We each have our personal journey, experiences, & beliefs around money. Not to mention the financial habits & practices we’ve picked up along the way.
Either way, growth & improvement is possible for all of us when it comes to managing our finances, paying off debt, building credit, growing savings, & more.
Alli Williams is a financial educator & money coach, and she’s joined me to talk about how we can design a personal financial plan that is simple & easy to stick to, as well as:
⚡️ The core components of a financial plan
⚡️ How to do your own money audit & understand your money
⚡️ How to seamlessly incorporate feedback loops into your process
⚡️ Building a realistic budget you can be consistent with
⚡️ Making it easier for your customers to Planning where you want your money to go to support your goals
⚡️ What to look out for when picking a bank for your business
🎧 Listen to this interview on Apple Podcasts: Coaches & Company Radio
DM us @coachesandcompany or leave a comment below with your thoughts, how you enjoyed the interview, & any follow up questions you have! We wanna hear from you!
You can learn more about Alli below:
@financiallifocused on Instagram
Watch the full interview below 👇🏽
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Read the transcript below:
Disclaimer: This transcript has been auto-generated – please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.
0:10
Hello, everyone and welcome. My name is Yasmine Salem Hamden and today I am here with Ali Williams. Aly is a financial literacy coach and educator and the founder of financially focused. Hi, Alli.
0:26
Yay, thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited to talk all that money today.
0:31
Oh, and I’m so excited to have you here. So excited to share this discussion with our community. And we’re going to talk about some important things. So today, we are discussing how to create a financial plan that you can actually stick to more women are coming into more money than ever before in modern history by way of digital entrepreneurship. And with more money comes more lessons to be learned as it relates to management, saving, investing expenses, and more. So I’m super pumped for this conversation today. And I would love for those that are not familiar with you yet to learn a little bit more about you. So if you wouldn’t mind, please, a brief introduction.
1:12
Yeah, so I’m Allie. And like I said, I, my company is financially focused. And our main goal is really to help TierPoint you know, have, especially women and couples create a flexible financial plan, they can stick to long term because I know if you’re watching this, there’s probably been a point where you tried to set a budget, and then you abandon it after a month, or you’ve always thought like, Oh, next year, I’ll make my finances a priority. And it’s really hard to stick to long term. So what I do is help people pay off debt, save, spend, do all the things kind of find that balance so that you can still, you know, get your weekly latte spend on the things that are important to you. And really use money as a tool to reach those big money goals. So I live in South Carolina, so it’s getting a little finally the cooling off here. And I am. It’s been here for six years, I think a while now. And it’s off Carolina for a while, and I have a one year old. So he keeps me pretty busy. But it’s been it’s been an adjustment but fun to the journey of motherhood as well.
2:12
Oh, I hear you on that we were chatting before we before we hit record on this, this journey of motherhood and entrepreneurship. So Allie, we might have to bring you back to talk more about how how we’re transitioning into this role. I’m sure I can think of a couple other awesome mom Mambo doors shot to jam out on that. Because yeah, it is a unique journey, that’s for sure. And there’s no blueprint.
2:38
No, there’s no what happened. Like, you know, I’m a planner, you know, I’m very type a like, I always had it, you know, everything’s organized. And children throw that out the window completely. Like you can’t plan anything. I’ll think I’ll get totally unpredictable. Yeah, yeah. So it’s definitely there’s definitely no blueprint. Yeah. Is there? Is that gonna read all the books in the world? But yeah,
3:02
So absolutely. I thought yyeah. But money is a little different, right? So you can create a plan, and you can set yourself up for success and ways to stick to that plan, and develop habits around your money. So if we could, I think it’d be a good place to start by sharing what the core components of a financial plan actually are, please. Yeah,ou’re gonna say a really fun party. I was like, Yeah, I was I like, thank you. I’m picturing it as a fun party like, yeah, again, hey, we’re gonna be partying in this room. So if you want to come join us, yeah, here’s where we’ll be. We’re gonna be talking about this and that way, only two people coming in are expecting to hear from you. They want to hear from you. They’re interested in what you’re talking about. And they’re probably ready to party. Right? I love I love. Yes, I love it. Okay, so it sounds like one of the common mistakes made is that you’re afraid people are afraid to once people are joining the waitlist, they kind of get nervous, like, Okay, well, I don’t want to scare him off. But it sounds like you’re saying don’t be scared. Just they want to hear from you.
