Most business owners are operators. They show up, execute, and repeat. And there's nothing wrong with that — until the day they want to scale, step back, or sell. Because what an operator builds isn't a transferable business. It's a personal service delivery system that stops working the moment they stop showing up.

In this solo episode of Books & Backbone, Donna Harris breaks down the real difference between operating a business and building one — and why the distinction shows up not in mindset or motivation, but in the books.

She walks through what an operator's financial picture looks like versus a builder's, why the 90-day test is the fastest way to know which one you are, and where to start if you want to make the shift.

The answer is simpler than most people expect. It starts with being able to see the business clearly — in the numbers, not just in your head.

Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc
CEO, Bookkeeping Made Simple LLC
mysimplebookkeeping.com | 801-692-0032

Neil Juneja was in the room when cannabis was first legalized in Washington State.

As founder and managing partner of Gleam Law, Neil represented the first cannabis licensees in Washington, was featured in Newsweek and Time Magazine, and has spent nearly 20 years navigating one of the most complicated regulatory environments in American business history. He's also handled partnership disputes between brothers, fathers and sons, and people who thought a handshake was good enough — in cannabis and far beyond it.

In this conversation with Donna Harris, Neil breaks down where the cannabis industry actually stands right now — the THCA loophole closure, the 280E tax burden that taxes cannabis businesses on gross profit instead of net profit, why Oregon once produced 12 times more cannabis than their state could consume, and what happens when a market goes from 70% margins to thin agricultural commodity pricing faster than anyone expected.

Then the conversation turns to something every small business owner needs to hear, cannabis or not: why you need an attorney before you have a problem, why governing documents are the foundation of your house, and why ChatGPT is a word salad machine that doesn't actually answer the legal question.

Neil's line says it all: would you rather have a guardrail at the top of the stairs or an ambulance waiting at the bottom?

Neil Juneja
Founder and Managing Partner, Gleam Law
gleamlaw.com

Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc
CEO, Bookkeeping Made Simple LLC
mysimplebookkeeping.com | 801-692-0032

July is done. Here's what it actually taught me.

In this reflective solo episode, Donna Harris opens August by looking back at July — what landed, what surprised her, and what she's still thinking about. The $40K loan nobody mentioned. The tax refund episode that apparently made people uncomfortable. The Built to Last closer that pulled the whole month together.

She also talks about what August is about: cash flow as strategy, the five numbers every business owner should check monthly, building toward the exit, and — at the end of the month — the launch of her book, From Broke to Bankable.

This one is looser and more personal than the educational episodes. It's the conversation that reminds you who's on the other side of the microphone — and why this show exists.

Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc
CEO, Bookkeeping Made Simple LLC
mysimplebookkeeping.com | 801-692-0032

July was about freedom. This episode is about what you build on it.

In the month-closing episode of Books & Backbone, Donna Harris walks through the five specific markers of a business that is actually built to last — not built on a good month, not built on strong revenue, but built on a financial foundation solid enough to hold whatever comes next.

Clean books maintained consistently. A profit and loss that tells the truth. A balance sheet that accounts for everything. Cash flow visibility 90 days out. And the quarterly conversation that translates numbers into decisions.

She talks about what those five things make possible — capital, partners, confident hiring decisions, a business you can actually sell someday — and closes with something personal: her family has been building things in America since the 1600s. Four ancestors fought in the Revolution. What that history has given her is a conviction that you don't build something real by hoping it works out.

This is the episode that closes July and opens the door to August. Worth the full listen.

Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc
CEO, Bookkeeping Made Simple LLC
mysimplebookkeeping.com | 801-692-0032

Neil Juneja was in the room when cannabis was first legalized in Washington State.

As founder and managing partner of Gleam Law, Neil represented the first cannabis licensees in Washington, was featured in Newsweek and Time Magazine, and has spent nearly 20 years navigating one of the most complicated regulatory environments in American business history. He's also handled partnership disputes between brothers, fathers and sons, and people who thought a handshake was good enough — in cannabis and far beyond it.

In this conversation with Donna Harris, Neil breaks down where the cannabis industry actually stands right now — the THCA loophole closure, the 280E tax burden that taxes cannabis businesses on gross profit instead of net profit, why Oregon once produced 12 times more cannabis than their state could consume, and what happens when a market goes from 70% margins to thin agricultural commodity pricing faster than anyone expected.

Then the conversation turns to something every small business owner needs to hear, cannabis or not: why you need an attorney before you have a problem, why governing documents are the foundation of your house, and why ChatGPT is a word salad machine that doesn't actually answer the legal question.

Neil's line says it all: would you rather have a guardrail at the top of the stairs or an ambulance waiting at the bottom?

Neil Juneja
Founder and Managing Partner, Gleam Law
gleamlaw.com

Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc
CEO, Bookkeeping Made Simple LLC
mysimplebookkeeping.com | 801-692-0032

Gaena Lu has been making almond milk for 13 years.

It started with lactose intolerance and a holistic culinary school in Berkeley. It went through three rebrandings, a seven-day shelf life that made logistics nearly impossible, a move to refrigerated with 21 days, and eventually — two years ago — a leap to something nobody had done before: almond milk in a recyclable aluminum can. Shelf stable. No refrigeration required. Nationwide shipping. Made in the US.

