May 23, 2025 • 55 mins
One Year In: What Worked, What Didn’t & What We’re Changing
🎙️ Welcome back to Full Throttle Finance™! In this special Part 2 episode, Felicia and Alli reflect on what really worked, and what did not, during our first year as a consulting firm. From contract lessons and Upwork strategies to social media struggles and staying agile without strict goals, we’re getting real about the highs, lows, and everything in between.
💬 Whether you're scaling your firm, navigating client relationships, or launching a new service, these behind-the-scenes insights will hit home.
🛠 Topics Covered:
- Contract do’s & don’ts in service-based work
- The real ROI of Upwork & networking
- Why we don’t goal set—but still hit targets
- Managing tough client breakups
- Budgeting with Profit First
- Lessons from our social media learning curve
- When (and why) we say no
🔗 Learn more about our services: www.cleanbeeconsulting.com/fullthrottlefinance
Watch a new episode of Full Throttle Finance™ every Friday! 👊🏼✊🏼💨
#FinancialLiteracy #SmallBusinessFinance #CleanBeeConsulting #EntrepreneurLife #BookkeepingTips #ConsultingFirm #FullThrottleFinance #ServiceBusiness #ProfitFirst #YearOneInBusiness
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Hello everyone and welcome back to FullThrottle Finance, a financial literacy
podcast geared towards taking complexfinancial topics and breaking them
down into fun, relatable discussions.
My name is Felicia, and I'm theCEO here at Clean Bee Consulting.
And with me again is Allie,who is our senior bookkeeper.
Together we focus on revving up thefinancial foundations for athletes,
(00:28):
entrepreneurs, and leaders in business.
Regardless if you're operating froman established program already or if
you're just getting started, we're hereto help you make small shifts that will
drive better financial performance.
Today we are going to piggybackon last week's episode, and we're
going to continue to discuss whatour first year anniversary as
(00:52):
a consulting firm looked like.
Yeah.
you know, we talked a lot aboutthe metrics and everything, but
this week we're going to spend alittle bit more time on things that
have worked really well for us andunfortunately, some of the things that
may not have worked as well for us.
Straight line emoji.
Face
So let's start with some of the items thatare like positive so we can kind of break
(01:13):
the ice we can talk with our listenersabout some of the positive things
we experienced surrounding contracts
Okay, contracts.
so I would say overall there weremostly goods that came out of contracts
in our first year of business.
I think for service industryjobs specifically, contracts
(01:36):
really, really matter.
But I will admit that I did not wantto put contracts in place when I first
started, when, when the firm was justme as Felicia as the freelancer, right?
I didn't wanna put strict stipulations inplace because I didn't know realistically
what I was growing the firm to be.
(01:58):
And two, I didn't wanna like lock myselfinto a contract working with somebody
that I didn't necessarily wanna work with.
be kind of scary to be honest.
Yeah, and you know, I, I come from workingwith another firm who locked in like
annual contracts and I just never feltlike annual contracts were the right
(02:24):
fit for this type of service industry.
I understand it like guaranteesthe revenue and that way you have
more to budget and plan off of.
But again, I think that that ledto staying in relationships that we
didn't need to necessarily stay into.
And that's not what I wanted forour firm and for the business
(02:44):
that I was building at the time.
Another reason why I didn't reallydevelop them was because a lot of the
contracts were coming from Upwork,which in its own is a contract every
single time I accepted a proposal.
So I didn't really need it.
But for those clients that I wassecuring outside of Upwork, that
was like a direct relationship ora direct networking connection.
(03:05):
Like building the contracts waslaborsome, like there's a lot involved
in it and I didn't have the capacityand didn't wanna put the capacity
into establishing them at first.
But I found through social mediathe contract club with Not Average
Law who is the same legal firmthat we use for our trademark.
(03:28):
And getting our trademark all registered.
They actually had, at the time it was asuper good deal and it is a lot less money
than it is now, but I still feel like itis totally a valid expense at this point.
But they have a contract club, whichis basically a database filled with
like pre templated contracts forlike almost every industry you could
(03:48):
imagine, and for like any type of jobthat you could imagine or any podcast
guest contract or anything like that.
And so I think it's Like a one timefee, to join the, the contract club,
which is still a, like I said, it'sa game changer if you're somebody who
is like us, who literally have to havethese contracts in order to outline the
(04:09):
terms of agreements with our clients.
But it, it was really the game changerfor us because I was able to levy
a contract from there and then kindof reformatted it a little bit more
to tailor specifically to what we dowith both Clean Bee Consulting and
with Full Throttle Finance, right?
Like we have one that's specificfor our Motorsport clients.
(04:29):
We have a different template thatis specific for all of our o other
industries that we work with too.
So at first I would say likethe labor was intimidating, but.
Braden and his contract club, notaverage law firm, really like changed
the game and made that like thisreally big scary thing on our list
was like literally, oh, it's done now.
(04:50):
That's easy.
And now we have all of ourcontracts that we need moving
forward for all of our clients.
You have or you go accessit on a regular basis?
How does that work?
Yeah, it's, I think it's in my ownpersonal vault, which is why you
don't have access to it, because youdon't really need, need our contracts.
But yeah, it's basically, I go toa specific website and I log in and
(05:11):
then he's got links to every contractthat you could imagine, you know, for
me, I just went with the bookkeepingone, maybe added a little bit of extra
stuff that I wanted to see in there,or omitted some of the things that I
didn't think really pertained to us orchanged some of the wording around like.
How long I wanted the, the contractto go on for, so on, so forth.
(05:32):
And so like to piggyback on contracts,like I mentioned, I've worked with
firms in the past that like, liketo do 12 month contracts especially
if it's like something that's like aretainer service where it's the same
amount of money every single monthfor this guaranteed scope of work.
It just makes sense to do 12 monthcontracts usually because again,
you can project that income for afull year, but I didn't like that.
(05:56):
And so one change in our contracts thatI really am still to this day a huge
favor or in huge favor of that I really.
Love most.
I don't know what theright way to say that is.
But we do 90 day trialperiods a lot of the time.
So before we even get a contractfrom a client, like I'll capture
(06:19):
an email or something like thatand do a blended rate, right?
So, you know, the way that we usuallybuild our retainers for clients here
at Clean Be Consulting and with fullthrottle finance is that we have four
different tiers depending upon whatthe type of service we're providing.
Is it bookkeeping, is it payroll, is itfinancial reporting, or is it consulting?
(06:40):
And then we also have tiersfor the size of your business.
If you're small, if you're a medium,or if you're a large size business.
We have different hourly rates forthose four different categories.
So generally when we try to get ourclient clients onto retainers, we'll
calculate their scope of work forwhat they're gonna need and where
it falls into that small, medium,large, and into those four buckets.
(07:01):
Right?
And that's how we get our retainer prices.
But.
It's really hard to guesstimatewhat those retainer prices
are gonna be ahead of times.
So one thing that's really worked well forus is before we get that, that signature
on that contract, we like to do a 90day period with our clients sometimes
where we take that bookkeeping, payroll,financial reporting, and consulting rate,
(07:26):
and we find the average rate betweenthose four buckets of what they're
gonna need and we charge them thatblended rate for actual hours worked.
And what we do is we actuallytrack what we're doing during
that 90 day trial period.
And so that way when we come backwith to them in 90 days with the
retainer, it's like, well, thisis over the last three months.
(07:46):
This is the actual.
Number of hours that wespent on bookkeeping.
This is the actual number ofhours that we spent on payroll.
This is the actual number of hours we'vespent consulting you, which may or may
not be what the client was expecting.
But it helps us a, secure,more accurate retainers.
And B, it helps with the clientunderstand what their actual needs are.
(08:08):
A lot of the times, right, they cometo us thinking I only need three hours
of bookkeeping a month, but they don'tunderstand that payroll is separate
from the reporting, which is separatefrom the consulting that we do.
And in reality, if you need three,you probably need five to six if we're
being honest on, you know, and that'sfive or six of hours of professionals
(08:29):
doing the work too, not five or sixhours of maybe the business owner doing
bookkeeping work when that's not there.
Their specialty or their trade, you know?
So a lot of the times that 90 daywindow worked really, really well
for us because we didn't have clientsfighting us when it came down to what
the actual retainer amount would be.
(08:49):
And then we weren't out any money, right?
We were getting paid an average rate foractual hours that we worked, and then we
have the data to back up the retainer forwhat they're gonna need moving forward.
And two, what that 90 day period alsoallowed us to do right, was find the
clients that weren't the right fit for us.
(09:10):
Because if it takes 90 days to get all ofthe pieces for the puzzle so that we can
even get in there to do your bookkeeping.
Sorry, but it's probably just notgonna work out in the long run.
Right.
And another thing I think thatreally worked well for us was
the flexible contract terms.
We have a 30 day cancellationnotice in our service agreements,
(09:31):
and that works both ways.
30 days just gives either partyenough time to accommodate or to just
make a changes to maybe their ownlabor force or something like that.
It was just an easy way for both partiesto be able to exit the clause if they
were feeling like it wasn't the right fit.
Or like if money just.
Didn't allow for our level of service.
(09:52):
You know, like if we were maybetoo expensive, like they thought
they could afford us and that theythought that they wanted to hire
us, but maybe it's straining thema little bit too much right now.
They wanna put it on pause orthey wanna exit the agreement.
We just wanted to make thatflexible on both sides of the
spectrum so that it was fair.
Which is always so much morecomfortable in a situation.
You know, if you can't, if you can'tafford us right now, you don't feel
(10:14):
like you're tied into somethingor you know, whatever the case is.
It's just, it's nice tohave that flexibility.
We work with small businesseswith sometimes small budgets, and
we're cognizant of that, right?
Like, maybe right nowis not the right time.
I don't want you to overextend yourselfbecause you've committed in writing to
an agreement that maybe you couldn'tfulfill your end of the bargain too.
(10:36):
So I also think that it was, we saidno to opportunities that just weren't.
The right fit for us, right?
maybe industries that we maybe don'thave like the most exposure into or
that we've never worked with before.
You know, we work with a bignetwork of other bookkeepers.
One of them actually maybeis a better fit for you.
And I would much rather refer you outto somebody that's gonna take care
(11:00):
of you than force you into our bubbleof our systems and our processes that
maybe aren't the right fit for you.
So I think that was a big one too, isthat that 90 day period just like kind of
allowed us to be like yes or no withouthaving that stringent contract in place.
And two, like not having those likereally firm restrictions around our
(11:23):
contracts allowed us to delve into, Iwould say, unconventional tasks that
we do outside of the bookkeeping.
Scope of work for clients, right?
Like for some of our clients, since wehave become contract pros, I feel like
we manage their own contract workflowsand their own service agreements.
We've helped them build, you know,contracts for both their service
(11:46):
agreements and for their contractorsthat we basically do 99% of the work for.
And then we send it outfor digital signature.
We capture the dig digital signatureon both sides of the spectrum, and
then we save it into their database.
And two, it's allowed us to delve intolike more executive assistant type
work slash maybe like an organizationalcoach scope of work, I would say.
(12:09):
Which is always somethingthat I've really.
I've thought a lot about doing,but like, I never like solicited
that as necessarily a service thatwe provide for clients, you know?
