“80% of household purchasing decisions are made by women. When the woman is growing a business, it means 80% of her business finance decisions are whether her business will help or hurt the household spending plan.” - Gretchen Heinen

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Introduction:

If you run a business, it is likely that you stay up at night or at least part of your working day wondering about the household finances and how you business is either going to help or hurt it. In today's episode (and new blog attached!) we are exploring this topic in detail. Get your Bible and your ear buds and let's dive in.

Time saving tip for podcasts: Listen while you cook, clean, drive, or walk. These are some of the best times to soak in a short learning that doesn't take you away from your family or life.

With that said, here are our practical and proven tips we have done with our clients in The Daring Daughters.👊

1. Get organized.

If you don't know what the household needs are, you have no idea how much your business needs to make in order to start relieving the pressure on the situation. This is a basic formula to figure out. Get a spreadsheet out or a piece of paper, download your last months transactions from any account you use and start adding up the categories. This should be done annually at the minimum for your household and ideally monthly in your business so that you don't miss critical deduction potential. It can be done by a dedicated bookkeeper which is usually you in the beginning and then can be outsourced once you have more revenue for support. In our Daring Daughter Planner we have a spending plan tool for both your household and your business.

2. Evaluate what is your household number.

Knowing the exact amount of money your business needs to bring in so that you can live within the goals you wish is critical. For some people it is a number that relieves inflationary spending like groceries and utilities that keep going up. For some people it is extra spending for kids activities. I know one entrepreneur who takes her money earned and uses it to put her children in competitive sports. For some people, like single women, the entirety of the situation is on them so the number is quite larger. In these cases, these women are looking at how much it will take to make their full-time job go away or prevent from having to get one. Know the number.

3. Separate the buckets.

Once you have gotten organized and know the number the next step is to make sure the accounts between business and personal are split. DO NOT CROSS MONEY FROM PERSONAL TO BUSINESS. This creates what the IRS call "breaking the glass" and it means they now have access to all of your personal spending history to evaluate it and have the right to deem your business a hobby and thus not eligible to be a business at all. You want a separate checking account for your business and a separate checking account for your personal. This is also true for savings and credit cards. The point is to not cross contaminate. This will likely take you a month or more to sort out and it can be arduous but don't skip this step. It is critical for the next steps. For some people this stage can be discouraging. Often times in this stage you have to transfer money from your personal checking account to your business account in order to keep the business bills paid. This is quite normal in most early stages of business. It is referred to as "owner contribution". I have had to do this plenty of times in new businesses I've started.

4. Do a product inventory.

At this stage we know what our target is and we also know what we exactly have in financial holdings. Now is the time to evaluate our products and services and see what they are really bringing in each month in revenue for us. For many women, looking at this feels bleak. It's a place where the enemy will try to attack your mindset and get you to quit or give up or set things down because they feel like they are just not working. It's also a great time to really look at your products or services and start looking at their scale potential. We follow a 5 step process in The Daring Daughters where we factor in the future legacy of the company in our planning. What I mean by this is, when you are 80 are you still going to want to show up live on Instagram everyday? If your business is solely based on your face showing up each day to serve and there is no scaling plan or exit plan, you are growing something unsustainable. Look at your products. Look at your company and start deciding what the legacy will be. It doesn't mean that you can't grow a personal brand of coaching or services. You most certainly can. But then I would say the best place to put the revenue you earn is in a solo 401K or SEP IRA plan for your future self so that when you are done wanting to show up live, you have a solid retirement built up. (FYI building your own retirement income is a good idea no matter what your business is but especially important for businesses that might not be something you can sell at some point). Bottom line, can your products sell without you? Can they scale? Can they live on when you are done working and still earn you passive and residual income?

No matter what your answer to that, you need to do a product inventory.

5. Evaluate your marketing and sales plan.

After you have determined what products need to be sold to meet your goals, now it's time to look at your marketing and sales. Most people expect to put up some social media posts and go in their stories each day and throw up a product link in their bio and then assume it will sell out. WRONG. In fact, only 2-3% of your social media is even seeing your posts and assuming your entire audience is your ideal client, 10% of those people will buy what you are selling which means 0.002-0.003% of your audience is going to buy your stuff from you posting it. If you have 1000 followers it means that each time you post, you have a likelihood of selling 2 items. To combat this, we build sales funnels as part of our marketing plan. We look for ways to engage the customer on a broad way (conferences, networking groups, meet ups, social media posts, podcast appearances, media appearances, guest appearances) and bring those people into your awareness. The next critical step is to collect their information so you can follow up. This can be getting their phone number, social handles, or in the case of automated funnels exchanging their email or phone number for something that interests them (a quiz, a freebie, a chance to hear from you again, etc).

