Latest / Wedding Pros who are ready to grow - with Becca Pountney / Where is all your money going? With Sally O'Gara
Transcript
- 0:00Get some sort of system to have all your figures in.
- 0:02There's loads of free things out there.
- 0:05You don't have to pay loads of money for software to kind of analyze all your figures.
- 0:09And yeah, if you really don't know what you're doing, just get someone to kind of do your bookkeeping and accounts for you.
- 0:17Don't, don't try and do it yourself to save a bit of money because at the end of the day, you're probably going to end up with a bigger tax bill than the money you tried to save.
- 0:26Getting someone to help you with it.
- 1:15I'm Becca Poutney, wedding business marketing expert, strategist, speaker and author.
- 1:20Over the last decade, I've combined my love of marketing with my knowledge of the wedding industry to help thousands of wedding pros and venues just like you learn new skills, strategize, get re energized and grow their businesses.
- 1:32Because after all, that's how you stay top of your game.
- 1:36Whether you're brand new into this industry or been here forever.
- 1:39I want to help.
- 1:40So grab a cup of tea or a cocktail, sit back and enjoy a brand new episode of my award winning podcast, Wedding Pros who Are Ready to to Grow.
- 1:48Let's get going with today's episode.
- 1:54Today I'm chatting with Sally O', Gara, the wedding business financial coach.
- 1:58Having spent 20 years as a chartered accountant, she's now on a new mission to help wedding business owners actually look at their numbers and get the control back.
- 2:06If you're someone that works incredibly hard but you don't feel like your bank account matches the workload, this episode is definitely for you.
- 2:14Sally, welcome to the podcast.
- 2:16Hi.
- 2:16Thanks for having me.
- 2:17It's an absolute pleasure.
- 2:18I'm thrilled to have you.
- 2:19And it's a topic that is incredibly important.
- 2:22I've been talking a lot with my clients recently about the importance of looking at numbers, and I know that's something you're really passionate about.
- 2:29So if people are listening, don't switch off because we're talking about money and numbers.
- 2:34Actually, this is one of the most important episodes you're going to listen to right now.
- 2:38So do stay listening and I promise we'll try and make it interesting for you.
- 2:42It's not going to be too complicated, but I want to change this narrative around everything just being fluffy and nice.
- 2:48And actually we need to look at the business side of things as well.
- 2:51But before we get into that, Sally, it would be helpful for people to get to know you a bit better because they may or May not have ever met you before.
- 2:58So just take me back.
- 3:00How or why did you become an accountant in the first place?
- 3:03Oh, gosh, yeah, so I became an accountant.
- 3:07I left straight from school when I was 18.
- 3:10And yeah, I just got.
- 3:12I started working for a firm and I did my accountancy qualifications over four years while I was still working.
- 3:20I worked at a firm for nine years before I had my kids.
- 3:24And then I went out on my own and started my own business doing a bit of accounts and tax, but really wanted to do the advisory stuff of helping businesses just have a better business, really.
- 3:35Okay, so you straight out of school, you went down the accountancy route, you did that for a long time.
- 3:40And then what happens to a lot of us is when we have children or start a family, things shift.
- 3:45And that's the point.
- 3:45When you went self employed in the first place, just walk us through that because that is a scary step and quite often we just breeze past it.
- 3:53Yeah, I just went self employed.
- 3:54But there'll be people listening that are on the brink of that.
- 3:57Maybe I stay in a job, maybe I go fully into my business and it is a bit scary.
- 4:02So just talk me through that time.
- 4:03Did it feel scary?
- 4:04Was it an obvious move?
- 4:06How did you make that decision at the time?
- 4:08I suppose it didn't feel scary.
- 4:10I thought, I'm gonna have way more freedom, you know, I can work when I need to between the kids, like once they're at school and stuff.
- 4:19But actually probably a couple of years in, I thought, this is really hard.
- 4:24I would probably be better off going back working for someone.
- 4:27But I was like, no, I just want that.
- 4:29I want that freedom to kind of work whenever I want.
- 4:33And yeah, I had to kind of make it work.
- 4:35That's an interesting perspective as well, that a couple of years in was when you had that realization.
- 4:40And actually I think that happens to the best of us.
- 4:43I go through a phase like once a year where I say to my husband, I'm just going to quit my business and go and work at Tesco's.
- 4:49It'll be so much easier.
- 4:50And then he says, you would hate it.
- 4:52You would hate to work for someone else because the longer you're self employed, the less employable we become.
- 4:57Because if we want to take the afternoon off like I'm doing today, we can take the afternoon off and there's no one to ask, we just do it.
- 5:04But on the other side of things, there is all that pressure and stress and decision making, which is the reason sometimes why we want to quit.
- 5:11Now, obviously you went out on your own in the first instance as a pure accountancy business doing tax and things like that.
- 5:18Whereas when I introduced you on the podcast, we talked about you working as a financial coach, doing more of the strategy side of things and specifically in the wedding industry.
- 5:27So I'd love to understand a bit more about that journey.
- 5:29How did you go from having just a pure accountancy firm to suddenly deciding to work in this wonderful wedding industry?
- 5:38Well, I knew when I started out I had to start just getting clients and the only clients I was going to get were the ones that wanted their accounts and tax done.
- 5:47So I had to start there.
- 5:48But I always wanted to do the advisory side and I think it was probably Covid.
- 5:54When Covid hit really how businesses were, so many businesses were in trouble, especially hospitality and wedding industry got hit really hard.
- 6:04And I just thought they work so hard.
- 6:06I just really want to go and help them.
- 6:09And so it kind of came from probably a year or two after Covid, I started kind of really focusing on wedding industry, talking to more people, finding out about their problems and what they needed.
- 6:20So, yeah, that's how I got into it.
- 6:21Amazing.
- 6:22And no regrets because it's a wonderful industry to work in.
- 6:25I love the wedding industry.
- 6:26I'm a big advocate for it and I think there's a huge need.
- 6:29I often talk about how a small business owners, wedding business owners are having to do all of the things and quite often they're very skilled at doing the thing that they're good at, taking the photos, creating the flowers,
- 6:41and they can do that in a way that I could never do that.
- 6:44But actually when it comes to, to the marketing side and the strategy side and the finance side, the things that we help them with, sometimes they do need a bit of help because we don't necessarily learn that stuff
- 6:53at school.
- 6:54We don't necessarily understand how to do it.
- 6:56And what we start as, this creative business suddenly becomes a monster.