So like having that flexibility aroundcontracts really allowed us to get
creative in our first year business,and I think that's a good thing.
(12:30):
I think it's a great thing.
it's not, we're not just a ina little box, you know, you can
come to us with your problemsand we can help you with them.
Yep.
Felicia, in the part one last week,you mentioned a few times about
how Upwork was a driving factorbehind our firm's early success.
Do you wanna share a little bit more abouthow become successful on that platform?
(12:54):
Yeah, it's, it's not easy, I'll say that.
But I think there was a lot of thingsthat were going, for me, I think
the time of year that I enteredinto the Upwork space was perfect.
It was literally coming rightoff of the tax deadline.
So I got, you know,people with extensions.
I got people that were newly electeds corp statuses that were coming.
(13:15):
So I think the timing had alittle bit to play with it.
But within two and a halfmonths, I climbed to the top
10% of freelancers on Upwork.
And like that's global.
me that.
I know.
And that's global too.
That's not even like UnitedStates based freelancers.
That is everyone across the globe.
And you know, my suggestions,I will stand by Upwork for
(13:37):
getting started in freelancing.
But you do need to be very specific inthe way that you work Upwork, if you wanna
actually make the proposals worth a damn.
I would say.
So first and foremost, to find theopportunities you wanna pick the keywords
that are specific to your industryor the types of jobs that you want.
So for us, I was searching thingslike payroll and bookkeeping and like
(14:03):
tax strategy specifically were thethree that I was searching and I was
searching them every couple of hoursduring the day and even in tonight.
Because again, if you're looking to workwith people across the United States,
you've got three time zones at least thatyou've gotta take into consideration.
If you want to be able to nailclients, I. More easily, I'd say.
(14:25):
And on top of that, I wouldonly search for US jobs.
So there's like a little on the side, likeI think it's like on the left hand side,
there's a little menu you can check Marka box to only show United States jobs.
So that way it took out allof the international stuff.
I only wanted to work with US basedcompanies and I only submitted proposals.
(14:46):
So like, if you're not familiarwith Upwork, what you do is you see.
You would go to the search, you wouldsearch for bookkeeping, you'd check mark
only US jobs, and then you would see awhole bunch of job postings basically.
And you can see, you know, underfive proposals sent already or
between 15 and 25 proposals.
(15:06):
Like there's a range under each onethat shows you how many other people are
like basically competing for that job.
As you are.
And so you can open the job posting,you can get to know a little
bit more about the, the company.
It'll usually tell you what thecompany's name is, kind of like,
what the job responsibilitiesthat they're looking for are.
And so I made it a goal to only submitproposals that were, that had less
(15:29):
than five proposals submitted already.
Because I found that if you were oneof those first five or six that were
submitted, you had like somethinglike a 75% greater chance of getting
a response back from somebody.
Like imagine if you were the jobposter and like you posted it and
you gave it a day, and then you cameback and you had over 25 proposals.
(15:53):
You're
You're gonna get.
first five, you know,
Yeah.
And you're gonna get overwhelmed.
Exactly.
So that was kind of my rule ofthumb was that I wouldn't waste
a proposal 'cause you have to useconnections to submit proposals and
your connections cost money on Upwork.
And so I didn't wanna waste moneyjust blindly sending proposals.
(16:16):
I, that's why I was verytactical when it came to it.
I feel like.
And a proposal is basicallylike, this is my background.
This is what I can help you with.
This is the rate of paythat I'm asking for.
So it's really just those threecriteria and then it's up to the
poster to determine if they want to.
Just hire you based off that, orif they wanna have like a zoom call
(16:37):
with you or something like that.
I had it go both ways.
I had people just hire me straightout of the proposal and then I didn't
actually talk to them on the phonefor like maybe a week or two after.
They are still a clientof ours to this day.
And then I've also had ones thatmaybe wanted to do one or two
interview processes, let's say.
And so once you submit a proposal, youneed to watch your inbox like a hawk.
(17:01):
And as soon as somebody who posts ajob responds to you, you wanna jump on
it and you wanna just respond to them,even if it's something generic, like,
yes, I would love to meet Tuesday.
Let me check my calendar real quickto make sure that I can meet in this
specific timeframe or whatever it is.
But they want some, they wantpeople who are responsive and I'll
(17:22):
let you know that if I waited morethan an hour to respond to them.
I almost never heard a response back, butif I got a response out to them within
five or 10 minutes of them contactingme from my proposal, that was the best
shot of like them still being online,them going, Hey, this person's serious.
(17:42):
And then, you know, theproposal usually got offered and
accepted to me after that point.
So turn your notifications on, on yourphone, turn your notifications on, on
your email, and as soon as they drop youa line in your messages, make sure you go
and message them back as soon as possible.
And then just know that youare going to submit proposals
(18:04):
that are going to go nowhere.
It's just gonna happen.
There's some fake job postings.
Some people get cold feetafter they put the listing out.
You know, there's a millionreasons why, but not every
single proposal I submitted got.
Viewed or accepted or movedfurther, but I would say that
like 80% of them did using this.
(18:25):
Streamlined workflow.
But also too, like, just like an algorithmon social media, Upwork is very similar.
So once you've got a few open contractsthat are performing well and consistently,
if you utilize their, like advertiseyour profile, which is where they use
some of your connects to like drop yourprofile in when people are searching
(18:47):
bookkeeper or searching tax strategist,you'll start to receive invites directly
from people to either apply like,Hey, I saw your Upwork on profile.
I'd like for you to applyto this open job listing.
Or they'll just contact you directlyand say, Hey, I like your profile.
I wanna hire you.
Or do you have availability to take me on?
And I've had it on both accounts.
(19:08):
I had a short term contractthat found me and just wanted
to hire me right off the bat.
And I've had a short term contract.
Actually, no, it's actually still acurrent con, it's a current contract.
We just don't.
Do scope of work for them outsideof the quarterly realm who invited
me to like imply and go throughthat formal process with them.
(19:28):
So Upwork can be tricky, but especiallyif you're starting out, you know, if
you follow these guidelines, like Iwould be surprised if you didn't have
some, some success along the way.
Submitting proposals,
I didn't realize Upwork was, had analgorithm like that that I like, that
like it, it, I mean, it makes sense thatif you've got stuff performing on there
(19:50):
that it would, you know, they would pushyou out more because you're obviously
doing well, you're obviously able towork with, with other clients, so.
Yeah, I mean, I think I had like,at one time I had like 10 contracts
going simultaneously and it feltlike I was getting more of these
like, Hey, are you interested?
I found you on Upwork versus nowwhere I only have a couple of
(20:12):
people that are still on Upwork.
Some of the original contractors, Idon't get as many of those drop-ins.
Like, Hey, I like yourprofile kind of a thing.
So I think it's like it's, Imean, it makes sense, right?
Like if you're feeding the,because there's fees on both sides.
The employer and me as thefreelancer, like they're getting
20% of every single transaction.
(20:33):
So I think it's like the more you havewith them, the more attractable you
are to their business model because.
They're getting 20% of every transaction.
So, well, I think it would be sillyto think that there's not some sort of
algorithm at play there on the backend.
But it took, I would say it took me a fullyear to like really like understand like
no, there is an algorithm and I can see
(20:55):
that
when I exactly like, just basedoff of my own work at this point,
So I guess I can lead us intoour next topic of networking.
I think it's kind of interesting.
We've, we've talked about, you know,sending out emails to companies, but
Yeah.
what's the networking and whatis it like, what have we actually
done networking wise for the firm?
(21:17):
Yeah.
It's like every time we get a littlebit hesitant and like a little bit
like, oh, we should probably likeoutreach and do our own marketing.
Like three more networkingopportunities come up.
Right.
And it's like, well, so we've been sittingon a couple of lists that we've been
making for like some local area businessesand business models we wanna work with.
(21:37):
That we haven't used them.
Right.
Like,
everything, last time I got, Igot a spreadsheet done for her.
She comes back to me and she's like, oh,so we've got a couple more new clients.
So yeah.
I don't know if we're gonna have timefor that, that list that she compiled.
which, I mean, I, we keep 'em and Ikeep punching that task every single.
Every other week that it comesup when I keep punting it.
(22:00):
Just because you don't knowwhen you're gonna need it.
So I don't like, it's definitelygood to prepare in that aspect.
But like marketing, I feel like wehaven't had to do so much of, and I
think that we have an untraditionalviewpoint about marketing which
maybe I'll get into in a little bit.
But as far as the networking go, I goes,I think networking outside of Upwork has
(22:24):
been our second biggest revenue generator.
Right.
And it's been fun networking,at least from the CEO aspect.
I've loved diving deep intothe local community here in my
surrounding area in Washington.
I remember there's one verymemorable experience that I have,
and honestly, I didn't even reallygo to the event with the mindset of
(22:48):
necessarily networking to build my.
My clientele base or just todeepen my roots in the community.
I went to support our localrestaurants and our local distillery.
Right?
So it was last fall Della Soil,which is a farm to table restaurant
that just opened here this past weekhere in Kenmore, Washington and Tuck
(23:12):
Muck Farm, which is a local farmhere in Woodinville, Washington.
They had this hoop harvest communitydinner at Copper Works distilling here
in Kenmore, which is a distillery that'sbeen open here for a couple of years.
And it was two very long tables of what.
Della Soil's Farm to table Fair wouldlook like once their restaurant concept
(23:37):
actually became a real restaurant conceptbecause they'd just been doing the popups
every couple of weekends at that point outin like the backyard of the distillery.
And all of the proceeds from thatdinner went to Tuk Muck Farms so that
they could purchase equipment so thatthey could keep growing fresh fruits
and vegetables here for the community.
(23:58):
Right.
The whole night really encouragedcommunity and we made a number of
good friends and connections from thatnight because like we were forced,
it was just me and Jacob and we werekind of forced to just pick a seat
at these like long community tables.
Exactly.
And like get to knowthe people around you.
And we ended up networking witha couple of people that actually
(24:19):
worked for this local city.
Governments in the area,which was really cool.
Some of them had their ownconsulting businesses and whatnot.
We have multiple connections thathave transpired from that night.
You know, we're actually servicing someof these people for their bookkeeping
now, and some of them are on our listsof we wanna do their bookkeeping,
how do we land them, kind of a thing.
(24:40):
But it was like my firstbig girl moment I would say.
Like, Hey, you're building this businessyourself and you get to be yourself and
like people actually like you for you andnot for the business you're representing.
You know, because I didn't gothere with the like, mindset
of promoting the business.
I went there for the mindsetof community and gathering and
(25:03):
supporting local businessesbecause that's what I love to do.
So like that was kind of like my big ahamoment that like, I. Diving deep local was
where I wanted to take the business next.
We didn't have any clientsin Washington at that point.
And you know, between that experienceand just the things that transpired
afterwards, we really started to growroots here in this part of Washington.
(25:27):
And I think another part ofnetworking that like I was maybe
timid or shy to at first was askingpeople for introductions to others.
I often misread people andoftentimes people misread.
My intents.
So I think like one thing I've learnedover the last year is that I need to be
more direct in asking for what I wantbecause like, what's that old saying,
(25:51):
like a closed mouth doesn't get fed.
