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Quote: “I promise you; your numbers are trying to tell you a story, you HAVE to read the story. Ignoring your numbers is not a strategy.” Danielle Hayden
Is there ever a bad time to talk about money? I don’t think so. Today we’re tackling some tough questions like “Do you feel like you have a handle on your finances? Budgeting, profit, taxes?” If you don’t, trust me…you’re not alone. On this episode of The Wealthy Speaker Show, we welcome Danielle Hayden to share her ideas to determine how you’re doing financially in your business and strategies that you can use to set financial goals to help you scale.
Danielle is a reformed corporate CFO (chief financial officer) who is on a mission to help rule-breaking female entrepreneurs understand their numbers so they can gain the confidence needed to create sustainable profits. After spending 10+ years in the boardroom as a corporate finance officer, Danielle is now in her sweet spot as the co-owner of Kickstart Accounting, Inc. where she helps business owners with bookkeeping, financial analysis, and education and as the author of the Profit Planner book series.
Read Full Transcript
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Jane Atkinson: Hey. Well, welcome back everyone to the wealthy speaker show is there ever a bad time to talk about money and finances.
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Danielle Hayden: I don't think so.
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Jane Atkinson: And you all know that I love, love, love to talk about money. So who do we bring in to talk about this well and make sense that it's a former CFO Danielle Hayden. Welcome to the show.
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Danielle Hayden: Thank you so much for having me here.
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Danielle Hayden: With it to have this conversation.
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Jane Atkinson: Now I can see you on zoom. But the rest of our listeners cannot, and I suspect when you went to school to study finance, you didn't quite look like everybody else in your class. Am I, am I wrong about that is that crazy
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Danielle Hayden: Oh that yeah you you hit it right on the nail. It's interesting. I have always been such a people person actually right before I transitioned into accounting. I was working as a hairdresser.
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Danielle Hayden: And yeah, totally different.
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Jane Atkinson: Very creative, interesting.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah. Yeah. And I loved
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Danielle Hayden: Talking to people and I so as I went into school for accounting and finance. I was always, I was always the, you know, Gabby one in the in the in the background because
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Jane Atkinson: All these left. I'm thinking a bunch of left brain dudes just what you had in your class.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.
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Danielle Hayden: Very interesting.
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Jane Atkinson: Well, okay. So talk a little bit about kind of how you came to run your business as it is today. What was your path because you worked in the corporate world as a CFO for a while. Right.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, so I went into corporate accounting, which means I helped mid sized businesses.
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Danielle Hayden: So about 20 to $50 million in revenue. And I went into these businesses. Yeah, and
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Danielle Hayden: I help them understand the numbers so that the board of directors, the investors and the CEO could use those numbers to grow the business. And so I was involved with several acquisitions, where I was part of a management team that would go in
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Danielle Hayden: Put in a structure of key performance indicators and board presentations to help hold the entire management team.
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Danielle Hayden: Accountable to our goals. We would go in, we would build the company. And then we would spin it off and sell it to another group of investors or private equity firm or another or another company.
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Danielle Hayden: What's so cool about what I was able to do. There was learning how these investors and learning how the board of directors and the CEOs, use the financial information to grow the business.
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Danielle Hayden: And so I went on a mission to bring that to entrepreneurship. I said, How can small business, how can entrepreneurs compete with bigger businesses, if they don't have that same resource. And so we're on a mission to bring everything I learned it at during that time as a CFO to entrepreneurship.
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Jane Atkinson: I love that. And let me ask you this. Somebody who let's say we're going to break it down and talk about kind of two groups of people.
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Jane Atkinson: The first group is that entrepreneur who's on their way to their first hundred K
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Jane Atkinson: That's going to be our emerging speaker group and then we have a lot of people in our world in our masterminds and in private coaching and in our school who are actually more like at 300 aiming for seven figures and beyond. So does all of the same
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Jane Atkinson: Is it all of this is it all the same regardless. And we'll talk a little bit about what are some basic things to do for that person on the on the way to the first hundred K. But you said 20 to 50 million, is that the same ideas if somebody's looking to get to the first million
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Danielle Hayden: Of course it is.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, yeah. Because how do you get to how do you get to 20 to 50 million, you start with your first million
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Right.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, you have to start somewhere. And that goes for the same person who who's under 100 K. We have so many clients. Most of our clients are within that range of their
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Danielle Hayden: We have some clients who are just hitting their hundred thousand dollar range.
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Danielle Hayden: And clients who are on their way to the first $5 million year the core concepts are the same. And it's learning to make data driven decisions so that you can continue to grow your business, no matter where you're at.
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Jane Atkinson: I love that. I just did a spreadsheet talking about what what are, we're going to be my paths.
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Jane Atkinson: To the seven figures you know coven was a little bit of a delay, but I do believe that our company will get there either next year or the year after
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Jane Atkinson: And really put down what was going to be in the investment required in order with all the different initiatives that I had in mind. So this is really good timing for me.
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Jane Atkinson: Really excited to talk to you and I may just like use this all for my own personal knowledge.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay, so let's say somebody's looking to go to that first hundred K. Let's give them one or two strategies that will just be for them. I know that these will flow into these will be the same strategies that the people are hoping to have are more will need, but what are some of the basics.
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Danielle Hayden: Yep. If we're, we're just getting started, or you've been started but you're
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Danielle Hayden: Slow to grow in the first few years some very, very basics. Make sure you
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Danielle Hayden: Separate your, your business expenses completely from your personal
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, you want to two separate
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Danielle Hayden: checking accounts credit cards. You do not want any commingling whatsoever.
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Danielle Hayden: Right, really important in the is the IRS. We won't go into all the reasons why but just, just do it.
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Jane Atkinson: Co mingling I liked your turn. Yeah, no commingling then from there, I want you to get into an accounting software.
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Danielle Hayden: We have people who sell me all the time. I don't have enough, I don't have enough expenses. I'll have enough income. Why don't you have enough you have enough you when you are starting from the beginning, it is the best time
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Danielle Hayden: To start getting things in the system start creating good habits that way. You already have those things in place as you grow.
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Jane Atkinson: An Excel spreadsheet is not going to cut it at some point in time and that no better time to do it now. So QuickBooks, whatever it might be. Just do it.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, and you lose your history. So I always hate to hear that business owners work while I had an Excel. I said, but you don't have an Excel now. So when we're four years in. And yeah, maybe you have an accounting system, you know, starting your three you lost the first three years of data.
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Danielle Hayden: And there is nothing
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Danielle Hayden: more fun than watching that growth.
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Jane Atkinson: Yeah, and I love you know part of my coach that I go to Dan Solomon's group Strategic Coach, they talk about 10 times in your business.
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Jane Atkinson: And when I first heard that term. I was like, Oh man, that sounds like so.
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Jane Atkinson: Overwhelming. I'm going to have to work so hard. And then I actually based on my numbers went back and realize I'd already done that one. So of course I can do it again.
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Jane Atkinson: So that was really exciting to be able to track because I went into QuickBooks, like the minute I got into business. So, okay, that's really good. No commingling software. What else
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Danielle Hayden: Once you're in the software. It's time. It's time to start recording it so make sure that you have
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Danielle Hayden: your Chart of Accounts set up correctly, you have a profit and loss statement that that's set up correctly start recording your transactions and from day one. I want you to start
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Danielle Hayden: Reviewing the information. So start pulling the profit and loss statement start pulling the balance sheet, you're going to struggle with us, you're going to say.
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Danielle Hayden: I don't know what the hell this means that's okay. I want you to just start reading the information because I promise you.
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Danielle Hayden: Your numbers are trying to tell you a story. You have to read the story. And so from day one. If you can look at it and say, oh wow I spent a lot of money right there. Did that work for me.
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Danielle Hayden: Let me do more of what's working and less of what's not.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay. And how often should you run your p&l and be reviewing it.
