think it's a part of like just loving what we do, right? Like loving the fact that we get to be problem solvers every day. And I think it's a different kind of a person that gravitates to kind of the things that we do.

Let's talk about the balance that you have now with the business and the podcasting, because you just talked about how, January through April, like, don't talk to me, I'm busy, like, the whole time. So, you can't take four months out when you're running a podcast. So, how do you, how are you thinking about that in terms of running this kind of side hustle, which obviously supports the main business, but really, like, through January through April, you're like, I don't want any new clients right now, I'm busy.

[00:17:03] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: To be honest, I will have to say this tax season, I actually used my podcasting interviews and time I took with it to be my break. Like I, you know, it was like, okay, I'm going to spend Thursday just doing podcasts for that day. Cause I know I've got all this other work, you know, and I've kind of scheduled it.

I have an editor, which has saved me. She is phenomenal. Chris is phenomenal. So that helps, but I really, I try. You know, I take some hiatus breaks and, I don't get into it. Finding guests was hard in the beginning. So that kind of put a damper on, oh, you know, if I take a break, you know, between seasons, season one and now my ongoing episodes, I took a couple months break and it was hard to get back into it.

But once I got into it, I'm like, all right. And now, you know, I try to book out. So, I think I have like 10 to 12 interviews now booked through September to do, you know, put in the can, as they say, right, put it in the can and have it and then work with my editor and then I can get it out.

And I try to do that so that, at least for parts of tax season, I can have that done. I don't interview all the time during tax season. I try to do a couple episodes of me just saying, hey, here's some information you need to know. Takes me what, 15 minutes to do it? I spend the morning doing it. I'll edit that. It's really easy and I'll put it out there. You know, my little bonus episodes.

[00:18:22] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah.

[00:18:23] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: But I look at it as a release. I love this. I love this.

[00:18:26] Sanjay Parekh: Well, let's talk about something else that you kind of mentioned as a release, which was exercise. You say, you know, you try to do it a few times a week. So how do you kind of try to fit that in? And where does it land in the stack of things that are important?

[00:18:38] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: I have to schedule it, honestly, like if it's not on the calendar and I say, oh, I'm going to go over to the health club and I'm going to walk and I'm going to swim, you know, and if I don't put it on the calendar, I won't do it.

[00:18:49] Sanjay Parekh: Is there, like, a particular time of day? Are you a morning, afternoon…?

[00:18:54] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: So, I used to be really early morning because we used to have to get up help our younger son get up because he always struggled to get out of bed. And then I’m like, all right, I’m up. I’m out the door. Well, honestly, I don't get out of bed now till like seven because I would kind of feel like, oh, I don't have to get him up anymore. And then, so somewhere in the morning, I try to get to the club. Sometimes in the afternoon on the weekends. I mean my husband's up at 4:30 every morning five days a week at going to the club. And I can't get up.

Yeah, bless his heart because I can't get up.

[00:19:24] Sanjay Parekh: I'm very sorry to your husband, but that's just all kind of wrong.

[00:19:27] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: I am so happy that he does it. But I try to balance it in the morning. Sometimes I can't and I have to do it in the afternoon But if I don't put it on the schedule, I might go walk the dog, right?

[00:19:37] Sanjay Parekh: Right.

[00:19:38] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: It's hot right now. It's too hot.

[00:19:41] Sanjay Parekh: I’ve got to imagine at 4:30 in the morning, the club is probably not that bad. Or maybe it is.

[00:19:45] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: It opens at 5 and honestly, my husband says you'd be surprised how many people are there at 5.

[00:19:49] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah.

[00:19:50] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: You know, and I've gone at 6:30. I have done it. I'm on summer break to a degree. During tax season, I do try to do it first thing in the morning just so I can have the rest of the day.

[00:20:00] Sanjay Parekh: Right, right. It gets you up and gets the blood flowing for the rest of the day. So that's good.

[00:20:05] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: It does. I mean, I can honestly say, you know, I just, at least twice a week, three times a week, but I'd like to do more. But, you know.

[00:20:11] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Almost all of us can probably do more. So yeah, it's a good goal to have.

Okay, well, let's talk about kind of reflecting back then on this journey that you've had so far and thinking about, you know, what you might want to do differently if you could. Is there anything that stands out to you that you'd do differently?

[00:20:31] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: I think the confidence in myself. I think when I first started out, I underpriced my abilities, you know, to work on tax returns. I did it for a very low price.

[00:20:42] Sanjay Parekh: And what reason was that? Were you not confident, not sure?

[00:20:47] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: I think there was a little bit of confidence of getting people to trust me.

And then a lot of them was family and friends. And I didn't want to over, like, I didn't want to rake them over the coals, you know? And not sure, honestly, when I first started doing it, would I do anything with this? So, I didn't want to put all this investment and money in. But a lot of it was confidence in myself to say, no, I'm a certified public accountant.

I have gone for training all these years. I get continuing education every year. You know, I need 80 hours of continuing education every two years. So, it's not like I just go, oh, I'm an accountant and I don't do any work. I'm continually learning and going to webinars and seminars and things like that.

And about year three or four, I realized, I am way too low in my prices, and I started getting clients that I just didn't want to work with that were just, you know, I undercharged them, but their work was just outrageous. Oh, it's a simple return, when it wasn't.

[00:21:46] Sanjay Parekh: And then when you looked at your hourly at that point, was it was that the thing that set you off from being like, oh, this doesn't make sense.

