The interior design business podcast for interior designers, architects, and home professionals. Hosted by interior design and digital marketing pro, Darla Powell.
They discussed the importance of commission structures, the differences between a fractional CFO and an accountant, and the need for data-driven decision-making. Kathy emphasized the role of regular financial health checks, understanding financial statements, and setting up effective financial systems. She also stressed the importance of budgeting, forecasting, and maintaining internal controls for business growth. Kathy shared insights on why seeking professional guidance is essential for the financial health and long-term success of interior design businesses.
Fractional CFOs can bridge this gap by providing actionable financial insights and strategic guidance. They help interior designers realize that while cost-cutting is appealing, especially since it looks good on paper, it doesn’t foster long-term growth. By looking at the potential return of your investments and checking to see if it’s aligned with your business goals, they can make the case for why the business needs these expenses. Kathy says that because they take a holistic view of your business Fractional CFOs are making sure that your interior design business won’t just survive but also thrive and scale effectively.
Kathy shared the story of a small interior design firm that booked her Fractional CFO services. The company was using a commission plan hastily devised by their bookkeeper. Upon closer examination, it became clear that the structure was flawed, with employees receiving an excessive share of the firm’s profit. This left the business losing funds quickly, struggling to cover costs and maintain profitability.
Thanks to her expertise in analyzing the data and understanding the financial implications, Kathy was able to guide them into revising the commission structure before even more financial damage could take place. And even though this was, understandably, met with initial resistance from their team, there was no choice but to make this adjustment to make sure that the business stays viable for the long-term. Through careful planning and alignment with its financial goals, the revised plan set the stage for the firm’s sustained growth and improved profitability.
You should also consider your upcoming expenses and forecasted growth areas. This will help you create a scalable commission structure, one that’s also adaptable to the changing needs of your business while staying financially healthy.
Random cost cutting, not having the right commission structure, and not integrating sales team behavior can hold back growth.
Kathy Svetina’s insights into Fractional CFO services highlight the importance of seeking professional guidance so you can align your financial strategies with your business goals. With the right guidance, your interior design business can reach its full potential and achieve long-term success.
Intro:
Designed by Wingnut Social is brought to you by Wingnut Social, the leading interior design and home pro digital marketing agency. We know it works so you don’t have to. Learn more at wingnutsocial.com.
Intro:
Have you hit a wall when it comes to growing your design business? Then welcome to Designed by Wingnut Social, helping home professionals accelerate their success with proven industry practices and expert advice.
Darla (host):
Hey, kids and welcome to Designed by Wingnut Social. I am your host, Darla Powell, and I am recovering from my one gazillionth cold since moving to Southern Maryland. I think I’ve had like six of them in the last three years on coming from sunny Miami where I had maybe one every 10 years. A coincidence? I think not. All right, but if you can stand my little scratchy voice, I think you’re gonna get a lot out of this episode.
Darla (host):
Today’s guest, Kathy Svetina, is a fractional CFO. And let me tell you a little bit about her here. You know, we got to do this, we just have to. We’re obligated to tell you about our guest, you know, sue me. Kathy Svetina is a financial expert who specializes in helping small businesses with an annual revenue of 3 million or more to build financially healthy and sustainable businesses. She is the founder of Newcastle Finance, a company that offers fractional CFO services. We’re going to tell you what that is and why it’s important and it is to growing small businesses. Kathy is also the host of the Help My Business is Growing podcast. I love that name. Her experience includes nearly 14 years of senior level Financial Planning and Analysis for Fortune 500 companies. She now uses her expertise to teach small businesses how financial information can be leveraged to drive their business forward.
Darla (host):
In this episode, Kathy and I talk about how much commission are you paying your interior designers? What does that look like? What is adjustable gross income? Why is that not as important as gross? And what’s the difference between someone who does your taxes and someone who’s actually helping you plan the future of your business to get you out of spinning your wheels if you have your head in the sand like an ostrich and you don’t know what you’re looking at, from a financial aspect. And you’re just delegating it to a bookkeeper or to an accountant? I think you’re gonna get a lot of value out of this episode. She opened my eyes to some stuff as a business owner and we’re I’m always here to learn. I don’t know everything. I don’t know a lot. So I’m always learning from my guests. And she definitely did that for us.
