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Your Numbers: Make Them Make Cents! · The Kelly Jedele Show

• Kelly Jedele: to have my company doing multi-six figures was just a little shocking. I wanted to make sure that all of that was good, but I also didn't want to look at the numbers. And then that bookkeeper had to leave. And it's when that bookkeeper left that she said to me, Kelly, you really need to learn this. Kelly intro: Hey, I'm Kelly Jedele and this is the Kelly Jedele Show. Here's the lie we've been sold that you have to pick: the career or the kid, the big vision or the bedtime story. I'm calling it. That's not the deal. You can have both. I have built businesses for the last 16 years as a single mom. And you can do it without hustling yourself into the ground, but by choosing strategically every single day. This show is for the woman who wants the business, the brand, the freedom, and the family. All of it. So grab your coffee, your kids' juice box, whatever you got in your hand. Let's get into it. Kelly Jedele: Hello and welcome back to the Kelly Jedele Show. Today we're talking about profit and revenue. We're talking about numbers. And so as a small business owner and as someone who's looking maybe to start a business, I want you to be open to this conversation. I know over the years I have had different feelings and different emotions about this topic. And today I want to get into a few details to just Help you feel a little more comfortable and a different idea for numbers. And I am not a CPA, I'm not a bookkeeper, and I know that there are many, many levels to this game. So what I want to talk to you about is the version that I know from being inside the business and also looking at the business as a small business owner. So I've had my cleaning business for 17 years. I started it from scratch, and now we're at two and a half million per year and we're pro we're getting close to that three million mark. And I know that as I have learned over the years. When I first started, I didn't even know to like put numbers on a page, right? Like it was just like I'm getting money, yay, it's in my bank account. Well I started keeping track of who was paying me and and when they were paying me because I noticed that, you know, some clients were paying by check. We don't take checks anymore. But this was back, you know, 17 years ago when that was popular and they wanted to save me the credit card fee. And so they would write me a check. Some people might not be home. They might have forgotten their checkbook at work or whatever. And so I found myself having to go back and pick up checks and pick up money and get paid later. And so I had to keep track of what the job was and whether they paid me or not and how they paid me. Because I think back then I had in the beginning Gosh, I don't even remember. I don't remember because I don't think we had Venmo back then. I didn't start with credit cards in the beginning. So maybe it was just cash and credit cards in the beginning. In the very, very beginning. And I probably quickly got into credit cards because I knew how easy that was, but I did not want the fees for that's for sure. So I had to keep track of that. And so in the beginning, this I actually just made a spreadsheet and had a clipboard and I just wrote the jobs as I went throughout the day because I was in the houses cleaning and doing the jobs. I had cleaning, organizing, and personal assistant work in the beginning. So I would go from cleaning a house to organizing a house to possibly doing some filing or networking. And so I had that clipboard with me because I didn't it wasn't as common today to have a phone like an iPhone. So those didn't exist. So back then that was what I was doing. And so in the very, very beginning I just wanted to know who was paying me and who wasn't. And then it was like a couple years in when the numbers, it was literally year two when the numbers started getting bigger. And so we had a separate team from me. So it was all the work I was doing and then someone, some another set of team, another team was going. And so that's when I hired my first manager, Kate. Someone that was separate from me, who was managing all of the finances And managing not all the finances, but a lot of it, and then managing the payment the payments. And so she got certified with QuickBooks and we started putting all of the numbers in QuickBooks. And that's when I was like, my gosh, we're making money. Because it was there was times when we would have we I remember when we hit our first ten thousand dollar month, like it was a huge deal. And it that's a big deal, right? That's a lot of money. And so when you especially when you're starting just working to make a hundred dollars a day or whatever the goal was, right? It was very small in the beginning. So helping having her do that helped us really keep track and make everything move forward. Year four or five, things started getting more more intentional with our finances because we were outgrowing the house. I was living in we had Carly and I had like it was like a eleven hundred square foot home. And so the the job, the business was all all of a sudden taking over like the living room, one of the bedrooms, the and all of the garage. And then we had a lot of meetings in the kitchen. So it was basically the whole house except for our bedrooms. Even Carly's bathroom she had to share with the staff in the you know, in those first few years. So I wanted to get an office separate from us. And so in order to do that, I needed a little bit of cash in order to like do the down payment and like