6. Be frugal.

I cannot tell you the number of people who come to our year long program having spent 10s of thousands of dollars on things that seem like they didn't work. I have an entire philosophy about this that I post a lot about on @thedaringdaughters IG page. I think you can use all that past "wasted" learning to your advantage. There are many ways. More on that later. When you are starting out your business you NEED to be scrappy. This means hiring interns, using Fiverr, DIY and being very cautious about where you invest. Look for containers and products/services that function in more than one capacity. I've seen people spend $7,000 on a single website or $5,000 to buy a URL that comes with email. Both of those things are pretty easy to DIY after watching a single YouTube.

7. Plan for scale.

Have a leadership meeting with your team that factors in what are the next places you will invest once you have more capital. If YOU are the sole team member then map out what is most critical to invest in first. Hint, it might not be your salary. In the epic and highly recommended book, "Shoe Dog", the founder of Nike invested in a full-time employee before he ever paid himself a dime. He went out and got a job as an accountant in order to fund this person's salary. Hire what the business needs first, not what you personally need. This means that you might have to work part-time or full-time while your business is growing. This does not mean you are failing. It means you are financially sound. Map out your scale plan and then hire for the positions.

8. Steward every penny that comes in.

In the ground breaking book "One Thousand Gifts", the author writes about how she found peace in being grateful for every little thing in her day while navigating horrible life loss. She lost several family members over the course of her life and walked through unimaginable grief and she leaned on the fact that the night before Jesus was crucified he gave thanks. Even when he was about to die he gave thanks to God, his father, who was allowing him to be sacrificed. Being grateful for every step of the way is the key to surviving the difficult years and moments of entrepreneurship, and let me tell you there will be plenty.

Here are Bible verses that coincide with each of our points today.

1. Get organized.

   • Proverbs 21:5 - "The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty."

   • Proverbs 24:3-4 - "By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures."

2. Evaluate what is your household number.

   • Luke 14:28 - "For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it?"

   • Proverbs 27:23 - "Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds."

3. Separate the buckets.

   • 1 Corinthians 14:33 - "For God is not a God of confusion but of peace."

   • Proverbs 22:7 - "The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender."

4. Do a product inventory.

   • Proverbs 19:21 - "Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails."

   • Proverbs 13:22 - "A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children, but a sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous."

5. Evaluate your marketing and sales plan.

   • Proverbs 16:3 - "Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and he will establish your plans."

   • Luke 12:48 - "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked."

6. Be frugal.

   • Proverbs 21:20 - "The wise store up choice food and olive oil, but fools gulp theirs down."

   • Proverbs 27:23 - "Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds."

7. Plan for scale.

   • Proverbs 15:22 - "Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed."

   • Proverbs 24:27 - "Put your outdoor work in order and get your fields ready; after that, build your house."

8. Steward every penny that comes in.

   • 1 Chronicles 29:11-12 - "Yours, LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all."

These Bible verses align with the different sections of your blog post, providing spiritual guidance and wisdom for managing household finances while growing a business as a Daring Daughter of God.

⚡NEW DIGITAL DOWNLOAD TOOL⚡

A lot of people ask to see how we do things in The Daring Daughters but the investment in the mastermind is not in the spending plan for them or they just don't have the time to dedicate to it. We are starting to roll out a series of digital resources of tools and processes we use to help women create business plans that can scale! Some of our clients are growing businesses that just provide some breathing room and some have scaling plans that are in the billions. (No lie!) Whether your business is to create breathing room in the household or you have plans to really scale it, this MASTERPLAN sheet can help you stay organized and on track this year for your goals. We use this in our mastermind every call with our clients.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE MASTERPLAN

Click Here to Listen to the Corresponding Episode

Episode Action checklist:

Here is a quick checklist to get you started with what we discussed today. Remember imperfect action beats inaction, get started and keep going!

• Download last months statements for your business and personal in every card or account you use to make purchases (checking, credit, Venmo, Zelle, etc)

• Categorize your spending into categories

• Determine the amount your business needs to pay the household (you) to meet your goal household spending needs

• Make sure business and personal accounts are separated

• Evaluate your product suite

• Evaluate your sales and marketing plan

• Be frugal. Get rid of anything you don't need to spend money on

• Work on your scale plan. What is the goal for the end game?

• Start a gratitude journal

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