Chapter Eighteen #2
“Yes. I may not be wired for numbers, but I love the shop. It’s a part of me.
My aunt Marie was the original owner, and when I was younger, my mom would drop me off to help her on the weekends.
I met Carly when I was fourteen, and she came to live with my aunt.
Carly was nineteen. She’d just lost her best friend and had broken up with her childhood sweetheart, Zev, who is now her husband.
She was not in a good place, and she spent a lot of time at the ranch, healing.
We clicked, even with the age difference, and she’s like a big sister to me. ”
There was a mix of sadness and joy in her voice. “I started working at the shop in high school, and I’ve poured my heart and soul into it. By then Carly was doing better, and my aunt wanted to travel, so she signed the shop over to her.”
“Wow. That’s quite a gift.”
“I know. My aunt never had visions of taking the shop to the next level. She opened when she felt like it and closed for weeks when she took trips. When Carly took over, we had big dreams, and we worked our butts off to make them come true. Then, a few years ago, Zev came back into her life and swept her off her feet. She and Zev were like real-life Goonies when they were young, and she never lost her love of treasure hunting. That’s when Marie and I became Carly’s partners, so she could work remotely during the warmer months and spend winters here at the shop.
Marie helps when she’s in town, and Quinn works for us full time, and we have other part-timers and extra help for the holidays.
But now that Carly’s pregnant, and she and Zev are starting a new treasure-hunting adventure in the Caribbean, she has to focus on those things. ”
“That makes sense, and it’s amazing that the three of you have been able to make all of that work.
That says a lot about your friendships and determination.
I wondered why you were the only one in your family who doesn’t live and work on the ranch.
It sounds like you fell in love with the people as much as the job. ”
“I love the ranch and my family, and I definitely fell in love with Carly and my aunt, but the job is everything. I love going to work, even on the harder days. I love taking part in community events and planning new recipes. I even love going in hours early on Mondays to make special chocolates. I love our customers, and I like giving them a reason to smile.”
“You’re good at that. I bet you’ll miss Carly when she’s gone.”
“I will, like crazy. It’s not even like we hang out much now that she’s married, but still.
I had a mini mental breakdown over that, but I’m good now, and I’m truly happy for her and Zev, which is why I need to learn accounting.
I don’t want to let anyone down, and I’m competitive.
Everyone in my family has their thing, and they’re really good at what they do.
Nobody doubts that one day Cowboy will take over running the ranch for my dad, that Sasha and Doc would die before they’d let a horse suffer, or that Dare would never give up on anyone who needed help. ”
He steeled himself against that.
Birdie held up her hands and said, “I know he doesn’t seem like that given what you’re going through with him, and I hate that he’s the way he is with you, but he really is an excellent therapist.”
“I don’t doubt that, and I’m not judging him.” He didn’t want to get lost in that. “But you sound like you have something to prove to your family.”
“Not to them,” she said softly. “Just to myself.”
There it was. The reason this mattered.
“But maybe I’m not smart enough to do it,” she said regretfully.
“Bullshit.”
She tilted her head, confusion rising in her eyes. “How can you say that after you and Carly tried to teach me, and I’m still lost? I never went to college, so…”
“Lots of smart people never went to college. Did you go to school to become a chocolatier?”
“No. I get bored in school, and my mind wanders. My aunt and Carly taught me everything I know.”
That was not at all surprising. “Is it easy to make chocolate?”
“Making chocolate is simple. You can do it at home. Making specialty chocolates takes patience and precision. Chocolate’s a finicky bitch. She’s all about temperature and timing. If you’re off on either, she’ll rebel. But treat her right, and she’ll make you look good.”
He loved how she gave everything a heartbeat. “Sounds like most women.”
“Nothing wrong with having high standards,” Birdie challenged.
“I agree. Look at all that you’ve accomplished. You’re smart enough to learn how to handle the books.”
“Oh, my sweet Viking, you have no idea how much I’d like to believe you.”
“You’d better believe it, because believing the opposite is what will sink you.”
That got her attention, and she leaned closer again. “You think I’m talking myself out of learning this?”