3:23
yeah. So I think, you know, everyone always starts with a budget. But for me, I actually started a few steps before. Because if you automatically you know, sit down there, either Excel file or kind of paper and go to write a budget, you probably won’t stick to it, because you don’t really know what your numbers are. So the first step is really to like what I call is your money audit, and you’re going to go through all of your accounts, it’s so annoying to do, like, I always tell my clients and it’s not fun. It’s, it’s not like, No, I’m not gonna even sugarcoat it. It’s not fun. But you have to do a money audit, and you have to go through and actually understand, where’s your money going today? Like, where are you spending your money? What bills do you have? How much do you have in debt? How much do you have in savings, you have to get this kind of current state situation. So then we can create that realistic budget? Because if you think, okay, like, oh, I spend $600 a month on food, and you’re plugging that into your budget, but the numbers are telling you $800 a month on food, you’re never going to stick to that ever, you’re always going to be off and then you’re going to get frustrated, and throw in the towel and be like, Well, my budget doesn’t work. Like oh, well. So you know, first you need to get get all your numbers written out. It’s time consuming. It’s annoying, but that’s your first step. And then from there, you know, your budget is kind of your blueprint per se. And everyone hates the term budget, but call it whatever you want. I really don’t care. You can call your spending plan, call whatever you want. Budget is just telling your money, where to go. That’s the simplest definition of a budget. It gets a bad rap, I think because you know, there’s people make it so strict and make it something it’s not but really it’s just you’re writing out wherever you want your money to go. And so with that budget or blueprint, you’re going to be allocating to your individual goals. So whether that’s to pay off debt, if you have credit card debt or any other debt, if you’re saving for a trip or repairs or a down payment, within that budget, you’ll be adding all of those. And plus, of course, like your expenses, but really, it’s just telling your money, where you want it to go. That’s why budgets are so important. Like I said, People hate the term budget, but call it whatever, I don’t care. The point is you need to tell your money where to go, or it’s not going to go where you want it. I mean, it’s not going to just like automatically, you’re not going to automatically save if you don’t like set set that foundation.
5:41
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, so it sounds like you want to start out by having a bird’s eye view. Like, let’s figure out what all we have, and then figure out what we want that to do.
5:51
Right? Yep, pretty much exactly that, you know, first you need to know what’s what’s working, what’s not current state, you know, take the reflect on, you know, where your money’s going today? Is that where you want to go? Maybe you have like, 15 subscriptions that you forgot about that you’re gonna you know, they’re each $5. So you don’t really think about it, and then you add it all up, and they add up. Yeah, and you know, or those random target traps where you’re like, oh, it’s highly go, you know, it’s $20 here, $20 here, $20. Here, then before you know it, you total it up and you spent $400 The target, you know, on random definitely
6:23
been there. Oh, yeah, same Hunter.
6:27
First, knowing where your money’s going now, and then creating a plan for where you want to go. And the big thing is, you want your plan to be realistic, right? Like, if you see someone on Instagram, who’s bragging about how they, you know, never shop at Target or something I don’t know. But like, you know, you’re going to don’t just cut it out completely, you know, you can decrease it, but just make it realistic, or else it’s going to be, you know, really hard to stick to, and everyone’s numbers look different, you know, what I spend on groceries is someone in South Carolina with one, you know, a one year old and a husband is going to be very different than someone in New York who has four kids. And you know, the prices obviously, are very different. So you need to make sure your numbers are based on your actual numbers. Not what like someone on Instagram told you to do. Do you
7:12
ever? Yeah. Do you ever see that? It goes, it makes its rounds every once in a while that pie chart where it’s like a new grad with the X number of dollars salary and what they spend their. And it’s so unrealistic?