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Danielle Hayden: I would prefer for it to be monthly. However, I know that that's pretty daunting.
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So,
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Danielle Hayden: You could do this, quarterly, so we have some clients who who who get their financial statements monthly. We have some who do it quarterly
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Danielle Hayden: But at a minimum, you need to do a quarterly because that is going to set you up for the rest of the year. Do I have enough in tax savings. Am I, am I bringing in enough to support my goals, do I need, how do I react so that
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Danielle Hayden: You have enough time throughout the year to react if you wait until November to get your bookkeeping caught up. You can't make any decisions anymore. The years done
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Jane Atkinson: Right, you're, you're too late to the ball and by doing it that frequently. Another good habit to get into is taking a certain percentage a side of every check that comes in. Can that be a habit that you could start doing right from the get go.
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Jane Atkinson: So as you're prepared for taxes and things like that. I cannot tell you how many
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Jane Atkinson: Times. My husband and I both have owed 20 3040 $50,000 in that, you know, and it's so much more sense to be paying it as you go.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, at least set it aside, I suggest to all of our clients, open up a checking account or savings account where you can transfer the funds.
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Danielle Hayden: You can do a base on every check that you get when when you review your financial statements. You'll have what's called the net income or loss.
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Danielle Hayden: If you have a loss. You don't have to set anything aside for taxes because you're going to be claiming a lawsuit is what it is.
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Danielle Hayden: If you have a profit, then you need to be setting aside between 20 to 30% of your, your profit and you can do it based on the check them out. But you might be, you might have
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Danielle Hayden: Over saved throughout the year. And that's not a bad things. A lot of people say to me, well, I'd rather be over saved and under saved and they say, Yeah, but if you're over saved, then you're not taking that cash and
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Danielle Hayden: And reinvesting it or
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Danielle Hayden: Getting yourself paid. So I'd rather you just use the funds correctly in the first place.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay. All right. So we don't want to, you have a saying ignoring your numbers is not a strategy.
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Jane Atkinson: I would say that that might be our pull quote for the beginning of the
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Jane Atkinson: Every time we do our show notes in our email or to promote this. We always have a full quote. And I think that might be that
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Jane Atkinson: That and on that very early on.
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Jane Atkinson: Ignoring your numbers is not a strategy from Danielle. Okay, let's talk about the three R's.
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Danielle Hayden: Yes. So we talked about earlier, can the can. The $50 million business use the same thing as the hundred thousand dollar business. And this is, this is where we can go back to fundamentals.
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Danielle Hayden: The three R's record review and read every single person needs to do that. So, either as a business owner, you're doing your own bookkeeping, or you have or you've gotten help and you've outsourced this
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Danielle Hayden: You'll record the transactions. In the end, your accounting software. So if your DIY style. You'll be the one going in and recording those if you have help your book up or should be recording those for you.
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Danielle Hayden: You want to review everything. So that was that process that we were talking about with the with the profit and loss statement and the balance sheet. It's taking that time.
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Danielle Hayden: I think we we overuse the term CEO time in 2020 but it but there's something to be said for it. And what that means is
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Danielle Hayden: I'm not going to work in my business today I'm gonna work on my business. And so today, I'm gonna
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Danielle Hayden: I'm gonna come in with my CEO hat and I am going to have the numbers already complete. Now my bookkeeper sent me the numbers. I'm not in the nitty gritty, I'm able to approach it.
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Danielle Hayden: Like an outsider and really review everything. And then the last part is read right so your numbers are trying to tell you a story.
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Danielle Hayden: Your job is to read the story. So you need to read, read that and figure out what is working. Where am I spending too much money.
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Danielle Hayden: Where am I not spending enough money. Where do I need to reinvest I have a large amount of profit. But I don't have a business coach that maybe I need to start investing into my business investing in myself development.
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Danielle Hayden: Maybe this year I've invested too much of myself development and I'm taking a loss home in my business or it's just one example you know anywhere where you're you're spending money or earning money.
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Danielle Hayden: Reading what's working and not working.
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Jane Atkinson: I love it, I love it. I remember one year thinking, oh, I don't know if I'm going to continue on with my mastermind. And when I looked back at the end of the year.
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Jane Atkinson: I recognize that actually it was one of my most profitable centers. And why would I do away with that, you know, I enjoyed it.
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Jane Atkinson: I don't know why I had come up with that idea in the first place. But once I really reviewed the numbers. Boy, what a story. It did tell me and I recognize that that would be foolish to not
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Jane Atkinson: Really appreciate what that was bringing to the table for me.
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Danielle Hayden: Well, that's a great example of that, we, we see that a lot. And I like that you brought up profitability, because that's really what's most important guys
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Danielle Hayden: You know, if you have we had a client last year who
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Danielle Hayden: She launched a new service offering. And she was so excited about it. She felt like it was her
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Danielle Hayden: her life's mission to bring this to the world. She, she really felt like there was nobody else out there taking all of the pieces of writing a book and publishing and putting it into into one offering right so she
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Danielle Hayden: started this company that started this new service line and she had to have all these contractors that she had to work with in order to get the deliverable done. So although she had
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Danielle Hayden: I'm going to say, I mean she had quadrupled her revenue but she was spending so much money and paying the contractors, because the contractors were giving her a low, quote, and then going over in time.
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Danielle Hayden: broke my heart. And then she had clients, where she had billing, but then had some collections issue. So she was billing and then giving them 30 days they were paying it 60 days, but she had contractors who were doing work for her that she had to pay within within 14 days.
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Danielle Hayden: recipe for disaster. However, she was so happy and doing it right. But she was getting the numbers in front of her every month. She was watching her credit cards.
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Danielle Hayden: Increase watching her availability to decrease watching her cash dwindle and she said, although I love this. And I want to bring this to the world. It is not profitable. I have to go back to my coaching business where I was making pure profit.
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Danielle Hayden: Because that is where I'm making money. I am going to bankrupt, not only myself but my family. If I keep on going. This. So that's where reading those numbers.
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Danielle Hayden: You can make quick decisions. I think she launched in January and closed it and in August, and that's how quickly you can make decisions if you're if you're monitoring your numbers and metrics. She went to went there to somebody you
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Jane Atkinson: Know, she could have a she wasn't watching the number. She could have
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Jane Atkinson: Dragged it on for
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Jane Atkinson: A couple of years, and not end the end of that had to be profitable at all. So that was a very good decision made very quickly. Love that. Okay.
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Jane Atkinson: transitioning over to the people. Now, and these things will apply to everybody. Anyway, really. But let's talk about. All right. Your goal is seven figures and hey, let's face it, everybody had a rough 2020. We know that
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Jane Atkinson: We felt very, very
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Jane Atkinson: I don't even know what the word is it's beyond gratitude. It's something more that we ended up finishing up from the year before in a really, really, really rough year there's some pride in there. There's some I'm humbled by it. There's gratitude for it. It's just incredible and
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Jane Atkinson: But we're not anywhere near where we want it to be.
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Jane Atkinson: Of course. This course which
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Jane Atkinson: Nobody was nobody was and so
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Jane Atkinson: There were there were some unicorns in my business, though I was very proud of some of my clients who were still having their best year ever, which is awesome. So let's fast forward to some of the more critical things to scaling your speaking business, what would some of those be
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Danielle Hayden: And as you start to scale. I'm going to assume we already have the good bookkeeping practices, we're reviewing numbers on a regular basis, or at least you you have the information
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Danielle Hayden: Right now, next up is planning.
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Danielle Hayden: In in corporate we went through a
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Danielle Hayden: Giant budget process. Okay, I would go to each department, I'd say, alright, advertising, what's our plan.
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Danielle Hayden: Alright sales guys
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Danielle Hayden: Tell me what your goals are, right, what do you, what do you need food. We need to hire. What do we need in order to be able to support those goals.
