October 15, 2024 • 53 mins
Mastering Business Finances: Tips, Mindset Shifts, and Empowerment for Professional Organizers
LINKS FOR LISTENERS:
Schedule a Zoom with Melissa to talk about joining our programs: CLICK HERE
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Get in touch with Danielle and her team at Kickstart Accounting: CLICK HERE
I am talking to Danielle Hayden, founder of Kickstart Accounting Inc., to demystify the world of business finances.
From actionable strategies in bookkeeping and tax planning to understanding the different financial roles like CPAs and CFOs, we are breaking down essential financial concepts and highlight the critical importance of knowing your numbers.
The discussion also delves into mindset shifts necessary for business success, especially for women entrepreneurs. Knowing your numbers actually means FREEDOM--and financial guidance can save and grow your business.
00:42 Tax Day and Financial Conversations
04:00 Introducing Danielle Hayden and Her Journey
08:25 Understanding Bookkeeping and Accounting
18:57 The Importance of Knowing Your Numbers
22:46 Budgeting and Financial Planning for Small Businesses
26:46 Support for Business Owners with Financial Challenges
28:07 Creating a Safe Space for Financial Conversations
29:34 Taking Responsibility as a Business Owner
30:28 The Importance of Nonjudgmental Financial Support
32:58 Understanding the Infinite Game of Business
35:33 The Role of Gender in Business Ownership
39:57 Practical Tips for Business Finances
41:20 Overcoming Financial Disorganization
45:22 The Importance of Separating Business and Personal Finances
46:50 Navigating State-Specific Financial Regulations
48:21 Breaking the Taboo: Talking About Money
52:07 How to Get Financial Help and Support
53:18 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hey Pro Organizers, my name isMelissa Klug and you are listening
to the Pro Organizer Studio Podcast.
Professional organizingchanged my entire life.
After 20 years of working at hugecompanies, I started working for myself.
I opened a professional organizingbusiness, grew it to six
figures, and I never looked back.
Now I get to spend all day, every day,teaching organizers around the world.
(00:25):
How to find clients, how to marketand sell yourselves, how to turn this
business into what you want it to be.
Whether you have been in businessfor 15 minutes or 15 years, you
have a home at Pro Organizer Studio.
I'm excited that you're here.
Let's get started.
Hey Pro Organizers, it's Melissaand today it is October 15th
(00:48):
when I am recording this.
And if you filed an extension onyour taxes in the United States, as
I hypothetically did, it is tax day.
Perfect day to put this out.
I am having a conversation with DanielleHayden of Kickstart Accounting about
something that a lot of business ownersincluding myself, do not love dealing
(01:12):
with, talking about, thinking about, andthat is taxes and bookkeeping and knowing
your numbers and all of the things.
And I wanted to have her on becauseshe herself is and was a small business
owner, and she only helps other smallbusiness owners and specifically women.
I am just really, really urgingpeople to know their numbers because
(01:36):
that's the only way any of us canhave a viable, long term business.
And listen, just want to say, a lotof the times when we have something
on this podcast, it is because, it'snot because I am perfect at it, it's
because I have things in my businessthat I need to improve as well.
And one of the things that I justreally, frankly, do not enjoy
(01:58):
doing is all of the kind of backend financials of my business.
Yet, I do them.
because it's important and I don't everenjoy it but what I'm trying to do after
talking to Danielle is she had such reallygood reframing of some of the things that
typically bother me and so ever since sheand I had this conversation I'm like oh I
can't wait to get this out to everybody.
(02:20):
Cannot wait for you to listen to her and Ireally hope you take everything to heart.
Before we get started trending withthe financial conversation is one of
the things I talk about on this podcasta lot, which is I always encourage
organizers to raise their prices.
I want you to look around.
I want you to see whatyour market is doing.
(02:40):
I want you to get paid what you are worth.
One of the first things I tell peoplewhen they join our group is, what
are your prices and let's raise them.
And we have lots of greatcoaching on that subject.
Well, I'm going to practice what I preach.
And on November 1st, Our prices forInspired Organizer, because we are
adding so many things to our program,are going to be going up significantly.
(03:04):
So I want to give people a chanceto get in for the last time.
One of our programs, the pricehas not changed since 2016, when
it was originally established.
And I'm changing that.
This is the perfect time to one, geta great business expense two, get
lifetime access to our Inspired Organizerprogram before lots of things change.
(03:26):
And it is a great way to get in with theloveliest group of people in organizing.
I would love to have you be a part ofour vibrant, exciting, knowledgeable,
financially savvy community.
If you want more information,you can schedule a Zoom with me.
You can go to ProOrganizerStudio.com/join.
(03:47):
You can send me an email athello@ProOrganizerStudio.Com and
I will send you more information.
Any of those ways, Iwould love to talk to you.
Alright, let's get startedwith Danielle Hayden.
The way that we always start out,especially when someone's new to
our audience, just give us, giveus your whole story as much or
as little as you want to tell us.
(04:07):
Oh my God, we could be here for hours.
Danielle Hayden founder ofKickstart Accounting Inc.
I founded my company nine years ago.
However, I, like so many other people havehad a long windy road to entrepreneurship.
I was originally a creative.
I started my career as a hairstylist
(04:27):
Interesting.
I know I am, I am left brain and brain.
I love that.
so what I found when I was workingas a hairstylist that I had
this knack for using the numbersto grow my book of business.
And I was trying to teach the othergirls in the salon that I worked
with how to read their paycheck,how to use the numbers, how to grow
(04:49):
their business and really take.
Control and empowerment becausethey were all just sitting in
the back room like, Oh, when aremore clients going to come in?
How do I make more money?
So really taught them how to becomebetter managers of their money how to get
control and, and how to find empowerment.
So fast forward, I went backto school cause I thought I was
going to own my own hair salon.
(05:10):
And along the way I found accounting,which just saying to my soul, I love
the black and white of accounting andit's really, really quiet in the office.
Like I remember sitting down for thefirst time and be like, Oh my God, I
don't have to talk to anybody for hours.
That would be, that's my dream by the way.
Wait, I don't have to interact.
Great.
I can just be by myself.
(05:31):
it was, it was so cool, youknow, fast forward nine years
and here's, I talk all day again.
So it wasn't meant to be, but, soI I found a niche again where I was
helping this midsize businesses, theboard of directors, the CEOs the,
the management team, how to use ournumbers to make business decisions.
That's literally what wewere doing and I'm like, wow.
(05:54):
Every single business owner, I don't carehow small you are or how big you are,
deserves access to the same financialinformation because you deserve to be
able to make the same business decision.
So we started it back in 2015.
Helping business ownersunderstand their numbers.
They can make better business decisions.
(06:14):
Now, here's what I learnedreal, real quick, though.
You can't build a budgetand you can't business plan.
You can't file your taxes.
You can't tax plan.
You can't do any of thosethings without bookkeeping.
Correct.
You just literally can't.
So we had to make a huge pivot inthe first year of business and we
use bookkeeping as the vehicle.
(06:35):
So once we, when we work with ourclients, we do the bookkeeping first.
Once we have the foundation created,now we can file your tax return.
Now we can do tax planning.
Now we can build you a budget.
Now we can add on likefinancial planning, right?
But we can't do any of that until wehave everything all organized and set
(06:56):
up and ready for you as a businessowner to make those business decisions.
Well, and I, I think that there is alot of everything you're talking about.
There's a lot of fear around it,you know, like knowing your numbers
you know, all of those things.
And then just a lot of us don't.
Understand it.
So we're gonna get into that.
(07:17):
But I do just really quickly.
I'm just laughing to myself that youwent from the most talky profession
Yeah.
to the least talky profession.
That is a pivot that I thinkis probably unprecedented.
I mean, seriously, it really is.
And I didn't, I didn't last long inlike I didn't go, I spent like one year
(07:37):
in Ian Ernst Young and I very quicklyfound myself in corporate accounting
because I wanted to work with people.
Yeah.
I wanted to, I wanted totalk to my management team.
I needed to collaborate.
I needed to talk to the board.
I, I always say I, I'm in, I'min business because I want to
help people run the business.
Yeah.
And now I'm just, now I'm talking all day.
(07:58):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Shut me up.
And here's the best part about that.
They'll never forget my best friend's mom.
She said it was like one day whenyou were like 11, she's you never
talked like you never spoke.
You were so quiet as a kid.
She's and then one day you just startedtalking and it was like, you had
something to say, everybody was goingto listen to it and you never shut up.
(08:21):
I love it.
It's fantastic.
I'm just glad that we all getto benefit from you talking now.
It's great.
So, okay, so, this is going tosound insane, but I'd just like
to lay it out for everybody.
Can you explain the differencebetween bookkeeping and accounting
and, and all of the things?
Because I think that there are a lotof people that don't realize that,
you know, there are big differencesbetween all of these things.
(08:42):
All right.
I was shocked when I came into businessand people are throwing all these terms
and they were using them differently.
And I'm like, Whoa, okay.
There's a lot of confusion becauseit depends where you came from.
You know, if you came from smallbusiness, if you came from corporate,
you know, depending on what yourbackground is, you're going to call
these things all different things.
So yeah, let's clear theair once and for all.
(09:03):
A bookkeeper is the personwho's doing your bookkeeping.
All that means is you, and I'm goingto use the word business owner a
lot, and I don't care how small yourbusiness is or how big your business is.
The day that you file your LLC.
You are a business owner.
Okay.
So I'm using the word businessowner you know, interchangeably with
(09:24):
CEO and you, my friend are that.
So as a business owner, you're out theremaking money, you're out there spending
money and the bookkeeper is taking thebookkeeping, all that making money and
spending money, and they're puttingit in an organized fashion into your
accounting software, and they're creating.
(09:46):
this really beautiful puzzle for you.
Like I hate puzzles, butthat's how people feel.
Right.
It's you have all these puzzle piecesand your bookkeeper is the magician who
puts all the puzzle pieces together andyou just get to come by and be like,
wow, that's all put together so pretty.
That's a beautiful picture.
Right.
(10:07):
So your bookkeeper, What's thepicture of your financials together?
Your accountant, it's really aninterchangeable term because if you
came from corporate, like sometimesyour bookkeeper just becomes a label of
account, but generally speaking, youraccountant is your CPA or tax accountant.
(10:27):
So I hold the CPA designation.
It is a very, very, veryhard, very hard test
can't even imagine.
Thanks.
That, that gives you a licensurethat says that you are able to
perform audits, attestation, taxes.
So this is generally your personwho is filing your taxes for you.
(10:48):
So your tax accountant, their only job.
Is to file your taxes.
You do not ring every timeyou have a business question.
You do not call them for business advice.
You do not call them for coaching.
You do not call them for literallyanything, but your taxes.
And the mistake I hear, I see so manypeople make so because their tax accounts,
(11:10):
the first person, most of us hire, causeI filed this LLC to file my tax return.
Shoot.
Let me call my tax accountant.
They start calling them for everything.
And their only job isto file your tax return.
You might have also a tax strategist.
So somebody who is helping you withtax planning, and again, not the
same qualifications, not the same.
(11:30):
No, it is the same, same team.
Then we have our CFO.
So our CFO, I think that this canbe interchangeable with a business
coach, but our CFO is the person.
So.
Let me define it chief financial officer.
However, in small business, theway I define a CFO is the person
(11:51):
who's going to help you start tolook forward in your business.
So bookkeeper looking backwards,CFO, we're looking to the future.
So I'm going to startcreating a business budget.
I'm going to make businessdecisions for the future.
With my numbers, where's yourbookkeeper is going to tell you,
this is what happened in the past.
(12:12):
Here's what you need to start doing.
Here's what you need to stopdoing, but your CFO is going
to help you look to the future.