Like that's basicallylike, kind of how I see it.
So I would say I'm less afraid nowto ask somebody to introduce me to
somebody else that I wanna work with.
Or at least like somebody that I wantthem to know that this is what I do.
Not necessarily that I'm gonna pitchyou for services, like do you need it?
(26:11):
But like, Hey, this is what Ido, this is what I'm an expertise
in, this is what I wanna do.
Do these things resonate with you?
If so, like I'm alwayshere kind of a thing.
And we've definitely grown clientsfrom those types of relations and
from those types of introductions.
So yeah, networking I think is like a bigone that has worked for us in a good way.
(26:33):
Well, and it goes back to kind of whatwe've talked about before of like we are
working with people who want to work with.
Us and this
Yep.
very easy because they alreadylike who you are and it's, it's
Heart
yeah, hard.
can't make the heart.
And I think, I think you shared a littlebit in part one about how goal setting
(26:55):
hasn't really been something that you'vebeen doing, something that you've been
putting at the forefront for this firm.
do you wanna elaborate more onhow you still track our business
success if you're not goal setting?
Because
Yeah,
we've talked
about it like in our previous episodeswe've talked about how you need
to set goals, but we don't really.
(27:16):
yeah.
I know, right?
It seems a little hypocritical.
But I would say that there's adifference in budgeting and goal setting.
Let's say we definitely budget everysingle month, which means that we
estimate what the hourly work forour hourly clients is gonna be.
(27:37):
We calculate what the revenue weexpect on one-off projects is gonna be.
We tally up all of our retainerrevenues, the ones that are
leaving, the ones that are comingin, the ones that are consistent.
And this gives us a smalltarget to track against.
I would say it allows us to checkthe box that we've met, our payroll
obligations, that we've met our, like,you know, owner's pay kind of obligations
(28:01):
that we've met our tax obligations.
Like, it gives me the peace of mindthat I need to be able to handle one-off
spending as it comes up throughout theweek, let's say, or throughout the month.
And so our, our overhead expenses tooare pretty minimal and rather static.
So everything's easy to project.
So no, we're not saying we wannahit X dollar amount in revenue.
(28:26):
We're going, this is whatour revenue is to work with.
These are what our expenses are.
Are we in the positive?
Are we in the minus?
Do I need to put money intothe business this month?
Or are we gonna be able to float by incoast on or put money to savings because
we're going to exceed our revenue,exceed our overhead expenses, and be
able to put some way for a rainy day.
So like it's.
(28:47):
That's why I say like, we don't goal set,but we're not flying blind and we're not
flying by the seat of our pants either.
Like we, we know what's going to comeand like honestly, we're within 10% of
that target every single month becausewe're looking at it every month.
It's not something we set in Januaryfor a budget and then it's like in June.
(29:08):
It's not anything likewhat we set in January.
Like we're literally lookingat things a a month at a time.
And I usually sit down to do thatcalculation somewhere in week three to
the beginning of week four of every month.
So probably next week, at the end of theweek, I will sit down and kind of do this
(29:29):
projection for June so that I can see whatour revenue is gonna look like for June.
And so obviously we spent a lotmore money than our normal I.
Expense allotment.
I would say our normal overheadexpenses over the last month or
so with all of the travel and withthe retreat and all of that stuff,
(29:50):
but that's why we use Profit First.
We use the Profit First Method to budgetfor our retreat expenses ahead of time
so that we're not dipping into like.
Debt to make that retreathappen necessarily.
We budget for our travelingand our networking expenses.
I've got a conference coming up thatI budgeted for at the end of last
(30:12):
year so that I could do it this year.
So that wasn't even something that'sgonna dip into this month's revenue
because I've already paid for it and Ihad already calculated for it beforehand.
We used Profit First to budgetfor sponsoring Kayla, right.
We did the budgeting and we sawwhat money we would be calculating
to pay in taxes to the government.
(30:33):
And I said, I don't love that number, sohow can we take that number and reduce
what we're paying to the governmentby still advancing our business
objectives and our business goals?
that aligns with our business plan,
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
Like we, we wanted to make sure thatour money was going back into something
that was going to further the mission ofour company, which is to put back into
(30:55):
the youth and to expand the knowledgeof financial information and to help
people understand finances better, right?
So that's, we use Profitfirst to budget for that.
Essentially budgeting our taxes, budgetingour payroll, budgeting for owner's
pay slash my own home office rent.
Like all of these decisions were weremade because we were doing the Profit
(31:18):
First method and utilizing that inour every day expenses and revenue
goals slash budgeting that we do.
So yes, I do think for certain businessmodels and business structures, goal
setting is probably a mandatory.
Thing that you need to implement.
(31:40):
But for us and where we're at ingrowing this firm, currently, we
benefit more from month to monthbudgeting versus setting goals and
saying, this is our target revenue.
Like the revenue has just come andit has exceeded our expectations.
So for me, it would just be likecreating a goal just to create it.
(32:01):
Right.
And that's not just doing something to do.
It is not something that sitswell for me, but being informed,
that speaks a whole lot to me.
you're still looking at it month by month,so it's still like a, very hands-on thing.
It's just something a little bit easierfor our business model, I would say.
(32:21):
Talk to me in year three,we might be goal setting.
fair, right.
For now, it works really well.
Yeah.
So we talked about the good in contractsbut there were also some things about
contracts that didn't work for us.
Do you wanna talk aboutthat a little bit more?
Yeah.
Multi-month retainercontracts right out the gate.
The hours are just alot harder to nail down.
(32:45):
And when you jump straight into aretainer, straight out the gate, like
you don't get that 90 day window tolike vet if the client is really going
to mesh well with you and your systemsand your workflows and your processes.
I think we've only done that with ahandful of clients where we've done
the retainers straight out the gate.
And it, those contracts have allfelt clunky the whole time to me.
(33:10):
So looking back at a year later and,you know, all the things that did and
did not work well, I think I stilllean towards that 90 day blended rate.
To figure out what the real servicesare gonna need be needed for that
client and that 90 day period to makesure that it's a good fit for both
(33:31):
people on both sides of the spectrum.
Yeah, because you know, eachparty gets to be happy with the
price and with the services.
Yeah.
you said, it's not clunky.
Yeah.
And then I think something that willprobably change too with future contracts
moving down the road, which it takessomething that I had on a someday
(33:52):
maybe plate of getting our contractsinto a new program called Anchor.
I put that on the back burner for a while.
But I think like after looking down and,you know, doing both these podcasts is
probably something I wanna bump up onthe list a little bit, is that we have
not required payment ahead of servicesbeing provided and we have not put in a
(34:14):
clause that we will automatically charge.
Payment methods on filesas of a certain date.
And I hadn't put that in because,honestly, up until like December of
2024, I never had an aging collectionsfor, for receivables for the business.
(34:34):
I never had a problem with clients payingus when it came time to pay us, but.
Going into the very end of2024 and carrying on into 2025.
We've carried large AR balancesthat have really drastically
impacted our own firm's cash flow.
And, you know, it's thrown in a,a wrench into our plans, right?
(34:57):
Because I have payroll obligations andI'm not lessening your hours because
I have a contract with you, but yourpayroll costs still have to be met, right?
And so I've had to dip in and putsome of my own money into the business
to make ends meet while chasingthese receivable accounts that
we've never had a problem before.
(35:18):
But all of that was just likerunning off of good faith.
And I think that that was great fora while and it served us for a while.
But I would change that withcontracts moving forward.
I don't necessarily disagree withlike delivering the service and then.
Invoicing for the service.
(35:39):
Like I'm, I am still okay with that,but I need a payment method on file,
and I need a clause in the contractthat says that we'll charge by X day
once we've invoiced for the services.
And that you have to have thatpayment method on file, on, you
know, that's how most firms do it.
Yeah.
how most firms do it.
(36:00):
And
yeah, sometimes you just have tomake those, those, those decisions.
But yeah, I'd say those are thetwo things really that were bad
per se when it comes to contracts.
Over the last year, lessons we learned,
Yeah.
And saying goodbye to clients isboth a good and bad thing for us.
(36:20):
Do you wanna talk a little bitmore with listeners about these
difficult decisions and things thatyou have to do that kind of suck?
yeah, this one was a really important.
Like one of those things thatyou write rewrite on repeat,
like, so that it sticks.
That I didn't want towork with shitty people.
(36:42):
Like in the past I was forced tostay in and work with toxic business
owners because it wasn't my businessand it wasn't my decisions to make.
It was somebody else's business that I wasbuilding, and I had to fall into line with
what they deemed the way to move forward.
Right?
(37:02):
And so I made a promise to myselffrom the very beginning that I
wouldn't work with shitty people.
And you know, one of our.
Early clients really helped mestand my ground in this aspect.
Not only was the business model a completechaotic mess, and if you listen to last
week's episode, I'll let you know this isthe talent agency that I talked to about.
(37:25):
So if you're wondering if you shouldever take on a talent agency as a client,
there's a lot of things that you probablywant and need to know, and we should
probably get on a phone call to discusssome of those things so that you're well
aware before you get yourself into that.
But the business model was verychaotic and the business owner
(37:46):
wanted to do things that I ethicallydid not feel comfortable doing.
And the business owner was anextreme micromanager, I would say.
They paid their staff theabsolute bare minimum in.
While operating in one of theabsolute largest and highest paying
(38:08):
minimum wage cities that there isin the United States currently.
So paid them the very bare minimum,didn't really treat them super great
and then asked the absolute most outof them in those job capacities, which
all of those are just things that don'treally resonate with me and the core
(38:29):
values that I hold and that the clientswe work with hold as well too, right?
That business owner treated therelationship with me more as I worked for
them instead of I worked with them kindof a relationship and because they were so
involved in their own accounting system,things would get changed quite often, and
(38:54):
then the fingers would be pointed backto me for blame when it was not something
that I would necessarily have touched.
So.
It was a whole bunch of red flagsthat really, I just was like,
no, like why am this isn't whyI got into business to do this.
Right.
So that, that client really showed methat the 90 day trial period worked.
(39:16):
Because when I first came on board,everything was like rainbows and
butterflies and unicorns, and thenit was just add, add, add, add and
take, take, take, take on the pay.
And with all of that and all ofthe issues, I was running into
administratively with them.
Like it was just, I had tocut, I had to cut them loose.
(39:38):
And they definitely did not like thatI was the one that was ending the
service contract, but I had to put itbehind me that this was business and.
That that wasn't right, the right fit forme, and I could not continue to do that.
And because of that experience too,we've also let two more clients go that
(39:59):
just weren't good fits just like this.
Maybe not for all of the same reasons,but we could just tell within that
90 day period either how responsiveor unresponsive they were and kind
of if they drug their feet throughthe mud on doing things or not.
Like really that whole experiencewith the talent agency kind of set the
precedence of like, no, no, Felicia,you're gonna stand your ground.
(40:22):
You're gonna stick up for yourself, andyou're only gonna work with people that
align with us at the core value level.
I remember when I first startedyou, you told me something to that
effect of like, I really just wantto work with clients who want to work
with us, who wanna provide us thedocumentation, who wanna, you know,
when we reach out to them, they're ontop of things and they want to do this.