Darla (host):
Before I get into my conversation with Kathy Svetina, I wanted to remind you guys that Wingnut Social, right, we’re a marketing agency for interior designers. And I know if you’ve reached out to us in the past six months or so, our search engine optimization and our Google Ads pay per click services have been on a waitlist. But I’m here to tell you right now that we are full balls to the wall, moving forward with those services, the waitlist is opened up, there’s no longer a wait on that. So if you’re looking for an agency to help your website with search engine optimization, so when people are googling, “Hey, I’m looking for an interior designer in Jolly Fats Weehawken” and you want to show up for that, if that happens to be where you are, then you’re going to need search engine optimization. And the synergy with SEO and what Google can can do for you in the synergy with social media is a beautiful marriage. So even if you’re an existing client, and you’re like, “You know what, the website juice people are, who are just Googling for me aren’t finding me.” We can help you out with that. So head on over to wingnutsocial.com to check out those services there.
Darla (host):
All right, that’s enough for that. Let’s get into my conversation with Kathy Svetina. Hey there, Kathy Svetina? Welcome to the show. How the hell are you?
Kathy (guest):
I’m really good. Thanks so much for having me, Darla.
Darla (host):
It’s my pleasure to have you on the show. And thank you so much for rescheduling. I know that you were had a call a couple of weeks ago and now look, no idea you gave it to me virtually.
Kathy (guest):
I did. Yes. I apologize.
Darla (host):
That’s okay. We’re good to go though. As long as you’re okay with me sounding like a frog. Then we can we can dive in? Are you good?
Kathy (guest):
I’m 100% okay with that.
Darla (host):
All right. So Kathy, we’ve had guests on the show before that were fractional CFOs. And talking about finance and business, right, but it’s been a minute, since we’ve done this and it especially now tax season, right? It’s so important and your show is gonna be airing very quickly after we record this so hopefully it’ll be timely and help some of our listeners. But before we dig into some of our topics here for financial help for small business owners, interior designers tell me just a little bit about what makes you an expert in this space and we’ll dig in.
Kathy (guest):
One thing that will tell you that a fractional CFO should not be doing your taxes. If they are, you don’t have a fractional CFO, you have an accountant that is charging you for fractional CFO services and they’re probably overcharging you. So that’s a little bit right there. And a fractional CFO is really someone that is overseeing your finances, overseeing your bookkeeper, your accountant on your taxes but they’re not doing the taxes, and they’re helping you plan for the future. So strategically plan for the future. They’re doing budgeting, forecasting, Cash Flow Planning, figuring out your workforce planning. Are you hiring the right people? Who should you be hiring, so all that good stuff that you need as the business grows. And I’ve been doing this in my own business for the last five years, but I’ve been doing this same thing for big companies. I used to work in Fortune 500 companies for 15 years. So I’ve been doing this for quite a long time.
Darla (host):
Nice. That’s awesome. And we in the greenroom, we were just talking about your podcast, which I told the listeners helped my businesses growing podcast, you just hit 100 episodes.
Kathy (guest):
Yes, we are just about to hit 100 episodes, not all 100 have been released and you know, comes out, but we do have a lot of them in the backlog. They’re being released every week.
Darla (host):
That’s awesome. Congrats, guys. I know, I know firsthand how hard that can be. So keep that to keep that going. So congrats on that. That’s no small feat.
Kathy (guest):
Thank you. Yeah, it’s a journey. And it’s a beast, you know, with all the production and post production, so I know exactly what you’re going through.
Darla (host):
Yeah, it is a beast. Okay, so my first question for you is, is there? Why can’t your fractional CFO do your taxes? Why can’t Why can’t they if they’re qualified to do that? When when that rolls around? Is there a conflict of interest? Is there just what what is the reasoning behind that?