- 7:01So I'd love to know if you see any commonalities specifically in our industry, if a wedding business comes to you, if they come to you for advice or if you're just chatting to them, maybe at a networking event,
- 7:11Are there some things that they have in common when it comes to their finances?
- 7:17I'd say most of them hate.
- 7:20Hate doing their finances.
- 7:22I think they're so creative dealing with numbers, I think they find quite difficult.
- 7:27So, yeah, I'd say that is definitely something I see nearly everyone say to me.
- 7:33Yeah, and I would have to agree with you There because a lot of businesses I speak to, if I'm doing one to one with them or working on their marketing, I'll start off with the questions around, okay, what's
- 7:42the business looking like financially?
- 7:44Have you got any budget for marketing?
- 7:46And then all of a sudden the eyes glaze over and they think, no, I don't know my numbers, I don't want to look at my numbers.
- 7:53And it's interesting, years back, about probably four or five years ago, I ran a session, an in person session at a retreat that was called is it a business or a Hobby?
- 8:03Which looking back is probably a bit on the nose, but that was the name of the session.
- 8:07And part of that session was just getting them to write down in a very basic way, not on an accountancy kind of way, because I'm not an accountant, but just a very basic way of getting them to write
- 8:16down what they were spending every and what they were making.
- 8:21And people cried like it ended up in this really kind of what I thought was going to be a very practical session actually ended in a real kind of almost a therapy session actually.
- 8:32When we start talking about the numbers, it does go a lot deeper.
- 8:35People, I think, yes, people don't like looking at them and we might blame being busy and we might blame like not enjoying it, but I think sometimes it's because we're scared of what we're going to see.
- 8:46Have you seen that?
- 8:47Yeah, I think people are really scared of what they're going to see and a lot of times it's not actually as scary as it, as you think it is.
- 8:57Yeah, it's sometimes scarier to not, not do it.
- 9:01No, I think now when you don't know, that's absolutely terrifying.
- 9:05When you do know, at least you've got a marker to go off.
- 9:08Now why do you think it is then?
- 9:10Because we see a lot of businesses in this industry who are fully booked or claim to be fully booked, and yet when you dig a bit deeper, they don't.
- 9:19They still don't feel financially secure.
- 9:22They still don't feel like they've got a control on their numbers, even though on the surface they're incredibly busy.
- 9:29So why, why is that?
- 9:30What, what causes that to happen?
- 9:32I think probably a couple of things.
- 9:34People confuse being busy with being profitable.
- 9:38So they think, well, I'm fully booked, I must be making money.
- 9:43But a lot of times if your services or your products are not actually profitable, it doesn't matter how busy you are.
- 9:53So yeah, I think that's one thing people confuse A lot.
- 9:56Another is people rely on a bank account to think, oh, I'm doing really well.
- 10:01I've got money in my bank account, so my business must be doing really well.
- 10:04But a lot of times that money is not actually yours.
- 10:08Some of it is like deposits for a wedding in a year's time that you shouldn't really be spending yet money for tax.
- 10:16That's probably one of the worst people.
- 10:20If you are profitable, you're going to be paying tax.
- 10:23And people just don't put money aside for that.
- 10:29So what we're saying then is that they're not managing their money correctly because they're just looking at the surface level.
- 10:36It's one problem.
- 10:37And then the other problem is that they're busy.
- 10:40They assume they're profitable.
- 10:41But being busy doesn't necessarily mean profit.
- 10:43So just let's strip it back to basics then.
- 10:46What do you actually mean when you say, well, you might be busy, but you're not profitable?
- 10:49Because they might be saying, well, yeah, I am.
- 10:51I'm getting this much money for my business.
- 10:53So what does, what do you actually mean?
- 10:55Give it to us in, like, basic language.
- 10:57Okay, so say we're looking at a service here.
- 11:01You want to know how much profit you're getting from that service, so what money you're getting in your sales, what all the costs are for that service.
- 11:10And people miss a lot of costs as well.
- 11:13So their time.
- 11:14People forget loads about how much time they spend.
- 11:17Travel.
- 11:18People don't include how much mileage they're doing to and from venues or picking up products from suppliers, things like that.
- 11:27That is, that will show you how much money you're actually making on a service.
- 11:30And a lot of people, you know, are not making enough money.
- 11:34And if you're busy, you're times in that by how many.
- 11:39If you're.
- 11:39If you're making no money and you're doing like 50 weddings a year, you're not.
- 11:43You're still not making enough money, are you?
- 11:45Okay, so first question then, because this is something people ask me all the time.
- 11:49Okay, so you say that I need to account for my time.
- 11:53How do I put a value on my time?
- 11:55How do I decide how much my time is worth?
- 11:58What am I, what am I putting against that?
- 12:00Am I going on minimum wage?
- 12:01Am I just plucking a number out the air?
- 12:02How do I decide how much my time is worth?
- 12:05Yeah, that is quite difficult, isn't it?
- 12:07I mean, definitely the minimum, I would say is minimum wage, but it should really be more than that.
- 12:14It Depends what sort of industry you're in, I suppose.
- 12:17But if you're a photographer or a florist or a wedding planner, maybe.
- 12:21But yeah, definitely minimum would be minimum wage.
- 12:25And shockingly, a lot of clients I speak to don't even pay themselves minimum wage or don't even set aside minimum wage.
- 12:32And what's really interesting, I'll tell you, the biggest thing that's shifted in my business to value my own time is having other team members and having to pay their time.
- 12:42Because I'm like, well, obviously I'm not going to send them to your event because I've got to pay for their time and you're not giving me any money.
- 12:47But for some reason, if I go, I forget that, well, why am I sending myself to this event?
- 12:52It's still costing me in time.
- 12:54And so actually, if you.
- 12:55You start to think, well, if I want to grow this business and I want to employ freelancers, I have to be able to pay someone for that time at that wedding, so that budget should be apportioned also if
- 13:05it's me going instead of the freelancer.
- 13:07So is that the way to look at it, to kind of think, right, well, if someone else is going, how much would I pay them to go and photograph that wedding on my behalf?
- 13:14Yeah, yeah, you could look at it that way.
- 13:16I mean, when I start working with people, I.
- 13:19I kind of look at their personal life and what kind of costs they have in their own life and kind of work backwards.
- 13:25So if you want to be paying off a mortgage or you want more holidays, pay for your kids to uni, like, what income do you need personally?
- 13:34And so then I would say start with that figure and then you work backwards then to price it into your.
- 13:41Into each of your weddings that you do.
- 13:44So looking at it holistically, not just the business cost, but the personal cost as well, what money do you actually want to earn?