(40:45):
That's who we wanna work with.
And I think you've, you've heldreally true with that and it,
you know, the people that don't,we just split our ways, so
Yeah, I've said it quite a fewtimes, but I think this is a
good place to say it again.
Like we can't want it more thanyou want it as the business owner.
So it's gotta be equal once, orthe business owner's gotta want it
(41:06):
more than us to keep us kind of,you know, right there with them.
Exactly.
All right, so Felicia, let'stalk a little bit about software.
What have you learned aboutforcing clients into a universal
software platform or streamlining?
Yeah, I mean, and I, in an ideal world,right, all of our clients would use the
(41:27):
same types of programs so that we, wehave all of these nice tidy workflows
that we can kind of like apply one tothe other easy to SOP and all of that.
And I get the appeal of that.
But like the old firm I used to workwith, they like to get everybody on
the same financial report system,the same payroll system, same receipt
(41:48):
management system, so on so forth.
But the more and more I work withsmall business clients directly in
a consulting capacity, the more andmore I don't love that for them.
Yeah.
It makes things nice for usadministratively, but like, it kind
of seems like an easy way out, right?
Like we're consultants and too,we always wanna keep learning new
(42:12):
software, in my opinion, because.
Each client is different,every business is different.
And ultimately what we try to doas consultants is find the best fit
for that client and their budget.
And that means the softwares that we useare not going to be cookie cutter options
across the board for every business.
Right.
(42:32):
And I don't care aboutthe referral money either.
Really don't care.
There's one program, right, thatI didn't even get approved for
to be a referral partner for.
I'm still going to refer that clientout to use that program software because
that's the software that makes theabsolute most sense for them and their
business and where it's growing to, right?
And so I think that those are some ofthe, the blockades that maybe some of
(42:55):
the other firms that I've worked within the past, like they siloed themselves
because they wanted everybody to getinto this cookie cutter program, when
really the part of consulting thatmatters most is that tailored effect.
That you give to each individualclient for what their business needs.
It truly for us, it's what software isgoing to deliver the best results for
(43:19):
the clients and make things the mostefficient for everybody that's involved.
In the beginning, I did try tostreamline softwares a little bit, but.
It honestly, if I had forced myselfto continue going down that road,
it would've left me saying no tosome of the best opportunities that
have come up in this first yearbusiness for us as a firm in general.
(43:43):
And so by saying yes to maybe somesoftwares that I wasn't so familiar with
I got to expand my own comfortability andmy own knowledge into some other platforms
that normally I probably would'vepassed on based on prior tendencies.
So ultimately, this increases myknowledge too, because I have more
tools under my belt that I can use andpull out to find the best fit for the
(44:08):
next client that comes down the road,or the next opportunity that one of our
current clients decides to engage in.
Definitely.
And I'm gonna, I'm gonna switch gearsa little bit here, and I wouldn't
necessarily say that this is our lasttopic, but it's been one of the hardest
things that we have gotten into.
And let's talk a little bit aboutsocial media and the struggles we face
(44:31):
with social media marketing as a firm.
'cause social media is hard, man.
Yeah, social media.
Social media is hard.
And I think we're finding, finding that wedon't, we don't love it all of the time.
Sometimes it's super fun.
A lot of times it's not super fun.
But yeah.
So social media, I think big thingthere was like lack of visibility
(44:53):
before Allie came on board.
Right?
It, I mean, even till still tothis day, like the Instagram
is still my personal Instagram.
I didn't want to create a businessInstagram account because I
was just another social media.
Don't wanna start from scratch.
Don't want anotheraccount to manage either.
Like already have enough, right?
(45:15):
Yeah
but I think like the lack ofvisibility that we had was a problem.
And that's what.
Started us on the socialmedia path to begin with.
And I think one of the strugglesthat we run into is that we're
trying to make similar content workacross multiple platforms where
maybe the content isn't receivedthe best on all of those platforms.
(45:37):
And we have ebbs and flowsfor when we actually are
inspired to make good content.
Let's just be real.
Right?
But it's picking up for sure.
Definitely after Road Atlanta.
I think we've definitely seen someupticks, like we got over 2000 views on
YouTube from one short where we talkedabout golf carts and deductible expenses.
(45:57):
So I don't think thatthat's one of the things.
man.
Right.
I don't think that's necessarily like theclip that we thought was gonna hit off
on YouTube, but like that's part of thelearning process for us is, is finding
out those things and, you know, we don'treally have a budget for social media.
And two, I think we want to know abit about social media and marketing
(46:21):
before we decide to just like handover the keys to somebody else
to try and do it professionally.
Right?
Like I think we need to know a littlebit about the foundation of social
media and marketing ourselves before.
We can bring somebodyelse in, into the picture.
And we have to just keepreminding ourselves.
I think too that we started postingon social media, not with the intent
(46:43):
necessarily to drive traffic and to buildrelationships with new clients and for
new clients to come out of it, right?
We started our social media presencebecause we needed somewhere where
we could build credibility andwhere we could send clients to.
Or like when new clients come to ourprofile, they can see and establish
(47:04):
rapport of like, these girlsknow what they're talking about.
And so I think that that'salso a little bit of why.
Maybe it hasn't taken off the way wewant it to is because we're literally
building credibility in a databaseright now, and two, like our revving
up for Financial success course, right?
We've gone through and we've linked outall of the podcast episodes that are
additional supplemental information inaddition to what's in our course, because
(47:28):
that's part of what this, this, thispodcast is for, is to help us build that
credibility and to build that presence.
So we have to keep reminding ourselvesthat it's not just for the likes.
Right.
And the engagement.
that we're, we're a little different too.
You know, you usually, you have abookkeeping firm or a consulting
firm and they're doing videos aboutjust bookkeeping and consulting.
(47:49):
Whereas we're kind of doing bookkeepingand consulting with that motorsport
twist, which usually doesn't go together.
So it's, we're finding our ownniche and we're finding, we're
trying to find a way to make ourvisibility out there so that we can,
we can help our motor sport people.
'cause that's what
Yep.
trying to do here.
And two to non-motorsport people too, right?
(48:09):
Because still a chunk of our firm clientsare not motorsport, industry folk do.
So, you know, it's, it's allpart of the learning process.
But I think like, again, that's whywe haven't set goals like to have
X amount of followers or y numberof likes on our posts or whatnot.
Like we're doing it differently.
And you know, in the long run, Ithink thinking outside of the box and
(48:32):
doing things differently has worked.
We'll see if this continuesto work for us or not.
Maybe we'll pivot it.
Who knows?
We'll figure it out.
And then I don't think cold callingor pitching services while we're
not in person, like I don't thinkthat's done anything good for us.
If anything, it's like completelyshut people off and like close
(48:52):
the door in our faces, right?
Like I was actually pretty disheartenedwhen we reached out to Nooma.
We thought it was gonna besuch a great partnership.
We just wanted, we weren'teven asking for anything.
We just like wanted to have a conversationwith them about how getting clean
hydration into the Motorsport Paddockcould, what it could look like for them.
(49:12):
Like showing mission foods andhow Mission Foods is all over
the Motor America Paddock.
Like we just wanted to have a conversationwith Nooma to show them the same thing
and what it was like within five minutesof sending the email that it was like,
no, thank you, goodbye from the owner.
And I mean, at least it was the owner,at least let's say, that did respond,
(49:33):
but it kind of like killed the vibe andkilled a lot of confidence and, you know.
Responding to people's stories, likeabout their troubles of being able
to stay in the Moto America paddockat the level that they've been
competing in the Moto America Paddock.
You know, I've reached out tothem directly via email because I
don't wanna just like slide intotheir dms or anything like that.
(49:56):
And, you know, with a very we wannahelp you mindset, not even talking
dollars or anything, and it'sjust, it's been rough because you
just hear crickets back from it.
So, you know, I think what I've found isthat people in certain industries don't
really seem to want to make decisionswithout like an in-person validation.
And I think that that in personvalidation isn't necessarily the
(50:18):
pitch of your services, but moreso like you as an individual.
So I think that.
There's, that's cold.
Calling's just never gonna be.
I worked in timeshare for goodness sake.
Like I should know that.
That's not something that I like to do.
Right.
No.
No.
That doesn't work out.
But you know, you live andlearn, which is what we're doing.
(50:39):
So, Felicia,
I,
any last words of wisdomfor our listeners out there?
yeah.
I say it a lot, but I only sayit a lot because it's true.
You have to spend money to earnmoney, and sometimes that means
putting your own skin in the game.
I was pretty transparentwith you, Allie, right?
(51:01):
Like when you came full time into thefirm I was pretty transparent that I was
throwing my own money into the business.
This is how much I was putting into thesavings account and that it was there
to be used as a safety net for us.
Like that I had calculated we couldrun the business off of what we had
at the time and what our expenseswere, but that we needed to have a
(51:22):
safety net in case shit got real.
Which shit got real.
And I think that that was an importantthing for me to do as a business owner
because it helped me hold myself.
Accountable along theway every single month.
Right.
I was chatting with youmultiple times a month probably.
I was chatting with youabout like our own cash flow.
Each situation each month ontelling you like I'm pulling
(51:45):
your payroll from our operatingexpenses versus from the savings.
Like we still have thismuch in savings, right.
And although we did borrow from thosereserve funds that I had transferred
from time to time, we managed to pay itback in full for four months straight
when I did have to borrow it becausethe cashflow was just like a week or
(52:06):
two delayed or something like that.
And we only had to dip into that reservefund, which we did dip into it and we
did use 80% of it, which is a littlebut it was only due to a few large aging
balances from clients that went unpaidhitting at the same time as retreat
(52:28):
planning, as the rider sponsorship.
And although we had budgetedall of that from Profit First,
It
it's different.
Yeah.
It just all hit the shit,hit the fan at the same time.
Right.
So I'm really happy with that.
Like, I honestly am proud that we didn't.
Touch, per se, those funds for thefirst four months that it was in there.
(52:49):
And we're gonna be able to pay itback now that things are rolling
again with our AR collections.
But I think that with it being my ownmoney, it really had a big psychological
impact on me as an individual and itdefinitely helped me spend our money
more smartly and be a little bitmore lean leading up to the retreat
(53:11):
and all of the spending that we weregonna do at that point as well too.
So I think it really helpedme maximize resources.
And I know not everybody has moneyto put in but if you are somebody
who does have money to put in to yourown business I think having skin in
the game is, it's a, an educationallesson that you're not really gonna get
(53:33):
from a textbook or from sitting downand listening to somebody, like do a
coaching session or something like that.
My dad always said that he didn'twanna pay for our college because he
wanted us to put our own money intoour own college so that we would
actually invest in our education.
And I think this is a very similartype deal, is you have skin in the
game and so you put your heart andyour soul into it and it shows.
(53:57):
Yeah, no, I, I agree with your dad.
I definitely, my mom helped paycollege for a while, and I think
while she was helping me pay for mycollege, I definitely didn't take it
as serious as I did when I startedpaying for college for myself.
And I got a lot more out of my educationonce I started paying for myself.
So your dad's a smart guy.
(54:18):
Mm-hmm.