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Danielle Hayden: All right, R amp D, research and development, and then a small business, right. That's just you. What do we plan on doing this year. What do we plan on developing are we are we doing a new course or we're doing a coaching program. Okay.
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Danielle Hayden: All right, where are we investing our money this year what development. Are we doing, right. So I went to each of these departments and we pulled all this information.
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Danielle Hayden: Into into an annual budget. I know that feels really big as a business owner. But during that CEO day right so I'm not working in my business today. I'm working on my business. I want you to have a planning session.
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Danielle Hayden: Once you to pull your income statement for the last year. Usually we do 12 months but with 2020 we're doing the last two years.
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Danielle Hayden: A little bit more that's accurate. Yeah, let's give a runway here. So we do this exercise with clients, where we'll pull
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Danielle Hayden: All of 2019 or 2020 data and we'll look at look at the trends and then we'll say, all right, what, let's start from the top. What are our revenue goals.
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Danielle Hayden: What, you know, do we have any big large speaking engagements. Do we have, what do we already have planned and what what are our goals.
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Danielle Hayden: So we start from the top. What's next, let's plan our spending. Do we need to advertise. Do we need to travel, do we, what do we need to help hit those those revenue goals.
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Jane Atkinson: What are our big giant investments going to be throughout the years.
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Danielle Hayden: Our investments.
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Jane Atkinson: And you know I set aside, and this is where you're helping me get more clear and
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Jane Atkinson: Could it be 10,015 20 $25,000 this year, just for personal development for my coaches. So I've never really sat down and created the budget for those things throughout the year I you know I think I'm like a lot of people were I'm really excited to set a financial goal for revenue.
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Danielle Hayden: But that's where you're not planning. That's what I did. Yeah, I know. We hear it all the time that people like. Well, I have a revenue goal. I'm like, yeah.
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Danielle Hayden: Great. But did you decide how much you needed to invest in order to hit that revenue goal you you have to spend money in your business, you might have operations subscriptions right unique calland Lee and zoom acuity.
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Danielle Hayden: Maybe you have some contractors who are working with you, social media consultants and you know anybody that you have supporting you in your business employees contractors
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Danielle Hayden: Other vendors who are supporting you, maybe you're doing something in your business that you don't want to do anymore. So you plan on outsourcing it or hiring a VA or planning on. Okay, where do I feel overwhelmed. I heard somebody else speaking about this recently.
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Danielle Hayden: Where I also budget my energy right so i i actually
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Jane Atkinson: Moved into this is interesting.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah. So okay, so taking so taking an inventory of
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Danielle Hayden: What am I doing this week, or this month. Right. What I do this year that I really enjoy doing and what did I not enjoy doing. Right. So we hear from people all the time.
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Danielle Hayden: I, I can do my own bookkeeping. I know how to do it. I just don't want to do it it like
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Danielle Hayden: sucks the life out of me and
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Danielle Hayden: Lingering black cloud, right. So maybe it's time to outsource that. Or maybe it's making website updates. Right. Like I or it's your social media. Maybe it's the administrative tasks, right.
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Danielle Hayden: Just doing the background planning and booking travel and keeping your calendar. Yes, the email suck. Right. And you need, you want your VA to come in and help you organize your emails.
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Danielle Hayden: Whatever it is just taking an
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Danielle Hayden: Inventory stack and then
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Danielle Hayden: An assessment of what you enjoy and you don't enjoy, then you can plan your expenses and say alright if I start to hit these revenue goals.
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Danielle Hayden: I can, I can take more of my time speaking and planning for speaking right and really just honing in that skill set and I can plan my expenses and get some of the stuff that sucks. My energy and outsource it
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Jane Atkinson: It's beautiful. I'll put in a plug for my new book scaling your speaking business 10 strategies for earning more while doing less
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Jane Atkinson: We talk a lot about team. And in the book. And what pieces you might be able to outsource. I love the term budget. What do you call that the energy budget. Is that the right
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Danielle Hayden: Terminology energy, energy budget energy assessment, right, like just
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Danielle Hayden: Taking stack of your energy and and what fills you up and what drains you
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Jane Atkinson: Exactly and and. Okay, so I have a kind of a big picture question.
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Jane Atkinson: In terms of the revenue expenses ratio. Do you have a percentage of a goal that you're you and your clients are after.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, so I want you to be at 30% profitability.
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Jane Atkinson: I was close.
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Danielle Hayden: After you pay yourself. So I want you to be at 30%. I think that's a very healthy business.
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Jane Atkinson: 30% after you pay yourself.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay, that's a good number to go for
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Jane Atkinson: You pay yourself in. So, okay.
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Danielle Hayden: Budget that right. So when you when you go
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Danielle Hayden: When you do your budget exercise. If you are an LLC. When you actually pay yourself, you will be an owner straw and so you won't actually be on the income statement.
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Danielle Hayden: But you still want to see it in the same place so that you can make sure that you're profitable.
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Danielle Hayden: By 30% after you pay yourself if you are an S Corp and you're an officer salary, then your salary will show up on the income statement, and I'm getting a little accounting terms there, but I do want to make sure that I'm
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Danielle Hayden: You know, addressing that and kind of elephant in the room and on on how you pay yourself but make sure you're at 30% after you pay yourself as an owner
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Jane Atkinson: Okay. I love that. And is there a threshold where I'm in Canada, so I'm a little bit different. I incorporated my company, a few years back, because I was seeing my income rise and I wanted to be able to do what you were talking about.
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Jane Atkinson: Is there a threshold of $1 amount that you say, Okay, at this point, you should really be thinking about changing from a sole proprietorship, too.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, unfortunately, it's a little bit of a more gray area there because it depends on how much money you're spending, you know, if you're a big spender I can't say at hundred thousand dollars, you should switch over.
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Jane Atkinson: Because
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Danielle Hayden: You could be somebody who's running a very lean business all online, you know, and without any help.
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Danielle Hayden: So in that instance
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Danielle Hayden: You might be paying yourself a lot, but as you scale, you probably aren't going to be able to withstand that. So,
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Danielle Hayden: I do tell people once you're paying yourself on a regular basis. So you're taking regular draws from your business. It's usually a good time to start assessing it
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Danielle Hayden: Talk to your tax account. Review your numbers put forth this plan, you know, if you if you put if you do this planning session and
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Danielle Hayden: And you're not planning on paying yourself very much because you're investing a lot of money back into the business and back into yourself. That's probably not a good idea to do that this year.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay, gotcha. And, and I think the your best words of advice were to talk to your tax accountant.
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Jane Atkinson: That's really who helped me make the decision. Like, okay, I see where you're going. I see where you've been, you know, a few years ago. This is the right time to start. Okay, fair enough. Um,
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Jane Atkinson: Let's talk about analyzing I really love this question.
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Jane Atkinson: Let's talk about analyzing the financial impact of speaking engagements like we're really drilling down here so you, you have two engagements a side by side, one for ABC core one for ABC Association and we're trying to look at which one was more profitable.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, so I think it's
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Danielle Hayden: Um, let's talk maybe
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Danielle Hayden: Pre covert after comin right
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Danielle Hayden: Because there is a, there was a time that the travel was much more of an impact. I
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Danielle Hayden: Think, for
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Jane Atkinson: Let's talk about this during normal, normal times
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, because, you know, right now it might be. You might be able to do both, right, because you're, you're probably not traveling and and it's going to be whatever your speaker fee is less any of your time to prepare for the speech right
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Danielle Hayden: But but pre coded
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Danielle Hayden: You know, to measure, there's two things measure profitability and then and then success. So what is our fee or what is our revenue that we're getting from that speaking engagement minus anytime that we needed to prepare for that engagement. So, how much time do we prepare on that speech.
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Danielle Hayden: We have some clients who are all over the board. And this we have some some clients who are speakers who have their speech right they give it every single time that that they go first speaking engagement and they have a really dialed in.
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Danielle Hayden: And that's more profitable because
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Jane Atkinson: There's not 10 hours of prep on prison.
