StephanieWeb-117

One small action can make an impact

by with No Comment Featured BlogMindsetNonprofitSmall business

One small action can make an impact.

Tomorrow is Election Day in the United States and millions of voters have already cast their ballots because of exactly that.

We know that our vote matters. Even though we are one in millions, our vote matters, this year more than ever before.

It got me thinking about how one small action I took, five years ago, has made an impact on my life and the lives of many, many others in a big way.

I took small, imperfect action, and sent emails to a carefully researched list of nonprofit leaders around the globe to see if they needed help with their financial management.

I’m pretty sure I had The Office on in the background and I’m definitely sure I asked my husband three hundred times Should I send it? Should I send it? Should I send it?

Spoiler alert: I took the small action. I sent the emails.

People responded.

I got one client, then four clients, and I had a business.

I’ll be the first to admit that if I could, I’d constantly be working on my business. I love the challenge of improving our client experience, the creativity of building and trying new things, and the freedom to do exactly what I want.

But sometimes it’s HARD. Launches have flopped. Clients have been unhappy. I’ve had to do things and have conversations that make me sick to my stomach. I’ve wanted to give up. I’ve wanted to turn and hibernate under a blanket and delete all of my emails.

Even though one small action can make an impact, it’s not always perfect. Here are my five biggest lessons from the past year:

  1. A flop is not a fail. Just because something doesn’t go the way you expected the first time, doesn’t mean it’s meant for the trash. Adjust and try again!
  2. Understand my strengths. Surprise – I’m not awesome at everything! Gallup’s Strengths Finder has been game-changing for our business and team to understand our work within our strengths.
  3. Simple to scale. You don’t need a business model with 15 different layers and revenue streams and goals. Simpler is always better.
  4. Hire people. Instead of trudging through work that’s outside of your Zone of Genius, hire amazing people to handle that work for you.
  5. Get nervous. If you don’t do things outside of your comfort zone, you will never experience the growth you want. I presented a new webinar this month that I was nervous about (but turned out so great!)

Thank you, for being a part of this amazing community of purpose-driven leaders. Your positive attitude, selflessness in service, and dedication of your life and work to helping other people is inspiring and humbling to me.

I’d love to know the biggest lesson you’ve learned as a leader this year! Comment below and let me know.

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Do you have too many tools in your toolbox?

by with One Comment Featured BlogProductivityResources

Raise your hand if you have a drawer in your kitchen, so jammed with gadgets and tools that you can barely open it, let alone find anything useful inside.

*Sheepishly raises hand*

You know exactly what I’m talking about. There’s that fancy potato masher from Williams Sonoma and the cherry pitter from 8 summers ago when you went through a brief obsession with cherries.

You have so many tools in the drawer that you don’t actually know which one to use when, so you end up using exactly none of them and defer to a good old fashioned fork for mashing those potatoes.

I was recently thinking about business in the same way.

If you spend more than three seconds online, you will be bombarded with tools, software, PDFs, templates, checklists, and workbooks all promising you clarity and confidence in some facet of your business. 

You may use that checklist once, or partially implement one of the software programs you purchased, but your laptop and inbox soon becomes the kitchen utensil repository of unused tools. The back end of your business remains in chaos because you haven’t committed to one quality system or process. 

Especially in the early stages of our businesses, when we’re trying to protect our margins and be as resourceful as possible, we grab the free stuff and hope for the best.

It’s time to clean out that toolbox, my friends!

In our business, we have a few key tools that fill up our toolbox and that’s it. The tools have evolved and upgraded over the years, as they should, but we keep our toolbox neat and tidy. If it doesn’t work or it’s half-used, it’s canceled. Everyone knows which systems are for what and everything has its place (and a coordinating Standard Operating Procedure). 

Image of a keyboard and pen to symbolize simple tools in your business toolbox.

Here are our tried-and-true tools that keep the business running smoothly, without cluttering up the toolbox!

Finance

  1. Quickbooks Online – The best accounting software out there, in my opinion. User-friendly, affordable, and talks to lots of other software.
  2. Profit Playbook – This free template will help you see into the future of your business with clarity to make smarter decisions, grow your income, and increase your impact.
  3. Gusto – This is my go-to payroll company. They handle all of your tax filings and make running payroll SO easy.