And that's probably a good place towrap it up for our part two of our
special two part firm anniversarysegments where we hope that you
found some of these experiences andstories we've shared, relatable.
And as always, if you found theseinsights valuable, please like,
share, comment, tag, all of things.
We would really appreciate it.
(54:39):
It just helps you show support for whatwe're doing here at Full Throttle Finance.
And if you're ever interested in bookingservices with us, you can visit our
website at www.cleanbeeconsulting.com.
That's C-L-E-A-N-B-E-E consulting.com.
Thank you so much for joining us,and we'll see you next Friday as we
(54:59):
continue to break down motorsportor finances with a motors boy twist.
We'll see ya.
Hello everyone and welcome back to FullThrottle Finance, a financial literacy
podcast geared towards taking complexfinancial topics and breaking them
down into fun, relatable discussions.
My name is Felicia, and I'm theCEO here at Clean Bee Consulting.
And with me again is Allie,who is our senior bookkeeper.
Together we focus on revving up thefinancial foundations for athletes,
(00:28):
entrepreneurs, and leaders in business.
Regardless if you're operating froman established program already or if
you're just getting started, we're hereto help you make small shifts that will
drive better financial performance.
Today we are going to piggybackon last week's episode, and we're
going to continue to discuss whatour first year anniversary as
(00:52):
a consulting firm looked like.
Yeah.
you know, we talked a lot aboutthe metrics and everything, but
this week we're going to spend alittle bit more time on things that
have worked really well for us andunfortunately, some of the things that
may not have worked as well for us.
Straight line emoji.
Face
So let's start with some of the items thatare like positive so we can kind of break
(01:13):
the ice we can talk with our listenersabout some of the positive things
we experienced surrounding contracts
Okay, contracts.
so I would say overall there weremostly goods that came out of contracts
in our first year of business.
I think for service industryjobs specifically, contracts
(01:36):
really, really matter.
But I will admit that I did not wantto put contracts in place when I first
started, when, when the firm was justme as Felicia as the freelancer, right?
I didn't wanna put strict stipulations inplace because I didn't know realistically
what I was growing the firm to be.
(01:58):
And two, I didn't wanna like lock myselfinto a contract working with somebody
that I didn't necessarily wanna work with.
be kind of scary to be honest.
Yeah, and you know, I, I come from workingwith another firm who locked in like
annual contracts and I just never feltlike annual contracts were the right
(02:24):
fit for this type of service industry.
I understand it like guaranteesthe revenue and that way you have
more to budget and plan off of.
But again, I think that that ledto staying in relationships that we
didn't need to necessarily stay into.
And that's not what I wanted forour firm and for the business
(02:44):
that I was building at the time.
Another reason why I didn't reallydevelop them was because a lot of the
contracts were coming from Upwork,which in its own is a contract every
single time I accepted a proposal.
So I didn't really need it.
But for those clients that I wassecuring outside of Upwork, that
was like a direct relationship ora direct networking connection.
(03:05):
Like building the contracts waslaborsome, like there's a lot involved
in it and I didn't have the capacityand didn't wanna put the capacity
into establishing them at first.
But I found through social mediathe contract club with Not Average
Law who is the same legal firmthat we use for our trademark.
(03:28):
And getting our trademark all registered.
They actually had, at the time it was asuper good deal and it is a lot less money
than it is now, but I still feel like itis totally a valid expense at this point.
But they have a contract club, whichis basically a database filled with
like pre templated contracts forlike almost every industry you could
(03:48):
imagine, and for like any type of jobthat you could imagine or any podcast
guest contract or anything like that.
And so I think it's Like a one timefee, to join the, the contract club,
which is still a, like I said, it'sa game changer if you're somebody who
is like us, who literally have to havethese contracts in order to outline the
(04:09):
terms of agreements with our clients.
But it, it was really the game changerfor us because I was able to levy
a contract from there and then kindof reformatted it a little bit more
to tailor specifically to what we dowith both Clean Bee Consulting and
with Full Throttle Finance, right?
Like we have one that's specificfor our Motorsport clients.
(04:29):
We have a different template thatis specific for all of our o other
industries that we work with too.
So at first I would say likethe labor was intimidating, but.
Braden and his contract club, notaverage law firm, really like changed
the game and made that like thisreally big scary thing on our list
was like literally, oh, it's done now.
(04:50):
That's easy.
And now we have all of ourcontracts that we need moving
forward for all of our clients.
You have or you go accessit on a regular basis?
How does that work?
Yeah, it's, I think it's in my ownpersonal vault, which is why you
don't have access to it, because youdon't really need, need our contracts.
But yeah, it's basically, I go toa specific website and I log in and
(05:11):
then he's got links to every contractthat you could imagine, you know, for
me, I just went with the bookkeepingone, maybe added a little bit of extra
stuff that I wanted to see in there,or omitted some of the things that I
didn't think really pertained to us orchanged some of the wording around like.
How long I wanted the, the contractto go on for, so on, so forth.
(05:32):
And so like to piggyback on contracts,like I mentioned, I've worked with
firms in the past that like, liketo do 12 month contracts especially
if it's like something that's like aretainer service where it's the same
amount of money every single monthfor this guaranteed scope of work.
It just makes sense to do 12 monthcontracts usually because again,
you can project that income for afull year, but I didn't like that.
(05:56):
And so one change in our contracts thatI really am still to this day a huge
favor or in huge favor of that I really.
Love most.
I don't know what theright way to say that is.
But we do 90 day trialperiods a lot of the time.
So before we even get a contractfrom a client, like I'll capture
(06:19):
an email or something like thatand do a blended rate, right?
So, you know, the way that we usuallybuild our retainers for clients here
at Clean Be Consulting and with fullthrottle finance is that we have four
different tiers depending upon whatthe type of service we're providing.
Is it bookkeeping, is it payroll, is itfinancial reporting, or is it consulting?
(06:40):
And then we also have tiersfor the size of your business.
If you're small, if you're a medium,or if you're a large size business.
We have different hourly rates forthose four different categories.
So generally when we try to get ourclient clients onto retainers, we'll
calculate their scope of work forwhat they're gonna need and where
it falls into that small, medium,large, and into those four buckets.
(07:01):
Right?
And that's how we get our retainer prices.
But.
It's really hard to guesstimatewhat those retainer prices
are gonna be ahead of times.
So one thing that's really worked well forus is before we get that, that signature
on that contract, we like to do a 90day period with our clients sometimes
where we take that bookkeeping, payroll,financial reporting, and consulting rate,
(07:26):
and we find the average rate betweenthose four buckets of what they're
gonna need and we charge them thatblended rate for actual hours worked.
And what we do is we actuallytrack what we're doing during
that 90 day trial period.
And so that way when we come backwith to them in 90 days with the
retainer, it's like, well, thisis over the last three months.
(07:46):
This is the actual.
Number of hours that wespent on bookkeeping.
This is the actual number ofhours that we spent on payroll.
This is the actual number of hours we'vespent consulting you, which may or may
not be what the client was expecting.
But it helps us a, secure,more accurate retainers.
And B, it helps with the clientunderstand what their actual needs are.
(08:08):
A lot of the times, right, they cometo us thinking I only need three hours
of bookkeeping a month, but they don'tunderstand that payroll is separate
from the reporting, which is separatefrom the consulting that we do.
And in reality, if you need three,you probably need five to six if we're
being honest on, you know, and that'sfive or six of hours of professionals
(08:29):
doing the work too, not five or sixhours of maybe the business owner doing
bookkeeping work when that's not there.
Their specialty or their trade, you know?
So a lot of the times that 90 daywindow worked really, really well
for us because we didn't have clientsfighting us when it came down to what
the actual retainer amount would be.
(08:49):
And then we weren't out any money, right?
We were getting paid an average rate foractual hours that we worked, and then we
have the data to back up the retainer forwhat they're gonna need moving forward.
And two, what that 90 day period alsoallowed us to do right, was find the
clients that weren't the right fit for us.
(09:10):
Because if it takes 90 days to get all ofthe pieces for the puzzle so that we can
even get in there to do your bookkeeping.
Sorry, but it's probably just notgonna work out in the long run.
Right.
And another thing I think thatreally worked well for us was
the flexible contract terms.
We have a 30 day cancellationnotice in our service agreements,
(09:31):
and that works both ways.
30 days just gives either partyenough time to accommodate or to just
make a changes to maybe their ownlabor force or something like that.
It was just an easy way for both partiesto be able to exit the clause if they
were feeling like it wasn't the right fit.
Or like if money just.
Didn't allow for our level of service.
(09:52):
You know, like if we were maybetoo expensive, like they thought
they could afford us and that theythought that they wanted to hire
us, but maybe it's straining thema little bit too much right now.
They wanna put it on pause orthey wanna exit the agreement.
We just wanted to make thatflexible on both sides of the
spectrum so that it was fair.
Which is always so much morecomfortable in a situation.
You know, if you can't, if you can'tafford us right now, you don't feel
(10:14):
like you're tied into somethingor you know, whatever the case is.
It's just, it's nice tohave that flexibility.
We work with small businesseswith sometimes small budgets, and
we're cognizant of that, right?
Like, maybe right nowis not the right time.
I don't want you to overextend yourselfbecause you've committed in writing to
an agreement that maybe you couldn'tfulfill your end of the bargain too.
(10:36):
So I also think that it was, we saidno to opportunities that just weren't.
The right fit for us, right?
maybe industries that we maybe don'thave like the most exposure into or
that we've never worked with before.
You know, we work with a bignetwork of other bookkeepers.
One of them actually maybeis a better fit for you.
And I would much rather refer you outto somebody that's gonna take care
(11:00):
of you than force you into our bubbleof our systems and our processes that
maybe aren't the right fit for you.
So I think that was a big one too, isthat that 90 day period just like kind of
allowed us to be like yes or no withouthaving that stringent contract in place.
And two, like not having those likereally firm restrictions around our
(11:23):
contracts allowed us to delve into, Iwould say, unconventional tasks that
we do outside of the bookkeeping.
Scope of work for clients, right?
Like for some of our clients, since wehave become contract pros, I feel like
we manage their own contract workflowsand their own service agreements.
We've helped them build, you know,contracts for both their service
(11:46):
agreements and for their contractorsthat we basically do 99% of the work for.
And then we send it outfor digital signature.
We capture the dig digital signatureon both sides of the spectrum, and
then we save it into their database.
And two, it's allowed us to delve intolike more executive assistant type
work slash maybe like an organizationalcoach scope of work, I would say.
(12:09):
Which is always somethingthat I've really.
I've thought a lot about doing,but like, I never like solicited
that as necessarily a service thatwe provide for clients, you know?
So like having that flexibility aroundcontracts really allowed us to get
creative in our first year business,and I think that's a good thing.
(12:30):
I think it's a great thing.
it's not, we're not just a ina little box, you know, you can
come to us with your problemsand we can help you with them.
Yep.
Felicia, in the part one last week,you mentioned a few times about
how Upwork was a driving factorbehind our firm's early success.
Do you wanna share a little bit more abouthow become successful on that platform?
(12:54):
Yeah, it's, it's not easy, I'll say that.
But I think there was a lot of thingsthat were going, for me, I think
the time of year that I enteredinto the Upwork space was perfect.
