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New Year, Better Finances: Practical Tips from Naomi Riley · The Confident Entrepreneur With Jennifer Ann Johnson

• 0:40
  Jennifer Johnson: It's a new year and we often make resolutions around health, wellness and, of course, money.
• 0:46
  Jennifer Johnson: In today's episode, we're diving into getting your financial house in order for the new year.
• 0:51
  Jennifer Johnson: We welcome into the studio Naomi Riley.
• 0:54
  Jennifer Johnson: Her consulting agency flourished during the pandemic, where she provided pivotal financial guidance and grew her business to become a multimillion dollar enterprise, making her services highly sought after.
• 1:06
  Jennifer Johnson: Welcome.
• 1:06
  Naomi Riley: Naomi, thank you so much for having me.
• 1:09
  Jennifer Johnson: I am excited to have you today because we meeting me and my listeners.
• 1:16
  Jennifer Johnson: I know we can't get enough of financial pieces on how can we do this, how can we do this better and that kind of thing.
• 1:23
  Jennifer Johnson: So tell us a little bit about your company and how it started, and I know you had great success over the pandemic.
• 1:30
  Naomi Riley: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:31
  Naomi Riley: So to be honest, my business flourished, actually, through the pandemic.
• 1:38
  Naomi Riley: I had studied some nonprofit laws during that time Excuse me, your pace just fell out and you know, a lot of businesses were struggling during the pandemic and so one of my best friends was working in accounting and he had asked he was losing staff left and right through the pandemic and and he knew that I was intelligent, very intelligent with my crafts and and he's like you know, all of these COVID laws are coming out and I'm going to need someone to help me with this, would you mind, you know, tackling it on.
• 2:17
  Naomi Riley: And so I put my head down into the books and started, you know, researching and studying all that I could on all the relief that was out there for for business owners, and really put my head to work with it and, you know, just guided tons and tons of business owners on a really good trajectory to get them through the pandemic business owners on a really good trajectory to get them through the pandemic, wow.
• 2:46
  Naomi Riley: So it was kind of born out of all of that.
• 2:47
  Naomi Riley: Yeah, yeah it was.
• 2:52
  Naomi Riley: I had worked a little bit in the accounting industry, but nothing like I had.
• 2:54
  Naomi Riley: When it powered down and everybody was taking work off, I was sitting in my office saying, okay, how can I help?
• 3:00
  Naomi Riley: Who can I serve?
• 3:01
  Naomi Riley: You know?
• 3:03
  Jennifer Johnson: And it was kind of like baptism by fire.
• 3:05
  Naomi Riley: Yeah, here you go.
• 3:08
  Naomi Riley: Yes, amen to that, amen to that.
• 3:11
  Naomi Riley: So, um, yeah, god is good and and you know I was able to our company was able to help.
• 3:18
  Naomi Riley: You know, a lot of businesses survive instead of shut down, and you also own other businesses as well.
• 3:25
  Naomi Riley: I do.
• 3:26
  Naomi Riley: Yeah, I own an AI company, a startup AI, a startup education.
• 3:31
  Naomi Riley: That is just getting out there.
• 3:33
  Naomi Riley: You know I'm an avid entrepreneur.
• 3:37
  Naomi Riley: I love sharing my message, what I've learned throughout my life.
• 3:43
  Naomi Riley: I'm a brain injury survivor turned savant and I love to read and research and find new ways to help our youth get through what we've allowed to happen in society.
• 3:57
  Jennifer Johnson: I love this because so many times we meet people who I'm a financial advisor or I'm a whatever, but they've never walked in the shoes of a small business owner and I was just literally having this conversation with someone else.
• 4:13
  Jennifer Johnson: So it's so great that you know, from the standpoint of the business owner, the concept we're talking about, because there's that authenticity, there's that vulnerability, there's that empathetic I know what you're going through, I've been there kind of space.
• 4:35
  Naomi Riley: Yeah, that can be.
• 4:37
  Naomi Riley: One of the biggest challenges that we as small business owners can go through are the fluctuations of you know what a business intake and outtake is and or outgoes, and you know, really making sure that our bottom line is always covered.
• 4:58
  Naomi Riley: So looking at those profit and losses are always going to be huge for every single month and then making sure that we can, you know, leave enough money in the in the pot so just in case, you know, unexpected expenses come up.
• 5:15
  Jennifer Johnson: So yes, I do know.
• 5:16
  Jennifer Johnson: Always do Very, very important, very important so let's talk about setting goals and intentions for the new year.