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Jane Atkinson: Yeah, maybe.
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Jane Atkinson: A couple because they're customizing it a little
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Danielle Hayden: Better. Of course, of course, maybe changing the changing a story or
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Danielle Hayden: Changing a piece of it. And then we have other other clients who they change their speech for
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Danielle Hayden: Every single engagement, right, they have to pay their VA to help them with imaging and maybe even parenting.
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Danielle Hayden: My issues. Yeah.
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Danielle Hayden: PowerPoints branding preparing for the speech, and I want you to start tracking that time.
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Danielle Hayden: I don't care what's in a Google Doc or in something more official like a toggle software.
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Danielle Hayden: But start tracking the amount of time that you need to prepare for each speech because that's going to determine how profitable. You are. And then how much you're paying other people to support you in
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Danielle Hayden: Being able to deliver
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Jane Atkinson: How does one decide what to equate their own hourly to like I bill out it over $1,000 an hour. So is am I putting it that way.
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Danielle Hayden: I would do, how much you're paying yourself if you're on a salary.
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Danielle Hayden: You know, divide your salary by
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Danielle Hayden: 2080 hours.
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Danielle Hayden: Okay, would be the most standard rate standard way of doing it. Or if you're not paying yourself right now. You can just
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Danielle Hayden: It's different, depending on where you live. You can do a quick Google search and say reasonable salary for a speaker. I'm in Ohio and in Ohio and and get a reasonable salary and then that becomes your hourly rate.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay, I feel like that's gonna be a hard Google hard Google but anyway.
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Jane Atkinson: Yeah. Oh, no. Maybe it'll come up. I don't know. Okay, fair enough. So understanding that now you talked earlier about KPIs key performance indicators. What would be some KPIs for a speaker.
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Danielle Hayden: So it depends on what's important to you and where you're at in your journey. So in the beginning, you might be thinking more about branding exercises. Right. So you're you're starting to get your name out there. You might be taking
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Danielle Hayden: More, More engagements to
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Danielle Hayden: To start to build your social media, maybe your build your you're taking these engagements because you want to start to build your email list. So at the beginning.
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Danielle Hayden: You might just want to start by tracking and this is, this could be important for anybody who's seasoned as well write
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Danielle Hayden: Some numbers.
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Danielle Hayden: For for speaking would be leads additional leads
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Danielle Hayden: Vendor relationships. So maybe I do a speaking engagement. I have no new followers
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Danielle Hayden: Or I i'm not i'm not allowed to get any new email subscribers. However, I met I met two new key partners that I can use to build relationships within the future.
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Danielle Hayden: Not so new, new vendor relationships new partnerships.
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Danielle Hayden: Number of email subscribers number of social media followers
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Jane Atkinson: So sometimes I think maybe all we're tracking is spin off you know he speaking engagements came from that one engagement, where we could really be looking at social reach did it expand
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Jane Atkinson: Were there new partnerships. I feel like you've given us a few other things to maybe factor in to see whether or not a speaking engagement was indeed successful
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, that's really
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Jane Atkinson: Great. I love it. Well, we're really trying to think more strategically here. So the final question is really around using the financials to make strategic investments. I feel like a lot of us and and
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Jane Atkinson: Meredith Elliot power put it beautifully when she wrote the foreword for scaling your speaking business. She talked about when you
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Jane Atkinson: Are growing your business, you're basically just reinvesting reinvesting reinvesting scaling means that those in those expenses. Stay kind of at one place and then your income grows so you're making so much more. That's what scaling is all about. What's your definition of scaling Daniel
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Danielle Hayden: Oh, I like that. Um, I don't know that your, your expenses necessarily stay the same, but I think that you're able
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Jane Atkinson: More like they they taper off. They're just not quite so they're not they're not quite such a large chunk. Let's say we could get it to that 30% that you mentioned, it might be yours. One and two. It's more like 60% whereas, we're getting an underhand
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, I mean, think about
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Danielle Hayden: At the beginning of your business you're investing in building a brand you right, you might have website development you your, your
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Danielle Hayden: Your expenses are going to be higher and your revenue is going to be lower. I want you to think about
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Danielle Hayden: We're doing a really fun exercise with our clients right now that's called the percentage of gross sales so
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Danielle Hayden: Looking at each of your expense lines as a percentage of your gross sales. Yeah. And as you scale. But I want you to see as more of that percent of sales going to officer salary. Right.
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Danielle Hayden: So you are becoming more efficient with
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Danielle Hayden: The way you do things you have processes and systems in place that help you become scalable right
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Danielle Hayden: And then you're able to spend less money because you have such great efficiency in the things that you do, and you really honed in on that on those things.
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Danielle Hayden: And then you're able to take more of that percentage of your sales to pay you personally and maybe supporting some of that that personal, personal growth.
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Jane Atkinson: Beautiful. Well, that was a good definition. Well, you have a profit planner book series how talk about those books and how people get them.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, the book series, there's, there's two books right now there's foundations and then financials.
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Danielle Hayden: They are designed to be structured around a single quarter per book foundations is for somebody who
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Danielle Hayden: We talked about earlier at the beginning of their business or maybe you don't have any of the bookkeeping processes in place.
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Danielle Hayden: Finances and accounting feels very overwhelming for you. I'm a big runner. And so I always use this example. You don't go run out, go say I'm gonna run a marathon and go do it next week. Right.
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Danielle Hayden: You say, I'm going to run this marathon. And I might add tomorrow I'm going to go for a walk. And then eventually, I'm going to jog. And then I'm going to run the marathon. Same concept here, you don't go say I'm gonna get all my bookkeeping an order tomorrow and then just go do it.
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Danielle Hayden: Right. This book every week gives you a small goal and every day has one action tasks and everything builds upon each other. So at the end of the book you feel really confident
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Danielle Hayden: about knowing your numbers, knowing your finances and then how to use them.
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Danielle Hayden: Like as a small daily tasks Notes section. So you can do it right in the book really becomes your diary or we do have an E book out to. So then you need your own pen and paper, but
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Jane Atkinson: Or an iPad with the stylist, which I absolutely I've gone away from all books and I just write in using my pen on the iPad. It is the most brilliant thing ever.
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Jane Atkinson: So I'm going to buy one of those your books. Where do people go to get them profit planner books calm, perhaps
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Danielle Hayden: Be a prophet back on. You nailed it. Yeah.
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Jane Atkinson: I just noticed that in my notes da. Oh yeah, I think it's there. Okay, so profit planner books calm. We're going to put that in the show notes.
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Jane Atkinson: But also if somebody's interested in kind of getting their act together financially. You also have a discovery call, where should they go to see more about that.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, you could same website you can go to profit center books calm and learn more about our services, as well as the books, you could book a call directly with me you won't get a high pressure sales person calling you.
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Danielle Hayden: Will have a really nice call and a chat about where you're at. It's an opportunity to ask questions. I know that.
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Danielle Hayden: Fight money and finances and accounting can be really scary right we come in with a lot of a lot of baggage in this area. And so I want this to be a place where you can come and it not be scary. You could ask any of those questions that you're like,
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Danielle Hayden: Feel really stupid asking that question.
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Jane Atkinson: Because
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Danielle Hayden: We have, we have a policy at our firm no judgment. There is no judgment.
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Danielle Hayden: That's, yeah.
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Danielle Hayden: So, come, come. Schedule call come talk to me. I'd love to hear more about your business and your processes and
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Jane Atkinson: And it sounds like you are working with some people from our world, which I think is very, very helpful. Danielle Hayden, thank you so much for dropping by the wealthy speaker show
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Danielle Hayden: today. Thank you for having me. This was super fun.
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Jane Atkinson: I really appreciate it. And if, for those of you listening in. Hey, let us know if you've enjoyed what we've been doing today. And with that, we will say see you soon wealthy speakers. Bye for now everybody
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Jane Atkinson: Hey. Well, welcome back everyone to the wealthy speaker show is there ever a bad time to talk about money and finances.