It was literally coming rightoff of the tax deadline.
So I got, you know,people with extensions.
I got people that were newly electeds corp statuses that were coming.
(13:15):
So I think the timing had alittle bit to play with it.
But within two and a halfmonths, I climbed to the top
10% of freelancers on Upwork.
And like that's global.
me that.
I know.
And that's global too.
That's not even like UnitedStates based freelancers.
That is everyone across the globe.
And you know, my suggestions,I will stand by Upwork for
(13:37):
getting started in freelancing.
But you do need to be very specific inthe way that you work Upwork, if you wanna
actually make the proposals worth a damn.
I would say.
So first and foremost, to find theopportunities you wanna pick the keywords
that are specific to your industryor the types of jobs that you want.
So for us, I was searching thingslike payroll and bookkeeping and like
(14:03):
tax strategy specifically were thethree that I was searching and I was
searching them every couple of hoursduring the day and even in tonight.
Because again, if you're looking to workwith people across the United States,
you've got three time zones at least thatyou've gotta take into consideration.
If you want to be able to nailclients, I. More easily, I'd say.
(14:25):
And on top of that, I wouldonly search for US jobs.
So there's like a little on the side, likeI think it's like on the left hand side,
there's a little menu you can check Marka box to only show United States jobs.
So that way it took out allof the international stuff.
I only wanted to work with US basedcompanies and I only submitted proposals.
(14:46):
So like, if you're not familiarwith Upwork, what you do is you see.
You would go to the search, you wouldsearch for bookkeeping, you'd check mark
only US jobs, and then you would see awhole bunch of job postings basically.
And you can see, you know, underfive proposals sent already or
between 15 and 25 proposals.
(15:06):
Like there's a range under each onethat shows you how many other people are
like basically competing for that job.
As you are.
And so you can open the job posting,you can get to know a little
bit more about the, the company.
It'll usually tell you what thecompany's name is, kind of like,
what the job responsibilitiesthat they're looking for are.
And so I made it a goal to only submitproposals that were, that had less
(15:29):
than five proposals submitted already.
Because I found that if you were oneof those first five or six that were
submitted, you had like somethinglike a 75% greater chance of getting
a response back from somebody.
Like imagine if you were the jobposter and like you posted it and
you gave it a day, and then you cameback and you had over 25 proposals.
(15:53):
You're
You're gonna get.
first five, you know,
Yeah.
And you're gonna get overwhelmed.
Exactly.
So that was kind of my rule ofthumb was that I wouldn't waste
a proposal 'cause you have to useconnections to submit proposals and
your connections cost money on Upwork.
And so I didn't wanna waste moneyjust blindly sending proposals.
(16:16):
I, that's why I was verytactical when it came to it.
I feel like.
And a proposal is basicallylike, this is my background.
This is what I can help you with.
This is the rate of paythat I'm asking for.
So it's really just those threecriteria and then it's up to the
poster to determine if they want to.
Just hire you based off that, orif they wanna have like a zoom call
(16:37):
with you or something like that.
I had it go both ways.
I had people just hire me straightout of the proposal and then I didn't
actually talk to them on the phonefor like maybe a week or two after.
They are still a clientof ours to this day.
And then I've also had ones thatmaybe wanted to do one or two
interview processes, let's say.
And so once you submit a proposal, youneed to watch your inbox like a hawk.
(17:01):
And as soon as somebody who posts ajob responds to you, you wanna jump on
it and you wanna just respond to them,even if it's something generic, like,
yes, I would love to meet Tuesday.
Let me check my calendar real quickto make sure that I can meet in this
specific timeframe or whatever it is.
But they want some, they wantpeople who are responsive and I'll
(17:22):
let you know that if I waited morethan an hour to respond to them.
I almost never heard a response back, butif I got a response out to them within
five or 10 minutes of them contactingme from my proposal, that was the best
shot of like them still being online,them going, Hey, this person's serious.
(17:42):
And then, you know, theproposal usually got offered and
accepted to me after that point.
So turn your notifications on, on yourphone, turn your notifications on, on
your email, and as soon as they drop youa line in your messages, make sure you go
and message them back as soon as possible.
And then just know that youare going to submit proposals
(18:04):
that are going to go nowhere.
It's just gonna happen.
There's some fake job postings.
Some people get cold feetafter they put the listing out.
You know, there's a millionreasons why, but not every
single proposal I submitted got.
Viewed or accepted or movedfurther, but I would say that
like 80% of them did using this.
(18:25):
Streamlined workflow.
But also too, like, just like an algorithmon social media, Upwork is very similar.
So once you've got a few open contractsthat are performing well and consistently,
if you utilize their, like advertiseyour profile, which is where they use
some of your connects to like drop yourprofile in when people are searching
(18:47):
bookkeeper or searching tax strategist,you'll start to receive invites directly
from people to either apply like,Hey, I saw your Upwork on profile.
I'd like for you to applyto this open job listing.
Or they'll just contact you directlyand say, Hey, I like your profile.
I wanna hire you.
Or do you have availability to take me on?
And I've had it on both accounts.
(19:08):
I had a short term contractthat found me and just wanted
to hire me right off the bat.
And I've had a short term contract.
Actually, no, it's actually still acurrent con, it's a current contract.
We just don't.
Do scope of work for them outsideof the quarterly realm who invited
me to like imply and go throughthat formal process with them.
(19:28):
So Upwork can be tricky, but especiallyif you're starting out, you know, if
you follow these guidelines, like Iwould be surprised if you didn't have
some, some success along the way.
Submitting proposals,
I didn't realize Upwork was, had analgorithm like that that I like, that
like it, it, I mean, it makes sense thatif you've got stuff performing on there
(19:50):
that it would, you know, they would pushyou out more because you're obviously
doing well, you're obviously able towork with, with other clients, so.
Yeah, I mean, I think I had like,at one time I had like 10 contracts
going simultaneously and it feltlike I was getting more of these
like, Hey, are you interested?
I found you on Upwork versus nowwhere I only have a couple of
(20:12):
people that are still on Upwork.
Some of the original contractors, Idon't get as many of those drop-ins.
Like, Hey, I like yourprofile kind of a thing.
So I think it's like it's, Imean, it makes sense, right?
Like if you're feeding the,because there's fees on both sides.
The employer and me as thefreelancer, like they're getting
20% of every single transaction.
(20:33):
So I think it's like the more you havewith them, the more attractable you
are to their business model because.
They're getting 20% of every transaction.
So, well, I think it would be sillyto think that there's not some sort of
algorithm at play there on the backend.
But it took, I would say it took me a fullyear to like really like understand like
no, there is an algorithm and I can see
(20:55):
that
when I exactly like, just basedoff of my own work at this point,
So I guess I can lead us intoour next topic of networking.
I think it's kind of interesting.
We've, we've talked about, you know,sending out emails to companies, but
Yeah.
what's the networking and whatis it like, what have we actually
done networking wise for the firm?
(21:17):
Yeah.
It's like every time we get a littlebit hesitant and like a little bit
like, oh, we should probably likeoutreach and do our own marketing.
Like three more networkingopportunities come up.
Right.
And it's like, well, so we've been sittingon a couple of lists that we've been
making for like some local area businessesand business models we wanna work with.
(21:37):
That we haven't used them.
Right.
Like,
everything, last time I got, Igot a spreadsheet done for her.
She comes back to me and she's like, oh,so we've got a couple more new clients.
So yeah.
I don't know if we're gonna have timefor that, that list that she compiled.
which, I mean, I, we keep 'em and Ikeep punching that task every single.
Every other week that it comesup when I keep punting it.
(22:00):
Just because you don't knowwhen you're gonna need it.
So I don't like, it's definitelygood to prepare in that aspect.
But like marketing, I feel like wehaven't had to do so much of, and I
think that we have an untraditionalviewpoint about marketing which
maybe I'll get into in a little bit.
But as far as the networking go, I goes,I think networking outside of Upwork has
(22:24):
been our second biggest revenue generator.
Right.
And it's been fun networking,at least from the CEO aspect.
I've loved diving deep intothe local community here in my
surrounding area in Washington.
I remember there's one verymemorable experience that I have,
and honestly, I didn't even reallygo to the event with the mindset of
(22:48):
necessarily networking to build my.
My clientele base or just todeepen my roots in the community.
I went to support our localrestaurants and our local distillery.
Right?
So it was last fall Della Soil,which is a farm to table restaurant
that just opened here this past weekhere in Kenmore, Washington and Tuck
(23:12):
Muck Farm, which is a local farmhere in Woodinville, Washington.
They had this hoop harvest communitydinner at Copper Works distilling here
in Kenmore, which is a distillery that'sbeen open here for a couple of years.
And it was two very long tables of what.
Della Soil's Farm to table Fair wouldlook like once their restaurant concept
(23:37):
actually became a real restaurant conceptbecause they'd just been doing the popups
every couple of weekends at that point outin like the backyard of the distillery.
And all of the proceeds from thatdinner went to Tuk Muck Farms so that
they could purchase equipment so thatthey could keep growing fresh fruits
and vegetables here for the community.
(23:58):
Right.
The whole night really encouragedcommunity and we made a number of
good friends and connections from thatnight because like we were forced,
it was just me and Jacob and we werekind of forced to just pick a seat
at these like long community tables.
Exactly.
And like get to knowthe people around you.
And we ended up networking witha couple of people that actually
(24:19):
worked for this local city.
Governments in the area,which was really cool.
Some of them had their ownconsulting businesses and whatnot.
We have multiple connections thathave transpired from that night.
You know, we're actually servicing someof these people for their bookkeeping
now, and some of them are on our listsof we wanna do their bookkeeping,
how do we land them, kind of a thing.
(24:40):
But it was like my firstbig girl moment I would say.
Like, Hey, you're building this businessyourself and you get to be yourself and
like people actually like you for you andnot for the business you're representing.
You know, because I didn't gothere with the like, mindset
of promoting the business.
I went there for the mindsetof community and gathering and
(25:03):
supporting local businessesbecause that's what I love to do.
So like that was kind of like my big ahamoment that like, I. Diving deep local was
where I wanted to take the business next.
We didn't have any clientsin Washington at that point.
And you know, between that experienceand just the things that transpired
afterwards, we really started to growroots here in this part of Washington.
(25:27):
And I think another part ofnetworking that like I was maybe
timid or shy to at first was askingpeople for introductions to others.
I often misread people andoftentimes people misread.
My intents.
So I think like one thing I've learnedover the last year is that I need to be
more direct in asking for what I wantbecause like, what's that old saying,
(25:51):
like a closed mouth doesn't get fed.
Like that's basicallylike, kind of how I see it.
So I would say I'm less afraid nowto ask somebody to introduce me to
somebody else that I wanna work with.
Or at least like somebody that I wantthem to know that this is what I do.
Not necessarily that I'm gonna pitchyou for services, like do you need it?
(26:11):
But like, Hey, this is what Ido, this is what I'm an expertise
in, this is what I wanna do.
Do these things resonate with you?
If so, like I'm alwayshere kind of a thing.
And we've definitely grown clientsfrom those types of relations and
from those types of introductions.