• 5:27
  Jennifer Johnson: I know we have some buckets that we're going to be talking about and I'm going to let you take the lead on this, because it's really, really important things for our listeners.
• 5:39
  Naomi Riley: Yeah.
• 5:40
  Naomi Riley: So you know how.
• 5:42
  Naomi Riley: One thing that you're always going to want to do is look back and look at how did the income and expenses fluctuate over the year.
• 5:50
  Naomi Riley: Did you have any extra income from the year?
• 5:54
  Naomi Riley: Go back and look at the months that for your previous year and just look at your months months that for your previous year and just look at your months.
• 6:05
  Naomi Riley: Did I have any extra income that was unexpected or added to my business in that way?
• 6:09
  Naomi Riley: Apps like Venmo, cash App, zelle they're all asking that the work be identified.
• 6:16
  Naomi Riley: If you're a small business owner and you're Venmoing or you're Cash Apping or whatever it is, make sure you're identifying that in those transactions because you know when it comes tax time, you know those are going to be looked at too.
• 6:32
  Jennifer Johnson: And when you say identify, like in the memo area of when are you paying this person?
• 6:37
  Naomi Riley: Any transactions over $600 are always flagged, and so you want to make sure that you're identifying like where did this go for?
• 6:46
  Naomi Riley: Was this a reimbursement for an actual personal expense or was this a expense for a business?
• 6:52
  Naomi Riley: And so you want to make sure that you're identifying those so that you can go back.
• 6:56
  Naomi Riley: I know, as busy business owners too, looking at your profit and loss on a monthly basis can be hard.
• 7:03
  Naomi Riley: I always encourage it, first and foremost, on a quarterly basis if at all possible.
• 7:09
  Naomi Riley: There's a lot of great platforms out there now that help you with online doing your profit and loss statements.
• 7:20
  Naomi Riley: A really good platform that I like is FreshBooks, and there's QuickBooks online too, so those are really, really good.
• 7:29
  Naomi Riley: So then you're gonna wanna also look at what spending habits worked well and where can I improve.
• 7:39
  Jennifer Johnson: That's always the bucket right, Always the spending.
• 7:42
  Naomi Riley: Yes, yes, you know identify.
• 7:44
  Naomi Riley: Are you a frugal spender or are you wanting those high quality goods and services?
• 7:50
  Naomi Riley: Now, I know a lot of us do right, but you know there's I'm high on the bucket.
• 7:55
  Naomi Riley: Yeah, you know.
• 7:57
  Naomi Riley: If you're the latter, you know there are times where the high quality goods and services may do a one time yearly sale or offer their services at a discounted rate.
• 8:10
  Naomi Riley: So make sure you're on their email list or you know their text message campaigns to to watch out for those sales, watch out for those sales and then always, you know, if you're the very frugal spender, you can always look for those deals on.
• 8:23
  Naomi Riley: You know the certain discounted site, sure.
• 8:35
  Naomi Riley: So another thing that I want to talk about is savings and investments.
• 8:36
  Naomi Riley: You know, did you reach your savings goals for the year?
• 8:38
  Naomi Riley: Do you have savings goals for the year?
• 8:40
  Naomi Riley: If not, I would always recommend just setting aside something, making sure that, if you didn't have any this past year, set aside a goal every month for this coming year.
• 8:55
  Jennifer Johnson: Are you a proponent?
• 8:56
  Jennifer Johnson: Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
• 8:57
  Naomi Riley: Yeah, go ahead.
• 8:58
  Jennifer Johnson: A proponent and I don't even know if you can do this in business, where you can.
• 9:02
  Jennifer Johnson: I know you can do it in personal, where you can say I want $100 out of my check every month to go into savings.
• 9:08
  Jennifer Johnson: Can you do automatic transfers like that from business to business or no?
• 9:14
  Naomi Riley: Business to business.
• 9:15
  Naomi Riley: No, I don't think you can do that.
• 9:18
  Naomi Riley: However, you know, if you are set up as a W-2 or you're on a payroll, yes, then those disbursements can be done that way.
• 9:30
  Naomi Riley: But if you are a contractor, then you have to do that personally and I would check with your accountant to see on how you want to make sure that that is done.
• 9:42
  Naomi Riley: So you know, if you're and again, this goes for the business owner too If you are, you know, setting aside an income for yourself on a monthly basis, make sure that you're line-idling, itemizing what you want to go into maybe a 401k, a Roth, all of those things that are very important as we age, Exactly you can forget, you know.
• 10:08
  Jennifer Johnson: and then, all of a sudden, five years have gone by, and then we're behind Exactly.
• 10:13
  Naomi Riley: There's some really good sources out.
• 10:15
  Naomi Riley: Stash app is a really, really good one where you can invest little increments into new stocks that are coming out.
• 10:25
  Naomi Riley: I always recommend that because you can invest very, very little, but it will increase over time.
• 10:31
  Naomi Riley: So another thing is look at where were your?
• 10:39
  Naomi Riley: How did your investments perform?
• 10:41
  Naomi Riley: Did you?
• 10:44
  Naomi Riley: Are you good on your debt management?
• 10:46
  Naomi Riley: Do you have high interest credit cards?
• 10:48
  Naomi Riley: Maybe think about consolidating those credit cards into something smaller.
• 10:54
  Naomi Riley: A lot of the credit card carriers will offer a 12 month introduction at a 0% rate.
• 13:27
  Naomi Riley: So if you can get on one of those offers and consolidate, you're really eliminating your interest rates and that more and more of those as of late.
• 13:38
  Naomi Riley: Yeah, you know another thing for setting goals and intentions for the new year thing for setting goals and intentions for the new year.
• 13:48
  Naomi Riley: So you know, one thing that you're going to want to do is what are your top financial priorities for the coming year?
• 13:53
  Naomi Riley: Are you planning on buying a home, saving for retirement, paying off debt?
• 13:58
  Naomi Riley: Right, I encourage you to write them down and focus on making sure they get done.
• 14:05
  Naomi Riley: You know what things, what expenditures maybe I could eliminate to like pay down that debt or save up for that down payment for my house.
• 14:15
  Naomi Riley: You know those things are really important.
• 14:18
  Jennifer Johnson: And if they're not in front of you, you don't remember them right.
• 14:21
  Jennifer Johnson: I have, I do this intentions at the beginning of every year and I have it on a bulletin board right next to my desk so I can see that.
• 14:31
  Jennifer Johnson: And there's buckets there's the money bucket, there's the personal bucket, there's the relationship bucket, and it's a visual.
• 14:40
  Jennifer Johnson: I can see it.
• 14:42
  Jennifer Johnson: Yes, it's so important.
• 14:43
  Naomi Riley: Put it at your desk so that you're looking at it every day.
• 14:47
  Naomi Riley: If you work in an office setting, just put it around you, making sure that you are looking at it every day.
• 14:53
  Naomi Riley: If you are working remote, maybe stick it on your laptop or make a sticker out of it.
• 14:59
  Naomi Riley: Do something where you're checking it out every day to hone in on those goals that you want to get done for the year.
• 15:07
  Naomi Riley: Smart, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound goals can set you to achieve these priorities.
• 15:17
  Naomi Riley: And you know what are the specifics.
• 15:21
  Naomi Riley: So smart is that we say what are the S stands for specific, so what are the specifics of your goals?
• 15:28
  Naomi Riley: And then measurable, that's the M part.
• 15:31
  Jennifer Johnson: What are?
• 15:31
  Naomi Riley: the measurable amounts that you can use to.
• 15:35
  Naomi Riley: You know, put into these, these accounts, or what your savings.
• 15:39
  Naomi Riley: Are the achievable, what can you achieve?
• 15:42
  Naomi Riley: You know a lot of people work paycheck to paycheck and I understand that can be very difficult, but possibly look at some of the things that you might be able to do to add to your income, if that is a an issue for you.
• 15:57
  Naomi Riley: You know there's a lot of things that you can do online now, especially with the revolution of AI, now that we're seeing, and you know I actually, you know, do consult and share a lot of ways that you can monetize with AI.
• 16:15
  Naomi Riley: And so, you know, don't limit yourself to say, hey, this is who I am, this is what I do and this is the only amount that I can make.
• 16:24
  Naomi Riley: Exactly, that's the point, yeah, so set aside a couple hours to explore something new and and learn.
• 16:33
  Naomi Riley: You know, we're always growing and evolving, and so it should be an important part of our daily life to learn about new things.
• 16:42
  Naomi Riley: Whether we want to pursue that or not, that's up to us, but at least we're learning about something new, and we're to pursue that or not, that's up to us, but at least we're learning about something new and we're training our mind to say, hey, I might be able to do this, I might be able to add a little bit more to my income.
• 16:55
  Jennifer Johnson: And a lot of the times it's about being open to it, because you can't be the kind of person who no, I don't do computers.
• 17:04
  Jennifer Johnson: And I will tell you.