- 13:50What do you need to earn in order to make.
- 13:52I think the other thing I see people making a mistake with when it comes to this as well is forgetting about overheads, as in, you know, the money that it costs you to run your business without even doing
- 14:02a single wedding.
- 14:04So people say, well, to go to a wedding, okay, I need to pay this for my time and this for my petrol and this for my camera to take the photos.
- 14:10But they forget about the website hosting and the email hosting and the training and the conferences and all of the other things that they're going to do.
- 14:18Yeah, yep.
- 14:19Yeah, definitely.
- 14:20All those sort of costs come down to your net.
- 14:22I think people probably confuse maybe like gross profit is the profit on the actual wedding.
- 14:29So the money you're getting in for the wedding and the cost of the wedding, then your net profit is after all your other sort of administrative costs.
- 14:38Yeah.
- 14:38Okay, so some of the mistakes then are around organizing your money.
- 14:44So some people are just looking at their bank account.
- 14:46And I've definitely been guilty of this in the past and thinking, yeah, I'm all right, I've got loads of money.
- 14:50But actually when I start thinking, okay, well this is for my tax and this is for my VAT return and this is for my freelancers and this is for this, you think, oh, actually I haven't really, I don't
- 14:59really have as much money as I thought I did.
- 15:01But if I operate on that just on what's in my bank account, I probably book more holidays than I can afford.
- 15:07So do you have any recommendations to your clients about how they organize their money or is it that they don't actually look at their bank account and instead they look on it?
- 15:17A different system.
- 15:18I would, I mean, don't ignore your bank account because that is still something you should look at.
- 15:23But I definitely would say get some sort of system to have all your figures in.
- 15:29There's loads of free things out there.
- 15:31You don't have to pay loads of money for software to kind of analyze all your figures.
- 15:35And yeah, if you really don't know what you're doing, just get someone to kind of do your bookkeeping and accounts for you.
- 15:43Don't, don't try and do it yourself to save a bit of money because at the end of the day you're probably going to end up with a bigger tax bill than the money you tried to save.
- 15:52Getting someone to help you with it.
- 15:54Yeah, absolutely.
- 15:55And what's it been game changing for me in my business when it comes to managing my money?
- 16:00Yes, I have an accountant and a bookkeeper and those, those great things.
- 16:04But day to day, I obviously don't hear, necessarily hear from them all of the time.
- 16:07And I want to know what's going on and feel in control of it.
- 16:10And the big thing that shifted for me was using my Starling business accounts and setting up spaces, setting up pots that were not showing physically in the main account, where I have direct debits going out all of the
- 16:23time.
- 16:23And it's probably not a perfect system, but I have direct debits always going out into my tax pot and into my Disney holiday pot and to my VAT pot and now, every time, incomes in 20% goes straight into
- 16:34the VAT pot.
- 16:34And so actually, if I do look at my current account, it's actually a lot lower than what's actually in there because everything has already been apportioned into all of these places.
- 16:43And that's been game changing for me because instead of just hoping in my head that there's money when it comes to tax return, I know that there's this pot and it's growing all the time and actually more often
- 16:53than not, and this is the better way for it to be, the tax bills are lower than the potential lot, which is good, because then I feel like, oh, I've got some bonus money that I can.
- 17:02I can bring back into my business.
- 17:04And yeah, so I don't know whether any of your clients use those spaces or whether you use them personally, but that's been really helpful for me.
- 17:10Yeah, yeah, there's a couple of people that use them and, yeah, they're really useful.
- 17:14Yeah.
- 17:14Now, one of the things that you say is that confidence comes with evidence, which I love this idea because what you're basically saying is you don't need to be afraid of looking at your money, because actually, once you
- 17:28look at your money, once you've got the evidence in front of you, you can be more confident.
- 17:32So just talk me through that.
- 17:34Explain to me what that looks like in practice.
- 17:36Yeah, I think a lot of wedding businesses probably wing it when it comes to making decisions.
- 17:43And if you've got those numbers in front of you, you can make so many more decisions, you're more in control.
- 17:50And that just builds your confidence, doesn't it, that you know they've got a viable business, that you can spend the money that you wanted on upgrading something.
- 18:00Yeah, that's.
- 18:00That's kind of what I mean by that.
- 18:02Now, what about the people that go the other way?
- 18:04Because I think there's some people that are out of control of their money, but there's also other people that are so scared to not have the money that they actually just save all of the money and never pay
- 18:15themselves anything because they're afraid that if they pay themselves something, they might need that money for something later on.
- 18:23So I don't know if that's a phenomena you've seen.
- 18:25I've definitely seen in businesses I've worked with where they say, but if I start paying myself that money, what if I need that money later on down the line?
- 18:33What I would say there is.
- 18:35This probably sounds a bit boring, but actually doing a budget for the next 12 months doesn't have to be complicated.
- 18:42It could be like Google Sheets or Excel.
- 18:46Just work out what your kind of average income is, what your average costs are, and then you're gonna know that you're gonna have enough money to pay yourself.
- 18:55You know, obviously you're gonna have a few things come up here and there, but I'd say, yeah, start is something like that.
- 19:01It's not.
- 19:02It's not hard to do.
- 19:03Yeah.
- 19:03And.
- 19:03And start somewhere again.
- 19:05A lot of clients I meet, I'm.
- 19:06They've never paid themselves anything, so they might do the thing.
- 19:10I used to call it the, the perfume buying.
- 19:13So, you know, every now and again they work really hard and going to buy myself some perfume out of my business account to reward myself, as if that's a salary.
- 19:21But they're never actually paying themselves anything properly.
- 19:24They're just buying the odd treat here and there.
- 19:27And I always say to them, just start somewhere.
- 19:29Even if you start a little direct debit of £50amonth out of your account, that goes into your personal account for your personal spending, at least you're starting somewhere.
- 19:39And then increase that because otherwise you're never going to feel confident to pay yourself.
- 19:44Yeah, yeah, I would say, yeah, like you say, start just paying an amount each month, the same day each month.
- 19:51Yeah.
- 19:52And then increase it from there.
- 19:53Because people are working so hard.
- 19:55They're not.
- 19:55You'd be better off going to work for someone else.
- 19:59I know, and I think that.
- 20:00But I think that's the big problem.
- 20:01Right.
- 20:02That's why people are scared to look at it, because they don't want to go and work for someone else and they want it to be a success.
- 20:08And they're scared that if they sit down and look at the numbers and the numbers tell them they'd be better off somewhere else, that, that.