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Danielle Hayden: I don't think so.
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Jane Atkinson: And you all know that I love, love, love to talk about money. So who do we bring in to talk about this well and make sense that it's a former CFO Danielle Hayden. Welcome to the show.
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Danielle Hayden: Thank you so much for having me here.
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Danielle Hayden: With it to have this conversation.
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Jane Atkinson: Now I can see you on zoom. But the rest of our listeners cannot, and I suspect when you went to school to study finance, you didn't quite look like everybody else in your class. Am I, am I wrong about that is that crazy
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Danielle Hayden: Oh that yeah you you hit it right on the nail. It's interesting. I have always been such a people person actually right before I transitioned into accounting. I was working as a hairdresser.
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Danielle Hayden: And yeah, totally different.
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Jane Atkinson: Very creative, interesting.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah. Yeah. And I loved
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Danielle Hayden: Talking to people and I so as I went into school for accounting and finance. I was always, I was always the, you know, Gabby one in the in the in the background because
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Jane Atkinson: All these left. I'm thinking a bunch of left brain dudes just what you had in your class.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.
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Danielle Hayden: Very interesting.
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Jane Atkinson: Well, okay. So talk a little bit about kind of how you came to run your business as it is today. What was your path because you worked in the corporate world as a CFO for a while. Right.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, so I went into corporate accounting, which means I helped mid sized businesses.
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Danielle Hayden: So about 20 to $50 million in revenue. And I went into these businesses. Yeah, and
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Danielle Hayden: I help them understand the numbers so that the board of directors, the investors and the CEO could use those numbers to grow the business. And so I was involved with several acquisitions, where I was part of a management team that would go in
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Danielle Hayden: Put in a structure of key performance indicators and board presentations to help hold the entire management team.
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Danielle Hayden: Accountable to our goals. We would go in, we would build the company. And then we would spin it off and sell it to another group of investors or private equity firm or another or another company.
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Danielle Hayden: What's so cool about what I was able to do. There was learning how these investors and learning how the board of directors and the CEOs, use the financial information to grow the business.
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Danielle Hayden: And so I went on a mission to bring that to entrepreneurship. I said, How can small business, how can entrepreneurs compete with bigger businesses, if they don't have that same resource. And so we're on a mission to bring everything I learned it at during that time as a CFO to entrepreneurship.
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Jane Atkinson: I love that. And let me ask you this. Somebody who let's say we're going to break it down and talk about kind of two groups of people.
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Jane Atkinson: The first group is that entrepreneur who's on their way to their first hundred K
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Jane Atkinson: That's going to be our emerging speaker group and then we have a lot of people in our world in our masterminds and in private coaching and in our school who are actually more like at 300 aiming for seven figures and beyond. So does all of the same
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Jane Atkinson: Is it all of this is it all the same regardless. And we'll talk a little bit about what are some basic things to do for that person on the on the way to the first hundred K. But you said 20 to 50 million, is that the same ideas if somebody's looking to get to the first million
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Danielle Hayden: Of course it is.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, yeah. Because how do you get to how do you get to 20 to 50 million, you start with your first million
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Right.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, you have to start somewhere. And that goes for the same person who who's under 100 K. We have so many clients. Most of our clients are within that range of their
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Danielle Hayden: We have some clients who are just hitting their hundred thousand dollar range.
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Danielle Hayden: And clients who are on their way to the first $5 million year the core concepts are the same. And it's learning to make data driven decisions so that you can continue to grow your business, no matter where you're at.
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Jane Atkinson: I love that. I just did a spreadsheet talking about what what are, we're going to be my paths.
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Jane Atkinson: To the seven figures you know coven was a little bit of a delay, but I do believe that our company will get there either next year or the year after
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Jane Atkinson: And really put down what was going to be in the investment required in order with all the different initiatives that I had in mind. So this is really good timing for me.
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Jane Atkinson: Really excited to talk to you and I may just like use this all for my own personal knowledge.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay, so let's say somebody's looking to go to that first hundred K. Let's give them one or two strategies that will just be for them. I know that these will flow into these will be the same strategies that the people are hoping to have are more will need, but what are some of the basics.
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Danielle Hayden: Yep. If we're, we're just getting started, or you've been started but you're
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Danielle Hayden: Slow to grow in the first few years some very, very basics. Make sure you
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Danielle Hayden: Separate your, your business expenses completely from your personal
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, you want to two separate
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Danielle Hayden: checking accounts credit cards. You do not want any commingling whatsoever.
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Danielle Hayden: Right, really important in the is the IRS. We won't go into all the reasons why but just, just do it.
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Jane Atkinson: Co mingling I liked your turn. Yeah, no commingling then from there, I want you to get into an accounting software.
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Danielle Hayden: We have people who sell me all the time. I don't have enough, I don't have enough expenses. I'll have enough income. Why don't you have enough you have enough you when you are starting from the beginning, it is the best time
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Danielle Hayden: To start getting things in the system start creating good habits that way. You already have those things in place as you grow.
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Jane Atkinson: An Excel spreadsheet is not going to cut it at some point in time and that no better time to do it now. So QuickBooks, whatever it might be. Just do it.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, and you lose your history. So I always hate to hear that business owners work while I had an Excel. I said, but you don't have an Excel now. So when we're four years in. And yeah, maybe you have an accounting system, you know, starting your three you lost the first three years of data.
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Danielle Hayden: And there is nothing
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Danielle Hayden: more fun than watching that growth.
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Jane Atkinson: Yeah, and I love you know part of my coach that I go to Dan Solomon's group Strategic Coach, they talk about 10 times in your business.
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Jane Atkinson: And when I first heard that term. I was like, Oh man, that sounds like so.
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Jane Atkinson: Overwhelming. I'm going to have to work so hard. And then I actually based on my numbers went back and realize I'd already done that one. So of course I can do it again.
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Jane Atkinson: So that was really exciting to be able to track because I went into QuickBooks, like the minute I got into business. So, okay, that's really good. No commingling software. What else
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Danielle Hayden: Once you're in the software. It's time. It's time to start recording it so make sure that you have
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Danielle Hayden: your Chart of Accounts set up correctly, you have a profit and loss statement that that's set up correctly start recording your transactions and from day one. I want you to start
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Danielle Hayden: Reviewing the information. So start pulling the profit and loss statement start pulling the balance sheet, you're going to struggle with us, you're going to say.
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Danielle Hayden: I don't know what the hell this means that's okay. I want you to just start reading the information because I promise you.
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Danielle Hayden: Your numbers are trying to tell you a story. You have to read the story. And so from day one. If you can look at it and say, oh wow I spent a lot of money right there. Did that work for me.
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Danielle Hayden: Let me do more of what's working and less of what's not.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay. And how often should you run your p&l and be reviewing it.
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Danielle Hayden: I would prefer for it to be monthly. However, I know that that's pretty daunting.
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So,
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Danielle Hayden: You could do this, quarterly, so we have some clients who who who get their financial statements monthly. We have some who do it quarterly
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Danielle Hayden: But at a minimum, you need to do a quarterly because that is going to set you up for the rest of the year. Do I have enough in tax savings. Am I, am I bringing in enough to support my goals, do I need, how do I react so that
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Danielle Hayden: You have enough time throughout the year to react if you wait until November to get your bookkeeping caught up. You can't make any decisions anymore. The years done
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Jane Atkinson: Right, you're, you're too late to the ball and by doing it that frequently. Another good habit to get into is taking a certain percentage a side of every check that comes in. Can that be a habit that you could start doing right from the get go.
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Jane Atkinson: So as you're prepared for taxes and things like that. I cannot tell you how many
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Jane Atkinson: Times. My husband and I both have owed 20 3040 $50,000 in that, you know, and it's so much more sense to be paying it as you go.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, at least set it aside, I suggest to all of our clients, open up a checking account or savings account where you can transfer the funds.
