Fastest 50: Breakwater Accounting + Advisory

Photo by Eric Crossan

Breakwater Accounting + Advisory
Location: Wilmington
Breakwatercorp.com

Breakwater Accounting & Advisory Corp provides outsourced bookkeeping and accounting services for small to midsize businesses and nonprofits. We test and use the latest technology tools available to streamline the back office operations for our clients. 

What have been the biggest obstacles your company has faced over the past three years, and how did you overcome them?
Wrong hiring decisions and giving too many chances — we have learned that once it’s clear it is not a good fit, we need to address it immediately. Our business is our people. So we all have to be paddling in the same direction! Like any small business, cash flow and growth. When you are growing and know what you need to put in place but don’t have the funding, the banks don’t want risk so borrowing is expensive. Businesses end up using credit cards or other high interest loans. I hate having debt, so we have been more conservative than most and have hung in there until we were able to invest more in the growth. 

What is the most valuable lesson you’ve learned over the past three years?
If you want to keep moving forward, you need to dedicate time to the proactive things despite the constant fires and day to day distractions that come your way. The hope is when you get the proactive things right, the day to day fires will decrease. But there will always be the day to day disruptions to your planned agenda — that’s life. Set aside time without distractions each week to work on the future oriented tasks and strategic planning.