really move into paying for rent and and that. So I had I needed a loan. And so I went to banks to get loans, but they needed like a profit and loss statement and a balance sheet and history from our company. And so that was all new to me. So we started getting financial documents put together. So we had this history for the banks. Cause I was making money and it was like year year five. So I had five years of history, but the banks still weren't excited about that. They wanted to see me match the money that they wanted. And I was like, how is that possible? Anyway, we got through it. I found People Fund. They were, they did amazing. They helped me get a small loan. It was $30,000. I thought that was so much money. It is a lot of money, right? But I got $30,000 and I was able to buy enough supplies to start another team. get into the office and let and keep moving. And I had a manager that switched. So Kate left. She had to go do something else. I got a new manager. And so and I was just kind of up leveling on stuff. And so it was just that. And then year six or seven, I had a bookkeeper who was part-time and she was doing like all of the credit card charges at that time and accounts like receivable and adjusting all the accounts. And so I would say during that time, that was when our numbers started getting more. And as the numbers were growing and we were getting more into it, I was starting to get more intimidated. So I was kind of pulling back and really allowing our new bookkeeper to really take take over on some of the decisions and just making sure that we were hitting all of our profit numbers. Not a good plan. Not a good plan. You've got to keep your head in the game. I know it's intimidating, and especially as you grow, those are numbers I had never seen. Those we were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars at that point. And so those were numbers that were far beyond my knowing. And I was in my mid-30s at that time, and my parents were very humble, hardworking, middle class folks. They they did not earn six figures. So to have my company doing multi-six figures was just a little shocking. So I wanted to make sure that all of that was good, but I also didn't want to look at the numbers. And then that bookkeeper had to leave. And it's when that bookkeeper left that she said to me, Kelly, you really need to learn this. And she she walked away from me with No replacement. And so I had to do the work that she was doing. And I didn't like it at the time, but as well as many times in my life when I know, like when I started my company because I got fired, I knew in that moment when she left that that was actually going to be a turning point for me. And so I leaned in, opened my eyes, opened the books, and learned. And I didn't learn all of the details. I learned enough to get us through to the next few months until I found my current bookkeeper. And that was really an an eye-opening experience for me because we have to know as business owners where the revenue is, where the profit is, where our top line numbers are, what's left over, what are we actually making. And then like just cash flow for the business. Like when you have a a business with recurring revenue, cash flow is a thing. Like you've got payrolls that are coming through. So you've got to make sure that there's enough cash on those payroll months, payroll weeks to to to roll into all of the bills that need to be paid. And then especially after we got to the higher six figures, but right before we hit a million, our sales tax numbers got start getting higher. And so we're paying, you know, seven, eight nine ten thousand dollars a month in sales tax right before of c payroll. So we got that rhythm going. And then my new my new bookkeeper was yeah kind of CPA status. She's she's she's a smart cookie. And so a lot of the things that she was doing was making sense and we would talk about the stories that the numbers told. And this was important to me. This is something that I didn't understand up until that point. And the stories that the numbers told. So you're looking at numbers, right? It's just like one, two, threes, whatever on number on the on the P<unk>L and in the balance sheet. But what you want is to take those numbers and look at the months prior and then the current month and and let it see, let it talk to you. Are you doing better? Is there anywhere to improve? Is there anywhere that you can give? Are you allowing enough room for your team? Is there an opportunity for you to save for something that you want down the road? A new vehicle, a new operations tool, a new employee? You know, like where where are the opportunities for you financially? And in those numbers, that's where the spaces are to look at that. And I wish I had more technical terms. For that, because I and I don't, I just don't. I'm not that kind of a numbers person, but I have her to ask questions for and we go through that and we look at where the possible profit leaks are. We also look at maybe mistakes in invoicing that we've found. So we found, you know, we meet once a month now, and we'll meet we now have it down to such a rhythm that we'll meet for like 30 minutes to 45 minutes, maybe an hour sometimes. That's usually just chatting about our kids. But that we'll talk about where invoices possibly have been missed or you know, miscalculated. And those are hundreds of dollars. So that's that's a huge find for when she's doing like just the the searching through our accounts and everything every month. And then also subscriptions are a big deal right now. So that's a new thing in the last year and a