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Danielle Hayden: You can do a base on every check that you get when when you review your financial statements. You'll have what's called the net income or loss.
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Danielle Hayden: If you have a loss. You don't have to set anything aside for taxes because you're going to be claiming a lawsuit is what it is.
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Danielle Hayden: If you have a profit, then you need to be setting aside between 20 to 30% of your, your profit and you can do it based on the check them out. But you might be, you might have
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Danielle Hayden: Over saved throughout the year. And that's not a bad things. A lot of people say to me, well, I'd rather be over saved and under saved and they say, Yeah, but if you're over saved, then you're not taking that cash and
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Danielle Hayden: And reinvesting it or
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Danielle Hayden: Getting yourself paid. So I'd rather you just use the funds correctly in the first place.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay. All right. So we don't want to, you have a saying ignoring your numbers is not a strategy.
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Jane Atkinson: I would say that that might be our pull quote for the beginning of the
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Jane Atkinson: Every time we do our show notes in our email or to promote this. We always have a full quote. And I think that might be that
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Jane Atkinson: That and on that very early on.
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Jane Atkinson: Ignoring your numbers is not a strategy from Danielle. Okay, let's talk about the three R's.
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Danielle Hayden: Yes. So we talked about earlier, can the can. The $50 million business use the same thing as the hundred thousand dollar business. And this is, this is where we can go back to fundamentals.
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Danielle Hayden: The three R's record review and read every single person needs to do that. So, either as a business owner, you're doing your own bookkeeping, or you have or you've gotten help and you've outsourced this
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Danielle Hayden: You'll record the transactions. In the end, your accounting software. So if your DIY style. You'll be the one going in and recording those if you have help your book up or should be recording those for you.
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Danielle Hayden: You want to review everything. So that was that process that we were talking about with the with the profit and loss statement and the balance sheet. It's taking that time.
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Danielle Hayden: I think we we overuse the term CEO time in 2020 but it but there's something to be said for it. And what that means is
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Danielle Hayden: I'm not going to work in my business today I'm gonna work on my business. And so today, I'm gonna
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Danielle Hayden: I'm gonna come in with my CEO hat and I am going to have the numbers already complete. Now my bookkeeper sent me the numbers. I'm not in the nitty gritty, I'm able to approach it.
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Danielle Hayden: Like an outsider and really review everything. And then the last part is read right so your numbers are trying to tell you a story.
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Danielle Hayden: Your job is to read the story. So you need to read, read that and figure out what is working. Where am I spending too much money.
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Danielle Hayden: Where am I not spending enough money. Where do I need to reinvest I have a large amount of profit. But I don't have a business coach that maybe I need to start investing into my business investing in myself development.
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Danielle Hayden: Maybe this year I've invested too much of myself development and I'm taking a loss home in my business or it's just one example you know anywhere where you're you're spending money or earning money.
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Danielle Hayden: Reading what's working and not working.
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Jane Atkinson: I love it, I love it. I remember one year thinking, oh, I don't know if I'm going to continue on with my mastermind. And when I looked back at the end of the year.
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Jane Atkinson: I recognize that actually it was one of my most profitable centers. And why would I do away with that, you know, I enjoyed it.
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Jane Atkinson: I don't know why I had come up with that idea in the first place. But once I really reviewed the numbers. Boy, what a story. It did tell me and I recognize that that would be foolish to not
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Jane Atkinson: Really appreciate what that was bringing to the table for me.
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Danielle Hayden: Well, that's a great example of that, we, we see that a lot. And I like that you brought up profitability, because that's really what's most important guys
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Danielle Hayden: You know, if you have we had a client last year who
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Danielle Hayden: She launched a new service offering. And she was so excited about it. She felt like it was her
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Danielle Hayden: her life's mission to bring this to the world. She, she really felt like there was nobody else out there taking all of the pieces of writing a book and publishing and putting it into into one offering right so she
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Danielle Hayden: started this company that started this new service line and she had to have all these contractors that she had to work with in order to get the deliverable done. So although she had
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Danielle Hayden: I'm going to say, I mean she had quadrupled her revenue but she was spending so much money and paying the contractors, because the contractors were giving her a low, quote, and then going over in time.
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Danielle Hayden: broke my heart. And then she had clients, where she had billing, but then had some collections issue. So she was billing and then giving them 30 days they were paying it 60 days, but she had contractors who were doing work for her that she had to pay within within 14 days.
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Danielle Hayden: recipe for disaster. However, she was so happy and doing it right. But she was getting the numbers in front of her every month. She was watching her credit cards.
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Danielle Hayden: Increase watching her availability to decrease watching her cash dwindle and she said, although I love this. And I want to bring this to the world. It is not profitable. I have to go back to my coaching business where I was making pure profit.
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Danielle Hayden: Because that is where I'm making money. I am going to bankrupt, not only myself but my family. If I keep on going. This. So that's where reading those numbers.
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Danielle Hayden: You can make quick decisions. I think she launched in January and closed it and in August, and that's how quickly you can make decisions if you're if you're monitoring your numbers and metrics. She went to went there to somebody you
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Jane Atkinson: Know, she could have a she wasn't watching the number. She could have
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Jane Atkinson: Dragged it on for
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Jane Atkinson: A couple of years, and not end the end of that had to be profitable at all. So that was a very good decision made very quickly. Love that. Okay.
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Jane Atkinson: transitioning over to the people. Now, and these things will apply to everybody. Anyway, really. But let's talk about. All right. Your goal is seven figures and hey, let's face it, everybody had a rough 2020. We know that
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Jane Atkinson: We felt very, very
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Jane Atkinson: I don't even know what the word is it's beyond gratitude. It's something more that we ended up finishing up from the year before in a really, really, really rough year there's some pride in there. There's some I'm humbled by it. There's gratitude for it. It's just incredible and
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Jane Atkinson: But we're not anywhere near where we want it to be.
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Jane Atkinson: Of course. This course which
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Jane Atkinson: Nobody was nobody was and so
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Jane Atkinson: There were there were some unicorns in my business, though I was very proud of some of my clients who were still having their best year ever, which is awesome. So let's fast forward to some of the more critical things to scaling your speaking business, what would some of those be
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Danielle Hayden: And as you start to scale. I'm going to assume we already have the good bookkeeping practices, we're reviewing numbers on a regular basis, or at least you you have the information
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Danielle Hayden: Right now, next up is planning.
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Danielle Hayden: In in corporate we went through a
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Danielle Hayden: Giant budget process. Okay, I would go to each department, I'd say, alright, advertising, what's our plan.
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Danielle Hayden: Alright sales guys
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Danielle Hayden: Tell me what your goals are, right, what do you, what do you need food. We need to hire. What do we need in order to be able to support those goals.
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Danielle Hayden: All right, R amp D, research and development, and then a small business, right. That's just you. What do we plan on doing this year. What do we plan on developing are we are we doing a new course or we're doing a coaching program. Okay.
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Danielle Hayden: All right, where are we investing our money this year what development. Are we doing, right. So I went to each of these departments and we pulled all this information.
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Danielle Hayden: Into into an annual budget. I know that feels really big as a business owner. But during that CEO day right so I'm not working in my business today. I'm working on my business. I want you to have a planning session.
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Danielle Hayden: Once you to pull your income statement for the last year. Usually we do 12 months but with 2020 we're doing the last two years.
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Danielle Hayden: A little bit more that's accurate. Yeah, let's give a runway here. So we do this exercise with clients, where we'll pull
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Danielle Hayden: All of 2019 or 2020 data and we'll look at look at the trends and then we'll say, all right, what, let's start from the top. What are our revenue goals.
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Danielle Hayden: What, you know, do we have any big large speaking engagements. Do we have, what do we already have planned and what what are our goals.