- 20:14That means they failed in some way, that.
- 20:16That means that they haven't done a good job.
- 20:19But I think, I guess our job today is to encourage people that, well, once you know that information, you can do something about it.
- 20:27It doesn't have to be the end, it could be the beginning.
- 20:31Yeah, yeah, definitely.
- 20:32Okay, so let's get practical then, because if it is going to be the beginning, if there are people listening, thinking, oh, my goodness me, I'm terrified.
- 20:40The thought of this terrifies me.
- 20:42I don't want to feel like I failed.
- 20:43I don't want to feel like I should go and get a job at Tesco's and they want to get this sorted.
- 20:47I want to give them Some practical guidance.
- 20:49So let's start off with the first numbers.
- 20:53So if someone is basically tracking nothing, what are the first numbers you want them to be able to know in their business?
- 21:00What should they actually be looking at on a regular basis?
- 21:04So I would say definitely turnover.
- 21:07I think a lot of wedding businesses know what their sales are, so definitely.
- 21:12Turnover, just to be clear.
- 21:13So turnover is everything that comes into the business?
- 21:16Yeah, yeah.
- 21:19Then profit.
- 21:21So I would say work out your profit on each wedding that you do.
- 21:26So what is your turnover, your sales for that wedding, and what are all the costs that you incurred to.
- 21:32For that wedding to go ahead?
- 21:34That is your profit.
- 21:35That is really key because some people offer different services and I would then kind of concentrate on the ones that are more profitable.
- 21:44Some people just sort of build time in, don't they, with bits and pieces, you know, if they're not profitable, you could have taken on something that was.
- 21:53So that is really key if you're doing different sort of services to see which ones are the most profitable.
- 21:59Just to stop on that one, because I want to break this down really basically for people, so that people don't feel overwhelmed.
- 22:04So, okay, so they've worked out everything that's coming into their business.
- 22:07They've worked out the turnover, now they're looking at the profit.
- 22:09So let's say, for example, let's keep the numbers simple.
- 22:13They are a celebrant and they are going out to a wedding next week and they're being paid £500.
- 22:21So how are we working out the profit that they're making on that £500?
- 22:25Are we taking into account all the overheads or not at this point?
- 22:28Are we just looking at the costs associated with that particular wedding?
- 22:32Yeah, so just the costs with that wedding, no overhead.
- 22:35Okay, so.
- 22:36So it's £500 and we're saying, right, well, it's going to cost me £50 in petrol, so that's now £450.
- 22:44It's going to cost us £50 in materials to print out our stuff.
- 22:48Okay, so now that's another £50 off.
- 22:50So now we're at £400.
- 22:52Are we then taking into account all of the time we've spent working on that wedding?
- 22:56I would, yeah, in that bit.
- 22:58Yeah.
- 22:58I would take into account all your time.
- 23:00Yeah.
- 23:01Okay, so let's say the wedding itself is an hour and we've got to be there three hours.
- 23:06So we then take off three hours of our time.
- 23:07But then presumably we also need to take off the time that's spent in Preparation on discovery calls, in writing, the ceremony, and all of that kind of thing.
- 23:15Yep.
- 23:16And that's generally when people realize they've not made any money.
- 23:21Okay, so we take all of that off, and then we're left with a number.
- 23:26And that number is the first number that we're looking at for profit for that wedding.
- 23:31And so then what we're doing is looking at a percentage potentially.
- 23:34So say we say the wedding's 500 and maybe we're left and we've say, okay, well, we had 10% profit from that service.
- 23:41We're then doing the same for all our services.
- 23:43So we can see which of the services give us the biggest percentage of profit.
- 23:47Yep, yep.
- 23:48And then I would then double down on those ones and lose our bonds.
- 23:53Okay, perfect.
- 23:54So what's interesting about that is, and I've, again, I've done this in kind of a bigger picture.
- 23:59Strategy sessions with clients is often the thing they think is the biggest profit is actually the thing with the smallest profit and vice versa.
- 24:06And they'll say, oh, I, I, I don't do this.
- 24:09It doesn't make me anything.
- 24:10But actually, when you look at it in the way we've just described, that's actually making them a lot more percentage of profit than some of the things that feel like they're making them more money.
- 24:19But once you've done all of the math, it takes it off.
- 24:21Now, I guess it's not fair to say that they're not making any money because the, the money that we set aside in that for their time, technically they could be paying that to themselves.
- 24:32So they are making that.
- 24:33They might not be making profit in the business, but it's not that they're not making any money for themselves.
- 24:38Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
- 24:40Okay, fine.
- 24:41So that's the first two steps there.
- 24:43So we've worked out what's our turnover?
- 24:45We've worked out, okay, let's look at all of our services and work out the percentage of profit so we can see which of these services is worth spending more time on.
- 24:53Which are the services either we need to get rid of or we need to put the price up on.
- 24:58Because that's the alternative, isn't it?
- 25:00We can go, oh, wait a minute, I should charge more for that so that I make more profit and I have a profit percentage that's consistent across the board.
- 25:07Okay, so now we've got all those numbers, at what point do we then throw in the overheads?
- 25:11Because that feels a bit scary.
- 25:13Yeah, so that's when I would go and look at all your overheads.
- 25:16So I suppose the simplest way is actually to look at your bank account and go, most things are monthly now, aren't they?
- 25:23So look at your last month and write down, or on a spreadsheet, write down all of your monthly costs.
- 25:29And then if you've got any annual ones, maybe stuff like insurance, things like that, then take them and divide them by 12 to work out your average kind of monthly costs.
- 25:39Okay, so then we should have a number for our monthly turnover.
- 25:43So that's.
- 25:44That's anything before we've even booked a wedding.
- 25:47Right.
- 25:47So that's web hosting, email addresses, insurance costs, associations, training, and all of the above.
- 25:56Right.
- 25:56That's.
- 25:57What if we want to invest in new stock things that we want to hire out, new cameras, would that count in our turnover costs?
- 26:03Some of them.
- 26:04Stuff like equipment, maybe not.
- 26:07You could.
- 26:08You could capitalize that and that's something different.
- 26:11But we won't go too in depth into that.
- 26:13But let's.
- 26:14Okay, so we've worked out all of our turnover.
- 26:16So now we know.
- 26:17We know our turnover, we know our profits and our percentages.
- 26:20Now we've worked out all of our overhead costs and we've got a figure for each month.
- 26:25So now how do we work out the, like, the combination between all of them and what we're actually left with?