7:27
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s discouraging for
7:30
many people. Yeah. Oh,
7:32
yeah. And you know, I’ve never been one to like Penny pinch, or, you know, if I see a coupon and it’s readily available while I use it, oh, yeah, I’m all about saving money. But I’m not someone who’s you know, clipping coupons to save 25 cents and changing brands to save $1. Like, those are great little things, but they’re not going to they’re not really going to move the needle, right? Like, if you’re really trying to pay off $10,000 in debt, you’re saving $1 on laundry detergent isn’t really good at you. They’re they’re, you know, they know, what is bigger moves. And, you know, look at those categories that are really like you’re spending excessive amounts. I mean, I just talked about this yesterday with one of my clients, they’re like, Oh, I didn’t realize how much I really spend on food. Because everyone always thinks you don’t spend as much as you do. Like, it’s so easy for those, you know, for me, like Chick fil A, all those little things to just add up. Yeah. You know, you have two options, you can decrease your expenses or increase your income. I mean, that’s the two ways to get more money, right? Yeah, well, you have two options there. But focusing on the dollar Movers is going to take you a lot longer than focusing on something that’s costing you, maybe $100 A month or even more. I mean, if you haven’t negotiated a bill lately, that’s another place to start, you know, I pretty much yell at my internet company, like every six to get a better rate. So there’s ways to do it that aren’t necessarily you know, cutting everything. So you have like beans and rice.
9:01
Yeah. That’s not really a great way to live. Not long term. I don’t think it’s realistic. Okay, so So we start out by assessing the current situation, and then developing a budget a budget. Okay, so, so this can apply both in our finding our personal finances and our business finances.
9:23
Yeah. I mean, I always say, you know, you should have a budget for both. They should be separate. Like if your finances aren’t separate, you know, if you’re just starting out with your business, or maybe you’ve been using your personal credit card or something like that, like if you take one thing from this, like do that today, like separate bank account, cards, keep everything let’s write that because
9:41
yes, that’s a legal lesson. That’s yeah, that’s a tax lesson that’s a financial lesson is separate your finances create separation between your business finances, and your personal finances, and that will allow for you to one create personal liability protection. So if there’s any issue that right arises in your business If you can have that separation, you’re not one in the same as far as you’re in your business and your business being you. But then also there are financial benefits, right? So creating that clarity between two separate entities, your personal finances and your business finances. And then also there are added tax benefits. I’m not a tax professional, I won’t speak on those. But there, when you do ultimately come to the point of preparing and filing your taxes in your business, and preparing and filing your personal taxes, you’ll see that it only makes sense to create separation between the two.
