Mark Mayoka, former Huntington councilman and CEO of Harbor Accounting Group, and author of Financial Crisis Planning for Small Businesses: Winning the Battle for Business Survival has revised hs 2008 book for the age of artificial intelligence.
The latest version of the guidebook is currently available on Amazon.
Mayoka, who holds CPA and JD degrees, originally put pen to paper in 2008 with a mission to help small businesses get through the financial crisis. Upon helping several thousands of small businesses as clients, Mayoka has revised his book to continue to advise small business owners on long-term resilience, using AI to their advantage.
His expertise in helping small businesses save money and manage their future is plentiful—he first acquired his own CPA practice in 1990 while attending law school. After a term as a town councilman in 2009, where he established a small business center and a chapter of Building Homes for Heroes to build homes for veterans, he returned to grow his practice.
Today, he leads Harbor Accounting Group, with a staff that includes his daughter, Brittany Mayoka, as chief operating officer, and son Sean Mayoka, as chief exchange officer. The firm is on track to be in the top 500 firms in the US in terms of revenue this year.
In assisting businesses, he stresses in his book how in today’s climate, every business will find itself in some sort of crisis. “You will need to be compulsively vigilant over your own cash flow and operating costs,” he writes.
The book includes seven core strategies gleaned from 35 years of experience in guiding small businesses, and implementing AI as a tool, that covers topics ranging from accounts receivable to technologies. In an interview, Mayoka detailed how platforms like Quickbooks can help small businesses forecast the future and predict cash flow.
Mayoka stresses the importance of “constant customer communication,” and how AI can also assist with knowledge of a customer base: “It gives you metrics on your employees— on the direction of their work productivity. It forecasts customer relationships. When you fill out a survey, it records the survey, and it takes that data, and it provides you with future forecasting information.”
Another critical component for his clients—cybersecurity: “In our field, it’s the number one priority.”
In addition to AI, there are various tax benefits that businesses may not be aware that they are eligible for, such as the Qualified Business Income Deduction, a 20% tax deduction on the profit of any business. Under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, deduction will go up to 23%.
Having merged various firms himself, his firm is experienced in leveraging AI to streamline different software, integrating them with other companies—project management, billing software, and analytics software.