• 17:06
  Jennifer Johnson: I fell into that trap for a long time.
• 17:09
  Jennifer Johnson: I don't do numbers, I hate numbers Truly.
• 17:12
  Jennifer Johnson: I do hate numbers, but I kept saying I don't math, I don't do this, and what did I not do?
• 17:20
  Jennifer Johnson: I didn't math, I didn't learn how to do things that I should have learned how to do.
• 17:28
  Jennifer Johnson: And then my husband, who does all of our he's our CFO ended up in the hospital and here I am.
• 17:36
  Jennifer Johnson: I have no idea what I'm supposed to do or how I'm supposed to do this.
• 17:40
  Jennifer Johnson: I don't even know how to check it at account balance.
• 17:42
  Jennifer Johnson: Oh no, but we put limitations on ourselves by what we say to ourselves and what we say to other people.
• 17:52
  Jennifer Johnson: So don't say I can't.
• 17:54
  Jennifer Johnson: You know, I'm not good with technology or I'm not good with numbers, because you are what you what you right.
• 18:02
  Naomi Riley: Yes, absolutely what you ask right.
• 18:03
  Naomi Riley: Yes, absolutely.
• 18:05
  Naomi Riley: And you know, as we grow and evolve, you know there's more and more opportunities for us to, you know, learn different things and make sure that we're setting our, our legacy up to be protected right.
• 18:22
  Naomi Riley: So, as small business owners and people in finance are, you know, working toward our goal, we want to make sure that we are having that book that has our proper passwords, our sign-ons, I know right, but, god forbid, if something ever were to happen to us, we want to make sure that we're protecting all of our IP and everything that we have to make sure that whomever is going to take over our businesses, it flows very easily for them.
• 19:02
  Naomi Riley: I think that's it's.
• 19:03
  Naomi Riley: It's it's our adult report card, our you know everything that we are.
• 19:07
  Naomi Riley: We're working as it's kind of like our adult report card.
• 19:13
  Jennifer Johnson: People really, for you know, like I didn't think about it until that point, I I know that I keep my password somewhere, but then you go in, uh, just talking about passwords, for a second I'll go in and change it because, oh, I can't remember my password and I'm not near my book.
• 19:29
  Jennifer Johnson: So, password and then not remember to change it in the book, and then nobody can get into the account, and you know, and you can't.
• 19:41
  Naomi Riley: Yeah, you know, in the accounting world over here we work with a lot of small business owners and we do that, we've done here in house accounting, and so we will have to contact the business owners.
• 19:55
  Naomi Riley: Obviously, the banks are very, very hard to, you know, get into and when we have the flows that go through, we have to do this, hey, put in the code and all of this, and you know it is, it is time consuming, but it is a really really good way to protect yourself, your business and then any of your, you know, descendants that you know could potentially help take over your business.
• 20:17
  Naomi Riley: Another thing that I want to really emphasize, too, is making sure that you have enough insurance for down the road to cover all of your expenses as well, because business owners, you know we get so busy in our daily lives and making sure that you know everything comes and all the income comes in and all the expenses go out on a monthly basis.
• 20:43
  Naomi Riley: That is really important.
• 20:45
  Naomi Riley: But we want to make sure that you're line iteming everything and every cost that you have so that it's easy for someone, you know, looking at it from a bird's eye view and saying, oh, this is easy, this is a great company.
• 20:59
  Naomi Riley: They got it all together Right.
• 21:02
  Jennifer Johnson: Because it also makes you when you determine it's time to exit, to sell your business.
• 21:09
  Naomi Riley: Absolutely.
• 21:10
  Naomi Riley: You want to show those, those quarterly profit and losses, those yearly profit and losses and your tax returns are going to be important to you.
• 21:19
  Naomi Riley: Verified tax returns are huge with any business exit.
• 21:24
  Naomi Riley: Tax returns are huge with any business exit.
• 21:30
  Naomi Riley: So you definitely want to make sure that all of your checks and balances are right there in order, you know.
• 21:34
  Jennifer Johnson: Going back to the budgeting and spending bucket for a second, I did this, and I'm trying to do it once a quarter now, but I did it last year, kind of at the end of the year, and we took our bank statements for business and personal separately of course and went through and went what's this charge, what's this charge?
• 21:54
  Jennifer Johnson: And now, granted, I'm sure you're going to say you should probably do that monthly, but it's difficult.
• 22:01
  Naomi Riley: What's that?
• 22:01
  Naomi Riley: It's difficult, I understand.
• 22:04
  Jennifer Johnson: But I found all of these little things that I, oh I had subscribed to this or this or this.
