“My dance card is full” is to say that your schedule is completely booked. Back in the day, women wrote their dance partners’ names on little cards they would carry around their wrist or in their handbag. This card had a finite number of openings, one for each song, and potential partners would hope their lady would favor them with a good one!

At Breakaway, our advisors work for themselves, not by themselves. This means that while we take care of all the back office details so they can focus on their clients, our advisors are entrepreneurs who get to enjoy the thrill (and sometimes experience the disappointment) of finding their own client base. While the first few months of entrepreneurship can be exciting, they can also be a little daunting and many of our potential advisors ask what they should do to prepare themselves financially and how much money they should save to feel confident on their journey.

I had my first tax season in 1994. That means I had about 25 tax seasons under my belt when we started Breakaway (give or take a couple years when I was in industry). For the most part, I actually enjoyed tax work. I got a chance to interact with my clients in a way that they valued (as long as I was giving them good news and ways to save money). I got to feel a sense of accomplishment when I could deliver a finished product on time to a client.

It’s arguably one of the most exciting moments in bicycle racing. Seemingly coming out of nowhere, a pack of riders surges ahead of the peloton and begins a courageous sprint, leaving the main group kilometers behind them.

As we build Breakaway, we have focused intentionally on our mission and values. We believe collaborating and memorializing them will help us remain true to our core as Breakaway grows. While we are passionate about Breakaway, all of us would say the most important thing in our lives are our families. Yet none of us have gone through this same, simple practice with those we value most. Have you? 

We all pay tax on income we earn. If you work as an independent contractor, you probably have a lot of questions about how to track your income, how to estimate tax, and how to pay taxes.

When you leave a high stress job and find yourself in your element, doing what you were meant to do, you may find yourself manifesting stress.

As we get into the swing of the new year, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and excited by all the projects and goals that come with a fresh start. If you find yourself bogged down in meetings talking about new ideas, but with very little time to actually execute them, you may want to reexamine your relationship to deep work and distractions.

One of our goals here at Breakaway is to support small business. Mainly we do this by providing monthly bookkeeping, goal setting, and advisory meetings with our clients as their guide on their business journey. 

When I met with one of Breakaway’s (soon to be announced) new board members last week, he toasted our success: “Congratulations on finishing your first quarter in business. You can honestly say it was your best quarter ever!”