Hey there, you don't need to blindly increase your revenue in your business
each and every year to be successful.
You know that?
You believe that increased revenue in your business means that you've made it.
You think months like six figures, seven figures, those milestones
means that you've arrived.
But that is absolutely not true because revenue generated in your business
means nothing if you don't have the wealth or legacy plan to show for it.
What really matters is how you and your family are being
impacted by your business, both financially and energetically.
So what happens after you pay yourself in your business?
Do you find yourself committing, over committing, over investing,
depleting your profit completely?
You don't have cash to be able to pay yourself that salary that
you've once had in the past year.
Or do you subconsciously do a lifestyle creep each and
every time your business grows?
And your business must carry the weight of your newfound needs.
This wreaks havoc on your nervous system each and every month.
By the end of this episode, you'll be able to see how your business
will contribute to your lifestyle and legacy goals instead of creating
another arbitrary goal for this year.
Stay tuned.
This is the Harmonious Wealth Podcast, where we're breaking online business
owners free from chasing every next revenue milestone and instead prioritizing
lifestyle and legacy goals so you can finally have the personal wealth
to show for your business success.
I'm your host, Ayanna Vaughn, fractional CFO and bookkeeper here to guide you.
Now let's start building your financial legacy.
Hey, and welcome to the first episode of Harmonious Wealth.
My name is Iyanna Vaughn and I am so excited to start this podcast.
Okay, I may not, I may seem kind of monotone because your
girl is on day one of her cycle.
She tried to cycle sync and it was not working for her.
Second time in a row where my cycle was late.
I was like, yeah, I'm going to record during my ovulation
first half of the luteal.
I'll be fine.
Cool, cool, cool.
No, why is it late?
And then now I'm on my first day of my cycle.
I've got my raspberry tea.
I have my little heating pad if I need it.
I'm doing fine right now, so I'm very grateful.
I had to like reframe my mind of like, okay, let me listen to some worship music.
Let me get cute.
Let me fix my hair because I'm going to record and I want to be able to
have like some personality versus like, but thank you so much for listening.
I want to also say that I promised myself that I will treat my business
like any other business, and I'm going to actually market, you girls going
to market, and I am going to launch.
We will be doing an open house on Friday, April 26 at 12 p.
m.
Eastern.
And we will be talking about why your revenue doesn't matter if you don't
have the wealth plan to show for it and why your cash isn't cashing, right?
Why are you making all this revenue and you don't have the money to show for it?
So if you want to join, go to lovelyfinancials.
com slash open house to join this and I would love to have you.
Okay.
So let's go back to where we are.
When you're thinking about revenue and your revenue goals every year, and you're
thinking that you should be doubling it, you're not making this up for yourself.
You know, you've seen people go on social media and they share that they're having
like their beyond six figure journey.
You know, they're hustling so much and now they're at that seven figure
mark or multi six figure mark.
They're celebrating maybe their first 10k month.
Maybe they're celebrating their six figure month, right?
And it's like going tremendously different for them.
However, there's a lot that goes on to make consistent revenue to
like six figures in a month, right?
There's so much brain work that you have to go through.
And there's so much back work that you need to go.
So what I think is like, whenever you're starting your business goals overall,
you must start with the end in mind and there are two ends in mind, right?
First, first, first and foremost, you have to be that person
in your business to serve.
It's going to be really important because when you have a servant heart
and you're creating a business that's going to show up for whoever is going
to do an exchange monetarily with you.
So you want to really think, especially if you're a service provider, think
of how you're serving your clients.
And also, especially as a coach, think how you're coaching your clients,
think about how you're going to use your gifts to serve humanity.
So I'm going to quote 1 Peter 4:10 in the Bible that says "each of you should
use whatever gift that you have received to serve others as fruitful stewards
of God's grace in various forms."
so to me, that means like I am using my gift of understanding money to help my
clients, you know, and I even want to go beyond my clients and even do, you
know, this podcast to share with you.
And I know that you have a very special gift and think about how you want to
really serve in that gift for each year before you get into your monetary goals.
So the second step, right, immediately second is like,
okay, I know how I want to serve.
Now I want to know how my business can serve myself thinking
of the end in mind, right?
Because I believe that your business should be one of the
first wealth vehicles to create a personal wealth plan for yourself.
That means it should be able to pay you consistently and you should
be able to grow in your business.
So say, for example, I think of the cashflow quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki,
and he talks about like, being an employee is like one cashflow quadrant.
The second is like, you are a service provider, for lack of a
better word, and you're going from like one person to many, right?
And you're serving as a solopreneur primarily, and then you're going
from solopreneur to a business owner where your processes and your team is
acting on your behalf to get that cash into your life, your personal wealth.