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Danielle Hayden: So we start from the top. What's next, let's plan our spending. Do we need to advertise. Do we need to travel, do we, what do we need to help hit those those revenue goals.
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Jane Atkinson: What are our big giant investments going to be throughout the years.
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Danielle Hayden: Our investments.
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Jane Atkinson: And you know I set aside, and this is where you're helping me get more clear and
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Jane Atkinson: Could it be 10,015 20 $25,000 this year, just for personal development for my coaches. So I've never really sat down and created the budget for those things throughout the year I you know I think I'm like a lot of people were I'm really excited to set a financial goal for revenue.
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Danielle Hayden: But that's where you're not planning. That's what I did. Yeah, I know. We hear it all the time that people like. Well, I have a revenue goal. I'm like, yeah.
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Danielle Hayden: Great. But did you decide how much you needed to invest in order to hit that revenue goal you you have to spend money in your business, you might have operations subscriptions right unique calland Lee and zoom acuity.
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Danielle Hayden: Maybe you have some contractors who are working with you, social media consultants and you know anybody that you have supporting you in your business employees contractors
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Danielle Hayden: Other vendors who are supporting you, maybe you're doing something in your business that you don't want to do anymore. So you plan on outsourcing it or hiring a VA or planning on. Okay, where do I feel overwhelmed. I heard somebody else speaking about this recently.
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Danielle Hayden: Where I also budget my energy right so i i actually
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Jane Atkinson: Moved into this is interesting.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah. So okay, so taking so taking an inventory of
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Danielle Hayden: What am I doing this week, or this month. Right. What I do this year that I really enjoy doing and what did I not enjoy doing. Right. So we hear from people all the time.
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Danielle Hayden: I, I can do my own bookkeeping. I know how to do it. I just don't want to do it it like
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Danielle Hayden: sucks the life out of me and
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Danielle Hayden: Lingering black cloud, right. So maybe it's time to outsource that. Or maybe it's making website updates. Right. Like I or it's your social media. Maybe it's the administrative tasks, right.
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Danielle Hayden: Just doing the background planning and booking travel and keeping your calendar. Yes, the email suck. Right. And you need, you want your VA to come in and help you organize your emails.
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Danielle Hayden: Whatever it is just taking an
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Danielle Hayden: Inventory stack and then
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Danielle Hayden: An assessment of what you enjoy and you don't enjoy, then you can plan your expenses and say alright if I start to hit these revenue goals.
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Danielle Hayden: I can, I can take more of my time speaking and planning for speaking right and really just honing in that skill set and I can plan my expenses and get some of the stuff that sucks. My energy and outsource it
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Jane Atkinson: It's beautiful. I'll put in a plug for my new book scaling your speaking business 10 strategies for earning more while doing less
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Jane Atkinson: We talk a lot about team. And in the book. And what pieces you might be able to outsource. I love the term budget. What do you call that the energy budget. Is that the right
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Danielle Hayden: Terminology energy, energy budget energy assessment, right, like just
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Danielle Hayden: Taking stack of your energy and and what fills you up and what drains you
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Jane Atkinson: Exactly and and. Okay, so I have a kind of a big picture question.
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Jane Atkinson: In terms of the revenue expenses ratio. Do you have a percentage of a goal that you're you and your clients are after.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, so I want you to be at 30% profitability.
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Jane Atkinson: I was close.
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Danielle Hayden: After you pay yourself. So I want you to be at 30%. I think that's a very healthy business.
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Jane Atkinson: 30% after you pay yourself.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay, that's a good number to go for
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Jane Atkinson: You pay yourself in. So, okay.
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Danielle Hayden: Budget that right. So when you when you go
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Danielle Hayden: When you do your budget exercise. If you are an LLC. When you actually pay yourself, you will be an owner straw and so you won't actually be on the income statement.
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Danielle Hayden: But you still want to see it in the same place so that you can make sure that you're profitable.
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Danielle Hayden: By 30% after you pay yourself if you are an S Corp and you're an officer salary, then your salary will show up on the income statement, and I'm getting a little accounting terms there, but I do want to make sure that I'm
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Danielle Hayden: You know, addressing that and kind of elephant in the room and on on how you pay yourself but make sure you're at 30% after you pay yourself as an owner
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Jane Atkinson: Okay. I love that. And is there a threshold where I'm in Canada, so I'm a little bit different. I incorporated my company, a few years back, because I was seeing my income rise and I wanted to be able to do what you were talking about.
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Jane Atkinson: Is there a threshold of $1 amount that you say, Okay, at this point, you should really be thinking about changing from a sole proprietorship, too.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, unfortunately, it's a little bit of a more gray area there because it depends on how much money you're spending, you know, if you're a big spender I can't say at hundred thousand dollars, you should switch over.
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Jane Atkinson: Because
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Danielle Hayden: You could be somebody who's running a very lean business all online, you know, and without any help.
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Danielle Hayden: So in that instance
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Danielle Hayden: You might be paying yourself a lot, but as you scale, you probably aren't going to be able to withstand that. So,
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Danielle Hayden: I do tell people once you're paying yourself on a regular basis. So you're taking regular draws from your business. It's usually a good time to start assessing it
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Danielle Hayden: Talk to your tax account. Review your numbers put forth this plan, you know, if you if you put if you do this planning session and
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Danielle Hayden: And you're not planning on paying yourself very much because you're investing a lot of money back into the business and back into yourself. That's probably not a good idea to do that this year.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay, gotcha. And, and I think the your best words of advice were to talk to your tax accountant.
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Jane Atkinson: That's really who helped me make the decision. Like, okay, I see where you're going. I see where you've been, you know, a few years ago. This is the right time to start. Okay, fair enough. Um,
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Jane Atkinson: Let's talk about analyzing I really love this question.
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Jane Atkinson: Let's talk about analyzing the financial impact of speaking engagements like we're really drilling down here so you, you have two engagements a side by side, one for ABC core one for ABC Association and we're trying to look at which one was more profitable.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, so I think it's
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Danielle Hayden: Um, let's talk maybe
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Danielle Hayden: Pre covert after comin right
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Danielle Hayden: Because there is a, there was a time that the travel was much more of an impact. I
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Danielle Hayden: Think, for
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Jane Atkinson: Let's talk about this during normal, normal times
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, because, you know, right now it might be. You might be able to do both, right, because you're, you're probably not traveling and and it's going to be whatever your speaker fee is less any of your time to prepare for the speech right
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Danielle Hayden: But but pre coded
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Danielle Hayden: You know, to measure, there's two things measure profitability and then and then success. So what is our fee or what is our revenue that we're getting from that speaking engagement minus anytime that we needed to prepare for that engagement. So, how much time do we prepare on that speech.
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Danielle Hayden: We have some clients who are all over the board. And this we have some some clients who are speakers who have their speech right they give it every single time that that they go first speaking engagement and they have a really dialed in.
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Danielle Hayden: And that's more profitable because
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Jane Atkinson: There's not 10 hours of prep on prison.
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Jane Atkinson: Yeah, maybe.
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Jane Atkinson: A couple because they're customizing it a little
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Danielle Hayden: Better. Of course, of course, maybe changing the changing a story or
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Danielle Hayden: Changing a piece of it. And then we have other other clients who they change their speech for
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Danielle Hayden: Every single engagement, right, they have to pay their VA to help them with imaging and maybe even parenting.
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Danielle Hayden: My issues. Yeah.
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Danielle Hayden: PowerPoints branding preparing for the speech, and I want you to start tracking that time.
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Danielle Hayden: I don't care what's in a Google Doc or in something more official like a toggle software.
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Danielle Hayden: But start tracking the amount of time that you need to prepare for each speech because that's going to determine how profitable. You are. And then how much you're paying other people to support you in
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Danielle Hayden: Being able to deliver
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Jane Atkinson: How does one decide what to equate their own hourly to like I bill out it over $1,000 an hour. So is am I putting it that way.