In this episode of Books & Backbone, Gaena sits down with Donna Harris to talk about what it actually looks like to build a food product business from scratch as a solo founder — the capital challenges, the logistics nightmares, the customer education required to get someone to trust a shelf stable product when they're used to fresh, and why doing in-person demos is still the most powerful sales tool she has.

Donna also tastes the cinnamon flavor live. She has a lot to say about it.

This one is for anyone building a physical product business, anyone who has ever wondered what it takes to get a food product onto retail shelves nationwide, and anyone who is lactose intolerant and tired of the almond milks in the box.

Two new fruit flavors coming in early 2026.

Gaena Lu
Founder, Marin Living Foods
marinlivingfoods.com

Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc
CEO, Bookkeeping Made Simple LLC
mysimplebookkeeping.com | 801-692-0032

Most bookkeepers send a PDF and disappear.

They categorize the transactions, reconcile the accounts, produce the reports, and deliver the file. Accurate. Compliant. And almost completely useless for actually running your business — because nobody explained what any of it means.

The quarterly review is what changes that. It's a scheduled conversation — four times a year — where someone sits down with you and goes through your financial picture in plain English. Not the numbers. What the numbers mean. Revenue trends, expense analysis, cash flow for the next 90 days, accounts receivable aging, tax planning, and one or two specific things to watch before the next conversation.

In this solo episode of Books & Backbone, Donna Harris explains what the quarterly review actually is, why most bookkeepers don't do it, and what happens for a business owner when they finally have it. The confidence. The better decisions. The absence of dread at tax time. And the realization that accurate records without explanation are only half the job.

At Bookkeeping Made Simple, the quarterly review is standard. Not a premium add-on. Not an upgrade. Just part of what bookkeeping should be.

Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc
CEO, Bookkeeping Made Simple LLC
mysimplebookkeeping.com | 801-692-0032

Loren DeFalco didn't set out to run a cannabinoid-focused hedge fund. He set out to stop having seizures.

After waking up in an ambulance at LaGuardia Airport in 2009, Loren spent years researching what conventional medicine couldn't fix for him — and found it in cannabinoids. That personal experience turned into CB1 Capital, a hedge fund and advisory group he has been running for close to a decade at the intersection of cannabis, finance, and drug development.

In this conversation with Donna Harris, Loren covers the full landscape of where the cannabis and hemp industries stand right now — the hemp loophole closure, the long-awaited Schedule III rescheduling, the banking crisis that keeps cannabis operators off US stock exchanges while Canadian competitors list on the NYSE, and the 280E tax burden that has cannabis companies paying taxes on gross profit instead of net profit like everyone else.

Then the conversation goes somewhere most cannabis discussions never reach — into the acidic cannabinoids that most people have never heard of. CBGA, CBDA, THCVA, and why Loren believes these under-researched compounds may have more therapeutic potential than anything the industry has focused on so far. Including why his LDL went from 150 to 66 after 18 months of CBGA while eating bacon, eggs, and cheeseburgers.

Donna also shares the story of her mother, a half a gummy, and walking to the kitchen without her walker at midnight.

This one covers a lot of ground. Worth the full listen.

Loren DeFalco
Co-Founder, CB1 Capital
cb1cap.com | LinkedIn: Loren DeFalco

Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc
CEO, Bookkeeping Made Simple LLC
mysimplebookkeeping.com | 801-692-0032

If your accountant congratulated you on your tax refund — find a new accountant.

A tax refund isn't found money. It's your own money, returned to you without interest, after the IRS held it for months while you could have been using it in your business. For a small business owner who controls their own quarterly estimated payments, overpaying isn't bad luck. It's a choice — usually an uninformed one.

In this solo episode of Books & Backbone, Donna Harris makes the case for a different goal entirely: not a big refund, not a surprise bill, but accuracy. Knowing exactly what you'll owe before you owe it — every quarter, based on real data from current books — so that April is a confirmation rather than a crisis.

She walks through how quarterly estimated tax planning actually works, why clean books are the foundation of an accurate estimate, and why the businesses that get surprised by their tax bills are almost always the ones whose books are behind.

Q3 estimated taxes are due September 15th. This episode tells you exactly what to do before then.

Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc
CEO, Bookkeeping Made Simple LLC
mysimplebookkeeping.com | 801-692-0032

She mentioned it in passing. One sentence, somewhere in the middle of a quarterly review call. Casual. Like it wasn't important.

"Oh, and my partner took out a $40,000 loan against the business last year."

Donna Harris wrote it down. Asked a few questions. And found three separate problems hiding inside that one sentence — overstated income, a missing liability on the balance sheet, and a partner equity calculation that didn't reflect what had actually happened.

None of it was fraud. None of it was intentional. It was the result of books that were being maintained without being understood — where nobody had ever asked the question that connected the loan to everything downstream from it.

In this solo episode, Donna tells the story of that quarterly review call and breaks down what it reveals about the gap between what business owners think their bookkeeper needs to know and what a bookkeeper actually needs to know. Because the casual detail is almost always the important one. And the problems that surface at tax time, at loan application time, or during due diligence are almost always the ones that were hiding in a sentence nobody asked about.

Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc
CEO, Bookkeeping Made Simple LLC
mysimplebookkeeping.com | 801-692-0032