- 26:32Okay, so, so we've got the turnover and we've got the cost of that wedding, which gives you your gross profit, which we said before.
- 26:39And then you're going to take up all of your costs and then you're going to come down to your net profit.
- 26:45Okay.
- 26:45And so whatever is at the bottom of that is basically what profit you're making in your business on a monthly basis.
- 26:52So say we had three weddings in a month at £500 and we worked out that each of them was making us £100 profit.
- 26:59That leaves us with £300 profit.
- 27:02And then if we've got £200 of expenses to go out of that, then actually we've only made.
- 27:09We've got £100 left at the end of the month, Correct?
- 27:12Yep.
- 27:13Okay, lots of maths going on on the podcast, but I think it's really important that we do make it simple because I don't want people going, oh, I don't understand gross profit and net profit.
- 27:23I'm out of here.
- 27:24Because actually there is some basic maths that everyone can be doing to work this stuff out.
- 27:29So to answer my initial question, the numbers, they should be looking at number one.
- 27:34Is turnover.
- 27:35That is how much money they have coming into the business in a month.
- 27:39So they could start doing this.
- 27:41Looking back at May, so look at May or June and choose a month and go, right, how much money came into my business?
- 27:48Write that next to turnover, then do your working out.
- 27:51Well, what was the, the service and what was the profit on that particular service you sold?
- 27:56Then work out your overheads.
- 27:58And once you've done all of that, you should have a number at the bottom and that will tell you whether or not your business, business is making profits.
- 28:05Now, if they do this maths and they come out with a negative number, what, what do we do?
- 28:13So it's probably a couple of things.
- 28:14One you said before was look at your prices that you're charging because, I mean, in the last two years, costs have gone up massively.
- 28:23And I know a lot of people are just too scared to put up their prices because they think, oh, no one's gonna pay, no one's gonna pay them.
- 28:31But if your costs are going up, you, you have to put your prices up.
- 28:34You can't, you can't run your business at a loss.
- 28:37So that is something.
- 28:39Look at first pricing, then obviously look at your costs then.
- 28:43Because a lot of people spend money on things that they're not actually using.
- 28:50A lot of subscriptions, you know, just repeat, don't you start it.
- 28:54Don't really look.
- 28:55Probably paying for like, like two or three things that, when maybe they only need one.
- 29:01So, yeah, saying go through your bank account, go, do I actually need to be paying these things?
- 29:07Yeah, that's where I would, that's where I would start.
- 29:09Okay, so if you're, if you've done this numbers, and it's looking scary, the two things to start looking at is, number one, should I put my prices up or do I need to sell more stuff so that I
- 29:18get more turnover coming in?
- 29:20And secondly, can I decrease my costs?
- 29:23Am I spending more than I'm earning?
- 29:25Therefore, do I need to, to get rid of it?
- 29:27Now the other thing we haven't factored into my calculation, I've just realized is this tax pot.
- 29:32So we talked about the tax and how people don't account for the tax.
- 29:35And in all my little calculations there, I didn't do anything to account for the tax.
- 29:39So when we're doing this like monthly review, what should we be doing?
- 29:44How should we be sorting out that tax money as well?
- 29:46So if we go back to the figures we had where we ended up with 100 pound of net profit, that is what you would pay your tax on, obviously it would depend if you're limited company or self employed,
- 30:01but I'd say between sort of 20 to 25%.
- 30:05But you know, it would depend on circumstances.
- 30:08So I would put that much aside because, yeah, a lot of people come around to pay their tax and they have spent all the money.
- 30:17Yes, exactly.
- 30:18Okay, so now our hundred pounds has got worse because we've now got to go and put at least £20 of that £100 into our tax pot.
- 30:25Gone away, and we're left with it.
- 30:27But you know, we, it's joking aside, but I think this is the reality for a lot of people listening and that's why we need to, to really look at these numbers.
- 30:34And I would encourage people to spend some time thinking about this.
- 30:37I know it's scary, but when you see the numbers in front of you, exactly as we said earlier, confidence comes with evidence.
- 30:44Once you can see it, it will give you the confidence to put your prices up because you'll realize, oh, wait a minute, I am working all the hours of the day and all I have left to show for
- 30:52at the end of a month is £80.
- 30:54And I could have earned £80 by doing a paper route.
- 30:58And I think that's the reality of it, isn't it?
- 31:01And that's what then gives you the confidence to go, no, I need to charge more or I need to be more visible on my social media, I need to do more marketing, I need to do all these things.
- 31:10Or on the flip side, sometimes I think people do these numbers and then the result is much better than they thought it was going to be because they're so scared it's going to be bad, they haven't done it.
- 31:18And actually once you do this, you realize, oh, wait a minute, actually I'm walking away with quite a lot of profit in my business and I'm quite happy with that.
- 31:27So I think the thing is they need to actually just do it.
- 31:30So how often then should we be looking at this stuff?
- 31:34Should we be doing it on a weekly basis, A monthly basis?
- 31:37A quarterly basis?
- 31:38A yearly basis?
- 31:39I would say minimum monthly, yeah, you can do it weekly if you really want, but I would say definitely monthly.
- 31:48You could stretch it quarterly, but I think three months is quite a long time.
- 31:54Okay, so getting into a habit basically of sitting down on a monthly basis.
- 31:58And again, this is something I've implemented in my own business and it's made a big difference is I do what my friend Taylor from NG calls KPI day and it's on the first of the month where I go
- 32:07through all my key performance indicators, which basically means I have spreadsheets and I fill in everything from how many Instagram followers I've got got to my percentage of costs for that month and my profit and all of those
- 32:17things.
- 32:18And it's been game changing because I can suddenly see, oh, this has worked really well for me.
- 32:23Oh, my website visits were down and also my profit was down, therefore maybe there's a correlation.
- 32:28And suddenly you've got all of this picture of stuff that you didn't know before that gives you the answers.
- 32:34So getting into that habit and having a little system for yourself of sitting down and looking at it once a month, I think it's really important because I do think a lot of people.
- 32:43And again, I've been trying to change the narrative on and telling people, do your tax return in May or June, don't wait till December.
- 32:50But people leave it so long that then they haven't got time to find out the money.
- 32:55They're doing it too late.
- 32:56They're looking at.
- 32:57They're looking back rather than being in control.
- 33:00Yeah, I mean, you're looking.
- 33:01If you're doing it in, in January and your year end is like March, like nine months has gone since then.
- 33:08So that is a long time.
- 33:10And that.
- 33:11And those figures then are not where you are today.
- 33:14You can't rely on them as today's because.