10:32
Yeah, I mean, your accountant will probably thank you, if you do that. You’ll also you’ll also think yourself, yeah, it’s so much easier, and it takes like, it doesn’t you know, this can take you can be do this in five minutes. This isn’t something that’s going to take you weeks, but like opening, you know, a business bank account, if you do use credit cards, you don’t have to I mean, I personally do because I’m all about the rewards. And I don’t struggle with credit cards. I know some people do. So you don’t have to use one but you know, get a business credit card, or at least use this business debit card, and then obviously track everything completely separate. Because then again, you know, it’s hard to flag everything in there, what’s personal used, what’s business and then your what is you know, when you’re paying the bill is it coming from your business account, you know, where’s the money actually coming from it gets gets messy, and if you can keep it as clean as possible from obviously helps you financially, you know, legally accounting, like all of that, it just will make your life a lot easier. So you should have a separate personal budget, and then your business budget. And obviously, they are connected in some way, right. So if you’re, you know, full time in your business, and you’re paying yourself, you know, depending on how you’re set up, I’m not going to get into that either because I’m not legal by any means. That’s, that’s, you know, me. Depending on how you’re set up, let’s say you get paid like $3,000 A month or $5,000 a month, if you’re so like, you know, then you’ll use that in your personal budget as your you know, income or paycheck. And then you’ll budget personally off of how much you actually paid yourself or got paid from your business. And then your business budget is going to have your business expenses, if you’re paying employee or whatever else is going on, you need to be able to see the two separately. So you know, you know if there’s business expenses, you need to reduce or if you need to, you know, if you’re trying to increase your profit margin or something you can say like, okay, you know, these are things we need to adjust. And it’s just gonna be a lot simpler if you can have, you know, the two separate because it’s so good to see,
12:26
do you have a tool that you recommend for those that are like, Okay, I don’t have anything in place right now, as far as my budget, my understanding what my finances look like, understanding what are creating budgets for my business and my personal. I know that like Google Sheets, or Excel, like, that’s a great place. That’s where I began, I started in, like, sorting out my finances. But I know there’s so many different tools. So is there something that you recommend,
12:52
I mean, I have templates in like, my programs that I like, give, you know, my client has very basic, like, I’m not someone who needs 70 charts that show me everything, because I want to be able to, like, look at it know what’s going on. Like, I want like a five minute check. I mean, to start, it’s not gonna die minute, right, it’s gonna take you time to set out but eventually managing your money doesn’t have to be time consuming. It can be like I check in every Friday and like, I’ll let you know at my budget is everything the you know, going the way I plan I’ll make safe things transfers if I need, I’ll make sure everything’s going the way I need it to go. But managing money doesn’t have to be this thing where you sit down for like three hours a week and like micromanaging everything. I might start that way when you’ve never done it before, but it really gets a lot simpler, but I use Google Sheets just because then I can pull it up anywhere and it’s easier than just like keeping it on my desktop you know when Excel but it’s totally personal preference. It’s gonna be trial and error. Some people like pen and paper some people love the phone apps I just like could I can’t six the phone apps and then making sure sometimes they get off and then it’s like says your spend on a certain category and didn’t and then you get alerts, like yelling at you every day. Like you’re
14:05
like leave me alone. So yeah. So I Yeah, so what habit what,
14:12
what tips do you have as far as making it a habit to continually manage your finances? I imagine in your programs and with your clients, you find people saying like, Okay, I’ve got my plan, but I just keep falling off the wagon. What tips do you have? Yeah, those of us that are experiencing that?
14:32
Yeah, so with personal finance, I tell everyone’s budget per paycheck and so if you’re if you are married, or you have a partner and you guys combined finances, maybe you get paid weekly and your partner gets paid once a month or something like that. So you know I if you’re getting paid weekly, you would literally check in every single week or if you got paid twice a month, you would check in twice a month. If you do get paid monthly. I still say check in once a week just to make sure you’re kind of on track because issue we get in is we’re more relaxed Have instead of proactive, so we are like, Oh, we’re doing great. And then we get to the end of the month and realized we’re like, over $100. And then you just panic. And you’re like, Well, I’ll try again next month. But if you check in every week, or at least twice a month, you can make adjustments for the second half of the month. Okay, I’m over on this category. What can I adjust or change? Or what can I do to kind of like, fix it or kind of balance myself back out for the second half of the month? So one thing is like, you don’t have to have a formal like money date. We don’t like my husband. I don’t do formal money days, because my husband would never sit there and do that. But, you know, we do check in or have conversations weekly, like what’s coming up? What expenses do I need to be aware of, you know, I manage our finances. So it’s more just like conversational. Like, is there anything that I need to add this month, or anything that you can think of so just making money conversational, and at least checking in weekly if it’s something you feel like you won’t do like schedule it into your calendar, like we all use calendars, Google calendars, my life, like that’s what I do every Friday or something for the same time, like adding a 30 minute block, where you just check everything like you have to tell it becomes that new habit, you have to just like, force yourself to do it. And from the business side, like, even if you have a bookkeeper or accountant, which are both valuable, you still need to know your numbers, like as much as you might not want to, you know, the only person who’s really like directing and growing your business, if you’re the CEO of it, is you and so you need to know where your money’s going, you need to know how much you’re spending on software technology coaches, legal, you know, if you’re not spending any full, you know, yeah, you have to know where your money’s going, you have to know where your money is coming from. Maybe you think, you know, maybe you spend all your time on your mastermind or something. And you’re actually not even bringing in as much as you thought from your mastermind based on like the time it’s taking, you know, you’d actually do it. So you’re reviewing your offer suite, you know, is this offer actually even worth me keeping for the next quarter or year? And you have to look at? Yeah, exactly. Like, am I actually making money on this? Or am I just spending?