“I don’t know, but you’re obviously intelligent. You couldn’t have gotten as far as you have if you weren’t, and whether you have a knack for numbers or not doesn’t really matter. What matters is learning where to put them and how to read the output. The program will do all the work.”
“If you say so.” She didn’t sound convinced.
A memory popped into his head that he hadn’t thought about in years. Robbie was a dreamer, and their mother used to teach him by correlating whatever it was to the things he was interested in, like helping others.
“I have an idea. Let’s forget the program for now.” Crew pushed the laptop away from her.
“Okay,” she said, drawing out the word with confusion. “I like this idea so far.”
“Let’s talk about chocolate instead.”
She grinned. “Now you’re speaking my language.”
“With the shop, you’ve got your ingredients to make the chocolates.” He turned to a clean page in her notebook and said, “Draw a circle and put two or three ingredients in it.”
She drew a circle and wrote, sugar, cocoa, and butter inside it.
“Good. Now draw your shop, but make it big enough to draw the retail side, complete with displays and whoever works there and the kitchen with all your equipment.”
She leaned over the notebook, carefully mapping out displays and counters, sinks, and equipment. She drew four people and wrote Divine Intervention above the picture.
“Now pencil in your employees, including temporary or on-call staff,” he said.
“This is way better than staring at spreadsheets,” she said as she drew them. “Now what?”
“Now we turn that into accounting. May I?” He reached for the pencil, and she handed it to him. “We have three parts to the accounting puzzle. Revenue and expenses are two parts, and the third part is profit or loss.” He wrote the words as he said each one.
“This is where I get lost,” she said.
He bumped his shoulder against hers. “What did I say about doubting yourself?”
“Sorry. I’ve totally got this.”
He chuckled. “Let’s just give it a chance. The cost of your ingredients is an expense.”
“Makes sense.”
He wrote expense over the ingredients. “The cost to run your shop is also an expense.” He wrote expense over the shop.
“But while ingredients are pretty simple to understand, because you can’t make your products without them, the cost to run your shop is a little more complicated.
It includes the cost of the building. Do you own the building or rent it? ”
“Marie owns it, but we rent it from her as part of the partnership agreement.”
“That rent is an expense, just like the utilities, insurance, and the salaries you pay yourselves and your employees.” He started a list of expenses for the shop. “Do you own or rent the equipment?”
“We own it.”
“Those are also expenses, but they’re depreciating, which we’ll cover later.
Anything you buy for the shop is an expense.
Little things like the bags you give to customers, napkins for tastes, signs, and decorations, to the cost of maintaining your website, and bigger things like that display cabinet downstairs in your foyer. You logged that as an expense, right?”
“Not really,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“What do you mean?”
“I bought that with my own money.”
“But you said it’s for the shop. You should get reimbursed for it.”
She rolled her eyes. “You sound like Carly. Why is everyone so obsessed with that? I don’t need to be paid back for the things I buy. I saw it, I liked it, and I bought it. End of story.”
“Birdie, it’s a business expense, which means the business can write it off.”
“Want to know a secret?” she whispered.
He leaned closer, listening.
“I don’t really know what that means,” she whispered.
“Then I’ll teach you,” he whispered. He vowed to teach her everything she needed to know, so she would never again feel like she was a step behind.
“Writing something off means that you can deduct some, or all, of the cost of it from the money the business earns, which may reduce what you pay in taxes.”
“What?” she exclaimed. “I’m all for paying less taxes. I had no idea that’s why Carly has been on me about the chocolate fountains and all the other things over the years.”
Red flags were waving, but Crew didn’t want to get lost in the weeds, so he made a mental note of that to help figure it out at another time and focused on the basics.
“At some point, we’ll make a list of the things you’ve bought on your own for the shop and see if we can do something with it, but for now, let’s get through this. ”
After listing expenses, he said, “The money the shop earns is called revenue.”
“I think it’s silly that we don’t just call it money, but I’ll play along,” she said. “Revenue is money in, and expenses is money out.”
“Exactly. The third piece of the puzzle is the profit or loss, which is your bottom line. To figure that out, you take your total revenue and subtract the total expenses, which is the cost of ingredients, plus the cost of running your business, and you end up with your profit or loss.”
She snagged the pencil from his hand and wrote: