April 9, 2024 • 22 mins
Embark on a transformative journey with us, Joel Skeen, as Courtney Shaughnessy of Alchemy Financial joins the Mindful Marketplace for a riveting exploration into the synthesis of financial acumen and unwavering ethical principles. Together, we navigate the complexities of fair compensation and conscientiously managing team growth, all while staying true to the heart of your business's mission. Our illuminating discussion unpacks the essence of budgets as moral compasses, guiding you towards socially responsible prosperity without sacrificing your values on the altar of expansion.
Delving beyond numbers, this episode champions the humanity within the workplace, treating employees as valued individuals with aspirations that transcend a simple paycheck. We challenge traditional corporate hierarchies, advocating for collaborative business models that foster profit-sharing and democratic decision-making. As we engage with the Rad Planners community, we share how Alchemy Financial exemplifies ethical engagement, offering key insights on aligning your financial strategies with both personal and corporate ethics. Tune in for a compelling narrative that promises not just to enlighten but also to inspire actionable change in your fiscal journey.
https://www.alchemyfinancial.co/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Joel (00:00):
What if investing in each other could change the world?
I'm Joel Skeen with bizradiousand this is the Mindful
Marketplace.
All right, all right, we areback here with Courtney
Shaughnessy, the CEO founder ofAlchemy Financial.
(00:21):
She lives in Western NorthCarolina, in my current hometown
of Asheville, north Carolina.
She has a fantastic, sociallyresponsible financial business
and I'm excited to get to digback in with her.
This is part two of a two-partepisode where, in the first part
, we got to talk with Courtneyabout her upbringing, her
(00:44):
background, why she's sopassionate about what she does
and how she helps especiallysmall businesses, businesses
that are run by single mothersand businesses really implement
strategies around the financialpart of their business to be
more sustainable, to be moreethically responsible in their
(01:04):
businesses so that they canreally live out their values.
If you're just joining us forthe first time, this is the show
where we talk to theentrepreneurs, industry leaders,
economic experts and advisorswho are not only solving a
market problem and making aprofit, but they're also solving
a social problem to make animpact, and it's where we learn
(01:25):
how to connect our money andbusinesses to our values, to our
communities and to ourselves.
So, courtney, welcome back tothe show.
Really glad to have you on heretoday.
Courtney (01:36):
Thank you so much, Joel.
I'm excited to be here.
Joel (01:39):
Yeah, so we had a topic that we wanted to dig in with
you here to really educate thepeople that are listening here,
either locally on bizradious oractually nationally.
You can listen to us fromanywhere online on the live
stream, but you can alsosubscribe.
If you have not yet, pleasesubscribe and like and do all
that stuff please.
If you haven't yet do it, it'son YouTube, spotify, itunes,
(02:03):
iheartmedia, stitcher,buzzsprout, all of those.
But, courtney, I guess let'sfirst kind of zoom out a little
bit and I want to ask you aboutkind of what are some of the
main and key points thatbusiness owners should take into
account when they want to thinkabout doing their finances in a
(02:23):
sustainable and ethical way?
I guess first, maybe even zoomout a little further Most people
don't even think of that whenthey think about doing
sustainable and ethicalbusinesses.
A lot of times the CFO partdoesn't even register to them.
Do you experience that?
Courtney (02:38):
Yeah, agreed wholeheartedly, and I know it
seems obvious, but the firststep is really defining your
values, identifying them,because you can't prioritize
everything and you have to bereally clear on just like we
spend so much time, especiallyin the beginning, as an
entrepreneur.
Sometimes we spend too muchtime on what our brand colors
(03:00):
are and what's our logo, what'sour company name going to be,
and then we put the cart beforethe horse.
We have to be really clear onwho we help and how we help them
.
Well, we also have to be reallyclear on what we're going to
care about, what we want to beknown for, how we want to exist
in that space, and because youcan't align values when you
(03:20):
don't know what they are.
Joel (03:22):
Yeah, exactly, and I'm sure there's lots of people out
there, or business owners outthere especially, who have
really good intentions.
But I guess what happens ifthey don't first really take
some intentional time to definetheir values?
Courtney (03:35):
Yeah Well, it's so cliche, but you fail to plan,
you plan to fail.
And so, just inevitably, whenyou're not intentional and you
don't make a conscious decision,it'll go by the wayside.
And because, as business owners, we're pulled in a million
different directions and we'respinning lots of plates and
there's a lot going on, justlike we try to be intentional in
(03:58):
our productivity and how weplan our time, how we manage,
plan our time how we manage wehave to also keep that in the
forefront, because it's a threadthat's woven into every thing
that we do, or if we want it tobe, it has to be clear, it has
to be top of mind.
Joel (04:14):
What have you learned in that process of helping
businesses define those values?
I guess what stood out to youthe most.
Courtney (04:20):
My specific area of interest is really around how we
treat and how we pay our team,and in the beginning it starts
with ourselves, so notexploiting ourselves and making
sure that the business issustainable for us and then
making sure that before we bringon team members.
(04:40):
That's probably the biggestquestion that I get asked is
when can I hire someone?
How do I know when I can hiresomeone?
How much can I afford to paythem?
And it's such an importanttransition when you go from one
solo person in your business toadding a team member and making
(05:01):
sure they understand when thatcan happen.
So there's a practicalcomponent to that, but the other
piece of it is not just whatcan I afford to pay them?
Am I paying them fairly?
Am I compensating themappropriately and when?
Is that the point that I canbring someone on?
And lots of times they'll usecontractors in the beginning,
(05:21):
which I'm an advocate of,because a contractor is someone
who has started their ownbusiness.
But there's lots of rules andregulations around that.
So you have to be mindful andcareful not to bring on
contractors and skirt any sortof parameters that have been set
by your state or the IRS interms of whether that's legal or
not, and that's something thatyour tax person can certainly
(05:44):
help you parse out.
But that is first and foremostmy biggest piece, because
typically your labor, yourpayroll, is the biggest expense,
I would say, for the majorityof businesses.
Joel (05:56):
Yeah, absolutely, and I know that I've gone through that
process of trying to decidewhen is it the right time to
hire someone.
And you know it is a it is adifficult decision to make
because in some ways the hiringsomeone is how you can grow your
business because you now havehelp.
It's now not just you all onyour own, but at the same time
(06:18):
you know it is it is an expense,and you do.
I remember having that thatdebate with some other people
where they were telling me thatlike well, you want to hire
someone for as cheap as you canbecause you want to essentially
maximize your profit and moveforward.
And I just remember feelinghaving a difficult time with
that because I don't know.
I'm curious your perspective onthis because I know that.
(06:40):
You know I was raised very.
My dad's a pastor.
I was raised very kind ofreligiously and always taught to
.
The golden rule was always abig piece of it is do unto
others as you would have them dounto you.
And part of the reason I gotinto business for myself was
because I didn't like how as anemployee I was often I think
George Carlin says it this wayIn a job you are, they're going
(07:03):
to pay you as little, justenough to keep you from quitting
, and you're going to do justenough work to keep from getting
fired, and that's a bad system,that's a bad situation, and so
I didn't want to put my peoplein the same situation that I so
desperately just wanted to getout of.
Is that why it's important toyou?
I'm curious your perspective onthat.
Courtney (07:25):
Yeah, well, and having been an employee in
situations where I wasoverworked and underpaid, and
how harmful it is, it's reallyharmful to that individual, it's
really harmful to theirfamilies, to their wellbeing.
And as I've gotten older, whenI was younger I had a lot more
(07:48):
stamina for working around theclock and being available all
the time.
And I think COVID has really,you know, through the pandemic,
brought a lot of these things tothe surface, because we
realized that our toleranceswere way too high.
And then we have this majorglobal event happen and we're
(08:08):
suddenly realizing, hey, onelife is short, and why am I
doing all of this?
What is the purpose of it?
And and really deconstructingwhat we've always accepted of
what this is, just how it is.
And you know, there's all thisconversation between generations
, with boomers and Gen X andmillennials and Gen Z and the
(08:30):
younger folks coming in andthey're like absolutely not, I'm
not going to tolerate that, I'mnot going to put up with that,
I don't accept it.
And so when we do this forourselves, we give ourselves the
permission to say I don'taccept that anymore.
And when we do that as acollective, that's when things
start to change.
I mean, if you look at the40-hour workweek.
It's been nearly 100 yearssince our actual workweek has
(08:53):
it's not changed right.
So there's a push now to go tothe four day work week.
There's lots of research andstudies around how you're
actually more productive, or anemployee who goes into the
office is actually really trulyproductive for three to four
hours of that eight or whateverhour day it ends up being, and
so there's a lot of that and Ithink sometimes we don't see the
(09:17):
correlation between this andour finances.
But it very much is right,because a happier, more
productive employee is going toyield better results for your
company and it's just going toall around make everyone happier
and healthier, and why wouldn'twe want to work towards that?
Joel (09:33):
Yeah, invest's.
Investing in your people isinvesting in your business, at
least from my perspective.
Because not only is it, is itlike you said, people can be
just as productive a lot oftimes with fewer hours or
whatever the case might be, butto me it's also just about not
reducing things like turnover,and you know retention and you
know the amount of time wasted.
(09:54):
I think it's I remember whosaid it but someone's like, well
, what if I treat my people well?
And then they quit.
And it's like, well, what ifyou don't?
And then they stay right.
Like like what, what are yousetting yourself up for?
And that kind of leads me intopoint two that you wanted to
bring up of how you help peopleand what's most important for
people who do want to haveethical and sustainable
(10:16):
practices in their finances isforecasting.
Could you tell us a little bitabout that?
Courtney (10:22):
Yeah, and so it leads into capacity.
So when you model it out andthat's part of the process when
someone says, can I afford tohire someone, can I afford to do
X, y, z, okay, well, let'smodel it out, let's see what
this looks like on the P&L andon the cash flow statement, and
(10:43):
especially as you get bigger andyou have a team in terms of
capacity.
So I can speak specifically tothe accounting work.
When you have a firm that'sdoing accounting work and you've
got a team working fractuallywithin lots of different
businesses, if you don't chargeyour client appropriately, it's
going to require you to pack andstack a roster for your usually
(11:07):
work in pods not every company,but lots of companies.
You have a lot of people whoservice a certain roster of
clients and so when you pack andstack someone's roster, the
amount of work it takes to getit done, what needs to be done,
is going to require usually wayabove and beyond a traditional
full-time job, and that's likethe thing that we have come to
(11:29):
accept within the accountingindustry specifically, but it
happens also in other businesses.
So it's the capacity planningwhen you have more work right.
The whole joke is when someonegets laid off and they don't
replace them and they just divvythe work out to everyone else.
That all is interlinked intoyour finances and your modeling
and what you can afford, andmaking sure that you're mindful
(11:52):
that you should not put theresponsibility on your employees
if you cannot afford to bringon appropriate number of staff
or team members to execute thework that needs to get done.
And so part of that is caringenough about your staff and your
team members to go through thatprocess of being really
(12:14):
thoughtful and intentional inyour capacity planning and
putting it into your forecast.
Joel (12:19):
What does that intention look like?
What are some of the thingsthat go into that?
Courtney (12:24):
Well, it's one being really honest and candid with
your staff and being able totake a temperature.
There's a lot of management thatgoes into this and being a good
manager, being a good employerand really having your finger on
the pulse of how people aredoing, how they feel, and not
only looking at what'sprofitable but what's good for
(12:47):
the whole everyone who's workingtowards a common goal within a
business.
And I think it really just boilsdown to okay, I care enough
about my people and my employeesthat I'm going to ensure that I
can actually afford to do rightby everyone.
(13:08):
And it goes and, of course,like wage is a big part of that
and we can talk about that in alittle bit.
But, um, when you I don't knowif you've ever been in a work
situation where you werestretched to the max, where the
expectations of you were morethan what you could reasonably
give over time and we can all dohard things for short periods
of time, but we all reach ourbreaking points and that's what
(13:29):
I think the pandemic at least inmy experience and with a lot of
the people that I know workingtraditional corporate jobs it's
like a rubber band.
It will only stretch so farbefore it breaks.
Joel (13:45):
Yeah, it sounds like on the whole, if I can paint broad
strokes is you're just talkingabout treating your people like
people instead of numbers, andtreating them, having a real
relationship with them.
I remember one of my favoritebooks that I read in business
when I was kind of coming up inbusiness and reading a lot of
books about business and aboutspecifically about leadership
was a book called Leadership andSelf-Deception and it talks
(14:07):
about how, if you treat peoplelike objects, something that's
either someone that's eitherjust there to help you get what
you want or that's just thereand in the way of something that
you want, you're going to neverdevelop a real relationship and
you actually put yourself in abox and you can't actually that
you carry that box with you intothe rest of your life.
(14:27):
But when you actually see theother person on the other side
of you as their own person, as aperson who has their own needs,
has their own desires, hastheir own wants and their own
dreams, and that you acknowledgethat and recognize that and
treat them as such, that boxgoes away and it allows you to
actually have real connectionand actually have real influence
(14:48):
with them from a leadershipperspective.
But I think a lot of timespeople forget that money is a
part of that.
It's not the whole thing, it'snot all of it, it's not the
entire thing.
But if you're treating peoplelike people when you talk to
them but you're treating themlike a number when it comes to
the balance sheet, it reminds meof Jim Wallace said budgets are
(15:08):
moral documents, and so I guesshow does that start to then
play out when we actually getinto the numbers and into the
compensation of it?
I know you have a process and afew points of kind of some
practical ways that people canmake sure that they're doing
this ethically and that they'retreating their people like
people.
Courtney (15:29):
Yeah, and you're right, it sounds so simple, like
it should be simple.
It should be easy, but it endsup not being.
A lot of times, at least in myexperience.
I've worked for very largeinternational businesses and
small businesses that reallystruggle in this area, and so I
think, ultimately, it beginswith deconstructing how we value
(15:50):
work, and there's this lensthat we we look through with
entrepreneurship, of risk andreward, and the person who takes
the risk should reap the rewardat a greater percentage of
those who help make those gains.
And I think the overlooked partthe middle if risk is on one
(16:14):
side and reward is on the otherIn the middle is leveraging
labor to get there and soexpanding our ideas of how we
look at our businesses and howwe look at this model and how
we're traditionally taught tolook at it, and opening
ourselves up to the possibilityof more collaborative models and
(16:34):
having the way that we evenview compensation for employees.
So typically we place a highervalue on strategy than we do on
execution, and I'm not sure ifyou are familiar with the book
Work Won't Love you Back, butthe author talks about the types
(16:58):
of work that has to happen inorder for all other work to
happen, and that's education,childcare service, retail, and
how historically they're theleast paid and most exploited of
all types of work.
And so, even though yourbusiness may not be within those
(17:21):
specific industries, we stillcarry those ideas into our
businesses, I thinksubconsciously.
So that's been part of myjourney is my own deconstruction
of what I've been taught toaccept and what a business is
supposed to look like.
And, for example, you broughtup international contractors.
That's a big problem, in myopinion, within accounting is
(17:42):
hiring international contractors, paying them less than what
would be legal to pay them inthe United States as a way of
bolstering profits in a business, and that, for me, is a
boundary.
I'm not going to work with abusiness who is hiring folks
internationally and paying thempennies on the dollar,
essentially from what it wouldcost to hire someone locally or
(18:04):
domestically.
It's exploitive.
And we could get into all thethings arguments that people
make, and to that I say just getto know some people who are in
those situations and reallyinterrogate whether what you've
been told is true.
And that's been my experience.
Once I actually did the work tointerrogate these ideas, these
(18:25):
thoughts, these beliefs, Irealized this is not okay, and
so these are things that I won'tengage in and I'm not going to
support.
I don't want to help a businessgrow and become more profitable
.
Who is using the decisionsabout what to do with?
Joel (18:43):
the profits are made by just one person or just a board,
(19:08):
but when those decisions onwhat to do with the profits that
are made because, yes, thebusiness owner has a huge, huge,
huge part in creating thoseprofits they have the idea they
make a lot, they take the biggerrisk in a lot of ways.
They put themselves out there,but they couldn't do it without
their workers.
If they could do it all bythemselves, they probably would
(19:28):
have.
So they couldn't, so they haveto use, so they have to have
someone else to help them and tothink that and we do have a bit
of a bias where it's well, theperson that started the business
has more right to decide whatto do with the profits that was
created by everybody, when therecould be some models that are
more democratic.
(19:49):
It doesn't mean that your brandnew worker is going to have the
same say as the guy who foundedthe company or the gal that
founded the company, but itcould mean that there's at least
some sort of process where weget to collectively decide how
those profits are used together.
And the businesses that do thatdon't fail a lot of times.
New Belgium they're in Colorado, but they're also here in
(20:11):
Asheville are a worker-ownedco-op.
I mentioned a couple on mybalance sheet last episode that
are actually outperforming manyof the other companies in their
space, so it can be a profitablemodel there.
I know that there's more that wecould dig in on here on the
details of this.
We are starting to run out oftime.
Where can people find you toreally if they want to learn how
(20:34):
they can match up theirfinances with their values,
whatever their values are?
Because it sounds likesometimes there are values that
you may have a little bitdifferent than theirs, and
that's okay.
There are some boundaries thatyou don't cross.
But if someone wants to be ableto really sit down with someone
to define their values, to dothat forecasting and to really
(20:54):
implement that fair compensationand make sure that their
finances match their values,where can they find you and how
can they get connected with you?
Courtney (21:02):
Yeah, my website is alchemyfinancialco.
You can find me on Instagram atalchemycfo Awesome.
Joel (21:11):
And I'm excited to get to continue the dialogue with you
here in the local area and alsoon the Rad Planners group that
we're both a part of.
Go, rad Planners.
Until next time, make sure tosubscribe on all the platforms I
mentioned earlier.
Make sure to listen to theother hosts on bizradious.
And until next time, rememberwe are each other.
What if investing in each other could change the world?
I'm Joel Skeen with bizradiousand this is the Mindful
Marketplace.
All right, all right, we areback here with Courtney
Shaughnessy, the CEO founder ofAlchemy Financial.
(00:21):
She lives in Western NorthCarolina, in my current hometown
of Asheville, north Carolina.
She has a fantastic, sociallyresponsible financial business
and I'm excited to get to digback in with her.
This is part two of a two-partepisode where, in the first part
, we got to talk with Courtneyabout her upbringing, her
(00:44):
background, why she's sopassionate about what she does
and how she helps especiallysmall businesses, businesses
that are run by single mothersand businesses really implement
strategies around the financialpart of their business to be
more sustainable, to be moreethically responsible in their
(01:04):
businesses so that they canreally live out their values.
If you're just joining us forthe first time, this is the show
where we talk to theentrepreneurs, industry leaders,
economic experts and advisorswho are not only solving a
market problem and making aprofit, but they're also solving
a social problem to make animpact, and it's where we learn
(01:25):
how to connect our money andbusinesses to our values, to our
communities and to ourselves.
So, courtney, welcome back tothe show.
Really glad to have you on heretoday.
Courtney (01:36):
Thank you so much, Joel.
I'm excited to be here.
Joel (01:39):
Yeah, so we had a topic that we wanted to dig in with
you here to really educate thepeople that are listening here,
either locally on bizradious oractually nationally.
You can listen to us fromanywhere online on the live
stream, but you can alsosubscribe.
If you have not yet, pleasesubscribe and like and do all
that stuff please.
If you haven't yet do it, it'son YouTube, spotify, itunes,
(02:03):
iheartmedia, stitcher,buzzsprout, all of those.
But, courtney, I guess let'sfirst kind of zoom out a little
bit and I want to ask you aboutkind of what are some of the
main and key points thatbusiness owners should take into
account when they want to thinkabout doing their finances in a
(02:23):
sustainable and ethical way?
I guess first, maybe even zoomout a little further Most people
don't even think of that whenthey think about doing
sustainable and ethicalbusinesses.
A lot of times the CFO partdoesn't even register to them.
Do you experience that?
Courtney (02:38):
Yeah, agreed wholeheartedly, and I know it
seems obvious, but the firststep is really defining your
values, identifying them,because you can't prioritize
everything and you have to bereally clear on just like we
spend so much time, especiallyin the beginning, as an
entrepreneur.
Sometimes we spend too muchtime on what our brand colors
(03:00):
are and what's our logo, what'sour company name going to be,
and then we put the cart beforethe horse.
We have to be really clear onwho we help and how we help them
.
Well, we also have to be reallyclear on what we're going to
care about, what we want to beknown for, how we want to exist
in that space, and because youcan't align values when you
(03:20):
don't know what they are.
Joel (03:22):
Yeah, exactly, and I'm sure there's lots of people out
there, or business owners outthere especially, who have
really good intentions.
But I guess what happens ifthey don't first really take
some intentional time to definetheir values?
Courtney (03:35):
Yeah Well, it's so cliche, but you fail to plan,
you plan to fail.
And so, just inevitably, whenyou're not intentional and you
don't make a conscious decision,it'll go by the wayside.
And because, as business owners, we're pulled in a million
different directions and we'respinning lots of plates and
there's a lot going on, justlike we try to be intentional in
(03:58):
our productivity and how weplan our time, how we manage,
plan our time how we manage wehave to also keep that in the
forefront, because it's a threadthat's woven into every thing
that we do, or if we want it tobe, it has to be clear, it has
to be top of mind.
Joel (04:14):
What have you learned in that process of helping
businesses define those values?
I guess what stood out to youthe most.
Courtney (04:20):
My specific area of interest is really around how we
treat and how we pay our team,and in the beginning it starts
with ourselves, so notexploiting ourselves and making
sure that the business issustainable for us and then
making sure that before we bringon team members.
(04:40):
That's probably the biggestquestion that I get asked is
when can I hire someone?
How do I know when I can hiresomeone?
How much can I afford to paythem?
And it's such an importanttransition when you go from one
solo person in your business toadding a team member and making
(05:01):
sure they understand when thatcan happen.
So there's a practicalcomponent to that, but the other
piece of it is not just whatcan I afford to pay them?
Am I paying them fairly?
Am I compensating themappropriately and when?
Is that the point that I canbring someone on?
And lots of times they'll usecontractors in the beginning,
(05:21):
which I'm an advocate of,because a contractor is someone
who has started their ownbusiness.
But there's lots of rules andregulations around that.
So you have to be mindful andcareful not to bring on
contractors and skirt any sortof parameters that have been set
by your state or the IRS interms of whether that's legal or
not, and that's something thatyour tax person can certainly
(05:44):
help you parse out.
But that is first and foremostmy biggest piece, because
typically your labor, yourpayroll, is the biggest expense,
I would say, for the majorityof businesses.
Joel (05:56):
Yeah, absolutely, and I know that I've gone through that
process of trying to decidewhen is it the right time to
hire someone.
And you know it is a it is adifficult decision to make
because in some ways the hiringsomeone is how you can grow your
business because you now havehelp.
It's now not just you all onyour own, but at the same time
(06:18):
you know it is it is an expense,and you do.
I remember having that thatdebate with some other people
where they were telling me thatlike well, you want to hire
someone for as cheap as you canbecause you want to essentially
maximize your profit and moveforward.
And I just remember feelinghaving a difficult time with
that because I don't know.
I'm curious your perspective onthis because I know that.
(06:40):
You know I was raised very.
My dad's a pastor.
I was raised very kind ofreligiously and always taught to
.
The golden rule was always abig piece of it is do unto
others as you would have them dounto you.
And part of the reason I gotinto business for myself was
because I didn't like how as anemployee I was often I think
George Carlin says it this wayIn a job you are, they're going
(07:03):
to pay you as little, justenough to keep you from quitting
, and you're going to do justenough work to keep from getting
fired, and that's a bad system,that's a bad situation, and so
I didn't want to put my peoplein the same situation that I so
desperately just wanted to getout of.
Is that why it's important toyou?
I'm curious your perspective onthat.
Courtney (07:25):
Yeah, well, and having been an employee in
situations where I wasoverworked and underpaid, and
how harmful it is, it's reallyharmful to that individual, it's
really harmful to theirfamilies, to their wellbeing.
And as I've gotten older, whenI was younger I had a lot more
(07:48):
stamina for working around theclock and being available all
the time.
And I think COVID has really,you know, through the pandemic,
brought a lot of these things tothe surface, because we
realized that our toleranceswere way too high.
And then we have this majorglobal event happen and we're
(08:08):
suddenly realizing, hey, onelife is short, and why am I
doing all of this?
What is the purpose of it?
And and really deconstructingwhat we've always accepted of
what this is, just how it is.
And you know, there's all thisconversation between generations
, with boomers and Gen X andmillennials and Gen Z and the
(08:30):
younger folks coming in andthey're like absolutely not, I'm
not going to tolerate that, I'mnot going to put up with that,
I don't accept it.
And so when we do this forourselves, we give ourselves the
permission to say I don'taccept that anymore.
And when we do that as acollective, that's when things
start to change.
I mean, if you look at the40-hour workweek.
It's been nearly 100 yearssince our actual workweek has
(08:53):
it's not changed right.
So there's a push now to go tothe four day work week.
There's lots of research andstudies around how you're
actually more productive, or anemployee who goes into the
office is actually really trulyproductive for three to four
hours of that eight or whateverhour day it ends up being, and
so there's a lot of that and Ithink sometimes we don't see the
(09:17):
correlation between this andour finances.
But it very much is right,because a happier, more
productive employee is going toyield better results for your
company and it's just going toall around make everyone happier
and healthier, and why wouldn'twe want to work towards that?
Joel (09:33):
Yeah, invest's.
Investing in your people isinvesting in your business, at
least from my perspective.
Because not only is it, is itlike you said, people can be
just as productive a lot oftimes with fewer hours or
whatever the case might be, butto me it's also just about not
reducing things like turnover,and you know retention and you
know the amount of time wasted.
(09:54):
I think it's I remember whosaid it but someone's like, well
, what if I treat my people well?
And then they quit.
And it's like, well, what ifyou don't?
And then they stay right.
Like like what, what are yousetting yourself up for?
And that kind of leads me intopoint two that you wanted to
bring up of how you help peopleand what's most important for
people who do want to haveethical and sustainable
(10:16):
practices in their finances isforecasting.
Could you tell us a little bitabout that?
Courtney (10:22):
Yeah, and so it leads into capacity.
So when you model it out andthat's part of the process when
someone says, can I afford tohire someone, can I afford to do
X, y, z, okay, well, let'smodel it out, let's see what
this looks like on the P&L andon the cash flow statement, and
(10:43):
especially as you get bigger andyou have a team in terms of
capacity.
So I can speak specifically tothe accounting work.
When you have a firm that'sdoing accounting work and you've
got a team working fractuallywithin lots of different
businesses, if you don't chargeyour client appropriately, it's
going to require you to pack andstack a roster for your usually
(11:07):
work in pods not every company,but lots of companies.
You have a lot of people whoservice a certain roster of
clients and so when you pack andstack someone's roster, the
amount of work it takes to getit done, what needs to be done,
is going to require usually wayabove and beyond a traditional
full-time job, and that's likethe thing that we have come to
(11:29):
accept within the accountingindustry specifically, but it
happens also in other businesses.
So it's the capacity planningwhen you have more work right.
The whole joke is when someonegets laid off and they don't
replace them and they just divvythe work out to everyone else.
That all is interlinked intoyour finances and your modeling
and what you can afford, andmaking sure that you're mindful
(11:52):
that you should not put theresponsibility on your employees
if you cannot afford to bringon appropriate number of staff
or team members to execute thework that needs to get done.
And so part of that is caringenough about your staff and your
team members to go through thatprocess of being really
(12:14):
thoughtful and intentional inyour capacity planning and
putting it into your forecast.
Joel (12:19):
What does that intention look like?
What are some of the thingsthat go into that?
Courtney (12:24):
Well, it's one being really honest and candid with
your staff and being able totake a temperature.
There's a lot of management thatgoes into this and being a good
manager, being a good employerand really having your finger on
the pulse of how people aredoing, how they feel, and not
only looking at what'sprofitable but what's good for
(12:47):
the whole everyone who's workingtowards a common goal within a
business.
And I think it really just boilsdown to okay, I care enough
about my people and my employeesthat I'm going to ensure that I
can actually afford to do rightby everyone.
(13:08):
And it goes and, of course,like wage is a big part of that
and we can talk about that in alittle bit.
But, um, when you I don't knowif you've ever been in a work
situation where you werestretched to the max, where the
expectations of you were morethan what you could reasonably
give over time and we can all dohard things for short periods
of time, but we all reach ourbreaking points and that's what
(13:29):
I think the pandemic at least inmy experience and with a lot of
the people that I know workingtraditional corporate jobs it's
like a rubber band.
It will only stretch so farbefore it breaks.
Joel (13:45):
Yeah, it sounds like on the whole, if I can paint broad
strokes is you're just talkingabout treating your people like
people instead of numbers, andtreating them, having a real
relationship with them.
I remember one of my favoritebooks that I read in business
when I was kind of coming up inbusiness and reading a lot of
books about business and aboutspecifically about leadership
was a book called Leadership andSelf-Deception and it talks
(14:07):
about how, if you treat peoplelike objects, something that's
either someone that's eitherjust there to help you get what
you want or that's just thereand in the way of something that
you want, you're going to neverdevelop a real relationship and
you actually put yourself in abox and you can't actually that
you carry that box with you intothe rest of your life.
(14:27):
But when you actually see theother person on the other side
of you as their own person, as aperson who has their own needs,
has their own desires, hastheir own wants and their own
dreams, and that you acknowledgethat and recognize that and
treat them as such, that boxgoes away and it allows you to
actually have real connectionand actually have real influence
(14:48):
with them from a leadershipperspective.
But I think a lot of timespeople forget that money is a
part of that.
It's not the whole thing, it'snot all of it, it's not the
entire thing.
But if you're treating peoplelike people when you talk to
them but you're treating themlike a number when it comes to
the balance sheet, it reminds meof Jim Wallace said budgets are
(15:08):
moral documents, and so I guesshow does that start to then
play out when we actually getinto the numbers and into the
compensation of it?
I know you have a process and afew points of kind of some
practical ways that people canmake sure that they're doing
this ethically and that they'retreating their people like
people.
Courtney (15:29):
Yeah, and you're right, it sounds so simple, like
it should be simple.
It should be easy, but it endsup not being.
A lot of times, at least in myexperience.
I've worked for very largeinternational businesses and
small businesses that reallystruggle in this area, and so I
think, ultimately, it beginswith deconstructing how we value
(15:50):
work, and there's this lensthat we we look through with
entrepreneurship, of risk andreward, and the person who takes
the risk should reap the rewardat a greater percentage of
those who help make those gains.
And I think the overlooked partthe middle if risk is on one
(16:14):
side and reward is on the otherIn the middle is leveraging
labor to get there and soexpanding our ideas of how we
look at our businesses and howwe look at this model and how
we're traditionally taught tolook at it, and opening
ourselves up to the possibilityof more collaborative models and
(16:34):
having the way that we evenview compensation for employees.
So typically we place a highervalue on strategy than we do on
execution, and I'm not sure ifyou are familiar with the book
Work Won't Love you Back, butthe author talks about the types
(16:58):
of work that has to happen inorder for all other work to
happen, and that's education,childcare service, retail, and
how historically they're theleast paid and most exploited of
all types of work.
And so, even though yourbusiness may not be within those
(17:21):
specific industries, we stillcarry those ideas into our
businesses, I thinksubconsciously.
So that's been part of myjourney is my own deconstruction
of what I've been taught toaccept and what a business is
supposed to look like.
And, for example, you broughtup international contractors.
That's a big problem, in myopinion, within accounting is
(17:42):
hiring international contractors, paying them less than what
would be legal to pay them inthe United States as a way of
bolstering profits in a business, and that, for me, is a
boundary.
I'm not going to work with abusiness who is hiring folks
internationally and paying thempennies on the dollar,
essentially from what it wouldcost to hire someone locally or
(18:04):
domestically.
It's exploitive.
And we could get into all thethings arguments that people
make, and to that I say just getto know some people who are in
those situations and reallyinterrogate whether what you've
been told is true.
And that's been my experience.
Once I actually did the work tointerrogate these ideas, these
(18:25):
thoughts, these beliefs, Irealized this is not okay, and
so these are things that I won'tengage in and I'm not going to
support.
I don't want to help a businessgrow and become more profitable
.
Who is using the decisionsabout what to do with?
Joel (18:43):
the profits are made by just one person or just a board,
(19:08):
but when those decisions onwhat to do with the profits that
are made because, yes, thebusiness owner has a huge, huge,
huge part in creating thoseprofits they have the idea they
make a lot, they take the biggerrisk in a lot of ways.
They put themselves out there,but they couldn't do it without
their workers.
If they could do it all bythemselves, they probably would
(19:28):
have.
So they couldn't, so they haveto use, so they have to have
someone else to help them and tothink that and we do have a bit
of a bias where it's well, theperson that started the business
has more right to decide whatto do with the profits that was
created by everybody, when therecould be some models that are
more democratic.
(19:49):
It doesn't mean that your brandnew worker is going to have the
same say as the guy who foundedthe company or the gal that
founded the company, but itcould mean that there's at least
some sort of process where weget to collectively decide how
those profits are used together.
And the businesses that do thatdon't fail a lot of times.
New Belgium they're in Colorado, but they're also here in
(20:11):
Asheville are a worker-ownedco-op.
I mentioned a couple on mybalance sheet last episode that
are actually outperforming manyof the other companies in their
space, so it can be a profitablemodel there.
I know that there's more that wecould dig in on here on the
details of this.
We are starting to run out oftime.
Where can people find you toreally if they want to learn how
(20:34):
they can match up theirfinances with their values,
whatever their values are?
Because it sounds likesometimes there are values that
you may have a little bitdifferent than theirs, and
that's okay.
There are some boundaries thatyou don't cross.
But if someone wants to be ableto really sit down with someone
to define their values, to dothat forecasting and to really
(20:54):
implement that fair compensationand make sure that their
finances match their values,where can they find you and how
can they get connected with you?
Courtney (21:02):
Yeah, my website is alchemyfinancialco.
You can find me on Instagram atalchemycfo Awesome.
Joel (21:11):
And I'm excited to get to continue the dialogue with you
here in the local area and alsoon the Rad Planners group that
we're both a part of.
Go, rad Planners.
Until next time, make sure tosubscribe on all the platforms I
mentioned earlier.
Make sure to listen to theother hosts on bizradious.
And until next time, rememberwe are each other.
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