17:10
Exactly, exactly. And I mean, I think there’s there’s definitely discussion to be had, as far as the season of your business, does it make sense for you to continue to offer something that maybe and it’s not profitable in the long run, but maybe the trade off is it is providing you experience an opportunity to experiment with your different methodologies and ultimately produce positive case studies. So there, right, there are I mean, every situation is unique, right? Everybody’s everybody’s financial situation, his or business is unique in that way, but as we were talking about before, is, you know, there are set standards and principles when it comes to finance that everybody should understand and really is uniform across the
17:58
board. Right? Yeah, you have to know your numbers. Like, like I said, even if you are someone who’s like I have a bookkeeper, like that’s great. I think there’s value in a bookkeeper, especially if you’re not going to keep up with it, then you need a bookkeeper. But yeah, you know, your bookkeeper should be showing you or you should be looking every month, like, what is profitable? What is the profit margin of, you know, your different programs? What are like, have your expenses gone up? What did you add? What are you projected to add in the next six months? If you’re gonna, you know, get a service provider, something that’s gonna cost you $30,000? Like, is that a smart financial move for your business? Based on the cash and stuff you have coming in? You know, how do you have payment plans coming in for six months? Look, you need to be able to project this stuff out and see it so that you can make strategic business decisions, too. And you’re the CEO of your business, you need to know, you need to know where where the money’s going, where it’s coming from, you can’t can’t ignore it forever.
18:53
Absolutely. Okay. So as far as for those that have not yet separated their finances, I’m interested in your opinion, are you a national bank kind of person or look, small, local bank?
14:12
what tips do you have as far as making it a habit to continually manage your finances? I imagine in your programs and with your clients, you find people saying like, Okay, I’ve got my plan, but I just keep falling off the wagon. What tips do you have? Yeah, those of us that are experiencing that?
19:04
So I, um, it depends. So me, I use Capital One Spark for business just because I always have and I like their credit card, and I don’t pay fees. I think the biggest thing with banks and this goes for personal or business use as you should not be paying any bank fees. At this point. There’s so many options out there, that someone’s charging you $10 A month maintenance fee or requires a minimum balance, like you need to switch banks. And that’s the same thing with personal like, you know, there’s so many online bank options right now. And there’s just a ton of choices. We have as you know, consumers, so there shouldn’t be we shouldn’t be paying unnecessary fees like at this point. And even with credit cards when we look at it, if you choose one that has an annual fee, which is fine. I have some that have annual fees, but you have to look are you going to actually use the enough of the card benefits to make an annual fee worth it or you just pay $95 a month, you know, or $95 a year just to like, say you have a certain card, you know, are the benefits worth the fee. But I think with banks, at least in my opinion, the more most important part is making sure you have like no monthly maintenance fees, no account minimum requirements, no random fees that they try to get you with a lot of the big traditional, you know, brick and mortar type banks have like, crazy, unnecessary fees that are very outdated.