- 33:16Yeah, it's just too far.
- 33:18Too far gone.
- 33:19Exactly.
- 33:20So we're talking about looking back, but I also think to be successful, and I'm sure you work on this with your clients as well, we also kind of need to look forward as well as backwards.
- 33:29So I guess step one is getting control of where we're at now and being able to report on it.
- 33:34But you mentioned earlier about budgeting and looking forward.
- 33:38So what should we be thinking about if we're looking forward, projecting for the next three months?
- 33:43Because if we were working in a proper business, as I call it, you know, in a big corporation, I guarantee they've got financial officers doing budgets and setting forecasts and all of these kind of scary words.
- 33:55But what does it actually look like in practice for us as small business owners?
- 33:59Yeah.
- 33:59So I think you can take that monthly figure and once you've like done, say three months, you can then to use that to predict, say the next three months, go, look, this is roughly.
- 34:12I know it's seasonal, so it does sort of vary.
- 34:16But just use that as an average going forward.
- 34:20These three months were like this.
- 34:21This is roughly what the next three months are going to be like.
- 34:24And then kind of build out.
- 34:26I'd say 12 months is a really good thing to try and build out.
- 34:29And then you can see.
- 34:32I mean, ideally you'd want to kind of track your budgets to your actuals, but yeah, there you can sort of see, am I going to be making some money in the next 12 months?
- 34:43Okay.
- 34:43And so in that, would you be planning for things like new equipment costs, planning for things like how much you need for, I don't know, if you want to go on a conference or do some training or, you
- 34:54know, your bills.
- 34:54You'd put all of that into your projected budget?
- 34:58Yeah, I would, yeah.
- 35:00And I think people are afraid of this because it feels sometimes like guesswork, but I guess it isn't guesswork entirely, but it partly is.
- 35:07And it's okay if we're not completely accurate.
- 35:09Is it better to just have something to start with?
- 35:11Yeah, I think it's best to have something to start with.
- 35:14And then as you're going along, if things change, then don't leave it as it is.
- 35:20If something's increased, then go and change it.
- 35:23You know, it's a moving sort of document that you.
- 35:26You sort of tweak all the time.
- 35:28Okay, so to recap, then, if we want to be confident on our business numbers, really, it's two things we need to, number one, track all those numbers we talked about and do it on a monthly basis, but also
- 35:40at least once a year, and then review it regularly, even quarterly, if once a year is too much.
- 35:45We should be also projecting forecasting, budgeting and planning.
- 35:49And you know what's interesting about that, again, is it makes sense, thinks it's not.
- 35:53I think we see finance as just this tiny part of our business.
- 35:57But what I want to encourage people, and I'm sure you do as well, is actually it's the whole business.
- 36:01So when someone comes to me and they want help with something, they want some training, for example, and they need to know whether they've got the budget to pay for that or not, or if they want to take
- 36:12a course, they need to know if they've got the budget to pay for that rather than it just popping up on Instagram and them deciding to spend a thousand pounds on it.
- 36:18Well, do you have a thousand pound in your training budget?
- 36:20And the same with your marketing.
- 36:21People say to me, oh, I want to do something different with my marketing.
- 36:24So I'll say, what's your marketing budget?
- 36:26I don't have One.
- 36:28Okay, well, you know, we could spend a million pounds on marketing your business, we could spend a billion pounds on marketing your business, or we could spend 100 pound on marketing your business.
- 36:36But you need to know how much you're willing to spend on marketing your business in order to make the profit you want.
- 36:43Yeah, yeah.
- 36:45Okay.
- 36:45So we're changing the narrative.
- 36:47We need to make sure that we are budgeting better and also looking back better.
- 36:52But you brought up an interesting point and I want to hear more on your thoughts on this.
- 36:56And it is, it's not unique to the wedding industry, but it's definitely something that we see a lot.
- 37:01And I think it's that difference between cash flow and profit.
- 37:06Because we know that in the summer months, sometimes we feel rich as wedding business owners because it's when all of our final deposits come in and we've suddenly got all of this money and then we get to November,
- 37:16December, January, February, and we can't afford to eat and we can't afford to pay our tax bills because we are a very seasonal business.
- 37:23And a lot of the money comes in at certain times, times of year.
- 37:27So how do we go about managing that side of things?
- 37:31Yeah, that's probably a little bit more complicated because I would say you should also have like a cash flow forecast of what cash is coming in and out, because that is not going to be the same as.
- 37:45I mean, obviously you're still going to have your money coming in and going out, but there's going to be other things in the cash flow that are not in, like your profit and loss account.
- 37:53So things like your tax, your tax bill, your vat, your deposits, those sort of things aren't in the profit and loss.
- 38:01So, yeah, ideally building out a cash flow, but that can be probably a bit too much for some people.
- 38:08Well, we won't go into detail, but I do think, I do think everyone should be thinking about it though, because, you know, if, if you get, if, you know, lots of money's coming in in August and no money
- 38:17is coming in in December.
- 38:19Well, we need to make sure we keep some of that August money to pay our bills in December.
- 38:23Because that's how businesses go under.
- 38:25Right?
- 38:26Yeah.
- 38:27I mean, businesses can still be profitable, but they run out of cash.
- 38:32Yeah, I see that quite a lot.
- 38:35Or people are having to put their own money in the business at a time of year where they don't want to.
- 38:40Who wants to put money in their business at like Christmas time and January?
- 38:44January when your tax bills due?
- 38:46That's I see that a lot and yeah, it's awful.
- 38:50But the good thing is, in some ways in our industry is quite often people are booking us ahead so we be able to do some kind of basic cash flow ahead of time.
- 38:59Because if someone books us now for next summer, we should know, as long as that continues to go ahead, how much projected cash we're going to go get in next summer.
- 39:09In some ways more than a business like, I don't know, the fish and chip shop down the road because they don't know whether any customers are coming in tomorrow until they walk in the door.
- 39:17Whereas we do know or at least have an idea that that money, money's coming.
- 39:22So I guess we need to find a way to, to look at that across the year and work out what portion of that needs to be split out for other months of the year.
- 39:30Yeah, I mean, I suppose you could go back to your pots.
- 39:33Thing that we were talking about is if you've got deposits coming in and you're not using them yet is to put them aside, you can't spend that yet because that is for when that's due to be spent next
- 39:44year.
- 39:44So that is a good idea to try.
- 39:47So basically then what we're saying is when someone pays in a deposit for the wedding, we shouldn't be spending that now.
