Do You Need A CFO?

Entrepreneur has published an interesting article about the financial needs of growing businesses.  Titled “Is It Time for a CFO?” the article addresses the concern of entrepreneurs and business owners struggling with the decision of hiring an employee to handle their financial needs.  According to Gwen Moran, there are four key questions to ask yourself when deciding if your company has grown enough to need a CFO:

• You're regularly getting financial "surprises" in the form of bank notices, tax penalties, or unusual financial statements.
• You regularly feel overwhelmed by the financial demands of your business.
• You're not keeping good records and not tracking expenses because you don't have time to do so.
• You're not looking at planning, regulatory or tax changes.

If the answer to these questions is ‘Yes’, then it’s time to hire a CFO.  Right now, Benay is functioning as an external CFO for several companies, solving the need for an in-house employee, and taking care on all of the same essential functions.

It’s something to think about as the year progresses and your businesses grow.  You can find the rest of the article here.

Love Shrinks

On May 3^rd Soho fans will have another interesting read on their hands in Love Shrinks: A Memoir of a Marriage Counselor's Divorce, Sharyn Wolf’s new book about her marriage failing at a time when she appeared as a guest on Oprah for publishing a best-selling novel about making love work.  While offering up advice on dating, she struggled with a fifteen year marriage in which she and her husband had sex only twice.  And despite her incredible success as a writer of relationship advice, she could not convince her husband to read any of her books.

Love Shrinks offers a peek into Wolf’s torn life, but more than irony, it offers up a genuine portrait of a couple of good people who made each other miserable despite themselves.  The novel is peppered with real life accounts of Wolf’s patients and their problems, how she would handle each successfully or unsuccessfully, while nothing was working right in her own relationship.  Despite their difficulties, Wolf remembers her husband’s good points, ending each chapter with an explanation of the good qualities that kept her with him.

Earlier this week, Wolf sat down with the good people at Unabashedly Bookish to give an interview about what made her decide to write Love Shrinks.  Get a taste of Wolf’s story by reading the interview here.

Benay's 25th Anniversary

This August will mark Benay Enterprises’ triumphant 25^th year in business.  Benay has been growing steadily since its founding by Neil Reshen in 1986, providing back-office and business management services for new clients around the world.  Today, Neil’s daughter, Dawn Reshen-Doty, continues his legacy, offering modern techniques with a trusted pedigree as President of Benay.  

It has been our privilege to provide businesses and individual clients alike with business management and bookkeeping services such as payroll preparation, benefits, insurance, and accounts payable and receivable for a quarter of a decade. We’ve provided income statements, balance sheets, profit and loss and cash flow documentation, budget projection, as well as royalty statements for years, but it’s our relationship with our clients of which we are the most proud.

The fine people at The Literary Group International have been with us for over fifteen years.  We’ve served Steerforth Press for over ten and The Overlook Press for eight, and the bright young intern, Merrilee Warholak, who walked through our door thirteen years ago is still with us, working as Director of Client Relations, making all of them happy.  We’re working hard for Soho Press, Tin House Books, The Disinformation Company, Granta USA and Eskandar New York too so we can list them all again during our next milestone announcement.  

Thank all of you for turning your daily grind into peace of mind, with Benay.

Aliens

We can’t wait for Granta’s 114^th release, Aliens.  This spring you can expect to quickly find yourselves in the excellent position of being able to get your hands on a copy of some of the best modern fiction, memoir, and poetry around.  As the title suggests, Aliens deals with belonging—or not belonging to be precise.  From Granta’s website:

“First there was the traveller; then the word was emigrants. In America, they turned into immigrants. And today – in many parts of the world – they are (we are) aliens. From somewhere else. At odds with and yet fully inside of another culture. At home nowhere.”

The first story in particular evokes that sense of alienation with artful contrast.  Come, Japanese! moves carefully through the homesick memories of a group of Japanese girls who believe they are on board a ship coming to America where they will meet their new husbands.  Author Julie Otsuka gives us fragments of these young girls’ lives, moments of beauty and longing and indecision, often overridden by their sense of duty or fate.  Mountains of substance are stored within their experience of home, and yet the plot of the story, indeed the fate of the unnamed girls about which the story is written, is entirely focused on a foreign land they hardly know. 

Aliens includes work by Robert Macfarlane, Mark Gevisser and Chris Dennis, as well as moving photography by Afshin Dehkordi, and short poetry by Adam Zagajewski and Juan Felipe Herrera.  There are too many great artists to list here, so we suggest you see for yourself.  The stories in particular will remind that we are all strangers together.

Sarahlee Lawrence Reading and Discussion

Sarahlee Lawrence, author of River House, traveled the world and became an experienced river guide. In this memoir uniting stories of nature and travel with a journey of self-discovery, the author delivers her life, rooted in a childhood in the American West, like few authors can. Allison Hallett of the Portland Mercury writes "It's very simple: If you call Oregon your home… then you need to go to a bookstore and purchase a copy of Sarahlee Lawrence's River House. . . ."

Lawrence is in her element in the space between, whether that means an exotic river on the borders of Bolivia and Peru, or the log cabin she builds in a wilderness at the edge of an encroaching city. From a review in the Seattle Times: "Lawrence writes with remarkable candor about her loved ones; the joys and pitfalls of life in a small community; and the creeping development from upscale Bend 40 miles away. She is in her element writing about nature, and it's a treat to share her journey."

On March 8th, you can do one better than owning the book already on its way to becoming an Oregon classic: you can attend the book discussion and meet the PNBA-award-winning author in person at Annie Bloom’s Books in Portland, Oregon! The reading and discussion starts at 7:00 pm – see you there.

Mike Sacks Reading in Chicago

Hey there, bloggers, and thanks for joining us again. Today, we’re revisiting a great offering from Tin House. Your Wildest Dreams Within Reason, written by Mike Sacks, is a comedic collection of bizarre and mundane emails, short stories, Craigslist ads, lesser-known tantric positions, and even letters to authors. It earned Sacks the appellation “comedic brick shithouse” by Viceland.com, and excerpts from the collection have been featured in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and others.

Mike will be doing a reading Thursday, March 10th in Chicago to promote the book. Fans will be able to find him at 7pm in Quimby’s Bookstore, on 1854 W North Ave - if you’re in the area, why not bring your copy down, get it signed, and chat with Mike?

Literary Group Topping Charts

Our clients at The Literary Group International seem to have found another runaway hit in Harry Markopolos’ memoir No One Would Listen.  The book recounts Harry’s investigation into the famous  Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, from Harry’s initial revelation about the NASDAQ chairman’s impossible claims, to his early attempts to warn the SEC, and his eventual vindication when Madoff was indicted.

No One Would Listen delivers a thrilling financial alongside Markopolos’ personal trials and drama.  Perhaps it is the mix of those two elements, paired with excellent narration, which has placed the book on the Bloomburg list of Top 30 business books of 2010 and rocketed it into the iTunes’ top five Best Books of the year.

There’s no doubt that No One Would Listen is a captivating success, riding the wave of public interest in the financial world in the aftermath of these recent economic storms.  The memoir serves not only as a engaging story, but also as a warning to all of us about how easily the system can be undermined, and how important it is for one man to persevere in the face of wrongdoing.  Read it today, or download it from iTunes to play during your daily commute.