20:30
Yeah, no, I definitely I definitely understand. So as far as rewards, are you a cashback or miles person?
20:36
what tips do you have as far as making it a habit to continually manage your finances? I imagine in your programs and with your clients, you find people sayinI have bolts in my business one is cashback just because it’s I have personal use, I have a travel card that I use for everything. Right now. Especially I’m not travelling much for business purposes. But we do some like local, we’ll do like personal local, like drive to the beach and do stuff. And I can just pay with points. So I have both but personal use, I have the Capital One Venture Card and I use it for like, literally everything we made for our honeymoon with rewards points and stuff. So that was really nice.g like, Okay, I’ve got my plan, but I just keep falling off the wagon. What tips do you have? Yeah, those of us that are experiencing that?
21:08
It makes it I mean, it makes sense to leverage that to your benefit, right? And yeah,
21:12
especially business expenses. Like if you have expense if you you know, if you’re better recurring. Yeah. And if you have, like you’re spending 5k on something like Mizel get the points for it. If you’re definitely if you’re gonna use a credit card, definitely get one with some kind of benefit. You can decide if you want it to be cashback or you know, travel rewards. But yeah, it’s free, you know, if you’re already gonna spend that money anyway, might as well.
21:36
Absolutely, absolutely. All right, what is your philosophy on saving as a business owner?
21:42
Yeah, so especially with business, I think you need a definitely like an emergency fund for your business, just like you’d have it for your personal so it’s, you know, depending on the type of business, you have the volatility, but seasonal, you know, you need to make sure you’re prepared for that, like if, you know, say the holiday season, right, like is like 80% of your sales for the year or something I don’t know, like, it’s just like your holiday business, you need to prep for that. So the rest of the year, you’re saving that money so that you can kind of survive for the rest of the year. But I would say depending on your business, you need at least a month of expenses, just in case like, you can even get a month ahead where like, you know, your revenue, or you know, the cash you have from October’s, you know, actually paying, you know, like, you’re kind of a month ahead and your expenses. So like, that would be helpful, because then if you do have a slow month, if you haven’t prepped everything out, then you’re not like, worried about paying yourself or, especially if you have employees, you definitely I mean, I would have at least a few months of their salary saved or a few months in there, just so that you don’t ever feel like, you know, oh my gosh, like if something goes wrong this month, I can’t like pay my people. So I would say you need at least a month, preferably like three months of core expenses saved. Of course, like if you had to cut some subscriptions or make things work, you could, but it kind of gives you that cushion and that comfort like okay, if this month is slow, I don’t have to completely derail everything or go into debt or you know, drained from my personal or whatever, you know, like try to figure out how to make it work. And then if there’s like big business goals you have like maybe you do have a brick and mortar type of business or something like that. Or maybe you want to venture into E commerce or something where you need inventory. I don’t know that’s ahead. But just scenario eyes, maybe it’s an option. Yeah, savings account or some kind of savings goal for that just like you would personal. So say your goal is to hit like 10,000 in this specific savings fund for like, inventory. It’s like, you know, you set and then you add in your business budget, okay, I’m going to save $500 A month towards this goal, just like you would personally so think everyone savings goals with business look different, but everyone needs some kind of savings in their business, even though they might think like they’re getting by just fine. Without it, it’s like, there might be a time where you won’t get by your business pivots, or you take a month off or you don’t want to launch something anymore, or something happens you just don’t know. And you don’t want to you know, have to rely on taking out loans or putting, you know, massive amounts on your credit card if you don’t have to, and especially if you can prepare right now.
24:27
Oh, I mean, that’s that safety cushion on its own like for sure it it gives you an advantage should you decide that you want to invest that that amount into a new business venture or a new investment or bring on a new employee or team member or hire on a contractor. But from the perspective of having the confidence like okay, I’m good, like I know that if and I it’s highly unlikely that we’re going to hit $0 In the next three months, but I know Oh, that should anything go wrong. I’m not going to, you know, go bankrupt, I’m not going to be out of business, I’m going to be able to rely on my savings, my business savings in order to keep keep the ship moving right.