• 22:10
  Jennifer Johnson: I don't even know what it is.
• 22:13
  Jennifer Johnson: I'm not using it.
• 22:15
  Jennifer Johnson: Why did I sign up for it?
• 22:17
  Jennifer Johnson: So you're basically kind of doing an audit of everything that you spent during the year and then going in and canceling all of those automatic subscriptions.
• 22:27
  Jennifer Johnson: Yes, oh my gosh, I can't tell you how much money.
• 22:31
  Jennifer Johnson: It's ridiculous.
• 22:33
  Jennifer Johnson: And now I'm trying to do it once a quarter because I see how much money I wasted on something that I didn't even know I had.
• 22:45
  Naomi Riley: Yes, it's very, very important that you're doing that because, again, I am the same.
• 22:50
  Naomi Riley: I am a guilty party of that one right there.
• 22:54
  Naomi Riley: The subscription yeah, definitely.
• 23:03
  Naomi Riley: Just doing that audit to make sure that you are not paying for something that you shouldn't be paying for anymore is huge.
• 23:07
  Naomi Riley: Another thing that you want to do is to protect your credit.
• 23:11
  Naomi Riley: I know that there's been a lot of fraud out there with so many individuals, and so I do have a lot of resources for individuals that have dealt with fraud issues.
• 23:23
  Naomi Riley: So make sure that you're checking your credit report at least once a quarter, and if you have any issues, I do have some resources that you can go to to, you know, check into those and dispute what you need to dispute.
• 23:40
  Jennifer Johnson: So onto the credit check thing is there like one site that's better than all of them for them to be able to go to, to do that on a quarterly basis, or maybe an automatic Every quarter?
• 23:51
  Jennifer Johnson: Yeah?
• 23:52
  Naomi Riley: Well, my free annual credit report is something that you're allowed to have every single year.
• 23:58
  Naomi Riley: Otherwise, transunion, equifax, those are really good at giving you your credit report.
• 24:05
  Naomi Riley: I think you get one credit report if you go to the actual website per year, so I would definitely look at that.
• 24:14
  Naomi Riley: I know that a lot of them now have subscriptions where they will flag saying, hey, your credit reports being monitored or is there an issue?
• 24:23
  Naomi Riley: You know something going on, and so that is that's really important Because, again, you know that's that's our adult report card.
• 24:31
  Naomi Riley: But I understand my myin-law was a victim to credit fraud and it takes a long time to get those things removed and it does impact your credit score.
• 24:43
  Jennifer Johnson: It certainly does.
• 24:44
  Jennifer Johnson: It does, and we don't think about that every day.
• 24:48
  Jennifer Johnson: It's not the typical crime that we think about, but it is every single day.
• 24:54
  Jennifer Johnson: I mean, we've recently had it at a post office near us, so it's, it's, it's crazy, for certain.
• 25:03
  Naomi Riley: Yeah, you know, and I I'm more than happy to leave you guys with a small business planner, that I use and I recommend it always helps to just really hone in and just say, okay, here is, you know, my quarterly expenses.
• 25:21
  Naomi Riley: It's got a lot of great ideas for you to, to really just like dive in and say, okay, here's what I need to do and here's, here's the things that I need to really focus in on.
• 25:32
  Naomi Riley: And then also, you know what can I eliminate from the budget or my expenses, you know to and also increase my income.
• 25:42
  Naomi Riley: We live in a in an age of new revolutions and new AI, so there's a lot of opportunities to make money online right now, wonderful.
• 25:56
  Jennifer Johnson: Is there anything that we've forgotten?
• 25:58
  Naomi Riley: No, I think that, yeah, I'm so happy to have been here and to share with you, you know, our thoughts on just preparing for this year and making sure that your your income and expenses and profit losses are all aligned.
• 26:15
  Jennifer Johnson: Awesome, and if they want to get your planner that you have or get in touch with you, how can they do so?
• 26:20
  Naomi Riley: Well, you can put it in the show notes.
• 26:22
  Naomi Riley: I'm giving everyone that listens to this one for free, and then they can go to NaomiLRileycom to learn more about who I am and what I do.
• 26:33
  Jennifer Johnson: Thank you so much for being on today and enlightening our listeners on how they can get their financial house in order for the new year.
• 26:39
  Jennifer Johnson: Appreciate it very much.
• 26:41
  Jennifer Johnson: Thank you so much, jennifer, and thank you to all my listeners.
• 26:45
  Jennifer Johnson: We'll see you again.