Project and Client Management

  1. Asana – We use Asana to organize all of our client work, membership stuff, and internal projects. It has been a game changer to keep us organized and ensure not a single ball gets dropped.
  2. Dubsado – Client onboarding was always a super manual process done entirely by me and Dubsado has helped us automate 90% of the process (and remove me from the other 10%).

Other

  1. Slack – We love Slack for internal team communication (and are thinking of moving our membership communication here too!)
  2. Acuity Scheduling – I haven’t had a back-and-forth email exchange about meeting times in years now. Love just sending people a specific link to schedule time to meet.
  3. ConvertKit – We moved to ConvertKit a year ago and love being able to track our emails, create automated sequences, and take advantage of their analytics to better reach our audience.

What are your favorite tools? Which tools of yours are jamming up the drawer and need to go?

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What to do before hiring anyone in your business

by with No Comment Featured BlogFinancial ManagementMindsetProductivity

You need an assistant!

Hire for your weaknesses!

You shouldn’t be doing any tasks that aren’t revenue-generating!

Have you heard this before?

I know I have.

Oftentimes entrepreneurs rush out to hire a Virtual Assistant (VA), a Facebook Ads Manager, an Online Business Manager (OBM) without actually knowing what they should be doing.

There are tons of job postings online so we Frankenstein a job description together, post it on Indeed, bring someone on, and guess what?

  • The relationship is nothing like we intended. 
  • Our plate is fuller than before. 
  • Growth is stagnating. 
  • Our calendar is filled with meetings to manage the team of 3-10 people. 
  • Profit margin tanks. 
  • We feel pressured to support the team we hired but are wondering where the ROI is hiding.

Since creating this business five years ago, I have learned this lesson firsthand and figured out the solution.

You must know how to do something yourself before you can hand it off.

Facebook Ads has been the bain of my existence for years now. Since the beginning of my business, I have been drawn in by the siren song of Facebook ads, thinking to myself, if I could just master Facebook ads, maybe I could build my email list, sell a new digital product, grow my membership faster. 

So I played around with Facebook ads several years back, got frustrated with it after about five minutes, and decided immediately to hire out. 

It’s not my expertise, I’m not interested in learning, so I’ll just find someone to do it for me. I literally thought it was like a switch to flip – and if you knew the special way to flip the switch, the revenue would just come pouring in. 

Oh, how wrong I was!

I hired a Facebook ads “expert”, paid them, and got no results. Not a single email address added to my list, no sales, nothing. You’d think I learned my lesson, but I did the same thing two more times! 

But I realized that all of these attempts were missing one key thing: I didn’t understand Facebook ads at all, so I didn’t articulate what I was looking for. The people I hired made empty promises and I couldn’t see it because I didn’t understand what I really needed either.

Lesson learned!

I recently decided I wanted to dabble in Facebook ads again to help grow our membership but instead of running out and hiring someone, I decided to learn it myself, so I am more educated if and when I do decide to hire someone. 

I (lightly!) invested in a couple courses and instead of whizzing through it, I took my time, created a strategy, and tested a couple ads for myself.

Now, I didn’t flip the switch and watch the sales come pouring in (bummer!), but now that I know how it works, I know exactly what I need and what questions to ask if and when I do hire someone. 

I won’t get burned again!

What about your finances? 

Many entrepreneurs immediately hire a bookkeeper or a CFO because they hate numbers and don’t even want to touch them. 

But, as a CFO, I think it’s important for every beginning entrepreneur to do your own bookkeeping in the beginning. You will get an intimate knowledge of what’s coming in and going out of your business. You will understand on a deeper level what your numbers mean rather than just filing away the Excel reports your bookkeeper sends you.

You absolutely don’t need to become an expert in Quickbooks or accounting or taxes – that’s what the professionals are for, after all! And you don’t need to manage your numbers forever. As things get more complicated, it’s vitally important to bring on the right support.

But once you gain that foundational understanding and knowledge, you will know exactly what and who you need to support you.

If you’re at the beginning stages of your entrepreneurial journey and are handling your finances yourself, The Entrepreneur’s CFO Corner gives you the tools and the resources you need to do it yourself, but you also have a CFO in your back pocket to check your work and ask questions. 

How has doing something yourself before you hire, helped you clarify what and who you need?