Kathy (guest):
The main thing is that finance and accounting are two different things. And the reason why I say that is because if a fractional CFO is doing your taxes, which they can, if you’re a very small business, you’re essentially they are focusing on the wrong thing. Taxes are obviously important. But what a fractional CFO should really be doing is looking at your business holistically and helping you plan. So taxes are very detail oriented and specific. And there’s, you know, taxes need to be done, but a fractional CFO, their focus should be on the future and helping you manage your business well. And the reason why I say that is because a lot of the accountants, because the way how they are trained, for example, they will look at how do we minimize cost. The problem with that is when you’re minimizing costs, you can be doing things that are not going to result in a healthy and sustainable business. And one of the things that I always say, it’s so easy to have a profitable business, showing it on your P&L, that it’s profitable. But that doesn’t mean that it’s going to be sustainable, because what you could do, you could fire a bunch of people, you can slash your costs, and it’s gonna look good, you’re gonna have a profit. But the problem is that, you know, a couple of months down the road, a year down the road, maybe two years down the road, the business is going to be hurting. So the person that is giving you that type of advice, really needs to have that holistic view of the business, what are they doing right now? And how is it going to affect the future down the road. And this is a difference between accounting and finance, finance is very future focused. Accounting is very now focused and focused in the past.
Darla (host):
Okay, so that makes that makes a lot of sense, right? So a fractional CFO is helping you in a lot of ways to develop the business and the future of the business to get it to a valuation to where if you want to sell the business, etc, that kind of thing. So in an ideal world, as a business, you should have a CFO, a bookkeeper and an accountant.
Kathy (guest):
Yes, so it’s a lot. It seems like you have a lot of people, but every single person is doing a different thing in your business. You know, just when you’re building a house, you just say you don’t say “I just need an architect,” you need other people that are going to be building it the same thing with the business as well, especially as you’re growing. And I generally work with businesses or you know, close to 10 million and 10 million up, you need that structure. And the more you grow, the more structure you need, and the more specialized those people need to be because the way how they’re going to help you is going to be different, and is going to really help your business grow in a healthy and sustainable way.
Darla (host):
Yeah, I love that. And I love the way that you broke that down. And it’s one of the reasons going back in the greenroom to your your the name of your podcast has “Help My Business is Growing” kind I want to circle back to that because you’re right, you can cut employees, you can cut some expenses and your black and white will look healthy, but you’re not growing, right? Probably you aren’t going to hurt yourself that’s going to be like that Slinky dog down the air because especially if you’re growing and scaling your business, the types of businesses that you work with those $10 million Interior Design Build firms, but small businesses are not cutting costs to spite themselves right and not as seems like a huge thing as interior designers as creatives. We don’t have training in this stuff to have that input because a lot of times designers will be like “Oh my gosh, that’s that investment in my business” like say from marketing for example, which is what we do here at Wingnut Social we do marketing for interior design firms help to grow their reach and awareness to build their business. is the word for their business, get them clients, but the initial investment isn’t small. And they get really kind of intimidated, sometimes some of the smaller businesses, and sometimes their accountant will say, “Oh, no, this is too much. You can’t afford this,” but not being having. Right, exactly. You’re shaking your head. But not having that mindset of understanding what the marketing is going to get you to get you to that five $10 million sphere down the road. And I have run into that I’ve had I’ve had interior designers come to me and say, “Okay, well, let me run this by my accountant before” and I’ve just been like, where if they had said, “I’m gonna run this by my CFO,” I would be like, “Okay, great. Well, we’re looking forward to working with you.” So I’m monologuing. A little bit, but just extrapolate on that, that difference again, for us, just so it’s super fine and clear.