So yeah, networking I think is like a bigone that has worked for us in a good way.
(26:33):
Well, and it goes back to kind of whatwe've talked about before of like we are
working with people who want to work with.
Us and this
Yep.
very easy because they alreadylike who you are and it's, it's
Heart
yeah, hard.
can't make the heart.
And I think, I think you shared a littlebit in part one about how goal setting
(26:55):
hasn't really been something that you'vebeen doing, something that you've been
putting at the forefront for this firm.
do you wanna elaborate more onhow you still track our business
success if you're not goal setting?
Because
Yeah,
we've talked
about it like in our previous episodeswe've talked about how you need
to set goals, but we don't really.
(27:16):
yeah.
I know, right?
It seems a little hypocritical.
But I would say that there's adifference in budgeting and goal setting.
Let's say we definitely budget everysingle month, which means that we
estimate what the hourly work forour hourly clients is gonna be.
(27:37):
We calculate what the revenue weexpect on one-off projects is gonna be.
We tally up all of our retainerrevenues, the ones that are
leaving, the ones that are comingin, the ones that are consistent.
And this gives us a smalltarget to track against.
I would say it allows us to checkthe box that we've met, our payroll
obligations, that we've met our, like,you know, owner's pay kind of obligations
(28:01):
that we've met our tax obligations.
Like, it gives me the peace of mindthat I need to be able to handle one-off
spending as it comes up throughout theweek, let's say, or throughout the month.
And so our, our overhead expenses tooare pretty minimal and rather static.
So everything's easy to project.
So no, we're not saying we wannahit X dollar amount in revenue.
(28:26):
We're going, this is whatour revenue is to work with.
These are what our expenses are.
Are we in the positive?
Are we in the minus?
Do I need to put money intothe business this month?
Or are we gonna be able to float by incoast on or put money to savings because
we're going to exceed our revenue,exceed our overhead expenses, and be
able to put some way for a rainy day.
So like it's.
(28:47):
That's why I say like, we don't goal set,but we're not flying blind and we're not
flying by the seat of our pants either.
Like we, we know what's going to comeand like honestly, we're within 10% of
that target every single month becausewe're looking at it every month.
It's not something we set in Januaryfor a budget and then it's like in June.
(29:08):
It's not anything likewhat we set in January.
Like we're literally lookingat things a a month at a time.
And I usually sit down to do thatcalculation somewhere in week three to
the beginning of week four of every month.
So probably next week, at the end of theweek, I will sit down and kind of do this
(29:29):
projection for June so that I can see whatour revenue is gonna look like for June.
And so obviously we spent a lotmore money than our normal I.
Expense allotment.
I would say our normal overheadexpenses over the last month or
so with all of the travel and withthe retreat and all of that stuff,
(29:50):
but that's why we use Profit First.
We use the Profit First Method to budgetfor our retreat expenses ahead of time
so that we're not dipping into like.
Debt to make that retreathappen necessarily.
We budget for our travelingand our networking expenses.
I've got a conference coming up thatI budgeted for at the end of last
(30:12):
year so that I could do it this year.
So that wasn't even something that'sgonna dip into this month's revenue
because I've already paid for it and Ihad already calculated for it beforehand.
We used Profit First to budgetfor sponsoring Kayla, right.
We did the budgeting and we sawwhat money we would be calculating
to pay in taxes to the government.
(30:33):
And I said, I don't love that number, sohow can we take that number and reduce
what we're paying to the governmentby still advancing our business
objectives and our business goals?
that aligns with our business plan,
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
Like we, we wanted to make sure thatour money was going back into something
that was going to further the mission ofour company, which is to put back into
(30:55):
the youth and to expand the knowledgeof financial information and to help
people understand finances better, right?
So that's, we use Profitfirst to budget for that.
Essentially budgeting our taxes, budgetingour payroll, budgeting for owner's
pay slash my own home office rent.
Like all of these decisions were weremade because we were doing the Profit
(31:18):
First method and utilizing that inour every day expenses and revenue
goals slash budgeting that we do.
So yes, I do think for certain businessmodels and business structures, goal
setting is probably a mandatory.
Thing that you need to implement.
(31:40):
But for us and where we're at ingrowing this firm, currently, we
benefit more from month to monthbudgeting versus setting goals and
saying, this is our target revenue.
Like the revenue has just come andit has exceeded our expectations.
So for me, it would just be likecreating a goal just to create it.
(32:01):
Right.
And that's not just doing something to do.
It is not something that sitswell for me, but being informed,
that speaks a whole lot to me.
you're still looking at it month by month,so it's still like a, very hands-on thing.
It's just something a little bit easierfor our business model, I would say.
(32:21):
Talk to me in year three,we might be goal setting.
fair, right.
For now, it works really well.
Yeah.
So we talked about the good in contractsbut there were also some things about
contracts that didn't work for us.
Do you wanna talk aboutthat a little bit more?
Yeah.
Multi-month retainercontracts right out the gate.
The hours are just alot harder to nail down.
(32:45):
And when you jump straight into aretainer, straight out the gate, like
you don't get that 90 day window tolike vet if the client is really going
to mesh well with you and your systemsand your workflows and your processes.
I think we've only done that with ahandful of clients where we've done
the retainers straight out the gate.
And it, those contracts have allfelt clunky the whole time to me.
(33:10):
So looking back at a year later and,you know, all the things that did and
did not work well, I think I stilllean towards that 90 day blended rate.
To figure out what the real servicesare gonna need be needed for that
client and that 90 day period to makesure that it's a good fit for both
(33:31):
people on both sides of the spectrum.
Yeah, because you know, eachparty gets to be happy with the
price and with the services.
Yeah.
you said, it's not clunky.
Yeah.
And then I think something that willprobably change too with future contracts
moving down the road, which it takessomething that I had on a someday
(33:52):
maybe plate of getting our contractsinto a new program called Anchor.
I put that on the back burner for a while.
But I think like after looking down and,you know, doing both these podcasts is
probably something I wanna bump up onthe list a little bit, is that we have
not required payment ahead of servicesbeing provided and we have not put in a
(34:14):
clause that we will automatically charge.
Payment methods on filesas of a certain date.
And I hadn't put that in because,honestly, up until like December of
2024, I never had an aging collectionsfor, for receivables for the business.
(34:34):
I never had a problem with clients payingus when it came time to pay us, but.
Going into the very end of2024 and carrying on into 2025.
We've carried large AR balancesthat have really drastically
impacted our own firm's cash flow.
And, you know, it's thrown in a,a wrench into our plans, right?
(34:57):
Because I have payroll obligations andI'm not lessening your hours because
I have a contract with you, but yourpayroll costs still have to be met, right?
And so I've had to dip in and putsome of my own money into the business
to make ends meet while chasingthese receivable accounts that
we've never had a problem before.
(35:18):
But all of that was just likerunning off of good faith.
And I think that that was great fora while and it served us for a while.
But I would change that withcontracts moving forward.
I don't necessarily disagree withlike delivering the service and then.
Invoicing for the service.
(35:39):
Like I'm, I am still okay with that,but I need a payment method on file,
and I need a clause in the contractthat says that we'll charge by X day
once we've invoiced for the services.
And that you have to have thatpayment method on file, on, you
know, that's how most firms do it.
Yeah.
how most firms do it.
(36:00):
And
yeah, sometimes you just have tomake those, those, those decisions.
But yeah, I'd say those are thetwo things really that were bad
per se when it comes to contracts.
Over the last year, lessons we learned,
Yeah.
And saying goodbye to clients isboth a good and bad thing for us.
(36:20):
Do you wanna talk a little bitmore with listeners about these
difficult decisions and things thatyou have to do that kind of suck?
yeah, this one was a really important.
Like one of those things thatyou write rewrite on repeat,
like, so that it sticks.
That I didn't want towork with shitty people.
(36:42):
Like in the past I was forced tostay in and work with toxic business
owners because it wasn't my businessand it wasn't my decisions to make.
It was somebody else's business that I wasbuilding, and I had to fall into line with
what they deemed the way to move forward.
Right?
(37:02):
And so I made a promise to myselffrom the very beginning that I
wouldn't work with shitty people.
And you know, one of our.
Early clients really helped mestand my ground in this aspect.
Not only was the business model a completechaotic mess, and if you listen to last
week's episode, I'll let you know this isthe talent agency that I talked to about.
(37:25):
So if you're wondering if you shouldever take on a talent agency as a client,
there's a lot of things that you probablywant and need to know, and we should
probably get on a phone call to discusssome of those things so that you're well
aware before you get yourself into that.
But the business model was verychaotic and the business owner
(37:46):
wanted to do things that I ethicallydid not feel comfortable doing.
And the business owner was anextreme micromanager, I would say.
They paid their staff theabsolute bare minimum in.
While operating in one of theabsolute largest and highest paying
(38:08):
minimum wage cities that there isin the United States currently.
So paid them the very bare minimum,didn't really treat them super great
and then asked the absolute most outof them in those job capacities, which
all of those are just things that don'treally resonate with me and the core
(38:29):
values that I hold and that the clientswe work with hold as well too, right?
That business owner treated therelationship with me more as I worked for
them instead of I worked with them kindof a relationship and because they were so
involved in their own accounting system,things would get changed quite often, and
(38:54):
then the fingers would be pointed backto me for blame when it was not something
that I would necessarily have touched.
So.
It was a whole bunch of red flagsthat really, I just was like,
no, like why am this isn't whyI got into business to do this.
Right.
So that, that client really showed methat the 90 day trial period worked.
(39:16):
Because when I first came on board,everything was like rainbows and
butterflies and unicorns, and thenit was just add, add, add, add and
take, take, take, take on the pay.
And with all of that and all ofthe issues, I was running into
administratively with them.
Like it was just, I had tocut, I had to cut them loose.
(39:38):
And they definitely did not like thatI was the one that was ending the
service contract, but I had to put itbehind me that this was business and.
That that wasn't right, the right fit forme, and I could not continue to do that.
And because of that experience too,we've also let two more clients go that
(39:59):
just weren't good fits just like this.
Maybe not for all of the same reasons,but we could just tell within that
90 day period either how responsiveor unresponsive they were and kind
of if they drug their feet throughthe mud on doing things or not.
Like really that whole experiencewith the talent agency kind of set the
precedence of like, no, no, Felicia,you're gonna stand your ground.
(40:22):
You're gonna stick up for yourself, andyou're only gonna work with people that
align with us at the core value level.
I remember when I first startedyou, you told me something to that
effect of like, I really just wantto work with clients who want to work
with us, who wanna provide us thedocumentation, who wanna, you know,
when we reach out to them, they're ontop of things and they want to do this.
(40:45):
That's who we wanna work with.
And I think you've, you've heldreally true with that and it,
you know, the people that don't,we just split our ways, so
Yeah, I've said it quite a fewtimes, but I think this is a
good place to say it again.
Like we can't want it more thanyou want it as the business owner.
So it's gotta be equal once, orthe business owner's gotta want it
(41:06):
more than us to keep us kind of,you know, right there with them.
Exactly.
All right, so Felicia, let'stalk a little bit about software.
What have you learned aboutforcing clients into a universal
software platform or streamlining?