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Danielle Hayden: I would do, how much you're paying yourself if you're on a salary.
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Danielle Hayden: You know, divide your salary by
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Danielle Hayden: 2080 hours.
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Danielle Hayden: Okay, would be the most standard rate standard way of doing it. Or if you're not paying yourself right now. You can just
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Danielle Hayden: It's different, depending on where you live. You can do a quick Google search and say reasonable salary for a speaker. I'm in Ohio and in Ohio and and get a reasonable salary and then that becomes your hourly rate.
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Jane Atkinson: Okay, I feel like that's gonna be a hard Google hard Google but anyway.
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Jane Atkinson: Yeah. Oh, no. Maybe it'll come up. I don't know. Okay, fair enough. So understanding that now you talked earlier about KPIs key performance indicators. What would be some KPIs for a speaker.
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Danielle Hayden: So it depends on what's important to you and where you're at in your journey. So in the beginning, you might be thinking more about branding exercises. Right. So you're you're starting to get your name out there. You might be taking
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Danielle Hayden: More, More engagements to
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Danielle Hayden: To start to build your social media, maybe your build your you're taking these engagements because you want to start to build your email list. So at the beginning.
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Danielle Hayden: You might just want to start by tracking and this is, this could be important for anybody who's seasoned as well write
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Danielle Hayden: Some numbers.
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Danielle Hayden: For for speaking would be leads additional leads
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Danielle Hayden: Vendor relationships. So maybe I do a speaking engagement. I have no new followers
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Danielle Hayden: Or I i'm not i'm not allowed to get any new email subscribers. However, I met I met two new key partners that I can use to build relationships within the future.
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Danielle Hayden: Not so new, new vendor relationships new partnerships.
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Danielle Hayden: Number of email subscribers number of social media followers
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Jane Atkinson: So sometimes I think maybe all we're tracking is spin off you know he speaking engagements came from that one engagement, where we could really be looking at social reach did it expand
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Jane Atkinson: Were there new partnerships. I feel like you've given us a few other things to maybe factor in to see whether or not a speaking engagement was indeed successful
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, that's really
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Jane Atkinson: Great. I love it. Well, we're really trying to think more strategically here. So the final question is really around using the financials to make strategic investments. I feel like a lot of us and and
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Jane Atkinson: Meredith Elliot power put it beautifully when she wrote the foreword for scaling your speaking business. She talked about when you
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Jane Atkinson: Are growing your business, you're basically just reinvesting reinvesting reinvesting scaling means that those in those expenses. Stay kind of at one place and then your income grows so you're making so much more. That's what scaling is all about. What's your definition of scaling Daniel
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Danielle Hayden: Oh, I like that. Um, I don't know that your, your expenses necessarily stay the same, but I think that you're able
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Jane Atkinson: More like they they taper off. They're just not quite so they're not they're not quite such a large chunk. Let's say we could get it to that 30% that you mentioned, it might be yours. One and two. It's more like 60% whereas, we're getting an underhand
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, I mean, think about
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Danielle Hayden: At the beginning of your business you're investing in building a brand you right, you might have website development you your, your
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Danielle Hayden: Your expenses are going to be higher and your revenue is going to be lower. I want you to think about
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Danielle Hayden: We're doing a really fun exercise with our clients right now that's called the percentage of gross sales so
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Danielle Hayden: Looking at each of your expense lines as a percentage of your gross sales. Yeah. And as you scale. But I want you to see as more of that percent of sales going to officer salary. Right.
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Danielle Hayden: So you are becoming more efficient with
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Danielle Hayden: The way you do things you have processes and systems in place that help you become scalable right
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Danielle Hayden: And then you're able to spend less money because you have such great efficiency in the things that you do, and you really honed in on that on those things.
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Danielle Hayden: And then you're able to take more of that percentage of your sales to pay you personally and maybe supporting some of that that personal, personal growth.
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Jane Atkinson: Beautiful. Well, that was a good definition. Well, you have a profit planner book series how talk about those books and how people get them.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, the book series, there's, there's two books right now there's foundations and then financials.
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Danielle Hayden: They are designed to be structured around a single quarter per book foundations is for somebody who
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Danielle Hayden: We talked about earlier at the beginning of their business or maybe you don't have any of the bookkeeping processes in place.
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Danielle Hayden: Finances and accounting feels very overwhelming for you. I'm a big runner. And so I always use this example. You don't go run out, go say I'm gonna run a marathon and go do it next week. Right.
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Danielle Hayden: You say, I'm going to run this marathon. And I might add tomorrow I'm going to go for a walk. And then eventually, I'm going to jog. And then I'm going to run the marathon. Same concept here, you don't go say I'm gonna get all my bookkeeping an order tomorrow and then just go do it.
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Danielle Hayden: Right. This book every week gives you a small goal and every day has one action tasks and everything builds upon each other. So at the end of the book you feel really confident
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Danielle Hayden: about knowing your numbers, knowing your finances and then how to use them.
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Danielle Hayden: Like as a small daily tasks Notes section. So you can do it right in the book really becomes your diary or we do have an E book out to. So then you need your own pen and paper, but
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Jane Atkinson: Or an iPad with the stylist, which I absolutely I've gone away from all books and I just write in using my pen on the iPad. It is the most brilliant thing ever.
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Jane Atkinson: So I'm going to buy one of those your books. Where do people go to get them profit planner books calm, perhaps
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Danielle Hayden: Be a prophet back on. You nailed it. Yeah.
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Jane Atkinson: I just noticed that in my notes da. Oh yeah, I think it's there. Okay, so profit planner books calm. We're going to put that in the show notes.
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Jane Atkinson: But also if somebody's interested in kind of getting their act together financially. You also have a discovery call, where should they go to see more about that.
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Danielle Hayden: Yeah, you could same website you can go to profit center books calm and learn more about our services, as well as the books, you could book a call directly with me you won't get a high pressure sales person calling you.
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Danielle Hayden: Will have a really nice call and a chat about where you're at. It's an opportunity to ask questions. I know that.
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Danielle Hayden: Fight money and finances and accounting can be really scary right we come in with a lot of a lot of baggage in this area. And so I want this to be a place where you can come and it not be scary. You could ask any of those questions that you're like,
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Danielle Hayden: Feel really stupid asking that question.
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Jane Atkinson: Because
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Danielle Hayden: We have, we have a policy at our firm no judgment. There is no judgment.
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Danielle Hayden: That's, yeah.
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Danielle Hayden: So, come, come. Schedule call come talk to me. I'd love to hear more about your business and your processes and
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Jane Atkinson: And it sounds like you are working with some people from our world, which I think is very, very helpful. Danielle Hayden, thank you so much for dropping by the wealthy speaker show
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Danielle Hayden: today. Thank you for having me. This was super fun.
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Jane Atkinson: I really appreciate it. And if, for those of you listening in. Hey, let us know if you've enjoyed what we've been doing today. And with that, we will say see you soon wealthy speakers. Bye for now everybody
Highlights you won’t want to miss:
- Danielle’s path from hairdresser to CFO. [2:00]
- Strategies that apply to any size business. [4:00]
- The 3 R’s…record, review & read. [11:30]
- Plan to scale. [17:30]
- Don’t forget to budget your energy too. [21:00]
- When should you incorporate? [24:30]
- Key performance indicators. [30:00]
When Danielle isn’t crunching numbers on her clients’ behalf or crafting the next iteration of the Profit Planner, you can find her hanging with her two kids as she inspires them to lead their fullest lives or doing any, and almost every fitness-related activity ranging from Spartan races to pilates.
If you would like some great ideas that you can put into practice now to help you reach your business goals, you simply can’t afford to miss this episode.
I hope you’ll download and learn.
Links:
Danielle’s website
Danielle’s book series
Jane’s NEW book: Scaling Your Speaking Business – 10 Strategies for Earning More While Doing Less
The Wealthy Speaker Daily Success Planner and Journal