Kathy (guest):
Yeah. And you and you touched on a point where I absolutely I have I have a lot of thoughts on that. And one of the things that I’ve always seen in also in the bigger businesses, too, is that marketing, funding, the budget for marketing seems to be more like a slush fund. It’s like, “Where can we cut our costs? Let’s cut marketing.” And it drives me crazy. Because if you are planning to grow the business, if you want to do certain things, like we need to grow our revenue by 20%, great, but let’s cut our marketing by, you know, 50%? It’s like, really? How do you expect me to do that? And this is what drives me crazy is because marketing is seen as a slush fund versus a fund that is an investment in the business. Yeah, obviously, I’m not just saying, you know, “Let’s throw money into marketing as much as we can,” I’m saying is let’s look at the marketing funds that we have, can we optimize? And how do we stretch the dollar as much as we can so that actually does stuff for the business, because marketing really is an investment vehicle for the business. And it’s not something that you know, you’re going to be just cutting whenever, and it’s going to, and if you are, it’s really going to affect you down the line. And again, and as you as you have so eloquently said, that’s the difference between someone who is in finance, and it’s looking at the business strategically and looking at the business from a long term view versus a cost accountant who is looking at, “Okay, this is going to be a $50,000 cost. It’s a lot of money. Now, let’s cut that.” And yeah, it doesn’t work.
Darla (host):
And then and then going back to my Slinky Dog analogy a year or two years from now, they’re wondering, “Why are my referrals dying down? Why don’t I not have clients?” and then they have to play that Slinky dog catch up. And it’s cost them twice as much to get to regain and that momentum, their competitors who have been investing. But this is just me, and it’s a little self serving, I have a marketing agency. But this is the example that I’m very intimately familiar with the need, as far as having that big picture thinking, to grow from a half a million dollar firm or a small business into a big business that you can sell one day retire and provide that lifestyle for yourself and your family. So I do appreciate that. What are some other aside from marketing? What are some other things like that, that a CFO provides that kind of tough love right? “Hey, you need to be investing in this for your business” that may be an accountant or that black and white binary person wouldn’t really be able to advise on or be uncomfortable doing
Kathy (guest):
So a good CFO should understand that everything that you do in your business would eventually end up in your finances. So from the fact of how you run your operations, how you treat your people, how you onboarding people, what type of people are you? Are you recruiting, those are all the things that seem like they’re far removed from finances, but they’re not. Because for example, if you have a management issue in terms of the way how you manage people is not does not in a way that is good for your business. And then you have a revolving door, you’re constantly going to have an issue with your customer service with your operations, your which is going to cost you money at the end. Also, if you have to recruit people, you’re going to constantly have to be paying recruiting fees, and it is just going to put so much strain on your business and also on the operations right and on the finances eventually.
Kathy (guest):
So a good CFO should understand that. And the way how to think about a CFO is someone who understands a little bit about a lot of things, and it’s able to pull those dots together and compile them into financial model, or make adjustments by actually hiring people that can help you with that. So a good CFO should be a connector. Like for example, I have a potential client that currently is looking for employee ownership stocks, and how do we manage that and how do we actually put that together? Right? So that it moves the business and it drives the business forward. That’s a good CFO should be able to have those connections where a particular lawyer that is actually good with that, or someone who is an HR that understands those nuances, and put you in connections with those people, not someone who’s just looking at the numbers, but is looking at the business holistically and helping you understand the landscape. And how is that going to affect your finances? And if right now and in the future?
Darla (host):
Good to know. Okay, so we are talking, this is leading me up to my next question about using data to drive your financial decisions and not your gut. Because if you’re an interior designer, maybe you’re a solopreneur, or you’re a small business, your gut might say, “Cut the marketing budget,” or you might you know, because you don’t know what you don’t know. So tell me about the difference on using data driven decisions, versus just, you know, making decisions from your head or your heart. You know, what, what’s the difference, because alot of a lot of business owners, I see them on the daily interior designers are just kind of winging it, not when nothing.