And I, I do think that one of the thingsthat I will say personally, as someone
who works with mostly small businessowners, I will encourage people always
and I'm sure you have some strongfeelings about this, the minute you,
(12:32):
when you said the minute you file yourLLC, the minute you become a business
owner, which I don't care if you have oneemployee or 10 employees or 20 employees
or 200 employees, you are correct.
You are a CEO and youare a business owner.
I believe that you must paysomeone to file your taxes for you.
You, I just, I still hear about peoplewho have decent sized businesses.
(12:53):
Listen, everybody's gotto do what works for them.
But if you own a business, please havesomeone professional do your taxes.
Yes.
Period.
Yes, period.
So here's the thing.
Been around for a long time, whichwas a lot of business owners.
And you, you mentioned at thebeginning, there is a lot of fear
and shame around our numbers.
(13:14):
And I'll never forget my firstyear in business, I had a old
family friend do my taxes.
Although I was a CPA, Iwas like, you know what?
I want this like checks and balance.
I'm going to do the bookkeeping.
He's going to do the taxes and just,you know, make sure everything's right.
I walked into Joe's office and hehadn't updated his office since I've
walked in that office while I was a kid.
(13:34):
He had that old brown paneling.
It was
Yeah, I know exactly.
I have a vision.
I know what that looks like.
Yep.
Yep.
We can all visualize it.
Hot summer day.
I actually have naturally curlyhair and it was sticky and stuffy.
And I remember walking into his office.
I was so ashamed.
I didn't grow enough.
I didn't pay myself enough.
(13:56):
I didn't do the bookkeepingthroughout the year.
I felt so overwhelmed.
And I walk into this man's officeand he shakes his head at my, at
me and calls it my little business.
I don't want that.
Why didn't you do this?
Why didn't you do that?
And I walked out of Joe's officeand I said, No one should ever
(14:17):
have to feel that way again.
Now, Joe, I'm sorry if you're listening.
I, I'm like terrified he'sgoing to hear me talk one day.
However, shame on you, Joe.
I, I was a growing business owner.
I needed somebody to come inand create a space for me.
For no judgment.
So when, so you need to find as a businessowner, you need to find the right team.
(14:40):
When we work with our clients.
So we do the bookkeeping tax and CFO work.
When we work with ourclients, we have a role.
There is no judgment.
There is no place for shame.
You're going to give us access tothe closest thing to you, right?
We feel that.
And we understand that.
Okay.
deeply, deeply.
(15:02):
And so you need to find a taxaccount that you want to work with.
Now, can I tell you one morestory about the like tax woes?
Okay.
So if you, if you are doing your ownbookkeeping and you're doing your
own taxes, You have so much risk.
So people say to me, I'm just,I'm not very risk adverse.
(15:22):
Like I'm, I'm just, I'm kind ofin this business owner thing.
I'm just, you know,I'm so scared of risks.
That's why I'm doing it myself.
It's the exact opposite.
So we had this clientcome to us last year.
And she had been doingher own bookkeeping.
She used HoneyBook and shewas using QuickBooks online.
She's I think I'm doing really awesome.
(15:44):
I just, I'm growing past a pointwhere I think I need a team.
I want to offer this toyou guys, to you guys.
Like I think I'm doing good.
I think I'm in a good spot,but I'm just going to have
you guys do it in the future.
So 2023 and we're like, Whoa,you don't want us to file us.
What was happening was that all of hersales were duplicated in QuickBooks.
(16:06):
Yes.
She created the sink with HoneyBookshe was buying the payments.
Now we worked with a lot ofbusiness owners in this industry.
So we've seen it happenover and over and over.
Now we, we did what wecall a catch up for her.
So we went back and werecategorized all of her sales.
(16:30):
We applied to everything correctly.
We restructured things.
So luckily we caught it.
She knew what her, heraccurate profitability was.
We filed her taxes correctly.
Had she not come to us, she was aboutto like seriously overpay in her taxes.
I was just about to saythat's actually a problem.
That's a better problem thanthe other problem, which is she
(16:51):
had paid in way too much money.
But she had also lost probably,you know, thousands, tens of
thousands of dollars by overpaying.
I mean, it's definitelybetter than the alternative,
Well, she had paid estimated taxesall year based on, on her income.
So at least she was able toget the refund from the IRS.
Yeah,
she didn't work with us,nobody would have caught that.
(17:12):
Correct.
So to your point, five minutes ago, sorry.
To your point, if you'redoing your own taxes, you are
putting your business at risk.
You're putting your family at risk.
You're putting your suppliers atrisk, any employees you have at risk.
And I don't think anybodywants that, right?
I don't think anybody'slike doing it maliciously.
I just think we think in our heads,like we have some superhero cape.
(17:34):
Like I have to do it all myself.
Please, for the love of God, stop doingthings you're not qualified to do.
Yeah.
And I, I just think that there aresituations that, I mean, like you
said, the education that you wentthrough and the, the work that you
have Have to do to become anything inthe financial sphere, an accountant,
a certified financial planner, anyof those things, there's a tremendous
(17:55):
amount of education that comes with that.
I can make someone's underweardrawer look really pretty, but
I have no idea what cogs is.
I mean, I do, but you know what I mean?
Exactly.
And you know what?
I would say I can't do what you do.
Like I need you, likeI desperately need you.
And, and we need each other.
And so we don't like, we can allretire superhero caves and say,
I, we each other and how can webest use each other's strengths,
(18:18):
Well, and I will say too, juston the, please, please go get
professionals to help you.
I'm very much.
And I've talked about it on this podcastand it's hilarious because I love
helping people with their business.
I mean, I do things forpeople all the time.
I, I coach them.
I do all the things I,I'm a DIY girl at heart.
Like I, I like to do a lot ofthings myself in my business.
And this is one where it'sa non negotiable for me.
(18:39):
Like you have, you haveto have an accountant.
My accountant has saved me literallytens of thousands of dollars.
That I would normally not have andit's just it's really, really important
to have that person on your side.
I am definitely not smart enough to do it.
Let's just talk though about thewhole know your numbers thing.
(19:01):
Because I think simply becausewe're not experts at this sometimes
you just go well, I'm just goingto mess around and well, I've
got money in my checking account.
So I've got money in my business bankingaccount, so I must be fine or whatever.
But tell me about that feararound knowing your numbers.
So I call it the report card effect.
If you're anything like me I talkedtoo much at school once I turned 11
(19:25):
and my mom thought if she groundedme that maybe I would stop talking
and that my grades would get better.
Natural.
But I, I saw so many of my friendsgoing through this, especially my
entrepreneur friends who, who we'reso used to getting report cards.
Yes.
And our report card tells you ifyou pass or fail, like literally
(19:47):
you failed, you're held back.
Okay.
Now let's fast forwardbecause we're not robots.
We're people.
And so now you're taking all this historyfrom your childhood and you plop into
entrepreneurship and you say, Well, myaccountant's going to send me my numbers.
I'm going to find out if I pass or failed.
(20:08):
Of course we're scared.
Of course we're not numbers people, right?
Like of course we don't want toopen up the financial report.
So if we can, if we can changethat reframe to think, Wow.
My numbers are an opportunityto do things differently.
We had a client who she had investedin like a second stream of income.
(20:30):
And when she, when you looked at herpoint of sale system, like seriously,
Melissa, like hockey stick revenue, like.
Lowing it away compared toher, her original business.
And she had to hire some contractorsto help her fulfill her contracts.
And what was happening every monthwhen we looked at her financials.
(20:52):
So we send our clients their financialson a monthly basis, but their snapshot.
The snapshot is an easy to read document.
So Katie would read her documentevery month and she was like,
Oh, my debt keeps going up.
Like what?
Why is my debt going up?
Hold on.
My cash is going down.
My, my profits going down.
Now, if I, if I look at my point ofsale system and my revenue, that's
(21:15):
skyrocketing, I'm good, but everythingelse is not in the right direction.
And it was around August.
So she started this inJanuary, around August.
She called me, she goes,I have to close it down.
I'm putting my family in jeopardy.
I'm, I'm, I'm going toend up in bankruptcy.
I, I, I can't take on this much debt.
I can't keep on payingmy contractors this way.
(21:36):
I, I know I've had this growth, but I,it, it, it doesn't profit wise make sense.
And she shut it down by the end ofthe year and she saved her business.
She's in business todaybecause she saved herself.
Yeah.
Imagine if Katie only lookedat her financials when she
prepared them for the taxes.
Right.
Yeah.
(21:57):
Right.
So what so many business owners do isthey wait until the end of the year.
They throw their financials together.
They look at it one time, maybe, maybetheir tax accountant just files taxes
with it and, and they, they, theynever made a business decision with it.
So knowing your numbers is about finding,
I love that.
It's a positive rather than a negative.
(22:20):
yeah.
And nobody's going to comeand tell you, you failed.
Even if you lost money, you didn't fail.
And you get to learn from it.
Correct.
So if you don't wait and you're actuallylook how cool I lost money last month.
Well, what the hell did I do wrong?
Like you get to look and if youmade money, how do I make money?
(22:43):
What happened?
Yeah.
What did I do?
to be able to understand thosepatterns, too, in the organizing
business, it can be cyclical.
Yeah.
Summer, depending, and all of thisdepends on a lot of different factors.
It depends on where you live.
If you live in an area like I do,where people go to their cabin
every weekend, organizing mightbe not on the top of their list.
(23:05):
But if you are in a cyclical business,as we can tend to be in, you have
to plan for those peaks and valleys,and you have to have the peak
months service the valley months.
So that's why we talk about budgeting somuch with small business owners, because
there's a power in budgeting that whenyou have your bookkeeping in place, right?
So we, we, when we knowwhere we've been now.
(23:29):
Because we know where we've been, wecan now see, well, shoot, summer's
a really slow time, but I still needto get paid because I have a family
and I need, I need to pay myself.
So let's budget out my spending insteadof acting I got, I'm a millionaire during
the high months and let's even that outand budget our, our money accordingly.
(23:51):
And that there's our thing when we hearthe word budget, they're like, if people
are like, all right, did y'all gonna tellme where I have to stop spending money and
I got to cut back and no more Starbucksand I'm like, literally not saying that
I'm like, here, let me give you 100 amonth in Starbucks, but let's plan for it.
You know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, that you have to plan for it.
The, but the, the know yournumbers thing is so much more
(24:15):
than, and you really touched on it.
It's, it's so much more thanjust finances too, because it's
everything that goes into finances.
It is, For what we do, howmany potential clients do you
have coming into your business?
What do you, what are your projections?
What do you think?
How many hours a weekare you able to work?
I will sometimes have people come intosome of our programs and they say I
(24:38):
really want to be a professional organizerbecause I want to have my own time.
I want to be my own boss andI would like to make a hundred
thousand dollars a year, but I onlywant to work three hours a week.
So I'll be like, we have a mismatch.
On expectations versus reality.
But some of that is also Ihad a boss many years ago that
said, hope is not a strategy.
And it's, it's true.
(24:59):
I think as a business owner,there are times you're like,
oh, I hope things get better.
What am I doing to go make them better?
And how can I plan out so that Idon't have as many panic months?
Yeah.
One thing that clients will come ona call with me and they'll say, do
you know like they brace themselveslike, where should I cut back?
And I'm like, cut back spending.
You told me at the beginning of theyear that your goal was growth, right?
(25:24):
You wanted to bring on moreclients and X amount of revenue.
How were you going to get there?
They were just going to fall from the sky.
If you're not spending eight to 10percent of your sales and advertising
and marketing, you can't expect to grow.
So when, when we work with ourclients, we walk them through
their healthy percentages.
(25:45):
So that means an each area ofyour spending, you need to be
spending a healthy amount of money.
To, to have a growing business.
Now you need to align yourspending with what your
intentions are for your business.
So if you're in a season where youknow, I really need to grow my team and
I'm not going to work as much, and Ijust really want to find some balance.
(26:09):
Your, your, your.
Spending structure is going tolook a little bit different.
You might not be spendingas much in marketing.
You're spending more on your team becauseyou want your team managing your clients.
So your biggest expense duringthat time is going to be more in
payroll than it is in advertisingand marketing, which is perfect.
But we as business owners.
Need to think aboutwhat our intentions are.
(26:30):
What are our goals?
Then how do we actually physicallyspend money to hit our goals?
And that's the power of knowingyour numbers and budget, right?
Like I know my numbers, I know what I did.
So I have some history ofwhat worked and what didn't.
Now let me plan for the future.
Yeah.
What do you recommend for peoplewho, let's say you have the people
who are the blinders people, do youhave a what is your plan for them?
(26:56):
Let's say one of those people came to you,what, what would you be doing with them?
So if you are somebody who isarea for you is you just want
to bury your head in the sand.
And it doesn't have any impact on howyou spend money because some people,
like I'm burying your head in the sand.
You might be a keeper or a spender.
So that means you have alot of money in savings.
(27:18):
Like I just want to keep all mycash or you might be a free spender.
Either way if you were to come toour firm, we hold your hand in a way
that's going to feel really supported.
So opening the door for you to say, Hey.
We're going to meet you at your speed.
We're not going to let you disappear.
We're going to hold you accountable.
We're going to hold your hand.
(27:38):
Right?
So here's what we need fromyou in order to get started.
We're going to meet with youon a regular basis in order
to get all that information.
And then we're going to do it for you.
Right?
So for anybody who's somebodywho's put your head in the
sand, get it off your plate.
Right?
Because then once, once we, once wehave access to everything, You can
go put your head in the sand becauseat the end of the month, we're going
(28:00):
to send you your financial reports.
We're going to wave a flag at you.
We're going to be youraccountability partner.
Hey, Hey, come out to play.
You're going to book a call.
You're going to review your financialstatements because you're going to
like your team because we actuallyare, are cool people who actually
talk to you and talk about whathappened in a nonjudgmental way.
Oh shoot, that's how much money I spent.
Oh my God.
(28:21):
Like safe space to be like, I cannotbelieve I actually spent that much money.
Or.
Celebrate.
Who, who can you really go to,to say, guess what, I hit my
first month of 10, 000 in sales.
Big deal.
Like most of your friends are not callingbecause they'll be like, Oh, cool.
(28:41):
You're paying for dinner on Friday,
Right.
right?
I mean, maybe, maybe your partnercan't call your mom, you know,
like your mom doesn't get it.
Your partner might not get it.
So having a bookkeeperwho you like to talk to.
You can celebrate Oh my God,it's my first 10, 000 a month.
How cool.
Like I'm so excited.
And they're there to help celebratewith you and then commiserate
(29:01):
when things aren't good.
So if you're somebody who is buryingtheir head in the sand, find a team that
will be there to celebrate with you.
Find a team that will be there to helpyou softly take your blinders off,
not abruptly, just softly, just startto pull them, pull them back and find
somebody who you want to talk to.
And, and that might not be me you mightthink I'm really annoying, but find
(29:23):
whoever it might be to do that for you,one thing that my team told me to stop
saying, I think it's really important,
Whatever it is, I'm already going to loveit if they told you to stop saying it.
So
you have a responsibility.
As a business owner, you don'tget to put your head in the sand.
You literally aren't allowed theday that you took out your LLC.
(29:47):
The day that you decided to take moneyfrom a client, the day that you signed
up to have a vendor partnership,you spent money as a business.
You now took on responsibility.
You don't, you don't get, you don'tget to just put the blinder on.
I'm sorry.
Like tough love get over it.
I don't care if you're a money person.
I don't care if you likenumbers The government doesn't
(30:10):
care the IRS doesn't care.
great.
Nobody's coming to save you You haveto take responsibility for yourself.
And what that might look like isasking for help and that's okay.
I really, I, I did not go backto it when you originally said
it, but I want to go to it now.
I think that when you talked aboutbeing nonjudgmental and how sometimes
(30:32):
there are people that are judgmentaland that is something that we deal
with in our work people, you know,being nonjudgmental when you're an
organizer is incredibly important.
And so you have to find someone on theother end, if, especially if money is
something that is you to you, you need tofind someone that is not going to make you
feel dumb or less or anything when there,when you have these questions, because
(30:55):
when you start a business there are waymore questions than anyone could ever ask.
That any one person canhold in their head, right?
And a lot of us have never hadto do any of these things before.
And so finding someone that you connectwith in the same way that we have clients
that when you said, I, I might annoy you.
(31:16):
Same thing with organizing clients.
I might not be your cup of tea.
Cool.
Go find that person that reallyconnects with you and speaks
the same language as you.
Yeah, absolutely.
Cause there is a lot of I, it's justas funny as you were talking thinking
about the whole knowing your numbers.
I'm like, I do not enjoygetting on the scale.
I do not enjoy looking likefinances and that type of thing.
(31:37):
I think are in the same category of
think so
just ignore it, it will go away.
It definitely doesn't.
And like you said, thegovernment doesn't care.
I'm sure that you have seen thisreel a million times with the
TikTok, but it's okay government.
Can you tell me how much money I owe?
No, you have to figure it out yourself.
Well, what if I get it wrong?
We send you to jail.
So
so true.
It is a very complex system.
(31:58):
And I, you know, I should say we havepeople that listen all over the globe.
So obviously this is a very Americancentric conversation, but I'm sure
taxes are no fun in really any country.
Yeah.
I mean, even even across borders, Imean, we all have our version of it.
So
There's no way that, you know,what the Canadian revenue system
or anything, and you're like, we'reall not having fun with taxes.
(32:19):
Right.
So, yeah, but, but knowing your numbersand just confronting them and being
honest with them and I think justtaking them Like it's just a data point.
It's not a good or a bad,it's not a value judgment.
It's not a measure of your worth.
It's just the, and knowing themcan allow you to get better.
tool in your tool belt ishow I like to consider it.
(32:40):
You know, your financial statements,your, your, your, like each one
is just a tool in the tool beltthat you get to learn from.
And, and doesn't mean I don't do it.
All right.
You don't do it.
All right, but I think we're bothable to say, hold on let me learn
from it and continue to grow.
I keep on hearing lately.
(33:00):
It's I'm, I'm called to hear it about theinfinite game where we're, we're in it.
We're in this it's, it's not a sprint.
It's a marathon.
It is.
I'm, I'm, I'm never going to win.
You know, if we can start tothink about owning our business,
it's I'm never going to win.
Even if I hit six figures, even ifI hit a million dollars, those are
(33:22):
just milestones in the journey.
I didn't, I didn't win the game.
So there's no, there's nofailing in the game either.
Right.
It's just.
It's just an infinite journey.
Someone has to someone goes awayfrom the Superbowl, not a winner.
It does not mean that theyhave had a terrible season.
And that's a game.
Like owning a business isn't a game.
(33:43):
So it's not a one timeevent where that's finite.
There's a Superbowl and, and it is finite.
Whereas this owning a businessthing is, is infinite.
And as long as we want to keep doing itfor, and so we can keep on showing up to
say it even if I lost money last year,I can still show up and do it again.
Who knows?
I might lose money againand I, I might do better.
(34:04):
And look, hey, if I lost moneyfor the last 12 months, I'm just
going to consider it a rolling 12.
And guess what?
In my rolling 12, I didn't lose money.
And guess what?
I won.
I love it.
Do you ever, I'm trying to, I'm trying tothink about how to phrase this question.
Do you, are, is there a time that you say,hey, you know what, I think that you've
given it a college try and it's just,it's maybe time to, okay, interesting.
(34:29):
Tell me, tell me more about that.
It's not my decision to make.
We have, we have never oncetold a client that it is,
I do consider us more ofa coach than a consultant.
And, and I don't think anybodywho's coming to us to say we are
presenting you with the facts.
Here are the facts.
The facts might be, this is the thirdyear in a row that you lost money
(34:53):
for me to say, you should stop tryingnow, you know, like I can tell you.
Hey, you lost my last three years.
What can we learn?
What should we do differently?
What would success look like?
What are the things that wecan do to get to success?
Who's the business coach I need to hire?
Here's the marketingchanges I need to make.
Here's the things I need to doto change my, my, my, my team.
(35:17):
But yeah.
It's never going to be my decision.
And if you have a business coach or a CPAor a bookkeeper who's telling you that
I would question who you have on yourteam because that's not their choice.
your choice when you're done.
Do you see a difference betweenmen and women business owners?
(35:38):
course,
Our male clients, it's so funny when we doa discovery call with a man versus a woman
most of our men, by the time they get onthe call with her, so yeah, I need help.
I'm not doing it myself.
It's here, take it most ofour male clients know that
they're not gonna I'm not a CPA.
I don't know how to do bookkeeping.
Why in the world would I ever learn this?
I've got shit to do.
(35:58):
I'm going to go, I'm going to gomake money and grow this business.
I'm going to do what I'm good at.
You do what you're good at.
So there seems to be a littlebit more like cut and dry of I'm
not the person for this role.
You are do it.
And, and so we, we actually, when we.
We tend to find them to be like aneasier kind of sign up in the process.
There's not as much emotionin the handover of information
(36:21):
either of Hey, here's my stuff.
There's not as much I don't knowthat they're taking as much judgment.
And then there's a, a changearound spending of money.
And I don't know that this is, Bullyacross men and women, but there seems to
be a little bit more of I need to spendmoney in order to grow this business.
And, and I, and I know that allmen have a different personality
style, money personality style.
(36:43):
It just leans a little bitmore towards the same thing
with, with hire a bookkeeper.
They also know I don't know how torun paid ads, so I'm going to, I'm
going to hire the paid ads guy.
So there just seems to be a littlebit more, I don't have to do it all.
It's not to generalize, but are womentrying to figure out how I can do it
myself or asking for help is hard or,
think it's the asking for help.
(37:04):
I think it's the asking forhelp Hmm, I'm not big enough.
okay.
I'm not worthy.
I'm not enough.
This thing, it's just my little hobby.
I'm doing it on the side.
I'm not a business owner.
I'm not a CEO.
So I started with that at the beginning,you have an LLC, you're a business owner.
(37:24):
You're the CEO of your business, period,
If you've been paid more than 1 foryour services, you're a business owner.
And you're the CEO of that.
So I, I think that that's the biggestmindset shift that I see for, for women.
I'm not enough.
And, and that, that if I'm not big enough,then I can just wear my superhero cape
(37:48):
and do the bookkeeping on my littlething that I'm kind of doing on the side.
It's not that important.
It's not going to be that big of animpact to my family's taxes, right?
There's a little bit of straightin your spine when you hire a
bookkeeper and you have a tax account.
I'm not going to be the one doing this.
I deserve help.
I deserve, I am big enough.
(38:09):
I am enough to have somebody elsecome and tell me what I need to do.
I don't think we're doing DIYbookkeeping and taxes because we want to.
I think it's a deeper mindsetproblem of like I'm forced to like.
I haven't made it yet.
You have to.
Yeah.
It's I like that concept of worthy.
(38:31):
Like that a business is only a business.
If it gets to a certain magical.
Yeah.
Who said so?
right?
Like literally who said so?
So we, when we work with ourclients, we have pricing tiers.
So our clients who are doing lessthan a hundred thousand dollars, you
have pricing that fits your budget.
(38:51):
If you're doing 500, 000, There's pricebecause right, because it's going to take
us a little bit longer to do that client.
But to be clear, mostaccounting firms don't do that.
So it's an anomaly that we do this,but we do it on purpose because
I believe that if you're bringingin 50, 000 this year, 75, 000 this
year, you still deserve a bookkeeper.
(39:14):
You still deserve tax help.
You still deserve access to the numbers.
And I want you to haveaccess to the numbers.
Like, how do you think that you'regoing to get to half a million dollars?
Everyone.
Everyone starts out small.
Everyone does.
We all do.
Yeah.
You do not there.
(39:34):
I actually just put up a pocketat the day that we're taping this.
I put up a podcast and I just saidanyone who is if you ever hear the
phrase overnight success, there'sliterally no such thing as that.
And same thing.
Like you don't get to bea billion dollar business.
without starting with yourfirst dollar, like period, the
end, everybody starts small.
(39:57):
So is there a kind of a sweet spotof when someone in their business
needs to start thinking about this?
I assume you think it's day one.
Is there, are there some people thatyou're like, Hey, get through six months
and see how it goes, that type of thing.
Tell me a little bit more about that.
I would say get some consistentrevenue prove your business concept.
So, do you have a, do you have a business?
(40:19):
Are you going to beselling on a regular basis?
If you do a one time project,of course, you don't need a
bookkeeper or tax accountant yet.
But if you are, Activelysearching for clients and taking
projects on an ongoing basis.
You've proven the concept you'veproven that you people want it in
your area and that you are, areregularly going to be in this function.
(40:45):
That's when it's time.
So yes, to your point, like if you juststarted yesterday and you haven't taken
anything yet, no, that's not to say wedon't have clients like that, because
there's some people who are like, Hey,I'm about to get busy And in six months,
I'm gonna have time to deal with this.
So I'm gonna get you in place today.
And then when I get busy,like this is already good.
So we do work with clients like that allthe time, or just I didn't got to get
(41:07):
this bookkeeping and taxing in place.
I want to set it and forget it.
Now I'm gonna go make money.
on your mindset and how convictedyou are in your business.
So this is something thatwe see a lot as organizers.
So this is kind of a, this is less ofa business owner question and more.
And it always it makes me have secondhandanxiety because it's not my problem yet.
(41:30):
We see it.
So I'm just trying to think abouthow to formulate the question.
Right.
But example, I gave a presentationone time and a guy came up to me and
said, you know, I'm so disorganized,you know, especially in papers.
I paper everywhere.
He's casually says.
I haven't filed my taxes in 10 years.
Do you have any just advicefor a situation like that?
Just in terms of Hey, you gotto get your stuff together.
(41:52):
I mean, start now,wherever you're at, right?
If you, if you haven't done in thelast few years, I think it was,
can start to become this mountain.
Yes.
So, don't get there.
Like seriously, you guys don't get therebecause the banks actually have a really
hard time giving you access to statements.
We just did a catch up for a client.
Five years.
She filed her taxes in five years.
(42:14):
She had to call the bank.
Two.
send us PDF statements that we thenhad to convert in order to be able
to get the information to QuickBooks.
So the longer you wait, the more expensiveit's going to be for you, because now she
had to pay the bank for her statements.
She had to pay us a gazillion dollarsto go through and manually input
(42:36):
all of this work from the PDFs intoQuickBooks, because you can't do
that with any type of automationwhen we're going five years back.
So don't be there, likewherever you are, stop.
And, and you, there's no paper anymore.
So like when I say get organized, Imean, have a business checking account
(42:57):
and a personal checking account.
Have a business credit cardand a personal credit card.
When you go out to dinner, if you talk,you know, about you're going with your
mom, then you pay with your personal card.
If you go to Walmart and youhave business and personal
stuff, separate the transaction.
You just organized it.
Separation of church and state.
(43:17):
Yeah.
Very important.
hard.
Just, and, and, and especiallylike you guys know how to organize.
All right.
So Organize your thoughts around it.
Business goes out of business orsomeone without a personal, and
we don't need to keep a box ofreceipts or papers or anywhere.
I don't know.
Does that answer the question?
(43:38):
You should see some of our clients though.
You
I get no shame.
No shame.
I totally get it.
There's areas.
I'm, I'm the same way with you.
I was telling the story this morning.
I got pulled over a few months agowith my daughter on our way to a
doctor's appointment and the copcame into the window and goes, do
you know why I'm pulling you over?
And I'm like, I really don't actually, hegoes, well, your, your texts have expired.
(44:04):
And I'm like,
Oh,
that my birthday, I drive aleased car and I'm like, Oh shoot.
I'm like, Oh, okay.
I'm like, when they expire, he'sDecember, it's June and I'm like, Oh,
I'm like, that was a long time ago.
Okay.
I'm so sorry.
So I was back to the window.
He's like, all right, good news.
(44:25):
I'm not going to tell you.
We all have our thing, right?
That's my thing.
My personal admin tasks, I can't seemto get organized, so I get it, right?
Like I just tell you thatstory is that I get it.
I am.
We're confessing things.
I'm currently looking, I'm staringright there at a, a decently large pile
of mail that I have not gone through.
Now, I'm sure 98% of it is justgonna get shredded, but there might
(44:48):
be that 2% that's really important.
I don't know.
So we all have our, weall have our things.
Oh,
So my mail, I actually also hate my mail.
My son's in charge of that.
So he
I love that.
and once a week, anything addressedto kickstart, he scans and he
scans and he emails it to me.
Oh, that's really great.
Job for any of our kids.
I love that.
(45:09):
So what tell me just a little bit moreabout if you had to give two pieces
of advice, we're going to take it.
We're going to say early businessowner and experienced business owner.
Do you have anything that you
Separate your business and personal.
So like we were just saying, likenormally that's, that's the first
advice I give to anybody is makesure that those are separate.
(45:30):
You are not your business.
Let me repeat that youare not your business.
And when you are spending personally outof your business account, you're doing
what's called piercing the corporate veil.
Now when somebody comes and sues you oryou get audited, you've just now exposed
your entire personal life as well.
So stop spending personallyout of your business account.
(45:51):
Take owner's draws.
I don't care how big or small you are.
You are taking owner's draws, whichtransfers the money from your business
account to your personal account.
Now you pay the daycare bill, the, themortgage, the, you know what I mean?
You pay your personal bills from yourpersonal account with your owner's draws.
When you become an S corp, when you arewhen you're making enough money that
(46:12):
it's tax advantageous to become an Scorp and you put yourself on payroll
then you're paying your personalexpenses from your personal account.
So I think that, that to me,if you leave with nothing else.
Make sure that's separate.
That way, when you go and you haveyour taxes done by your professional
or you've, you hire the bookkeeper,you're ready to start setting budgets.
(46:33):
You have everything in an organizedformat so that they just take
the business checking accountand the business credit card.
And they make these beautiful,they like, you know, magic wand
right into financial statements.
Well, tell me a little bit moreabout how you do your work.
So, one of the other things thatI talk to organizers a lot about
(46:54):
is and again, we're just usingthe United States as an example.
You know, we will have people that cometo our coaching group and they will say,
I don't want to pass my discount on tomy employee or to my clients anymore.
I'm going to take my containerstore discount and, you know, how
do I need to account for that?
And I'm 100 percent of the time, I'mlike, you got to ask an accountant.
(47:16):
In your state and sometimes even inyour own municipality, there might be
different laws and rules like there.
Someone in California has very differentlaws than I do in Minnesota that
someone does in New Jersey, whatever.
So can you talk a little bit abouthow the state by state thing works
with the kind of work that you do?
Yeah, so we are national, so we workwith anybody in the United States, so
(47:38):
when we work with our clients, we cando both the bookkeeping and tax from
a federal and state level but you areright two, two big things differentiate
state by state, it is your, your payrolland, and the laws around your employees
and your team and then sales tax.
Okay.
And, and whether or not you'regoing to pass that through or how
(47:59):
you're going to collect and pay.
So those are the two big thingsthat you really want to make
sure that you have that resource.
It doesn't, they don'thave to be in your state.
Like I said, we, we workwith clients in every state.
We have the research tools to beable to help you in your state.
. Is there, is there anything that I haven'ttouched on that you wanted to talk about?
(48:21):
I think the big thing that I alwayswant to tell people is it's okay.
We all have a lot of shame around it.
We all have our thing.
It's not an easy topic for anybody.
I talk about this stuff all day, everyday, however, it's still, it's still
hard for me like to talk about kickstartsfinances, like kickstart account, isn't
this like I'm running a business too.
(48:43):
And I met with my bookkeeping andCFO team this morning and it's
still hard for me to hear things.
And it was like, kind offelt awkward sometimes.
And I'm like, okay, well likeI can do it too, you know?
So it's not just you and it's okay,but guess what you have to do it
anyway you have to do it anyway.
So just like I went to the gymthis morning and I'm going to drink
(49:05):
this whole freaking cup of waterthat even if I don't want to, I'm
going to also look at my numbers.
We're going to do the hard things.
Well, and I, I really like thatbecause one of the things that I
am passionate about, and I saw thisthrough, so I came from a corporate
background, and you I saw that and,and I, I have this in myself too,
women don't negotiate in the same way.
(49:27):
That's why I asked you about thedifferences between men and women.
Women don't, don't negotiate salarythe same way they don't negotiate.
Like talking about money for women,again, not to wildly generalize.
It can be harder.
And I think that there is a lot ofwhether it is shame or whether it is
just, I don't understand it and I'membarrassed for not understanding it.
(49:51):
I should know, there's recriminationI should know these things.
Well, how should you know these things?
And, and that's why we hire all women.
So I, I mean, we have a, a womanlike lead team because we want to
create that space for you to beable to say, I know you explained
it to me like 10 times, but can you
Can you explain it again?
(50:11):
like 10 more times for me?
Like there's, there's a, there's a aspace where you can go and, and feel.
I don't think that's alwaysthe case with numbers.
There's not a lot of spaces for womento come in and say, I just really
don't know what you're talking about.
Can you say that again?
And just in the same way thatwe ask people to hire us, we ask
(50:32):
people to hire us and bring usinto their most personal spaces.
Money is your mostpersonal electronic space.
Yeah.
Well, you guys do is vulnerable.
It really
super vulnerable, butmoney's very vulnerable.
And what, one of the things we'retrying to do inside of our coaching
(50:53):
group is talk about money more.
Like we had someone the other daythat just posted about, Hey, our
team had our first 40, 000 a month.
That's.
Crazy, right?
Like that's that's amazing.
But she broke down.
Well, here's where that 40, 000 went.
And, and so we're just we're trying tobe a little bit more open about that.
But it's really hard.
(51:14):
It feels like it's supposed to be.
It's supposed to be secret.
Yeah.
Like I said, you're probablynot calling your friends,
probably not calling your mom.
You know what I mean?
Like we're not, we're not having my,my mom told me growing up, you don't
talk about money, religion, politics.
Yeah, money, religion, politics and sex.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(51:34):
You let that one out, ironically.
But honestly, I think we talkabout all those other things way
more than we talk about money.
I think you could add up like ifyou talk about all four of those
things, we definitely talk aboutthree of those things all the time.
And we don't talk about money.
We just don't.
So just being open and transparentabout it, I think is great.
So
Start talking about your money.
(51:55):
The only way that you can grow yourbusiness is to know your numbers
and to talk about the money.
We have to, we have to do it.
And there's, there's peoplewho want to do it with you.
absolutely.
We'll tell people if they are inthis we'll just call it a valley of
a valley of shame or I don't want toknow or whatever we want to call it.
(52:16):
And people want to crawlout and get some help.
How can they get in touch with you?
Kickstart account inc.comis the the best place to go.
Book a call.
My, my team is reallyprobably nicer than I am.
They're, they're great humans.
Great women who just really wannahelp and they show up every day
to make a huge impact in, in theworld and in your communities.
(52:37):
So, come book a call, talk tous and promise we won't bite.
And one of my biggest passionsis making sure that women can
have thriving businesses sothat they can keep it going too.
And I think that's the biggest thingabout money is, you know, money may not
be everyone's goal for their business,but it does work, you know, you do
(52:57):
need money to be able to move on.
And so
day, you have to pay your taxes
Yeah.
You have, you have to.
And so at the end, like you, in orderto be, to have that longevity and in
order to keep your business going, likeI want you to keep your business going so
that people can continue to get helped.
So
yeah, absolutely.
love it.
Well, thank you for joining
Yeah.
Thank you for having me here.
Appreciate it.
(53:21):
I have a brand new free workshop calledhow professional organizers can get
clients without using social media.
It is available on demand24 seven at P O roadmap.
com.
That is a wrap on this week'spro organizer studio podcast.
I will see you next week.
Have a great day.
Organizers.
Hey Pro Organizers, my name isMelissa Klug and you are listening
to the Pro Organizer Studio Podcast.
Professional organizingchanged my entire life.
After 20 years of working at hugecompanies, I started working for myself.
I opened a professional organizingbusiness, grew it to six
figures, and I never looked back.
Now I get to spend all day, every day,teaching organizers around the world.
(00:25):
How to find clients, how to marketand sell yourselves, how to turn this
business into what you want it to be.
Whether you have been in businessfor 15 minutes or 15 years, you
have a home at Pro Organizer Studio.
I'm excited that you're here.
Let's get started.
Hey Pro Organizers, it's Melissaand today it is October 15th
(00:48):
when I am recording this.
And if you filed an extension onyour taxes in the United States, as
I hypothetically did, it is tax day.
Perfect day to put this out.
I am having a conversation with DanielleHayden of Kickstart Accounting about
something that a lot of business ownersincluding myself, do not love dealing
(01:12):
with, talking about, thinking about, andthat is taxes and bookkeeping and knowing
your numbers and all of the things.
And I wanted to have her on becauseshe herself is and was a small business
owner, and she only helps other smallbusiness owners and specifically women.
I am just really, really urgingpeople to know their numbers because
(01:36):
that's the only way any of us canhave a viable, long term business.
And listen, just want to say, a lotof the times when we have something
on this podcast, it is because, it'snot because I am perfect at it, it's
because I have things in my businessthat I need to improve as well.
And one of the things that I justreally, frankly, do not enjoy
(01:58):
doing is all of the kind of backend financials of my business.
Yet, I do them.
because it's important and I don't everenjoy it but what I'm trying to do after
talking to Danielle is she had such reallygood reframing of some of the things that
typically bother me and so ever since sheand I had this conversation I'm like oh I
can't wait to get this out to everybody.
(02:20):
Cannot wait for you to listen to her and Ireally hope you take everything to heart.
Before we get started trending withthe financial conversation is one of
the things I talk about on this podcasta lot, which is I always encourage
organizers to raise their prices.
I want you to look around.
I want you to see whatyour market is doing.
(02:40):
I want you to get paid what you are worth.
One of the first things I tell peoplewhen they join our group is, what
are your prices and let's raise them.
And we have lots of greatcoaching on that subject.
Well, I'm going to practice what I preach.
And on November 1st, Our prices forInspired Organizer, because we are
adding so many things to our program,are going to be going up significantly.
(03:04):
So I want to give people a chanceto get in for the last time.
One of our programs, the pricehas not changed since 2016, when
it was originally established.
And I'm changing that.
This is the perfect time to one, geta great business expense two, get
lifetime access to our Inspired Organizerprogram before lots of things change.
(03:26):
And it is a great way to get in with theloveliest group of people in organizing.
I would love to have you be a part ofour vibrant, exciting, knowledgeable,
financially savvy community.
If you want more information,you can schedule a Zoom with me.
You can go to ProOrganizerStudio.com/join.
(03:47):
You can send me an email athello@ProOrganizerStudio.Com and
I will send you more information.
Any of those ways, Iwould love to talk to you.
Alright, let's get startedwith Danielle Hayden.
The way that we always start out,especially when someone's new to
our audience, just give us, giveus your whole story as much or
as little as you want to tell us.
(04:07):
Oh my God, we could be here for hours.
Danielle Hayden founder ofKickstart Accounting Inc.
I founded my company nine years ago.
However, I, like so many other people havehad a long windy road to entrepreneurship.
I was originally a creative.
I started my career as a hairstylist
(04:27):
Interesting.
I know I am, I am left brain and brain.
I love that.
so what I found when I was workingas a hairstylist that I had
this knack for using the numbersto grow my book of business.
And I was trying to teach the othergirls in the salon that I worked
with how to read their paycheck,how to use the numbers, how to grow
(04:49):
their business and really take.
Control and empowerment becausethey were all just sitting in
the back room like, Oh, when aremore clients going to come in?
How do I make more money?
So really taught them how to becomebetter managers of their money how to get
control and, and how to find empowerment.
So fast forward, I went backto school cause I thought I was
going to own my own hair salon.
(05:10):
And along the way I found accounting,which just saying to my soul, I love
the black and white of accounting andit's really, really quiet in the office.
Like I remember sitting down for thefirst time and be like, Oh my God, I
don't have to talk to anybody for hours.
That would be, that's my dream by the way.
Wait, I don't have to interact.
Great.
I can just be by myself.
(05:31):
it was, it was so cool, youknow, fast forward nine years
and here's, I talk all day again.
So it wasn't meant to be, but, soI I found a niche again where I was
helping this midsize businesses, theboard of directors, the CEOs the,
the management team, how to use ournumbers to make business decisions.
That's literally what wewere doing and I'm like, wow.
(05:54):
Every single business owner, I don't carehow small you are or how big you are,
deserves access to the same financialinformation because you deserve to be
able to make the same business decision.
So we started it back in 2015.
Helping business ownersunderstand their numbers.
They can make better business decisions.
(06:14):
Now, here's what I learnedreal, real quick, though.
You can't build a budgetand you can't business plan.
You can't file your taxes.
You can't tax plan.
You can't do any of thosethings without bookkeeping.
Correct.
You just literally can't.
So we had to make a huge pivot inthe first year of business and we
use bookkeeping as the vehicle.
(06:35):
So once we, when we work with ourclients, we do the bookkeeping first.
Once we have the foundation created,now we can file your tax return.
Now we can do tax planning.
Now we can build you a budget.
Now we can add on likefinancial planning, right?
But we can't do any of that until wehave everything all organized and set
(06:56):
up and ready for you as a businessowner to make those business decisions.
Well, and I, I think that there is alot of everything you're talking about.
There's a lot of fear around it,you know, like knowing your numbers
you know, all of those things.
And then just a lot of us don't.
Understand it.
So we're gonna get into that.
(07:17):
But I do just really quickly.
I'm just laughing to myself that youwent from the most talky profession
Yeah.
to the least talky profession.
That is a pivot that I thinkis probably unprecedented.
I mean, seriously, it really is.
And I didn't, I didn't last long inlike I didn't go, I spent like one year
(07:37):
in Ian Ernst Young and I very quicklyfound myself in corporate accounting
because I wanted to work with people.
Yeah.
I wanted to, I wanted totalk to my management team.
I needed to collaborate.
I needed to talk to the board.
I, I always say I, I'm in, I'min business because I want to
help people run the business.
Yeah.
And now I'm just, now I'm talking all day.
(07:58):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Shut me up.
And here's the best part about that.
They'll never forget my best friend's mom.
She said it was like one day whenyou were like 11, she's you never
talked like you never spoke.
You were so quiet as a kid.
She's and then one day you just startedtalking and it was like, you had
something to say, everybody was goingto listen to it and you never shut up.
(08:21):
I love it.
It's fantastic.
I'm just glad that we all getto benefit from you talking now.
It's great.
So, okay, so, this is going tosound insane, but I'd just like
to lay it out for everybody.
Can you explain the differencebetween bookkeeping and accounting
and, and all of the things?
Because I think that there are a lotof people that don't realize that,
you know, there are big differencesbetween all of these things.
(08:42):
All right.
I was shocked when I came into businessand people are throwing all these terms
and they were using them differently.
And I'm like, Whoa, okay.
There's a lot of confusion becauseit depends where you came from.
You know, if you came from smallbusiness, if you came from corporate,
you know, depending on what yourbackground is, you're going to call
these things all different things.
So yeah, let's clear theair once and for all.
(09:03):
A bookkeeper is the personwho's doing your bookkeeping.
All that means is you, and I'm goingto use the word business owner a
lot, and I don't care how small yourbusiness is or how big your business is.
The day that you file your LLC.
You are a business owner.
Okay.
So I'm using the word businessowner you know, interchangeably with
(09:24):
CEO and you, my friend are that.
So as a business owner, you're out theremaking money, you're out there spending
money and the bookkeeper is taking thebookkeeping, all that making money and
spending money, and they're puttingit in an organized fashion into your
accounting software, and they're creating.
(09:46):
this really beautiful puzzle for you.
Like I hate puzzles, butthat's how people feel.
Right.
It's you have all these puzzle piecesand your bookkeeper is the magician who
puts all the puzzle pieces together andyou just get to come by and be like,
wow, that's all put together so pretty.
That's a beautiful picture.
Right.
(10:07):
So your bookkeeper, What's thepicture of your financials together?
Your accountant, it's really aninterchangeable term because if you
came from corporate, like sometimesyour bookkeeper just becomes a label of
account, but generally speaking, youraccountant is your CPA or tax accountant.
(10:27):
So I hold the CPA designation.
It is a very, very, veryhard, very hard test
can't even imagine.
Thanks.
That, that gives you a licensurethat says that you are able to
perform audits, attestation, taxes.
So this is generally your personwho is filing your taxes for you.
(10:48):
So your tax accountant, their only job.
Is to file your taxes.
You do not ring every timeyou have a business question.
You do not call them for business advice.
You do not call them for coaching.
You do not call them for literallyanything, but your taxes.
And the mistake I hear, I see so manypeople make so because their tax accounts,
(11:10):
the first person, most of us hire, causeI filed this LLC to file my tax return.
Shoot.
Let me call my tax accountant.
They start calling them for everything.
And their only job isto file your tax return.
You might have also a tax strategist.
So somebody who is helping you withtax planning, and again, not the
same qualifications, not the same.
(11:30):
No, it is the same, same team.
Then we have our CFO.
So our CFO, I think that this canbe interchangeable with a business
coach, but our CFO is the person.
So.
Let me define it chief financial officer.
However, in small business, theway I define a CFO is the person
(11:51):
who's going to help you start tolook forward in your business.
So bookkeeper looking backwards,CFO, we're looking to the future.
So I'm going to startcreating a business budget.
I'm going to make businessdecisions for the future.
With my numbers, where's yourbookkeeper is going to tell you,
this is what happened in the past.
(12:12):
Here's what you need to start doing.
Here's what you need to stopdoing, but your CFO is going
to help you look to the future.
And I, I do think that one of the thingsthat I will say personally, as someone
who works with mostly small businessowners, I will encourage people always
and I'm sure you have some strongfeelings about this, the minute you,
(12:32):
when you said the minute you file yourLLC, the minute you become a business
owner, which I don't care if you have oneemployee or 10 employees or 20 employees
or 200 employees, you are correct.
You are a CEO and youare a business owner.
I believe that you must paysomeone to file your taxes for you.
You, I just, I still hear about peoplewho have decent sized businesses.
(12:53):
Listen, everybody's gotto do what works for them.
But if you own a business, please havesomeone professional do your taxes.
Yes.
Period.
Yes, period.
So here's the thing.
Been around for a long time, whichwas a lot of business owners.
And you, you mentioned at thebeginning, there is a lot of fear
and shame around our numbers.
(13:14):
And I'll never forget my firstyear in business, I had a old
family friend do my taxes.
Although I was a CPA, Iwas like, you know what?
I want this like checks and balance.
I'm going to do the bookkeeping.
He's going to do the taxes and just,you know, make sure everything's right.
I walked into Joe's office and hehadn't updated his office since I've
walked in that office while I was a kid.
(13:34):
He had that old brown paneling.
It was
Yeah, I know exactly.
I have a vision.
I know what that looks like.
Yep.
Yep.
We can all visualize it.
Hot summer day.
I actually have naturally curlyhair and it was sticky and stuffy.
And I remember walking into his office.
I was so ashamed.
I didn't grow enough.
I didn't pay myself enough.
(13:56):
I didn't do the bookkeepingthroughout the year.
I felt so overwhelmed.
And I walk into this man's officeand he shakes his head at my, at
me and calls it my little business.
I don't want that.
Why didn't you do this?
Why didn't you do that?
And I walked out of Joe's officeand I said, No one should ever
(14:17):
have to feel that way again.
Now, Joe, I'm sorry if you're listening.
I, I'm like terrified he'sgoing to hear me talk one day.
However, shame on you, Joe.
I, I was a growing business owner.
I needed somebody to come inand create a space for me.
For no judgment.
So when, so you need to find as a businessowner, you need to find the right team.
(14:40):
When we work with our clients.
So we do the bookkeeping tax and CFO work.
When we work with ourclients, we have a role.
There is no judgment.
There is no place for shame.
You're going to give us access tothe closest thing to you, right?
We feel that.
And we understand that.
Okay.
deeply, deeply.
(15:02):
And so you need to find a taxaccount that you want to work with.
Now, can I tell you one morestory about the like tax woes?
Okay.
So if you, if you are doing your ownbookkeeping and you're doing your
own taxes, You have so much risk.
So people say to me, I'm just,I'm not very risk adverse.
(15:22):
Like I'm, I'm just, I'm kind ofin this business owner thing.
I'm just, you know,I'm so scared of risks.
That's why I'm doing it myself.
It's the exact opposite.
So we had this clientcome to us last year.
And she had been doingher own bookkeeping.
She used HoneyBook and shewas using QuickBooks online.
She's I think I'm doing really awesome.
(15:44):
I just, I'm growing past a pointwhere I think I need a team.
I want to offer this toyou guys, to you guys.
Like I think I'm doing good.
I think I'm in a good spot,but I'm just going to have
you guys do it in the future.
So 2023 and we're like, Whoa,you don't want us to file us.
What was happening was that all of hersales were duplicated in QuickBooks.
(16:06):
Yes.
She created the sink with HoneyBookshe was buying the payments.
Now we worked with a lot ofbusiness owners in this industry.
So we've seen it happenover and over and over.
Now we, we did what wecall a catch up for her.
So we went back and werecategorized all of her sales.
(16:30):
We applied to everything correctly.
We restructured things.
So luckily we caught it.
She knew what her, heraccurate profitability was.
We filed her taxes correctly.
Had she not come to us, she was aboutto like seriously overpay in her taxes.
I was just about to saythat's actually a problem.
That's a better problem thanthe other problem, which is she
(16:51):
had paid in way too much money.
But she had also lost probably,you know, thousands, tens of
thousands of dollars by overpaying.
I mean, it's definitelybetter than the alternative,
Well, she had paid estimated taxesall year based on, on her income.
So at least she was able toget the refund from the IRS.
Yeah,
she didn't work with us,nobody would have caught that.
(17:12):
Correct.
So to your point, five minutes ago, sorry.
To your point, if you'redoing your own taxes, you are
putting your business at risk.
You're putting your family at risk.
You're putting your suppliers atrisk, any employees you have at risk.
And I don't think anybodywants that, right?
I don't think anybody'slike doing it maliciously.
I just think we think in our heads,like we have some superhero cape.
(17:34):
Like I have to do it all myself.
Please, for the love of God, stop doingthings you're not qualified to do.
Yeah.
And I, I just think that there aresituations that, I mean, like you
said, the education that you wentthrough and the, the work that you
have Have to do to become anything inthe financial sphere, an accountant,
a certified financial planner, anyof those things, there's a tremendous
(17:55):
amount of education that comes with that.
I can make someone's underweardrawer look really pretty, but
I have no idea what cogs is.
I mean, I do, but you know what I mean?
Exactly.
And you know what?
I would say I can't do what you do.
Like I need you, likeI desperately need you.
And, and we need each other.
And so we don't like, we can allretire superhero caves and say,
I, we each other and how can webest use each other's strengths,
(18:18):
Well, and I will say too, juston the, please, please go get
professionals to help you.
I'm very much.
And I've talked about it on this podcastand it's hilarious because I love
helping people with their business.
I mean, I do things forpeople all the time.
I, I coach them.
I do all the things I,I'm a DIY girl at heart.
Like I, I like to do a lot ofthings myself in my business.
And this is one where it'sa non negotiable for me.
(18:39):
Like you have, you haveto have an accountant.
My accountant has saved me literallytens of thousands of dollars.
That I would normally not have andit's just it's really, really important
to have that person on your side.
I am definitely not smart enough to do it.
Let's just talk though about thewhole know your numbers thing.
(19:01):
Because I think simply becausewe're not experts at this sometimes
you just go well, I'm just goingto mess around and well, I've
got money in my checking account.
So I've got money in my business bankingaccount, so I must be fine or whatever.
But tell me about that feararound knowing your numbers.
So I call it the report card effect.
If you're anything like me I talkedtoo much at school once I turned 11
(19:25):
and my mom thought if she groundedme that maybe I would stop talking
and that my grades would get better.
Natural.
But I, I saw so many of my friendsgoing through this, especially my
entrepreneur friends who, who we'reso used to getting report cards.
Yes.
And our report card tells you ifyou pass or fail, like literally
(19:47):
you failed, you're held back.
Okay.
Now let's fast forwardbecause we're not robots.
We're people.
And so now you're taking all this historyfrom your childhood and you plop into
entrepreneurship and you say, Well, myaccountant's going to send me my numbers.
I'm going to find out if I pass or failed.
(20:08):
Of course we're scared.
Of course we're not numbers people, right?
Like of course we don't want toopen up the financial report.
So if we can, if we can changethat reframe to think, Wow.
My numbers are an opportunityto do things differently.
We had a client who she had investedin like a second stream of income.
(20:30):
And when she, when you looked at herpoint of sale system, like seriously,
Melissa, like hockey stick revenue, like.
Lowing it away compared toher, her original business.
And she had to hire some contractorsto help her fulfill her contracts.
And what was happening every monthwhen we looked at her financials.
(20:52):
So we send our clients their financialson a monthly basis, but their snapshot.
The snapshot is an easy to read document.
So Katie would read her documentevery month and she was like,
Oh, my debt keeps going up.
Like what?
Why is my debt going up?
Hold on.
My cash is going down.
My, my profits going down.
Now, if I, if I look at my point ofsale system and my revenue, that's
(21:15):
skyrocketing, I'm good, but everythingelse is not in the right direction.
And it was around August.
So she started this inJanuary, around August.
She called me, she goes,I have to close it down.
I'm putting my family in jeopardy.
I'm, I'm, I'm going toend up in bankruptcy.
I, I, I can't take on this much debt.
I can't keep on payingmy contractors this way.
(21:36):
I, I know I've had this growth, but I,it, it, it doesn't profit wise make sense.
And she shut it down by the end ofthe year and she saved her business.
She's in business todaybecause she saved herself.
Yeah.
Imagine if Katie only lookedat her financials when she
prepared them for the taxes.
Right.
Yeah.
(21:57):
Right.
So what so many business owners do isthey wait until the end of the year.
They throw their financials together.
They look at it one time, maybe, maybetheir tax accountant just files taxes
with it and, and they, they, theynever made a business decision with it.
So knowing your numbers is about finding,
I love that.
It's a positive rather than a negative.
(22:20):
yeah.
And nobody's going to comeand tell you, you failed.
Even if you lost money, you didn't fail.
And you get to learn from it.
Correct.
So if you don't wait and you're actuallylook how cool I lost money last month.
Well, what the hell did I do wrong?
Like you get to look and if youmade money, how do I make money?
(22:43):
What happened?
Yeah.
What did I do?
to be able to understand thosepatterns, too, in the organizing
business, it can be cyclical.
Yeah.
Summer, depending, and all of thisdepends on a lot of different factors.
It depends on where you live.
If you live in an area like I do,where people go to their cabin
every weekend, organizing mightbe not on the top of their list.
(23:05):
But if you are in a cyclical business,as we can tend to be in, you have
to plan for those peaks and valleys,and you have to have the peak
months service the valley months.
So that's why we talk about budgeting somuch with small business owners, because
there's a power in budgeting that whenyou have your bookkeeping in place, right?
So we, we, when we knowwhere we've been now.
(23:29):
Because we know where we've been, wecan now see, well, shoot, summer's
a really slow time, but I still needto get paid because I have a family
and I need, I need to pay myself.
So let's budget out my spending insteadof acting I got, I'm a millionaire during
the high months and let's even that outand budget our, our money accordingly.
(23:51):
And that there's our thing when we hearthe word budget, they're like, if people
are like, all right, did y'all gonna tellme where I have to stop spending money and
I got to cut back and no more Starbucksand I'm like, literally not saying that
I'm like, here, let me give you 100 amonth in Starbucks, but let's plan for it.
You know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, that you have to plan for it.
The, but the, the know yournumbers thing is so much more
(24:15):
than, and you really touched on it.
It's, it's so much more thanjust finances too, because it's
everything that goes into finances.
It is, For what we do, howmany potential clients do you
have coming into your business?
What do you, what are your projections?
What do you think?
How many hours a weekare you able to work?
I will sometimes have people come intosome of our programs and they say I
(24:38):
really want to be a professional organizerbecause I want to have my own time.
I want to be my own boss andI would like to make a hundred
thousand dollars a year, but I onlywant to work three hours a week.
So I'll be like, we have a mismatch.
On expectations versus reality.
But some of that is also Ihad a boss many years ago that
said, hope is not a strategy.
And it's, it's true.
(24:59):
I think as a business owner,there are times you're like,
oh, I hope things get better.
What am I doing to go make them better?
And how can I plan out so that Idon't have as many panic months?
Yeah.
One thing that clients will come ona call with me and they'll say, do
you know like they brace themselveslike, where should I cut back?
And I'm like, cut back spending.
You told me at the beginning of theyear that your goal was growth, right?
(25:24):
You wanted to bring on moreclients and X amount of revenue.
How were you going to get there?
They were just going to fall from the sky.
If you're not spending eight to 10percent of your sales and advertising
and marketing, you can't expect to grow.
So when, when we work with ourclients, we walk them through
their healthy percentages.
(25:45):
So that means an each area ofyour spending, you need to be
spending a healthy amount of money.
To, to have a growing business.
Now you need to align yourspending with what your
intentions are for your business.
So if you're in a season where youknow, I really need to grow my team and
I'm not going to work as much, and Ijust really want to find some balance.
(26:09):
Your, your, your.
Spending structure is going tolook a little bit different.
You might not be spendingas much in marketing.
You're spending more on your team becauseyou want your team managing your clients.
So your biggest expense duringthat time is going to be more in
payroll than it is in advertisingand marketing, which is perfect.
But we as business owners.
Need to think aboutwhat our intentions are.
(26:30):
What are our goals?
Then how do we actually physicallyspend money to hit our goals?
And that's the power of knowingyour numbers and budget, right?
Like I know my numbers, I know what I did.
So I have some history ofwhat worked and what didn't.
Now let me plan for the future.
Yeah.
What do you recommend for peoplewho, let's say you have the people
who are the blinders people, do youhave a what is your plan for them?
(26:56):
Let's say one of those people came to you,what, what would you be doing with them?
So if you are somebody who isarea for you is you just want
to bury your head in the sand.
And it doesn't have any impact on howyou spend money because some people,
like I'm burying your head in the sand.
You might be a keeper or a spender.
So that means you have alot of money in savings.
(27:18):
Like I just want to keep all mycash or you might be a free spender.
Either way if you were to come toour firm, we hold your hand in a way
that's going to feel really supported.
So opening the door for you to say, Hey.
We're going to meet you at your speed.
We're not going to let you disappear.
We're going to hold you accountable.
We're going to hold your hand.
(27:38):
Right?
So here's what we need fromyou in order to get started.
We're going to meet with youon a regular basis in order
to get all that information.
And then we're going to do it for you.
Right?
So for anybody who's somebodywho's put your head in the
sand, get it off your plate.
Right?
Because then once, once we, once wehave access to everything, You can
go put your head in the sand becauseat the end of the month, we're going
(28:00):
to send you your financial reports.
We're going to wave a flag at you.
We're going to be youraccountability partner.
Hey, Hey, come out to play.
You're going to book a call.
You're going to review your financialstatements because you're going to
like your team because we actuallyare, are cool people who actually
talk to you and talk about whathappened in a nonjudgmental way.
Oh shoot, that's how much money I spent.
Oh my God.
(28:21):
Like safe space to be like, I cannotbelieve I actually spent that much money.
Or.
Celebrate.
Who, who can you really go to,to say, guess what, I hit my
first month of 10, 000 in sales.
Big deal.
Like most of your friends are not callingbecause they'll be like, Oh, cool.
(28:41):
You're paying for dinner on Friday,
Right.
right?
I mean, maybe, maybe your partnercan't call your mom, you know,
like your mom doesn't get it.
Your partner might not get it.
So having a bookkeeperwho you like to talk to.
You can celebrate Oh my God,it's my first 10, 000 a month.
How cool.
Like I'm so excited.
And they're there to help celebratewith you and then commiserate
(29:01):
when things aren't good.
So if you're somebody who is buryingtheir head in the sand, find a team that
will be there to celebrate with you.
Find a team that will be there to helpyou softly take your blinders off,
not abruptly, just softly, just startto pull them, pull them back and find
somebody who you want to talk to.
And, and that might not be me you mightthink I'm really annoying, but find
(29:23):
whoever it might be to do that for you,one thing that my team told me to stop
saying, I think it's really important,
Whatever it is, I'm already going to loveit if they told you to stop saying it.
So
you have a responsibility.
As a business owner, you don'tget to put your head in the sand.
You literally aren't allowed theday that you took out your LLC.
(29:47):
The day that you decided to take moneyfrom a client, the day that you signed
up to have a vendor partnership,you spent money as a business.
You now took on responsibility.
You don't, you don't get, you don'tget to just put the blinder on.
I'm sorry.
Like tough love get over it.
I don't care if you're a money person.
I don't care if you likenumbers The government doesn't
(30:10):
care the IRS doesn't care.
great.
Nobody's coming to save you You haveto take responsibility for yourself.
And what that might look like isasking for help and that's okay.
I really, I, I did not go backto it when you originally said
it, but I want to go to it now.
I think that when you talked aboutbeing nonjudgmental and how sometimes
(30:32):
there are people that are judgmentaland that is something that we deal
with in our work people, you know,being nonjudgmental when you're an
organizer is incredibly important.
And so you have to find someone on theother end, if, especially if money is
something that is you to you, you need tofind someone that is not going to make you
feel dumb or less or anything when there,when you have these questions, because
(30:55):
when you start a business there are waymore questions than anyone could ever ask.
That any one person canhold in their head, right?
And a lot of us have never hadto do any of these things before.
And so finding someone that you connectwith in the same way that we have clients
that when you said, I, I might annoy you.
(31:16):
Same thing with organizing clients.
I might not be your cup of tea.
Cool.
Go find that person that reallyconnects with you and speaks
the same language as you.
Yeah, absolutely.
Cause there is a lot of I, it's justas funny as you were talking thinking
about the whole knowing your numbers.
I'm like, I do not enjoygetting on the scale.
I do not enjoy looking likefinances and that type of thing.
(31:37):
I think are in the same category of
think so
just ignore it, it will go away.
It definitely doesn't.
And like you said, thegovernment doesn't care.
I'm sure that you have seen thisreel a million times with the
TikTok, but it's okay government.
Can you tell me how much money I owe?
No, you have to figure it out yourself.
Well, what if I get it wrong?
We send you to jail.
So
so true.
It is a very complex system.
(31:58):
And I, you know, I should say we havepeople that listen all over the globe.
So obviously this is a very Americancentric conversation, but I'm sure
taxes are no fun in really any country.
Yeah.
I mean, even even across borders, Imean, we all have our version of it.
So
There's no way that, you know,what the Canadian revenue system
or anything, and you're like, we'reall not having fun with taxes.
(32:19):
Right.
So, yeah, but, but knowing your numbersand just confronting them and being
honest with them and I think justtaking them Like it's just a data point.
It's not a good or a bad,it's not a value judgment.
It's not a measure of your worth.
It's just the, and knowing themcan allow you to get better.
tool in your tool belt ishow I like to consider it.
(32:40):
You know, your financial statements,your, your, your, like each one
is just a tool in the tool beltthat you get to learn from.
And, and doesn't mean I don't do it.
All right.
You don't do it.
All right, but I think we're bothable to say, hold on let me learn
from it and continue to grow.
I keep on hearing lately.
(33:00):
It's I'm, I'm called to hear it about theinfinite game where we're, we're in it.
We're in this it's, it's not a sprint.
It's a marathon.
It is.
I'm, I'm, I'm never going to win.
You know, if we can start tothink about owning our business,
it's I'm never going to win.
Even if I hit six figures, even ifI hit a million dollars, those are
(33:22):
just milestones in the journey.
I didn't, I didn't win the game.
So there's no, there's nofailing in the game either.
Right.
It's just.
It's just an infinite journey.
Someone has to someone goes awayfrom the Superbowl, not a winner.
It does not mean that theyhave had a terrible season.
And that's a game.
Like owning a business isn't a game.
(33:43):
So it's not a one timeevent where that's finite.
There's a Superbowl and, and it is finite.
Whereas this owning a businessthing is, is infinite.
And as long as we want to keep doing itfor, and so we can keep on showing up to
say it even if I lost money last year,I can still show up and do it again.
Who knows?
I might lose money againand I, I might do better.
(34:04):
And look, hey, if I lost moneyfor the last 12 months, I'm just
going to consider it a rolling 12.
And guess what?
In my rolling 12, I didn't lose money.
And guess what?
I won.
I love it.
Do you ever, I'm trying to, I'm trying tothink about how to phrase this question.
Do you, are, is there a time that you say,hey, you know what, I think that you've
given it a college try and it's just,it's maybe time to, okay, interesting.
(34:29):
Tell me, tell me more about that.
It's not my decision to make.
We have, we have never oncetold a client that it is,
I do consider us more ofa coach than a consultant.
And, and I don't think anybodywho's coming to us to say we are
presenting you with the facts.
Here are the facts.
The facts might be, this is the thirdyear in a row that you lost money
(34:53):
for me to say, you should stop tryingnow, you know, like I can tell you.
Hey, you lost my last three years.
What can we learn?
What should we do differently?
What would success look like?
What are the things that wecan do to get to success?
Who's the business coach I need to hire?
Here's the marketingchanges I need to make.
Here's the things I need to doto change my, my, my, my team.
(35:17):
But yeah.
It's never going to be my decision.
And if you have a business coach or a CPAor a bookkeeper who's telling you that
I would question who you have on yourteam because that's not their choice.
your choice when you're done.
Do you see a difference betweenmen and women business owners?
(35:38):
course,
Our male clients, it's so funny when we doa discovery call with a man versus a woman
most of our men, by the time they get onthe call with her, so yeah, I need help.
I'm not doing it myself.
It's here, take it most ofour male clients know that
they're not gonna I'm not a CPA.
I don't know how to do bookkeeping.
Why in the world would I ever learn this?
I've got shit to do.
(35:58):
I'm going to go, I'm going to gomake money and grow this business.
I'm going to do what I'm good at.
You do what you're good at.
So there seems to be a littlebit more like cut and dry of I'm
not the person for this role.
You are do it.
And, and so we, we actually, when we.
We tend to find them to be like aneasier kind of sign up in the process.
There's not as much emotionin the handover of information
(36:21):
either of Hey, here's my stuff.
There's not as much I don't knowthat they're taking as much judgment.
And then there's a, a changearound spending of money.
And I don't know that this is, Bullyacross men and women, but there seems to
be a little bit more of I need to spendmoney in order to grow this business.
And, and I, and I know that allmen have a different personality
style, money personality style.
(36:43):
It just leans a little bitmore towards the same thing
with, with hire a bookkeeper.
They also know I don't know how torun paid ads, so I'm going to, I'm
going to hire the paid ads guy.
So there just seems to be a littlebit more, I don't have to do it all.
It's not to generalize, but are womentrying to figure out how I can do it
myself or asking for help is hard or,
think it's the asking for help.
(37:04):
I think it's the asking forhelp Hmm, I'm not big enough.
okay.
I'm not worthy.
I'm not enough.
This thing, it's just my little hobby.
I'm doing it on the side.
I'm not a business owner.
I'm not a CEO.
So I started with that at the beginning,you have an LLC, you're a business owner.
(37:24):
You're the CEO of your business, period,
If you've been paid more than 1 foryour services, you're a business owner.
And you're the CEO of that.
So I, I think that that's the biggestmindset shift that I see for, for women.
I'm not enough.
And, and that, that if I'm not big enough,then I can just wear my superhero cape
(37:48):
and do the bookkeeping on my littlething that I'm kind of doing on the side.
It's not that important.
It's not going to be that big of animpact to my family's taxes, right?
There's a little bit of straightin your spine when you hire a
bookkeeper and you have a tax account.
I'm not going to be the one doing this.
I deserve help.
I deserve, I am big enough.
(38:09):
I am enough to have somebody elsecome and tell me what I need to do.
I don't think we're doing DIYbookkeeping and taxes because we want to.
I think it's a deeper mindsetproblem of like I'm forced to like.
I haven't made it yet.
You have to.
Yeah.
It's I like that concept of worthy.
(38:31):
Like that a business is only a business.
If it gets to a certain magical.
Yeah.
Who said so?
right?
Like literally who said so?
So we, when we work with ourclients, we have pricing tiers.
So our clients who are doing lessthan a hundred thousand dollars, you
have pricing that fits your budget.
(38:51):
If you're doing 500, 000, There's pricebecause right, because it's going to take
us a little bit longer to do that client.
But to be clear, mostaccounting firms don't do that.
So it's an anomaly that we do this,but we do it on purpose because
I believe that if you're bringingin 50, 000 this year, 75, 000 this
year, you still deserve a bookkeeper.
(39:14):
You still deserve tax help.
You still deserve access to the numbers.
And I want you to haveaccess to the numbers.
Like, how do you think that you'regoing to get to half a million dollars?
Everyone.
Everyone starts out small.
Everyone does.
We all do.
Yeah.
You do not there.
(39:34):
I actually just put up a pocketat the day that we're taping this.
I put up a podcast and I just saidanyone who is if you ever hear the
phrase overnight success, there'sliterally no such thing as that.
And same thing.
Like you don't get to bea billion dollar business.
without starting with yourfirst dollar, like period, the
end, everybody starts small.
(39:57):
So is there a kind of a sweet spotof when someone in their business
needs to start thinking about this?
I assume you think it's day one.
Is there, are there some people thatyou're like, Hey, get through six months
and see how it goes, that type of thing.