- 39:53We should be putting that to the side until that wedding's happened.
- 39:57Not happened.
- 39:58I would say put it aside until you need to start paying costs for that wedding, which, you know, you might have some now, but I'd have thought most of them are going to be nearer the time of the
- 40:09wedding.
- 40:09So, yeah, don't use that cash.
- 40:14And it's interesting, isn't it, because I don't actually know the limit on pots and spaces in something like Starling.
- 40:20I know Monzo do them as well, but in some ways you could almost, if you, if it allowed you to, you could have a pot for every single wedding.
- 40:26Especially if you're only not doing many weddings.
- 40:28If you're doing 10 a year, for example, you could have a pot for all those weddings and then you've got all of the money organized and you know where to spend it from and you're not scrabbling around looking
- 40:36for that money that you spent on a new computer that you were supposed to spend on cake ingredients for the wedding cake.
- 40:41And we laugh about it, but I think this is the reality that a lot of people are doing and that's why it's funny, because it's, it's scary and funny at the same time.
- 40:49Yeah, yeah, it is scary.
- 40:51Yeah.
- 40:51Because people just see, oh, I've got, especially this time of year, oh, I've got a few grand in my bank account.
- 40:55Oh, yeah, you can go and buy that new computer, which they may need,.
- 41:00But they should have budgeted for and, and thought about it.
- 41:03And actually, you know, when you're conservative and this is how I've shifted my whole mindset around the tax I said earlier, sometimes, sometimes it pays back because it is much better to get to your tax bill and feel
- 41:15like you've got money coming back to you that you can spend on something nice than to get to your tax bill and think, oh, my goodness me, I cannot pay this.
- 41:23I don't know how I'm going to pay it.
- 41:24And so, you know, putting in the work in early and being conservative and maybe putting a bit more aside than you think you need to, knowing that at a certain date that will then free up and that does
- 41:34become profit is.
- 41:35It's exciting.
- 41:36It makes your tax bill a lot more fun than worrying about it.
- 41:40And I think that's been the biggest shift for me.
- 41:41Get in control of my numbers means I'm not scared of the VAT bill, I'm not scared of the tax bill.
- 41:47I'm not scared of those costs coming out because I know that I've thought it through and I know that I've got the money aside for it.
- 41:54And I think that's, you know, at the very least, after listening to this conversation, I hope that people at least start to put that money aside, either physically in a space or at least as my dad used to
- 42:06do on a spreadsheet.
- 42:07He used to just have that running total.
- 42:09So he knew that, that, that needed to be in his account at all times because he wasn't lucky enough to be running a business in the age of spaces and digital bank accounts like I am.
- 42:19But yes, I always remember his VAT spreadsheet because he would always say, if my VAT bill ends up being lower than I expect, then we'll be able to go on holiday.
- 42:29And actually looking back, I think, well, he probably set some good foundations for me, even though I didn't know it as a child, just by talking to me about those things and showing me his spreadsheets.
- 42:39And that's why I have my little Disney that just continues to get topped up every single month ready so that when I'm ready to go on my Disney holiday, I've got the money set aside for it.
- 42:49Okay.
- 42:50One of the other things you Talk about is money leaks.
- 42:52So money leaking out of our business.
- 42:55And I know that's one of the things you try and fix for clients.
- 42:57So what are some of the common money leaks?
- 43:00Where are people losing money in their business?
- 43:03Definitely underpricing.
- 43:05That is a massive money leak.
- 43:07Really?
- 43:07Really.
- 43:08Because a lot of people are picking prices from someone else's Instagram.
- 43:15They're looking at other people that are in their kind of space and going, oh, they're charging that.
- 43:21I can't charge any more than that.
- 43:22But, you know, you don't know if they're profitable, if they're making money.
- 43:26You've just got to look at your own figures.
- 43:28So, yeah, underpricing, massive, massive sort of leap of money and probably lack of sort of financial structure.
- 43:38Not having a plan as well.
- 43:39You know, if you're just, like we said, oh, just going to go buy a computer, if you've not, if you've not worked out, have you got the budget?
- 43:47Have you got the budget for that, then, you know, you're, you're losing money there.
- 43:52So some of the other areas we talked about was before, some of the costs, you know, you're paying, you're paying subscriptions that you don't actually need.
- 43:59Yeah.
- 44:00And I think that that's a big one as well, like reviewing your subscriptions.
- 44:03But it's interesting because also I think sometimes when we, these conversations, people will then hear this and go, right, I need to cut all my subscriptions.
- 44:11And that's not necessarily what we're saying.
- 44:15So, you know, I, I joke about it sometimes with things like, so I have a membership and people are in the membership, they're paying every month.
- 44:22And sometimes they'll come to me and they'll say, business is down, I'm quitting my membership.
- 44:25Which is absolutely fine.
- 44:26But sometimes I think, well, that might be the time you need it the most.
- 44:29Like you, you actually need the help now to get that back.
- 44:32And so, so I kind of want people to reframe that and think, okay, well, if I keep that membership or I keep that piece of software and it costs me this much money, how am I going to utilize
- 44:43that to make either the time or the money back?
- 44:46Rather than I need to cut everything back and spend nothing, because then people cut their marketing budgets, they cut their budgets for everything, and then suddenly their business starts to fail because they're not doing all of the things
- 44:57they need to.
- 44:58So how do we make that differentiation between knowing what to cut and what not to cut up?
- 45:03Yeah, that is quite.
- 45:04Yeah, it's a good one, isn't it?
- 45:05Yeah.
- 45:06I mean I wouldn't cut people as well cut like accounting fees and get in the help from sort of coaches and stuff like that.
- 45:15But a lot of times spending that money, you're going to make more money than, than what you've spent.
- 45:21So yeah, be realistic, don't, don't cut things just to save money, you know, cut things that you are not using.
- 45:29Yeah.
- 45:29And I think, and I think when you get control of your numbers and kind of the whole theme of this convers, once you get control of those numbers, you can make better decisions.
- 45:37So you're not just thinking, help, I need an extra 100 pound a year so I'm going to cut my accountant fee for that month.
- 45:43Right.
- 45:44That's a snap decision.
- 45:45Whereas actually when we're in control of it, we can look at it and go, right, this year I've spent X amount on I don't know, this piece of software.
- 45:53If I stop paying for that, how much more time would it cost me to do that task?
- 46:00And therefore is it actually end up costing me more in time than I, I'm spending on it?
- 46:05If I cut the accountancy fee, how much money am I actually going to now spend on doing my tax return?