Kathy (guest):
But when you and I can and I think the best way that I can show the difference with the data is if I tell you a story of one of my clients, when we first started working together, the they had a couple of designers there were on a commission, and they had a salary and that I had a commission. When we started looking at the numbers, we ended up discovering that the commission plan and I, and I’m putting this in quotes, because it really wasn’t the plan. It was basically something that their accountant, actually their bookkeeper slapped together without really looking at the business. So what ended up happening was, when we started unpeeling, all those onions, we figured out that the person the business was actually giving out 20% of their gross profit commission to their employees, which eventually ended up that at the end of the day, the business was losing money, because they were giving out Mexico everything because our employees. And we were able to only figure this out because we looked at the data. But but before that the business didn’t the owner didn’t know that because they were just making decisions based on their data. It’s like, okay, it seems fine to me, I have cash in the business. And the reason why they had cash in the business is because particularly the roads design build. They took a lot of money up front, obviously, as a project were coming, you’re taking a lot of money up front, and then the cost and everything and comes trickling down later. And we’re always paying, robbing Peter to pay Paul. And it was it was a huge problem. So what we ended up doing, when we looked at all this data, we had to completely revamp the the commission plan to make it something more sustainable. Obviously, the salespeople were unhappy because now there were given the world. But yeah, if we didn’t do that the business would have failed and it would have been it would have been a disaster.
Ads:
I was going through a rebrand in my company and having a new website built. And I brought in weeknight at around the same time and had them do a strategy. In that strategy, I found it to be really comprehensive and actionable. I like probably many designers find Instagram to be such a bear. I understand that it is so so important, it is a visual medium, what we do is so visual. Like it’s just, it’s an entire full-time job. And with running a business and actually doing design, it was just really not feasible for me to keep up that pace with Instagram if I ever wanted to sleep. So working with them, they have taken all of that off of my plate, which honestly is the most valuable piece of working with them.
Darla (host):
So tell me, I’m curious, a couple of the things that you just did there. I’m sure you you had to look at the AGI, not that just the overall grossing the Adjusted Gross Income, right? Reduce that after costs and expenses of you know, acquiring that sale and everything. What are some of the bullet points there? If someone’s out there like “Oh my god, I’m just paying my you know, designer straight commission,” what are some things that they need to be asking their their CFO or their bookkeeper to start changing immediately?
Kathy (guest):
So the AGI is a tax terminology, right? Adjusted Gross Income. We don’t use that in finance because that is a tax terminology. But we use gross income. Basically, gross income is whatever comes into your business, and then you have gross profit. So the way to look at it is whenever someone pays you, that’s income to you, and then you have costs associated with that specific job. Like you buying materials, you might be, you know, if you’re a design-build, you might be paying contractors or whatever it might be. You reduce that income by the costs, that will give you a gross profit. And everything else like marketing, you talked about your accountant, your people, whatever it might be, that is operating expenses. So gross profit minus operating expenses equals net income.
Kathy (guest):
So as you’re putting this commission plan in place, there are two things that you should be really looking at. One is looking at the business holistically in terms of making sure that you have enough gross profit in place so that you can actually pay all those people. So before you start putting the commission plan in place, look at the business, what are your expenses for the next couple of months, at least for the next year, and figure out where the business is going to be. Obviously, then we also have to figure out where the growth is going to be.
Kathy (guest):
And then the other thing that is really important, so you’re looking at the numbers, what makes sense for the business. And then the other thing which gets overlooked when people are looking at their commission plans is what type of behavior do you want to drive with your salespeople. And that is super important. Because, for example, if you want them to just sell, sell, sell, they will sell the most that they can. But if you want them to hit a specific gross margin, gross profit margin, then you might be incenting them on the gross profit margin. So the best way to think about that is, again, what the numbers are telling you, and then what behavior are you rewarding? Are they bringing the right business in? Or are they bringing any type of business in? Because if they’re bringing the business in, and then you have to go and really overservice that particular client because they’re just, you know, they’re not going to be the exact client they’re not going to be a good client for you, for whatever reason, that is not a good way to drive the revenue and grow your business.
Darla (host):
Quality over quantity. So you have to think about what that looks like, and that ideal client, and having a tiered structure of some sort, I imagine, for different things. That’s, I mean, this is a 10-hour show, right? That we could go into on this. So we’re just really touching the surface of this. So it does sound like if you’re struggling with this, you’re going to need to call up Kathy, or get some better clarity on this subject here, from a CFO.