Tell me a little bit more about that.
I would say get some consistentrevenue prove your business concept.
So, do you have a, do you have a business?
(40:19):
Are you going to beselling on a regular basis?
If you do a one time project,of course, you don't need a
bookkeeper or tax accountant yet.
But if you are, Activelysearching for clients and taking
projects on an ongoing basis.
You've proven the concept you'veproven that you people want it in
your area and that you are, areregularly going to be in this function.
(40:45):
That's when it's time.
So yes, to your point, like if you juststarted yesterday and you haven't taken
anything yet, no, that's not to say wedon't have clients like that, because
there's some people who are like, Hey,I'm about to get busy And in six months,
I'm gonna have time to deal with this.
So I'm gonna get you in place today.
And then when I get busy,like this is already good.
So we do work with clients like that allthe time, or just I didn't got to get
(41:07):
this bookkeeping and taxing in place.
I want to set it and forget it.
Now I'm gonna go make money.
on your mindset and how convictedyou are in your business.
So this is something thatwe see a lot as organizers.
So this is kind of a, this is less ofa business owner question and more.
And it always it makes me have secondhandanxiety because it's not my problem yet.
(41:30):
We see it.
So I'm just trying to think abouthow to formulate the question.
Right.
But example, I gave a presentationone time and a guy came up to me and
said, you know, I'm so disorganized,you know, especially in papers.
I paper everywhere.
He's casually says.
I haven't filed my taxes in 10 years.
Do you have any just advicefor a situation like that?
Just in terms of Hey, you gotto get your stuff together.
(41:52):
I mean, start now,wherever you're at, right?
If you, if you haven't done in thelast few years, I think it was,
can start to become this mountain.
Yes.
So, don't get there.
Like seriously, you guys don't get therebecause the banks actually have a really
hard time giving you access to statements.
We just did a catch up for a client.
Five years.
She filed her taxes in five years.
(42:14):
She had to call the bank.
Two.
send us PDF statements that we thenhad to convert in order to be able
to get the information to QuickBooks.
So the longer you wait, the more expensiveit's going to be for you, because now she
had to pay the bank for her statements.
She had to pay us a gazillion dollarsto go through and manually input
(42:36):
all of this work from the PDFs intoQuickBooks, because you can't do
that with any type of automationwhen we're going five years back.
So don't be there, likewherever you are, stop.
And, and you, there's no paper anymore.
So like when I say get organized, Imean, have a business checking account
(42:57):
and a personal checking account.
Have a business credit cardand a personal credit card.
When you go out to dinner, if you talk,you know, about you're going with your
mom, then you pay with your personal card.
If you go to Walmart and youhave business and personal
stuff, separate the transaction.
You just organized it.
Separation of church and state.
(43:17):
Yeah.
Very important.
hard.
Just, and, and, and especiallylike you guys know how to organize.
All right.
So Organize your thoughts around it.
Business goes out of business orsomeone without a personal, and
we don't need to keep a box ofreceipts or papers or anywhere.
I don't know.
Does that answer the question?
(43:38):
You should see some of our clients though.
You
I get no shame.
No shame.
I totally get it.
There's areas.
I'm, I'm the same way with you.
I was telling the story this morning.
I got pulled over a few months agowith my daughter on our way to a
doctor's appointment and the copcame into the window and goes, do
you know why I'm pulling you over?
And I'm like, I really don't actually, hegoes, well, your, your texts have expired.
(44:04):
And I'm like,
Oh,
that my birthday, I drive aleased car and I'm like, Oh shoot.
I'm like, Oh, okay.
I'm like, when they expire, he'sDecember, it's June and I'm like, Oh,
I'm like, that was a long time ago.
Okay.
I'm so sorry.
So I was back to the window.
He's like, all right, good news.
(44:25):
I'm not going to tell you.
We all have our thing, right?
That's my thing.
My personal admin tasks, I can't seemto get organized, so I get it, right?
Like I just tell you thatstory is that I get it.
I am.
We're confessing things.
I'm currently looking, I'm staringright there at a, a decently large pile
of mail that I have not gone through.
Now, I'm sure 98% of it is justgonna get shredded, but there might
(44:48):
be that 2% that's really important.
I don't know.
So we all have our, weall have our things.
Oh,
So my mail, I actually also hate my mail.
My son's in charge of that.
So he
I love that.
and once a week, anything addressedto kickstart, he scans and he
scans and he emails it to me.
Oh, that's really great.
Job for any of our kids.
I love that.
(45:09):
So what tell me just a little bit moreabout if you had to give two pieces
of advice, we're going to take it.
We're going to say early businessowner and experienced business owner.
Do you have anything that you
Separate your business and personal.
So like we were just saying, likenormally that's, that's the first
advice I give to anybody is makesure that those are separate.
(45:30):
You are not your business.
Let me repeat that youare not your business.
And when you are spending personally outof your business account, you're doing
what's called piercing the corporate veil.
Now when somebody comes and sues you oryou get audited, you've just now exposed
your entire personal life as well.
So stop spending personallyout of your business account.
(45:51):
Take owner's draws.
I don't care how big or small you are.
You are taking owner's draws, whichtransfers the money from your business
account to your personal account.
Now you pay the daycare bill, the, themortgage, the, you know what I mean?
You pay your personal bills from yourpersonal account with your owner's draws.
When you become an S corp, when you arewhen you're making enough money that
(46:12):
it's tax advantageous to become an Scorp and you put yourself on payroll
then you're paying your personalexpenses from your personal account.
So I think that, that to me,if you leave with nothing else.
Make sure that's separate.
That way, when you go and you haveyour taxes done by your professional
or you've, you hire the bookkeeper,you're ready to start setting budgets.
(46:33):
You have everything in an organizedformat so that they just take
the business checking accountand the business credit card.
And they make these beautiful,they like, you know, magic wand
right into financial statements.
Well, tell me a little bit moreabout how you do your work.
So, one of the other things thatI talk to organizers a lot about
(46:54):
is and again, we're just usingthe United States as an example.
You know, we will have people that cometo our coaching group and they will say,
I don't want to pass my discount on tomy employee or to my clients anymore.
I'm going to take my containerstore discount and, you know, how
do I need to account for that?
And I'm 100 percent of the time, I'mlike, you got to ask an accountant.
(47:16):
In your state and sometimes even inyour own municipality, there might be
different laws and rules like there.
Someone in California has very differentlaws than I do in Minnesota that
someone does in New Jersey, whatever.
So can you talk a little bit abouthow the state by state thing works
with the kind of work that you do?
Yeah, so we are national, so we workwith anybody in the United States, so
(47:38):
when we work with our clients, we cando both the bookkeeping and tax from
a federal and state level but you areright two, two big things differentiate
state by state, it is your, your payrolland, and the laws around your employees
and your team and then sales tax.
Okay.
And, and whether or not you'regoing to pass that through or how
(47:59):
you're going to collect and pay.
So those are the two big thingsthat you really want to make
sure that you have that resource.
It doesn't, they don'thave to be in your state.
Like I said, we, we workwith clients in every state.
We have the research tools to beable to help you in your state.
. Is there, is there anything that I haven'ttouched on that you wanted to talk about?
(48:21):
I think the big thing that I alwayswant to tell people is it's okay.
We all have a lot of shame around it.
We all have our thing.
It's not an easy topic for anybody.
I talk about this stuff all day, everyday, however, it's still, it's still
hard for me like to talk about kickstartsfinances, like kickstart account, isn't
this like I'm running a business too.
(48:43):
And I met with my bookkeeping andCFO team this morning and it's
still hard for me to hear things.
And it was like, kind offelt awkward sometimes.
And I'm like, okay, well likeI can do it too, you know?
So it's not just you and it's okay,but guess what you have to do it
anyway you have to do it anyway.
So just like I went to the gymthis morning and I'm going to drink
(49:05):
this whole freaking cup of waterthat even if I don't want to, I'm
going to also look at my numbers.
We're going to do the hard things.
Well, and I, I really like thatbecause one of the things that I
am passionate about, and I saw thisthrough, so I came from a corporate
background, and you I saw that and,and I, I have this in myself too,
women don't negotiate in the same way.
(49:27):
That's why I asked you about thedifferences between men and women.
Women don't, don't negotiate salarythe same way they don't negotiate.
Like talking about money for women,again, not to wildly generalize.
It can be harder.
And I think that there is a lot ofwhether it is shame or whether it is
just, I don't understand it and I'membarrassed for not understanding it.
(49:51):
I should know, there's recriminationI should know these things.
Well, how should you know these things?
And, and that's why we hire all women.
So I, I mean, we have a, a womanlike lead team because we want to
create that space for you to beable to say, I know you explained
it to me like 10 times, but can you
Can you explain it again?
(50:11):
like 10 more times for me?
Like there's, there's a, there's a aspace where you can go and, and feel.
I don't think that's alwaysthe case with numbers.
There's not a lot of spaces for womento come in and say, I just really
don't know what you're talking about.
Can you say that again?
And just in the same way thatwe ask people to hire us, we ask
(50:32):
people to hire us and bring usinto their most personal spaces.
Money is your mostpersonal electronic space.
Yeah.
Well, you guys do is vulnerable.
It really
super vulnerable, butmoney's very vulnerable.
And what, one of the things we'retrying to do inside of our coaching
(50:53):
group is talk about money more.
Like we had someone the other daythat just posted about, Hey, our
team had our first 40, 000 a month.
That's.
Crazy, right?
Like that's that's amazing.
But she broke down.
Well, here's where that 40, 000 went.
And, and so we're just we're trying tobe a little bit more open about that.
But it's really hard.
(51:14):
It feels like it's supposed to be.
It's supposed to be secret.
Yeah.
Like I said, you're probablynot calling your friends,
probably not calling your mom.
You know what I mean?
Like we're not, we're not having my,my mom told me growing up, you don't
talk about money, religion, politics.
Yeah, money, religion, politics and sex.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(51:34):
You let that one out, ironically.
But honestly, I think we talkabout all those other things way
more than we talk about money.
I think you could add up like ifyou talk about all four of those
things, we definitely talk aboutthree of those things all the time.
And we don't talk about money.
We just don't.
So just being open and transparentabout it, I think is great.
So
Start talking about your money.
(51:55):
The only way that you can grow yourbusiness is to know your numbers
and to talk about the money.
We have to, we have to do it.
And there's, there's peoplewho want to do it with you.
absolutely.
We'll tell people if they are inthis we'll just call it a valley of
a valley of shame or I don't want toknow or whatever we want to call it.
(52:16):
And people want to crawlout and get some help.
How can they get in touch with you?
Kickstart account inc.comis the the best place to go.
Book a call.
My, my team is reallyprobably nicer than I am.
They're, they're great humans.
Great women who just really wannahelp and they show up every day
to make a huge impact in, in theworld and in your communities.
(52:37):
So, come book a call, talk tous and promise we won't bite.
And one of my biggest passionsis making sure that women can
have thriving businesses sothat they can keep it going too.
And I think that's the biggest thingabout money is, you know, money may not
be everyone's goal for their business,but it does work, you know, you do
(52:57):
need money to be able to move on.
And so
day, you have to pay your taxes
Yeah.
You have, you have to.
And so at the end, like you, in orderto be, to have that longevity and in
order to keep your business going, likeI want you to keep your business going so
that people can continue to get helped.
So
yeah, absolutely.
love it.
Well, thank you for joining
Yeah.
Thank you for having me here.
Appreciate it.
(53:21):
I have a brand new free workshop calledhow professional organizers can get
clients without using social media.
It is available on demand24 seven at P O roadmap.
com.
That is a wrap on this week'spro organizer studio podcast.
I will see you next week.
Have a great day.
Organizers.
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Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides. Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.