Yeah, I mean, and I, in an ideal world,right, all of our clients would use the
(41:27):
same types of programs so that we, wehave all of these nice tidy workflows
that we can kind of like apply one tothe other easy to SOP and all of that.
And I get the appeal of that.
But like the old firm I used to workwith, they like to get everybody on
the same financial report system,the same payroll system, same receipt
(41:48):
management system, so on so forth.
But the more and more I work withsmall business clients directly in
a consulting capacity, the more andmore I don't love that for them.
Yeah.
It makes things nice for usadministratively, but like, it kind
of seems like an easy way out, right?
Like we're consultants and too,we always wanna keep learning new
(42:12):
software, in my opinion, because.
Each client is different,every business is different.
And ultimately what we try to doas consultants is find the best fit
for that client and their budget.
And that means the softwares that we useare not going to be cookie cutter options
across the board for every business.
Right.
(42:32):
And I don't care aboutthe referral money either.
Really don't care.
There's one program, right, thatI didn't even get approved for
to be a referral partner for.
I'm still going to refer that clientout to use that program software because
that's the software that makes theabsolute most sense for them and their
business and where it's growing to, right?
And so I think that those are some ofthe, the blockades that maybe some of
(42:55):
the other firms that I've worked within the past, like they siloed themselves
because they wanted everybody to getinto this cookie cutter program, when
really the part of consulting thatmatters most is that tailored effect.
That you give to each individualclient for what their business needs.
It truly for us, it's what software isgoing to deliver the best results for
(43:19):
the clients and make things the mostefficient for everybody that's involved.
In the beginning, I did try tostreamline softwares a little bit, but.
It honestly, if I had forced myselfto continue going down that road,
it would've left me saying no tosome of the best opportunities that
have come up in this first yearbusiness for us as a firm in general.
(43:43):
And so by saying yes to maybe somesoftwares that I wasn't so familiar with
I got to expand my own comfortability andmy own knowledge into some other platforms
that normally I probably would'vepassed on based on prior tendencies.
So ultimately, this increases myknowledge too, because I have more
tools under my belt that I can use andpull out to find the best fit for the
(44:08):
next client that comes down the road,or the next opportunity that one of our
current clients decides to engage in.
Definitely.
And I'm gonna, I'm gonna switch gearsa little bit here, and I wouldn't
necessarily say that this is our lasttopic, but it's been one of the hardest
things that we have gotten into.
And let's talk a little bit aboutsocial media and the struggles we face
(44:31):
with social media marketing as a firm.
'cause social media is hard, man.
Yeah, social media.
Social media is hard.
And I think we're finding, finding that wedon't, we don't love it all of the time.
Sometimes it's super fun.
A lot of times it's not super fun.
But yeah.
So social media, I think big thingthere was like lack of visibility
(44:53):
before Allie came on board.
Right?
It, I mean, even till still tothis day, like the Instagram
is still my personal Instagram.
I didn't want to create a businessInstagram account because I
was just another social media.
Don't wanna start from scratch.
Don't want anotheraccount to manage either.
Like already have enough, right?
(45:15):
Yeah
but I think like the lack ofvisibility that we had was a problem.
And that's what.
Started us on the socialmedia path to begin with.
And I think one of the strugglesthat we run into is that we're
trying to make similar content workacross multiple platforms where
maybe the content isn't receivedthe best on all of those platforms.
(45:37):
And we have ebbs and flowsfor when we actually are
inspired to make good content.
Let's just be real.
Right?
But it's picking up for sure.
Definitely after Road Atlanta.
I think we've definitely seen someupticks, like we got over 2000 views on
YouTube from one short where we talkedabout golf carts and deductible expenses.
(45:57):
So I don't think thatthat's one of the things.
man.
Right.
I don't think that's necessarily like theclip that we thought was gonna hit off
on YouTube, but like that's part of thelearning process for us is, is finding
out those things and, you know, we don'treally have a budget for social media.
And two, I think we want to know abit about social media and marketing
(46:21):
before we decide to just like handover the keys to somebody else
to try and do it professionally.
Right?
Like I think we need to know a littlebit about the foundation of social
media and marketing ourselves before.
We can bring somebodyelse in, into the picture.
And we have to just keepreminding ourselves.
I think too that we started postingon social media, not with the intent
(46:43):
necessarily to drive traffic and to buildrelationships with new clients and for
new clients to come out of it, right?
We started our social media presencebecause we needed somewhere where
we could build credibility andwhere we could send clients to.
Or like when new clients come to ourprofile, they can see and establish
(47:04):
rapport of like, these girlsknow what they're talking about.
And so I think that that'salso a little bit of why.
Maybe it hasn't taken off the way wewant it to is because we're literally
building credibility in a databaseright now, and two, like our revving
up for Financial success course, right?
We've gone through and we've linked outall of the podcast episodes that are
additional supplemental information inaddition to what's in our course, because
(47:28):
that's part of what this, this, thispodcast is for, is to help us build that
credibility and to build that presence.
So we have to keep reminding ourselvesthat it's not just for the likes.
Right.
And the engagement.
that we're, we're a little different too.
You know, you usually, you have abookkeeping firm or a consulting
firm and they're doing videos aboutjust bookkeeping and consulting.
(47:49):
Whereas we're kind of doing bookkeepingand consulting with that motorsport
twist, which usually doesn't go together.
So it's, we're finding our ownniche and we're finding, we're
trying to find a way to make ourvisibility out there so that we can,
we can help our motor sport people.
'cause that's what
Yep.
trying to do here.
And two to non-motorsport people too, right?
(48:09):
Because still a chunk of our firm clientsare not motorsport, industry folk do.
So, you know, it's, it's allpart of the learning process.
But I think like, again, that's whywe haven't set goals like to have
X amount of followers or y numberof likes on our posts or whatnot.
Like we're doing it differently.
And you know, in the long run, Ithink thinking outside of the box and
(48:32):
doing things differently has worked.
We'll see if this continuesto work for us or not.
Maybe we'll pivot it.
Who knows?
We'll figure it out.
And then I don't think cold callingor pitching services while we're
not in person, like I don't thinkthat's done anything good for us.
If anything, it's like completelyshut people off and like close
(48:52):
the door in our faces, right?
Like I was actually pretty disheartenedwhen we reached out to Nooma.
We thought it was gonna besuch a great partnership.
We just wanted, we weren'teven asking for anything.
We just like wanted to have a conversationwith them about how getting clean
hydration into the Motorsport Paddockcould, what it could look like for them.
(49:12):
Like showing mission foods andhow Mission Foods is all over
the Motor America Paddock.
Like we just wanted to have a conversationwith Nooma to show them the same thing
and what it was like within five minutesof sending the email that it was like,
no, thank you, goodbye from the owner.
And I mean, at least it was the owner,at least let's say, that did respond,
(49:33):
but it kind of like killed the vibe andkilled a lot of confidence and, you know.
Responding to people's stories, likeabout their troubles of being able
to stay in the Moto America paddockat the level that they've been
competing in the Moto America Paddock.
You know, I've reached out tothem directly via email because I
don't wanna just like slide intotheir dms or anything like that.
(49:56):
And, you know, with a very we wannahelp you mindset, not even talking
dollars or anything, and it'sjust, it's been rough because you
just hear crickets back from it.
So, you know, I think what I've found isthat people in certain industries don't
really seem to want to make decisionswithout like an in-person validation.
And I think that that in personvalidation isn't necessarily the
(50:18):
pitch of your services, but moreso like you as an individual.
So I think that.
There's, that's cold.
Calling's just never gonna be.
I worked in timeshare for goodness sake.
Like I should know that.
That's not something that I like to do.
Right.
No.
No.
That doesn't work out.
But you know, you live andlearn, which is what we're doing.
(50:39):
So, Felicia,
I,
any last words of wisdomfor our listeners out there?
yeah.
I say it a lot, but I only sayit a lot because it's true.
You have to spend money to earnmoney, and sometimes that means
putting your own skin in the game.
I was pretty transparentwith you, Allie, right?
(51:01):
Like when you came full time into thefirm I was pretty transparent that I was
throwing my own money into the business.
This is how much I was putting into thesavings account and that it was there
to be used as a safety net for us.
Like that I had calculated we couldrun the business off of what we had
at the time and what our expenseswere, but that we needed to have a
(51:22):
safety net in case shit got real.
Which shit got real.
And I think that that was an importantthing for me to do as a business owner
because it helped me hold myself.
Accountable along theway every single month.
Right.
I was chatting with youmultiple times a month probably.
I was chatting with youabout like our own cash flow.
Each situation each month ontelling you like I'm pulling
(51:45):
your payroll from our operatingexpenses versus from the savings.
Like we still have thismuch in savings, right.
And although we did borrow from thosereserve funds that I had transferred
from time to time, we managed to pay itback in full for four months straight
when I did have to borrow it becausethe cashflow was just like a week or
(52:06):
two delayed or something like that.
And we only had to dip into that reservefund, which we did dip into it and we
did use 80% of it, which is a littlebut it was only due to a few large aging
balances from clients that went unpaidhitting at the same time as retreat
(52:28):
planning, as the rider sponsorship.
And although we had budgetedall of that from Profit First,
It
it's different.
Yeah.
It just all hit the shit,hit the fan at the same time.
Right.
So I'm really happy with that.
Like, I honestly am proud that we didn't.
Touch, per se, those funds for thefirst four months that it was in there.
(52:49):
And we're gonna be able to pay itback now that things are rolling
again with our AR collections.
But I think that with it being my ownmoney, it really had a big psychological
impact on me as an individual and itdefinitely helped me spend our money
more smartly and be a little bitmore lean leading up to the retreat
(53:11):
and all of the spending that we weregonna do at that point as well too.
So I think it really helpedme maximize resources.
And I know not everybody has moneyto put in but if you are somebody
who does have money to put in to yourown business I think having skin in
the game is, it's a, an educationallesson that you're not really gonna get
(53:33):
from a textbook or from sitting downand listening to somebody, like do a
coaching session or something like that.
My dad always said that he didn'twanna pay for our college because he
wanted us to put our own money intoour own college so that we would
actually invest in our education.
And I think this is a very similartype deal, is you have skin in the
game and so you put your heart andyour soul into it and it shows.
(53:57):
Yeah, no, I, I agree with your dad.
I definitely, my mom helped paycollege for a while, and I think
while she was helping me pay for mycollege, I definitely didn't take it
as serious as I did when I startedpaying for college for myself.
And I got a lot more out of my educationonce I started paying for myself.
So your dad's a smart guy.
(54:18):
Mm-hmm.
And that's probably a good place towrap it up for our part two of our
special two part firm anniversarysegments where we hope that you
found some of these experiences andstories we've shared, relatable.
And as always, if you found theseinsights valuable, please like,
share, comment, tag, all of things.
We would really appreciate it.
(54:39):
It just helps you show support for whatwe're doing here at Full Throttle Finance.
And if you're ever interested in bookingservices with us, you can visit our
website at www.cleanbeeconsulting.com.
That's C-L-E-A-N-B-E-E consulting.com.
Thank you so much for joining us,and we'll see you next Friday as we
(54:59):
continue to break down motorsportor finances with a motors boy twist.
We'll see ya.
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