Kathy (guest):
That actually has a finance background, not an accounting background, but a finance background.
Darla (host):
Yeah, for sure. I made that error when I had a salesperson about a year ago. So I was paying, I think it was too much because I made some mistakes. So that was before I had my CFO. So yeah, I feel that pain intimately.
Darla (host):
Okay, so in the time that we have left, let’s talk about financial health checks, right? So we might be overwhelming some of our listeners who are like, “Oh, you know, I’m just this, I’m in deep doo-doo. I don’t even know where to start to see where I’m even at.” So what are financial health checks? And how can we see where we’re at?
Kathy (guest):
The financial health check is really a place for you to understand where you are in the business. And that’s something that I look at before I start working with a client. I really want to understand where you are with your accounting, because especially if, again, if you are getting a lot of money upfront for your design project, we need to make sure that you are not spending that money willy-nilly, because the costs are going to come and bite you later on. So we need to make sure that your accounting is set up properly.
Kathy (guest):
And then we have to figure out if you have the right financial systems in place. So what does that mean? That you’re using the right tools. Sometimes a specific system, for example, like an app or software can really take the load off of your project management. There are a lot of tools out there, especially if you’re doing design-build, like almost like remodeling, construction type of projects. There are a lot of those out there because they’re really going to help you with making sure that you’re tracking the contracts the right way, that the payments are all there, all of that good stuff. And that is going to significantly alleviate this, “How am I doing? Am I profitable? Or am I not profitable?”
Kathy (guest):
So that’s a good way. And then the third thing is having someone that can actually do the financial analysis for you. And a lot of times, you know, a bookkeeper can do some of the basic stuff. One of the things that’s really interesting and what we use in finance, it’s called common-sizing. What that is, is we are anchoring your income at 100%. And then we’re looking at all the other expenses that you have in your profit and loss statement, and we’re trying to see how much of that particular expense is taking over your income. So essentially what we’re saying is for every dollar that you bring in, how much does it go towards your cost of goods sold? How much does it go towards your marketing? How much does it go towards your people? And that is really helpful when you’re trying to make decisions of where do I need to put my resources, and where is my money actually going. That’s a good way of doing financial analysis.
Kathy (guest):
And then of course, then you have to do the financial forecasting and the budgeting, that’s really important. And then the fifth piece, which is something that gets overlooked so much in small businesses, is making sure that you have proper internal controls. And what that means is that the person, especially if you have one person doing all your bookkeeping, that they’re not basically having all the keys to your kingdom. Because there have been, and I can tell you so many times when I have conversations with business owners, that people might have stolen from them in the past. Oh no, which is just uncomfortable to think about, but that’s the reality, unfortunately. So you have these things in place so that that doesn’t happen. For example, one of the easiest things is if they are putting in the bills for you, that they’re not also reconciling and paying them, because someone can easily put a fraudulent invoice in there and they can pay themselves.
Darla (host):
I mean, I hate to think about that, but I mean, it happens. You see those stories every day. Yeah, we have for our bank accounts and everything, we have user management, you know, logins, they get their own. Alright, so that seems to help do that.
Darla (host):
So I’m wondering, usually in our space, and I’m sure you’ve seen this as well since you work primarily with design-build firms, our first hire when we’re scaling our business is a bookkeeper. That’s the first thing that we offload, right? So should we make that a double whammy? Do bookkeeper and CFO? Where, how big do we need to be or start thinking before we hire a CFO? And in line with that thinking?
Kathy (guest):
And that’s a great question. So a CFO, really, you will start thinking about it. It depends not just on the revenue, where you are in your business, but also the type of questions you’re asking. So if you’re growing really fast, and you’re saying, “Well, when should I hire people? How should I hire these people? What should my margins be?” If you just don’t know how to answer those questions yourself, that is the time that you can bring in a fractional CFO. And you have fractional CFOs that work with a lot of smaller businesses. Like I said, I work with businesses from about $10 million and up, but you have ones that work with a lot smaller businesses, and you can have the conversation with them if they can help you with it.