And then finally, you are an investor because what I believe is with your
business, you're growing cash, right?
When you have excess cash and you're able to use that cash to
then invest in your future, you're able to then invest the money up.
The money grows itself, right?
So I like to think of your business being the number one vehiclethat helps
you go through the different phases of phases of your cash flow quadrant.
Okay.
So with our clients, we go through our four step framework in creating
a legacy plan or just really understanding a business owner
holistically for both their personal and their business in four key areas.
First, when we meet with our clients, we kind of help them understand
what their legacy goals are.
Short version of it is step one legacy goals.
When we do a kickoff call with our clients, we kind of feel out.
Okay.
What do you love most about your life?
What do you love most about your business?
What are your immediate lifestyle goals that we can help you with?
And also like, what are some immediate business goals
that you want to support in.
And then we dig a little bit deeper because we know entrepreneurs
do not think about retirement.
And we would like to frame it because a lot of business owners believe
that they want to work until forever.
But that is not the case.
So sometimes when I get some pushback, I'll say, okay, what do you
want your life to look like at 60?
And then we kind of grasp like, what is a day in the life when you're 60, right?
And then the second part of our framework, when we kind of get your
lifestyle and like legacy goals beginning to like churn, right?
We then say, okay.
Let's assess the trends and that's through bookkeeping and the trends
like for the past couple of years.
We'll look at, okay, where has your revenue been?
Where has your profit been?
How much have you been paying yourself?
And then we'll say, okay, based on your legacy goals, based on your trends,
the third part is uncovering the gaps.
Like, where do you want to be?
Immediate highlight of gaps is like your cashflow.
We help you create a annual cash flow forecast that is weekly because
things happen in between the month or as you're going through the months.
And we highlight the gaps of where you want to be, where you are now.
And then finally, we create a legacy plan.
So that includes for your business, a profit plan for the next three years,
because I like to look, I like to get you out of the weeds of things, help you
see a bird's eye view of exactly what's going on in your business so that you
know, okay, if my legacy goal at 60 is to do is to have a nest egg of 2 million.
Okay.
What does that mean today?
What do I need to do today?
Even if it's just like contributing, even a small martial morsel, even
if it's saving three months of saving so that you can then get more
aggressive and paying off your debt or investing in your retirement.
What can you do within these next 12 months?
We kind of do go deeper into the next 12 months together because
I want you to understand how much you actually need to pay yourself.
A lot of times we're just paying ourselves another arbitrary number again, right?
We're doing arbitrary revenue goals.
We do an arbitrary what we must pay ourselves from our business and it's
erratic and we're all over the place.
That's why revenue goals don't really matter if you don't have the personal
wealth or legacy plan for yourself.
So the benefit of creating that legacy goal is after we work together within the
first 6 to 12 weeks, we then follow up every single quarter to say, okay, how
close are we to your goal for this year?
How close are we going to be to your legacy goal, right?
How close are we to knocking out your immediate lifestyle goals?
That can be like getting more massages, that can be taking your
family on vacation twice a year.
Like those things are things that I like to work on with my clients.
The benefit of having a legacy goal is that we're able to see every single year
how close you are to your legacy plan and you're able to understand and successfully
accomplish your immediate lifestyle goals.
Okay, so I'm going to go over three things of why revenue means nothing if
your business isn't creating the personal wealth or legacy plan to show for it.
And I'm going to start with the three numbers that you must know
in your business because typically we're accustomed to just showing or
like knowing our revenue numbers.
I know when I first speak with clients on sales calls, they
pretty immediately know, okay.
This is my revenue for last year.
This is what I want it to be kind of.
They kind of know.
And then when I asked them about profit, they're like, let
me go see if I could find it.
Then if I ask about what they pay themselves, they typically don't
necessarily know, and they feel that what they pay themselves isn't enough.
So.
This is because we are so used to just showing our revenue number.
We know like the back of our hand when we should know our profit
and what we paid ourselves like the back of our hand as well.
Sometimes we don't even know like business owners don't know what they've made in
profit until they see their tax return.
And even if they get their Schedule C, if they are a sole proprietorship,
like a single member LLC taxed as a sole proprietor, they're
just looking at their Schedule C.
Their accountant isn't telling them what this means.
They're just saying, this is my net income for my business and this
is what my taxes are looking like.
So they have both a profit and a tax surprise during tax season, or if they
are working with a bookkeeping firm or a bookkeeper accountant, or even if they're
doing their numbers by themselves, they are usually behind and when they're
looking at it, they're not necessarily looking at their three reports.
So the three reports include your, let's talk about the world, right?
If we are talking about the world, the hottest place.