25:17
Separate from your personal savings. So you’re not, you know, like you still have both. Yeah. I’m not an accountant. But depending on how you’re set up, you should also be saying for taxes. Yeah, that’s a whole other thing. I don’t you know, no, no, I’m
25:32
not a CPA included in your budget, though.
25:35
Yeah, taxes are not something you want to ignore, though. That’s not something you want to mess up. Yeah, shouldn’t be spending everything that comes in pretty much you have to be able to save for taxes, save for an emergency save for other things, you know, you have to treat your business, I think, especially on the in the online space, we have to everyone needs to try to treat their business like a true business, not just like a hobby that you’re doing on the side.
26:03
Yeah, like,
26:05
legal, right, you know, you have to treat it like an actual business, which means you have to save for things, which means you have to legally pay
26:14
your taxes, taxes, you need to get the right legal stuff in place, you need to budget accordingly, and manage your expenses and have an emergency saving, right and have a clear idea of what your finances look like. Because, I mean, I think I think of business finances and personal finances as sort of like a health check, right? Like, it might look like your business is doing great and outside. But if your finances are in shambles, your business is not really doing that great,
26:46
right? And it’s not sustainable, like you know, exactly, like a sustainable business, like not something that just works for six months, or a year or maybe even two years. I mean, I mean, you probably see it too, I know, I’ve seen a ton of businesses that don’t exist anymore, or especially in online space where they were there for a year or two and then have disappeared and disappear. You know, if you want a sustainable business long term, you have to have these core pillars pretty much set up, you have to have your taxes, like in line, you have to have your legal in line, you have to have your financial situation in line, because if not one of those kind of fall off your business isn’t going to be sustainable, long term. If you want this to be a 1020 year, even a generational thing that you can pass down to your kids or set up, you know, for your grandkids or whatever. If you really want to set this up as even like a generational wealth type of thing. You have to have all this in order.
27:41
Foundation. Yeah. You mean the foundation? Absolutely. I mean, it’s Yeah, I think a lot of people, I think I think there are a lot of people that think that far ahead as far as I want to create something that I can pass on to my my children and my grandchildren. But I think there are a lot of people that probably don’t think that far ahead. And I thought I say like, most days, I’m not thinking that far ahead. Most days, I’m thinking about my immediate family, right, our comfort and our living and our ability to my husband, our ability to provide for our family members and our child. And so even that even if those are your priorities, and that short term is your priority, having these foundational pieces in place, that is what’s going to get you there, that is what’s going to allow for you to be able to create a business that is sustainable, that can provide for you that that serves you and allows for you to serve your community and your clients. And without those foundational pieces in place. It’s a house of cards. Yeah. Falling down.
28:43
Yeah, and everyone, I mean, not everyone, but a lot of people start businesses right for the freedom for time freedom, or to spend more time to spend more time with your children or to take a random weekend trip or to not be locked into that, you know, nine to five life. And if that’s your goal, right, you need to have those foundations there so that you you can feel comfortable. And you can reach that true time and financial freedom where you can spend your days doing maybe you can say no to a project, because your finances are in order and you know where your money is going, you have savings so you don’t have to take on every client just to get more money and you’re not constantly worried about where’s the next sale coming from, you know, you have all that set up. So you’re not constantly chasing the next client and stressing yourself out so much where you aren’t spending time with your kids, which is the whole point of why you started the business.