half for me, where we've got to keep an eye on which subscriptions we have. And what subscriptions we are using. So it's there, especially with AI, I've got, you know, I think three different AI subscriptions. And are we using all of them? I just got an email this morning about MANIS is no longer. So like save all your data, we're giving you a refund. Which is good news for me because I accidentally bought way too much for them. So that's great news for me, but it's also like it's a reminder, like, okay, I need to go in. And take my credit card statement for the last two or three months and put it into AI to make sure that I'm using those subscriptions. Because if I'm not, let's cancel something because that leak in your business is easy to happen if you're not paying attention. And so many of us, me included, back in the day, will just go by and months will go by and you don't look at the details. Open up those credit card statements. Open up that bank account and make it make sure that you're seeing all those line items that make do they make sense? Where is that from? And also fraud. I've had fraud. I had my purse stolen in 25. 25? 26. Yeah. So in December of 2025, I had my purse stolen out of my car. I left my purse in my car. Don't do that. Well, they stole. all of my cards, my credit cards, debit cards, membership cards, everything. And so we had to keep track of that for six months. So they stole the credit card. They got they got they got charges on three different cards. They got charges on two different debit cards that we and all that money got refunded. But it took six months. And then there was even a I had a blank check that I folded up inside, but don't do that. They wrote themselves a $500 check in March. And so I had to get that. So fraud is a thing. So that's another reason why you want to look at I don't want to scare you. I'm not here to I'm not here to scare you. Please, please know that. There's this is a lot of information. I realize that. Let's take a breath. I have had 17 years of learning this. Okay, let's take a breath. We learn these things as we go. What I would like to do is compress some of this to keep you from having to have those mistakes that I had. I don't want your bookkeeper walking out and you not knowing. So what that looks like now in the beginning of what you're doing is just being mindful, just not being scared to look and ask questions. Like look at what you've got. That's what it is. So take a moment and put it on your calendar once a week or once a month. Probably Probably at least at least twice a month, if not once a week, to look at what the charges are that you're putting through your accounts. And make sure that you're keeping your business credit card and your personal credit card separate. Don't mingle those two. The tax, the IRS gets it gets really messy with that. But I know that as I have grown my business and my finances have gotten bigger. The checks are bigger, like the taxes are higher. That the more I learn in this arena and listen to podcasts and have friends that are talking about these conversations, the more I know, the more confident I feel as a business owner and a leader that my business is strong and sturdy and can t stand the test of time. I don't want to get to a place where cash flow is wonky, because that's happened. And I had too many people in my too many people on my payroll without enough revenue. And I was trying to be a nice person. That doesn't fit in when you're talking about profit and loss. It doesn't. You can't just give people jobs. It's gotta work with the business. And so now I sell I tell people what I need and I look at my numbers and I make decisions that way. And I make decisions out of confidence and out of really, really making hard decisions. So a lot to learn, right? A lot to learn. There's so many things and areas of space where we can really expand our world into the knowing of the business. We can grow into these numbers. At two and a half million, we we have payroll that's just You know, sixty thousand, seventy thousand dollars every other week. And our sales tax is twenty thousand dollars a month. So these are numbers that are just mind blowing to me. Little Kelly is just like, holy crap, that's what we're doing now. So, yes, these are huge numbers and they're very attainable. It's very possible for you to get there. And the way to get there is to be mindful every single year. Of what you're doing and every single month of all of your expenses. So don't shy away from that. Be proud of what you're accomplishing, of the money that you're bringing in, and just be responsible. Be mindful of all of the ways that you can move yourself and your team forward and your clients. So thank you for listening to me today. That was a lot. We got a little intense there, so hopefully we can take a breath and move forward. But share this with one woman if you can think of someone that this might help. Pass it along to her. And also like and follow. Subscribe to the podcast so we can keep this going. And if you are a small business and would like some sponsorship opportunities with us, we have some open and we'd love to talk to you about it. Please look at the show notes for that. And we will see you next week. Have a great week. Bye, y'all. Kelly: That's it for this week. If something in this episode hit, do me a favor. Send it to one woman in your life who needs to hear it. That's how this community grows, one honest conversation at a time. Follow the show, leave a review, and come find me on Instagram. I read everything. Remember, strong doesn't mean solo. I'll see you next week.