[00:21:52] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Well, I didn't do an hourly rate. I actually did flat rates. I started out, right off the bat doing flat rate.

[00:21:57] Sanjay Parekh: But then you translate that back into an hourly when it's too many hours.

[00:22:02] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Yeah, I did. And it just, I started like year three or four going, wait a minute, I am way under where I need to be.

And you know, my current clients at the time, I kept them kind of where they were. I raised them a little bit, but any new clients, I was like, this is my rate, you know, and every year I'm like, this is my rate. And now, you know, I've shifted my business a little bit. I'm trying to get a little bit away from individual tax work.

I do more small business and entrepreneur work, although there is individual tax work in that there's still business work as well. So, shifting more to an annual fee where it's a monthly, like you can pay me monthly kind of thing, subscription type base. It's a journey, but it was the confidence to say, and also to not apologize, right?

That confidence of not apologizing for why I do what I do, why I charge for what I do. And this is my business.

[00:22:52] Sanjay Parekh: Right. I think that's something that all entrepreneurs struggle with. Even if you've been an entrepreneur for a long time, it’s like, oh, is anybody going to pay this much? There’s this worry that it's worth it.

[00:23:06] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Yeah. They’ll pay it. There are people who won't, you know I cannot tell you how many calls I get during tax season. How cheap can you do my tax work? And my response is that I'm not the one you want to hire. You get what you pay for, unfortunately.

[00:23:21] Sanjay Parekh: Right. I think that's for us as entrepreneurs kind of learning how to discriminate with the segment of people that you want to deal with. And for some people, the people that want cheap taxes, those are the clients that they want.

[00:23:34] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Absolutely.

[00:23:34] Sanjay Parekh: Which is great. Like have at it, but for you it's kind of that upper end.

[00:23:40] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: And not to apologize for that, right? It's okay to set who you want to work with.

[00:23:44] Sanjay Parekh: Right. Yeah, a hundred percent. So, you know, kind of, as you have set these systems in place, is there any technology or methodology that you've used to help you manage all of this stuff for these clients?

[00:23:57] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Yes, a lot. I have to say Google calendar or Microsoft Outlook calendar.

Well, my family uses Google calendar, so we all have our calendars and all, but I've translated that to my office as well. I have a scheduling software that I use. Clients can go and schedule and then it goes right onto my calendar. I use a client portal, a secure client portal where I chat with my clients, all documents can go there.

It's called TaxDome. It's made for accountants with tax work, bookkeeping work, that kind of thing. It has workflows in it, so helps automate processes. I could set up engagement letters in the beginning. And then once the clients say, yeah, we want to do this, I can send the email out and it automatically sends them something to sign.

Once it’s signed, it puts them into the next, you know, workflow. So, I absolutely have utilized technology, you know, this whole AI thing, people are so scared of AI and I'm utilizing it because it has helped me take care of the small things so that I can do the bigger things with my clients.

[00:24:56] Sanjay Parekh: Right.

[00:24:56] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: And spend more time with my clients.

[00:24:58] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. That's a great perspective on technology just in general, I think. Okay, last question for you. What would you tell somebody that is thinking about taking that leap like you did and either launching a side hustle or going all in like you did?

[00:25:14] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: I think a couple things. First, understand that when you're launching it, you're not going to have that 15 minutes of fame or right out the gate, make that first hundred thousand dollars.

You might, but most of us it's a lot of ebbs and flows and you have to understand and be willing to know that there's going to be some lean times and there's going to be not so lean times in that regard. The other thing, and I say this to all my clients, if you are doing a side hustle, you're not a hundred percent sure if you want to become more of an entrepreneur, you know, grow that small business. No matter what, separate your finances, put all your side hustle and business monies into an account separate from your personal. It will save you in the long run.

It really will give you a better idea. And doing something like a QuickBooks or a Wave, you know, an accounting software or Excel to track everything. So you have a better idea of where things are. And have patience.

[00:26:09] Sanjay Parekh: I think that's something I've seen often in entrepreneurs, first time entrepreneurs, especially that don't really understand how well they're doing or not realizing that they're actually losing money in the business because they haven't tracked all of that well.

[00:26:22] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Right.

And hiring a professional, to be honest. I know even when you get started, if this is really your passion, yes, hiring a CPA, hiring a lawyer. It might mean, oh, that's a lot of money out of my pocket initially. But in the long run, it will save you a lot of heartache and get you to understand and finding that professional that wants to work with you and doesn't talk above you, you know and wants to be there with you in the journey.

[00:26:46] Sanjay Parekh: Samantha, this has been fabulous. Where can our listeners find and connect with you online?

[00:26:52] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Sure. You can check out my website, www.yourfinancialmaven.com. And then if you go onto that website at the bottom of all my social media, but I am on Facebook, I'm on Instagram, all under Your Financial Maven, I'm on Threads under Your Financial Maven.

And my podcast you can find on Spreaker Prime Network or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

[00:27:14] Sanjay Parekh: There you go. Thanks so much for being on today.

[00:27:17] Samantha Mittman Besnoff: Thank you, I appreciate it.

[00:27:22] Sanjay Parekh: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit Hiscox.com. And to hear more Side Hustle to Small Business stories, or share your own story, please visit Hiscox.com/side-hustle-to-small-business. I'm your host, Sanjay Parekh. You can find out more about me at my website, SanjayParekh.com.