- 46:11Maybe getting it wrong, maybe not doing it correctly, maybe, you know, not saving as much as I could or not understanding it.
- 46:18And so we need to make better decisions.
- 46:20Whereas actually if you look at something, I don't know, a Netflix subscription you're paying for and you haven't turned on Netflix for the last six months, well, let's get rid of it.
- 46:28Or you know, again, people paying for things when that is covered somewhere else.
- 46:33So I've heard of people where they're paying for a credit card every, every month which includes travel insurance and they don't realize then they're paying for their travel insurance on top.
- 46:40So just getting control of your numbers, understanding it and then making wise decisions rather than just split second, let's just cut everything and cut back.
- 46:49Yeah.
- 46:51Okay Sally, before I let you go, you obviously help people with this.
- 46:56This is the whole point of you starting this side of your business is because you are passionate about helping people get control of their finances.
- 47:02And I know that you have a bit of a blueprint that you look at with clients with three different milestones.
- 47:08Do you want to just briefly walk me through that, what, what that is and what it looks like?
- 47:13Yeah, so it's a 12, like a 12 month program, a one on one kind of coaching and we look at three milestones, which is gaining clarity, building confidence and driving growth.
- 47:25And yeah, we work on that one to one over the 12 months.
- 47:29I do some.
- 47:31I was just going to say what, what do each of those milestones Just give us an overview so, you know, get clarity.
- 47:36What, what are we doing in that?
- 47:38What are we getting clarity.
- 47:39So I think a lot, I said before, a lot of businesses have like weak financial foundations and that the clarity piece is like getting really clear on where you kind of want your business to go, what you want
- 47:51to purse, what you want personally in your life, how your business is going to achieve that.
- 47:56So a lot of that is like vision, mission, getting your goals for your business and looking at the numbers, which we've obviously talked about.
- 48:03So that's kind of the gaining clarity.
- 48:05The building confidence is, is then being confident that you understand your numbers and how it's going to help you then grow your business.
- 48:13So increase your profits and increase the amount of cash you have in your business.
- 48:18Okay.
- 48:18So you're basically looking at it holistically.
- 48:21You're looking at the whole picture across a year and what are the outcomes?
- 48:25Like what, what would you hope that people achieve when they've worked on this stuff?
- 48:29Well, yeah, definitely more in control of your business.
- 48:32Business.
- 48:34I like to try and get people to achieve 20% profit growth, which, you know, I think is achievable.
- 48:42I can't think of other things at the moment.
- 48:45Well, I, I would say 20% profit growth for most people is probably a good milestone to be thinking about because if we can achieve 20% profit growth, then, then we, then we've done well, especially if we're starting at
- 48:57negative or very low profit growth.
- 49:00So I think the big message from today's episode is to not find this stuff scary and to get clarity to look at the numbers to stop being afraid of it.
- 49:11And if that means you need to.
- 49:13Again, I'm an advocate.
- 49:14I talk about this a lot of just booking time in your diary and going and sitting in a coffee shop or a separate space to do something, some deep diving on strategy or on numbers, and just sit down
- 49:24and take your notebook and just go and create some spreadsheets and work on this.
- 49:29And if you don't feel, feel confident to do it alone, that's when you enlist some help or pay someone to help you with it as well.
- 49:36Sally, it's been such an interesting conversation.
- 49:39I know it's one that's uncomfortable for a lot of people, but I think it's important that we start Talking about this stuff and that we say, I guess I don't want people to walk away feeling any sense of
- 49:48shame about their numbers either.
- 49:50Like if you are someone listening to this and you're thinking, my numbers are a mess, I'm not making any profit, that's okay.
- 49:57Sally's mission here is to help you do better.
- 50:00Not to make you feel uncomfortable, but actually sometimes in that discomfort it is the driver to make us realize we need to, we need to do something about this.
- 50:09Now you have a free resource.
- 50:10Do you want to just tell us a bit about that and I'll make sure I link to it in the show notes.
- 50:14Yeah, it's called where is the money going?
- 50:17And it's a financial guide to get more in control of your business.
- 50:22Pay yourself properly and yeah, kind of really build, build your life, really build from your business business.
- 50:31Fantastic.
- 50:31I will put the link to that in the show notes.
- 50:33So if you are interested in that or if you've ever asked yourself that question, which I think we all have, where is the money going?
- 50:40Then that's the resource you need to go and get and, and work through it.
- 50:43Even if it's booking that time in the coffee shop, booking some time with Sally, like have a look at it and get control.
- 50:49Do not get to January and have to pay your tax bill and have a stress.
- 50:53That's not what any of us want for you.
- 50:55Sally, I always have my podcast with the same question and it's this one.
- 50:58What's one thing you personally wish you'd known sooner in your own business?
- 51:04I think for me was like getting help is not a failure.
- 51:08Like being in business is lonely.
- 51:12And I think getting other people to help you, I mean, I've done like one on one coaching with people, group coaching.
- 51:19I'm still in a group program and I think I've progressed far more being in those programs than I would have trying to work it all out on my own.
- 51:28Yeah, absolutely.
- 51:29And like you said, it's not something to feel like you failed.
- 51:32If anything, the people who do the best are the people that learn from the best and the people that go faster are the people that learn from other people's mistakes and don't make them themselves.
- 51:41And yeah, I think that's definitely one for us all to learn from.
- 51:44Sally, if people want to find out more about you, about your business, where are the best places for them to.
- 51:48Find you, you can go on LinkedIn, Sally Agara and, and Instagram.
- 51:54I think it's Sallyogara.
- 51:57Amazing.
- 51:57And again, I will make sure I put all of the links in the show notes so people can go and find you there.
- 52:03Sally, thank you so much for being so open and ready to talk about money with us.
- 52:08All is much appreciated and I'm sure we will speak again soon.
- 52:12Okay, thanks for having me.
- 52:13Such an interesting conversation.
- 52:15And I know for some of you you're going to be panicking and thinking I don't know my numbers.
- 52:19And I just want to reiterate to you one more time, it's okay.
- 52:22But just like we said earlier, conf comes with evidence.
- 52:26And once you do that hard work, just sit in a coffee shop, go through your numbers, get those numbers we talked about down on paper, then you can make smarter decisions.
- 52:34You'll feel back in control of your finances and that's when your business can thrive.
- 52:38And if you need help with any of those things from a strategy side of things, then reach out to myself, reach out to Sally.
- 52:44We would love to help you and do make sure you get that workbook because all of us sometimes wonder, where on earth is that money going?
- 52:51I'll see you next time.