29:33
So the lesson here is and this is something that I I preach all the time is be proactive. Don’t wait to be reactive the surprise in the legal stuff because by the time you’re in a legal a sticky legal situation, it’s many times too late to go back, right and right ProAct but you’ll have to be reactive at that point. And sounds like same goes you would agree that the same goes with in your finances. Yeah, you can
30:01
So much easier, less stressful, I know it might sound more stressful to start and it still might take same with legal right where it might take you time to like, get everything in order, there’s things you have to kind of implement. But
30:11
once you feel so good though, when you do exactly once
30:15
it’s there, it just like that weight can be lifted off your shoulder, you know, you haven’t set up, you know, if you want to, you know, take three weeks off of work because you want to go on that family trip. And you know, you have to save it you know, every where your money’s going, you know, you have savings, you know, where you have sales coming in, you don’t have to worry about you can just like, check out and actually take a vacation or if you’re sick or something, you know, you can actually take a sick day, or whatever it is you can take time off. Or if your child has like a game or a recital or something you want to go to you don’t have to say yes to every, you know, like I said every client or something because you feel competent in your business finances, and you know that your business finances are linked to your personal goals. So that your Yeah, you know, everything kind of everything comes full circle.
31:03
Exactly, exactly. Alright. So Allie, our final question for you is what is the big message that you’d like to leave us
31:11
with? I think the big message would be that finances aren’t as scary or overwhelming as people think it’s just that you have, you have to just face the numbers, which people don’t want to do. But once you do, it gets to be easy. Like I know, if you’re sitting here, you’re probably like, money’s not using, it’s overwhelming. But if you do the steps that we talked about, it gets to be easy money. Money is a tool, we don’t want to put more, you know, I guess more meaning into the term money than we need to. But it’s just a tool that you can use to do what you want, right? It’s just an exchange. And that’s what money is. And if you get the foundation set up, it does get to be easy. And it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. But we have to get the foundational things set up first, or it’s always going to be overwhelming, because I always tell like my clients, I can’t pay your bills for you. I can’t say for you, I can’t do it for you, you have to do it yourself. And no one will care about your money as much as you do. I mean, I can help you and accountant can help you, you know, a bookkeeper can help you, but at the end of the day, you have to care. And so the message, you know, the message would just be no one’s gonna care as much as you do. And you have to face it. And money doesn’t have to be overwhelming. That’s an emotion that you know, you’ve tied to it either be based on like money past, maybe some money, trauma, maybe some money, money issues you have to work through, which is valid and real and things a lot of people do have to work through. But if you are feeling overwhelmed about money, those are things you can address, but you don’t have to stay there. You know, you see all these people, you know, having all this success or feel good about money. And you might be sitting there like oh, well, that’s easy for them. And you can do that too. Like I always say if I can do this literally anyone I’m no one special when it comes to money like I am, I am a normal person.
33:04
Yeah. Oh, extra.
33:07
Yeah, like I’m an average person who paid off six figures of debt and saved and did all this. And on an average salary I don’t make, you know, like I always say my husband and I together made six figures. Yeah, but separate as individuals we do not so like, it’s not like I was making a million dollars sitting here telling everyone like, oh my god, it’s so easy.
33:28
You just do. Yeah, no, like I can do it. So
33:32
it just, you have to start you have to face them, face the numbers and just take it,
33:38
get started. Do it. Nobody’s nobody cares about it as much as you should, because nobody’s impacted as much as you are. And in my experience, everything and I really appreciate that you brought this up, Ellie is that everything. My experience has been that overwhelm comes from lack of clarity. And so to follow that that step that you that you lead with Ali is gain clarity on what your financial situation looks like that can help remove that overwhelm and guide you towards the path of financial freedom, financial independence, control over your finances, clarity of what your goals are, and more. So thank you so much, Allie for joining us today. I’m really sharing Yes, I really was and we will have all of Ali’s information in the notes in the description of this video. Be sure to connect with her check out her resources and naxian Alli
34:30
sounds good. Thank you.
34:31
Thank you
*The information presented in this blog post is for educational & informational purposes only. This should not be a substitute for customized legal advice from a licensed professional in a private setting. If you need legal advice, please consult with an attorney. This is not a law firm.
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