StephanieWeb-124

The One Thing You Need to Change the World

by with No Comment Business DevelopmentFeatured BlogMindset

There is this feeling or attitude I’ve seen in the nonprofit world that it’s a badge of honor to work for little money because you’ve dedicated your life to a cause greater than yourself. Beginning then building my career there, I started to take on the approach of seeing how much I could do with the least amount of money possible, because after all, money wasn’t the why behind what I did for a living.

That attitude is rooted solidly in scarcity mindset and the belief that it’s one or the other: make money OR change the world.

But the truth is, in order to create change and make this world a better place, you need money. No one knows this better than nonprofit leaders. One of the main jobs of nonprofit leaders is to ask others who have built wealth for money (often older white men).

So we know that money is essential to the systemic change we want to achieve.

But if we’re not making any money ourselves, we are entirely reliant upon other people to create the change we want in the world. We are not empowered to actually make a difference because we’re relying on other people to fund it.

There’s something off about this approach, right?

We need to flip this script!

For a long time I felt ashamed making a decent amount of money to help nonprofits do their work. I never wanted to talk about making money in my business because if my mission is to help these organizations make an impact, and their staff were operating on pennies, why in the world should I make a decent buck?!

If I’m being honest, I actually am motivated by money. I want to make more money so I can share with others how I’ve built my business to make money and therefore empower others to make more money and create impact in ways that feel good to them. 

I’ve never felt comfortable sharing about my business growth because it feels in direct opposition to the nonprofit culture that we should be martyrs to the impact we’re making. 

But lately, my perspective has completely shifted.

I have been learning from women who are unapologetic about building wealth. There’s no shrugging off or sweeping under the rug the fact that their businesses are generating millions in revenue. They’re not plastering photos of their designer shoe collection or sports cars all over social media, but they are direct in sharing the fact that they make very good money. 

Why? Why share your business revenue with the world? Isn’t that a little braggy?

No way.

They share because it inspires others to see what’s possible.

They share because they are helping thousands of women with their work and they are 100% confident in the value they provide.

They share because it empowers others to go out and do the same thing. They believe in radical abundance and know that there’s more than enough to go around.

These women know that if they build wealth, they can create a greater impact on the world for their families, future generations, and their community. 

Rachel Rodgers, Allie Casazza, and Luvvie are beautiful examples of women who are unapologetic about building wealth to secure a better future for their families and their communities.

I too want to build a million-dollar business by providing exceptional CFO and bookkeeping services to nonprofits and purpose-driven businesses to help them grow too. 

It’s a beautiful chain reaction.

We help leaders better understand their numbers to make smart decisions for growth 

They can grow and change the lives of those they serve

Then those people grow, change, build, and serve

It’s an endless cycle and I certainly don’t want to be the one to break the cycle by playing small and being a martyr. 

I am so grateful to have examples of brilliant strong women who are building big businesses, talking about it publicly, and empowering me to do the same. 

Making money allows us to create, give, serve, and change in a much bigger way.

 

This is a great conversation to have as you begin to plan revenue for Q4 and 2021. How have you been playing small? Are there ways you can expand your reach to grow your business, those you serve, and your impact?

Our Profit Playbook is a great resource to help you create a revenue roadmap. You’ll build out monthly revenue, expense, profit, and cash goals (yes, those things are all different!) to create a step-by-step guide to accomplish your goals.

Way too often we unintentionally play small, limiting ourselves to the status quo, when really we’re just limiting our impact.

Let’s begin 2021 empowered to change the world!

If you’re ready to expand your impact, grab our free Profit Playbook to help you chart the course to changing the world!

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Where did 100 Degrees come from?

by with No Comment Featured BlogMindsetNonprofitSmall business

 

Rewind almost exactly seven years and I was laying in the pitch dark, on a thin pad on the floor of a cement room in rural Senegal. I had a mosquito net over me, but no sheets or blankets because I was sweating.

I checked my phone to see the time, hoping and praying it was almost morning so I could get up, splash some lukewarm water on my face, and just end the sleepless night, but it was only midnight. At least five more hours to go.

As if to torture myself, I opened the weather app on my phone to see how hot it was, and when I saw 100 degrees on that screen in the darkness, I cursed everything.

Why was I making myself so uncomfortable? Why wasn’t I home enjoying the summer with my husband in our air-conditioned home?

The next morning, after a few hours of sleep, I woke with a clear head and realized: The discomfort of 100 degrees was a direct path to impact and change.

I couldn’t go into these villages in Senegal to support primary school construction projects without the discomfort. I needed to push through the discomfort in order to bring about positive change in those children’s lives and create impact in my own life too.

When I founded the business five years ago and brainstormed names for my new company, 100 Degrees was the first thing that came to mind.

Why?

Because we help leaders push through their own discomfort around numbers to create greater impact and change in their lives and communities.

So next time you’re sweating through your monthly finance review, frustrated, hot, angry, and wondering why in the world you put yourself through this journey of leadership or entrepreneurship, think about 100 Degrees.

Your journey, even though it may be 100 degrees with no a/c, is the only one to impact and growth.

What’s been a “100 degrees moment” in your journey? Comment and share with me!

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Are you guilty of saying this?

by with One Comment Business DevelopmentFeatured BlogMindsetNonprofitSmall business

“My business [or nonprofit] is my baby.”

Ever said that before? I have.

We love our work! We take pride in the change we’re making in the world and take things personally because we’ve poured so much heart and soul into what we do.

I also have a real life human baby. Noelle is 9 months old now and she is super amazing and fun. She’s starting to talk and when she says Mamamamama, my heart just explodes. She’s crawling everywhere, trying to stand by herself, and I’m constantly chasing after her. Her half gummy/half toothy grin could melt even the coldest of hearts.

But she’s still a baby.

As her mama, I meet her needs and am at her beck and call 24/7. I love her so much that helping her grow and supporting her brings me so much joy, and I wouldn’t trade that responsibility for the world.

Now, thinking back to my business…do I really want my BUSINESS to be my baby too?

Demanding. Needy. Full of responsibilities that ONLY I can fulfill.

That’s a hard NO.

So if our work isn’t our baby, what SHOULD it be?

How about a race car!

You learn how it works, what buttons to push, what features to add to make it go further and faster, and the right mechanics to make it all run smoothly. Then those people (your team) can operate the race car to help it cross the finish line.

It’s a team effort and you’re all in alignment towards the same goal, but you don’t do everything.

So, how do we shift our work from being a baby to a race car?

  1. Automate. Take stock of all of your software and make sure it talks to each other, and there are no redundancies or gaps. For example, are you invoicing clients or donors in Quickbooks AND Dubsado? Choose one and stick with it. Is your CRM like Salesforce talking to your project management system like Asana? Link those babies up!
  2. Hire the right people. Figure out what roles you need on your team and hire for the roles, not the people. Maybe you need financial analysis and strategy and are trying to force a square peg into a round hole by asking your bookkeeper to do that work. They’re different skill sets, so get the right people into the right seats.
  3. Create a routine. Surely there are tasks in your organization that need to happen weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. Take an hour and write it all down, then map it out on your calendar, spreadsheet, or project management system. Consistency is the only way to make progress on any of your goals, and getting it all in one place will help you stick to the routine.

What do you think? Is your business your (demanding, needy, yet lovable) baby? Or is it a well-oiled machine ready to cross the finish line to your world-changing goals?

PS – Did you see my Instagram post this week? Check it out and let me know what you think!

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I hate failing

by with No Comment Featured BlogFinancial ManagementNonprofitSmall business

I have a true confession for you, bright and early today.

I hate failing.

I know, I know. Failure is part of success. Fail forward. Blah blah blah.

I don’t care. I hate it to my core. (#enneagram3 much?!)

A lot of times when we think we are failing, it’s only because we are measuring ourselves against someone else’s success.

Here’s what I mean:

Feeling like a failure because your sales numbers are way lower than that person on Instagram who has a similar business model

Feeling like a failure for only raising $75k at your virtual gala when you saw that another organization raised $250k

Feeling like a failure because you only have 10 clients and your business bestie has 35

The problem is, other people’s metrics are irrelevant. Insignificant. Frankly worthless.

The most important measuring stick to use is your own.

I get asked ALL. THE. TIME: What’s a good profit margin? How much should I be spending on my team? How much income do I need to bring in every month?

The people on the other end of those Zoom calls probably hate me but the answer first is always: It depends!

That’s the truth though. It depends on your business model. If you’re a nonprofit or small business. What your revenue streams are. How long you’ve been in operation. How much revenue you’re bringing in. It goes on!

I’ll never leave you hanging though!

The best way to assess your own business is by reviewing your own historical numbers and watching the trends.

If you want to know if your profit margin is “good”, start by calculating your profit margin every month for the last 12 months, side by side. Is the number generally going up? Is it going down?

You’ll likely have highs and lows but when you look at the trend line, we want to see it going up (But not too much! That could be a sign you need to reinvest in the biz).

If you want to know how much income you should be bringing in, start by looking at your average monthly expenses for the last 12 months. You need at least that much per month (plus say 20% for savings/profit).

So, if you were ever wondering if your numbers are “good”, you now have my official answer!

Here’s a quick list of metrics you should be looking at in your business or nonprofit:

  1. Profit margin
  2. Cash on hand
  3. Revenue diversity
  4. Burn rate (average monthly expenses)

PS – You can always grab our Profit Playbook here here to help you calculate these metrics and more.

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Three simple steps to your monthly routine

by with One Comment Featured BlogNonprofitProductivitySmall business

I love the saying: Where your attention goes, energy flows.

We want to put our energy into the right things to get maximum results with minimum wasted time. No entrepreneurs (especially those with kiddos) can afford to be wasting a single second right now, ya know?!

Where are YOU spending the majority of your time and energy right now? Trying to keep your head above water while simultaneously running a household, growing a business, raising children, and not forgetting to feed yourself at least once a day?

Yup, me too! 

I don’t know about you, but I certainly didn’t expect to be mostly quarantined well into summer and it’s thrown a bit of a kink into my routine.

If you feel this way too, you can get back on track! Today I want to share with you three steps I’ve been following this summer to help you revamp your  routine and put your energy and attention back into your numbers:

Do your bookkeeping. This is as simple as coding all of your revenue and expenses accurately and comparing your bank statement to your accounting.

Review your financial statements. Check out your P&L compared to last month and see how you’re doing. Calculate your profit margin compared to last month (Profit Margin = Net Income / Revenue). See how much money is in the bank.

Update your forecast. You probably have a plan for the rest of the year and revenue and expenses mapped out monthly (If you don’t, reply to this email ASAP and I will hook you up with a template!). Come back to this plan, make any adjustments, and go forth and grow!

Simple, right?! Because what we focus on expands.

How are you going to get into your own monthly finance routine today? 

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Interview with the Speak to Scale Podcast with Jessica Rasdall

by with No Comment Featured BlogFinancial ManagementMedia

We recently chatted with Jessica Rasdall of the Speak to Scale Podcast on the challenges and tasks entrepreneur’s need to be performing to ensure you’re remaining solvent at the end of the day.

No one likes to talk about all of the fears, uncertainties, and worries that come with this unique path we’ve chosen….. Like: when is that next contract going to come in? When will we book that next speaking engagement? When are we going to get paid again? I know that after this recent COVID scare, all of us were feeling these emotions on overdrive. So why aren’t we talking about it?

In this episode, we’re digging deep into how to tackle our entrepreneurial finances and achieve a more predictable income.

Give it a listen and let us know your biggest takeaway!

Listen on iTunes

Listen on Spotify

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Is mid-year goal planning irrelevant?

by with No Comment Featured Blog

As we come up on the halfway mark of this year, the past 180 days have probably looked wildly different than you would’ve thought back on January 1st.

Routines, priorities, and even entire business models have shifted, but to answer the question, Is mid year goal planning irrelevant? I say no.

Mid-year goal planning is now more important than ever. 2020 may feel like a total wash but there’s still plenty of opportunity to make an impact on the world. NOW is the perfect time to incorporate all of these challenging lessons we’ve learned in the last six months into your life and business plans.

And I don’t mean just making a bucket list of things to check off. I mean reassessing what’s important to you and building it into your budget and cash flow projections.

Examples!

Want to incorporate diversity, equity, and anti-racism education into your business? Add it to the budget!

Want to bring a new team member onboard so you can have more precious time with your family? Add it to the budget!

Remember that your budget must align with your plan.

So as you begin to shape the next six months and create new priorities, make sure to include the resources that will help you get this done, otherwise it. won’t. happen.

PS – Did you see that the PPP forgiveness parameters have changed? Check out our post to see how you may be affected (for the better!)