Let's say we're in Africa, right?
We're in Kenya, and we're having a great time.
It's hot.
We've seen our income statement before.
Or then when we go to extremely cold, or even in the middle, in America, we, some
people have seen their balance sheet.
A lot has not.
A lot of people have not.
So the income statement is your revenue expenses, profit, your balance sheet
is what you own in assets, what you own liabilities, what's up over in equity,
and then your statement of cash flow, which is as cold as Antarctica because
you probably never see it is your how your cash has moved in your business with
your operating activities, which is just every day in your business operations,
your investing activities, which is like if you're buying equipment or
selling equipment that will be investing activities or your financing activities
in that If you were to pay off your debt, paying yourself and your business.
So if you're not receiving your three reports, or if you're not reviewing
your three reports every single month.
It's really hard to know like how your business finances are doing.
And when I go into our approach is when we give our clients or their reports,
we're going to assume that you're probably not going to go through the full
report unless you're on a call with us.
So at the top of the, of the report, we're going to tell you your revenue,
of course, your profit, what you've paid yourself outside of just creating
like a tax estimate, which is really important for us because we don't
want you to have a tax surprise.
We want to show you those 3 things.
We have 2 more, but if you know, those 3 things in your business revenue,
profit, what you paid yourself.
You will be golden.
So our approach is when we show you those things, you're able to
understand how, immediately how your business is supporting your lifestyle.
So with your owners, which you pay yourself and your business
can show up in various places, depending on how you are taxed.
So if you are a single member LLC taxed as a sole proprietor, which means that
you are not an S corp or a C corp, then that means what you pay yourself
is on the balance sheet, which is from equity, which is what is left over.
So you won't necessarily know if you don't look at the balance sheet, right?
So we're just going to help you figure that out with the three metrics.
Another way that you might pay yourself is if you become taxed as an S corp,
which means you become an employee of your company, you are going to be a, you're
going to earn, have a salary, and you're going to be on the income statement, a.
k.
a.
the profit and loss statement.
And that's going to be confusing if you're paying yourself both with owner's draw and
with salary, because it's like, okay, what did I really pay myself in my business?
You know, what's going on there?
When we give our clients a holistic view of what their business finances are,
they're able to then ask us questions each month, or when they meet with us
during our quarterly accountant meetings, we're able to help them say, okay,
this is what the trends are telling us.
This is what you've been paying yourself.
How can we help support you on your next set of goals for the next quarter?
Every second Thursday of the month, we deliver our clients, their report, and
then they are able to use this data to, to change the trajectory of their businesses
and then also improve their lifestyle.
Like with one of our clients, she's been with us for quite some time, like Six
to seven years, and she's really on it.
She's, she's able to like outside of meeting.
She's looking at her report.
She's seeing the trends and she's able to then use those trends to help
support her these past couple of years of having 70 percent profit margin.
That's kind of unheard of.
It's definitely something that is possible, but because she's able to look
at her trends and understand where her revenue is, where her profit is, what
she must pay herself, she's able to hit those high profit margins because
on one hand, the more profit that you have, most of the times is what is
going to help you increase your cash.
That is not always the case.
Because even though your profit may be high, your cash might be depleted
because you might be paying off debt preemptively because you're
having a fear of debt, right?
Or you might be paying yourself a lump sum because you haven't
been paying yourself consistently.
So those things outside of your profit impact your cash.
With our client who has, who has had the highest profit margin because
she's looking at her numbers and she's reviewing those three key items, she's
been able to pay off her own debt.
Travel with her, with her family, get aggressive with her retirement
savings, and she's able to execute her goals and really execute serving
her clients more because she really understands what's, what's going
on in her business holistically.
You might be wondering, you know, Hey, I'm joining in the middle of the year.
How can I really understand what's been going on from even the top of the year,
maybe even 2023 so when you work with us within the 1st, 4 weeks, we will
get your financial systems created or improved and updated through a bookkeeping
cleanup, if that is needed for you.
So we will review, okay, how do you like to see your revenue so that
we know which each line item is performing, how it's performing for you?
How do you like to see your expense category so that you as CEO can
make decisions off of your numbers?
How do you understand like your return on investment by looking
at exactly what's going on?
And then we help you understand your profit and your profit margin so
that we can always aim to increase your profit so that you can then pay
yourself more, have more cash on hand so that you can create your legacy
goal or accomplish your legacy goals.
When it comes to managing your cash flow to pay yourself well in your business.
Typically, what I see is before working with someone strategically
on this, there's no rhyme or reason for your cash flow.
A lot of time people are like reacting, they're hustling
to get to the next result.
They're doing a lot of cash injection strategies, like entirely
stressing themselves out and they don't have a way to understand
exactly what's working for them.
And they're growing to multiple six figures, but then they're
still not paying themselves what they need to pay themselves.
Maybe they're using debt versus leveraging debt out of need versus, okay, maybe
I want to save this cash strategically because I do have the cash, to invest in
your business to buy big ticket items, but they don't understand what that
means for like the next three months.
So.
Then they're, they're having to dip into savings or having to, I've seen
when it comes to cash flow, people are blindly using profit first,
which I absolutely love, but they're blindly using profit first, being
overwhelmed with the multiple different accounts without really drilling in.
And how can I really understand where my cash is going so that I can pay myself.
So when it comes to like navigating those cashflow issues, after we've learned
what you know, what you have in revenue, what you earn in profit and what you pay
yourself, our approach with our clients is how can we help you map out what your
cash will look like for the next year?
Because if you know, if you were to pay 20 K for like coaching or You were
to pay a team member and understand how you can afford that team member,
you would want to know what happens.
Like we want to ensure that the next 24 weeks you're able to have adequate
cash on hand in your business.
And this allows you to have confidence in managing your money even when you
feel like you don't have much to manage.
So when we start working with our clients, they may feel that they don't
have that cash on hand, but we can maneuver and kind of like strategically
place their different expenses of what they pay themselves so that they
can see what it really looks like.
So Luke 16:10 in the Bible says, whoever can be trusted with very
little can be trusted with much.
This is extremely important because if you think that you're starting with
humble beginnings, which most of us are, I want to help you understand
how you can really navigate where you are now so that you can really grow
your mindset as you grow your money.
Within the first two weeks of working with our clients in both our profit
planning intensive, as well as our fractional CFO clients, we have what
I like to call the cashflow call.
So we have our kickoff call, two weeks later we have our cash flow
call, and then two weeks later, which is four weeks after, we
have our money education session.
In the cash flow call, we go over both business and personal cash flow needs.
I create a 12 month cash flow forecast that is broken down weekly so we can
understand how cash flows through both your personal and business finances.
We then help you create a personal spending plan so that you are no longer
guessing what you must pay yourself.
The reason why you are living paycheck to paycheck or owner's draw to owner's
draw or strike payout to strike payout, is because you need support
in knowing what you must pay yourself.
Typically, we see when someone pays himself, their living expenses
are about 80 to 90 percent of what their take home pay is.
And that is not okay.
The great thing is as a business owner, you're able to expand
beyond living paycheck to paycheck.
When we work with our clients on creating their spending plan, we'd like their take
home pay or their, what their business salary should be, or what they should pay
themselves from their business to be 50%.
I'm spending no more than 50 percent of your take home
pay on your living expenses.
So that means if you thought you needed to pay yourself 10K potentially it
might be 15 to 16 thousand a month.
So then when it comes to the cashflow forecast, we can say, okay, this is what
you need to do in revenue this month or these weeks to be able to support paying
yourself exactly what you need to pay so that you can have that revenue baseline
so that at least you're hitting what you need to pay yourself so that you're not
no longer living paycheck to paycheck.
And when you are living on half of what you pay yourself, you could
spend the other 50 percent on things like charitable contributions.
You can like save so that you can have three months, six months of
expenses saved up, you can pay off your debt, things like that.
You can like really thrive in your life.
So let me know in the comments, if you're watching on the YouTube
version, which do you struggle with the most in your business?
Do you struggle most with maintaining profit in your business?
Or do you struggle with paying yourself your ideal salary in your business?
Or is it both?
Let me know.
If you're ready to uncover what you must pay yourself in your
business so that you can accomplish your immediate lifestyle goals.
Sign up for my new Dream Life Calculator.
I want you to avoid living paycheck to paycheck or better yet strike payout
to strike payout so that you can have visibility of your personal funds.
The Dream Lifestyle Calculator helps you uncover what you need to pay yourself
without living on 100 percent of your income so that you can start to thrive,
not only survive in your life and that you're able to hit your immediate
lifestyle goals and your legacy goals.
Go to lovelyfinancials.
com slash lifestyle to get started.
If you're a woman growing your business and family and want to have your business
build personal wealth and legacy, subscribe on either YouTube or wherever
you listen to your favorite podcasts.
I'm on a mission to help a hundred women earn at least 1 million in
net worth to create generational wealth and break generational curses.
If this aligns with you, I'd love for you to be a part of the
community and join in listening to more Harmonious Wealth episodes.
Thank you so much.
Hey there girlfriend, if you're ready to finally have the lifestyle
and legacy to show for your business success, I would love for you to
click that subscribe button on your favorite podcast app or YouTube.