Kathy (guest):
The bookkeepers are really, if you cannot afford to have someone like that to overlook your bookkeeper as well, then don’t just delegate your numbers to one person. What do I mean by that? Be curious every single month, look at your bank statements, look at your vendor list, and look at your profit and loss statement and balance sheet. The balance sheet is where a lot of stuff happens, because you can hide a lot of things on a balance sheet, because owners generally don’t really look at the balance sheet because you’re like, “Well, I’m really looking at profit, do I have profit? Or do I not have profit? And do I have cash? Or do I not have cash?” Right? And everything else I don’t really care about.
Kathy (guest):
A balance sheet is a wealth of information. So if you understand how the balance sheet works, what the balance sheet actually tells you and how to read it, you are going to be so much better at making decisions about your business. And you’re going to know if something doesn’t look right. If something doesn’t look right in your profit and loss, or income statement, or if something doesn’t look right on your balance sheet, then have a conversation with the bookkeeper and say, “Hey, what’s happening here?”
Darla (host):
Yeah, “Why are you embezzling?”
Kathy (guest):
And I will say most bookkeepers, that person, they don’t do that. There are some out there that unfortunately have, you know, and I have had three clients so far, where the bookkeeper was doing weird stuff. And it was, wow, yeah.
Darla (host):
It exists. You can’t just assume that everybody’s on the up and up. You have to unfortunately, you know, just have your knowledge to at least where you can spot some things. And if you then have someone like yourself, I appreciate that.
Darla (host):
Kathy, is there anything I’ve forgotten to ask you that you think the audience needs to hear before we get into the lightning round?
Kathy (guest):
The one thing that I would say that’s going to make the most impact to your business is if you’re planning, not just looking at it from a day-to-day type of operations, because I know when we are busy, we really get heads down. But truly planning where do you want your business to be and put a simple budget together. Budgeting does not have to be a month or week-long effort. Just look at your financial statements and figure out where do I want my revenue to be? And where do I expect the expenses to be? That is really the simplest exercise that you can do for your business. And then every single month, compare where you thought the budget was at and what changed. And if something needs to change, change your projections as well. That is the main thing that I see that really drives the businesses forward, having those projections, because now you know where your money is going. You’re going to start asking questions, you’re going to be more curious, you’re going to have more conversations with your finance people, and you’re going to be more educated about where your money is going. So that’s going to make a huge impact.
Darla (host):
I love it. Thank you so much. So Kathy Svetina, now I have to ask you, are you ready for the lightning round?
Kathy (guest):
I so am.
Darla (host):
I believe that you are excited. What would the hashtag on your tombstone be?
Kathy (guest):
It would be #curious because I have curiosity about a lot of things, just about everything.
Darla (host):
Awesome. You’re stuck on a deserted island, you can have your one favorite food forever. What is it?
Kathy (guest):
Mashed potatoes. 100%.
Darla (host):
Good choice. I like it. There’s some potassium and vitamin C in potatoes. Little known fact. Yeah, not bad just from a survival standpoint, you’re not gonna get scurvy. I love it. I think, right? There’s some vitamins, I think.
Darla (host):
Last but not least, please recommend a book that’s impacted you either personally or professionally.
Kathy (guest):
When I was in my last class in college, we had to read this book. And it has made a significant impact in my life. And I really love it. And it’s called “The World of Yesterday” by Stefan Zweig. And he was a writer in Vienna. And one of the interesting things about that book was that it actually shows how the world has changed, when he was born in the 1880s, all the way to like 1945, and how things that were really secure, the type of environment in the 1880s, and how things have changed over the world wars. I really liked that book. It just spoke to me. And he writes in such a good way, his prose is absolutely amazing. So that made a huge impact on me as I was, you know, called.
Darla (host):
I’ll have to check that out, “The World of Yesterday.” Yeah, that sounds very, very interesting. That’s a first, we haven’t had that one on there. And it’s an autobiography too, okay, cool.
Darla (host):
Kathy, please tell us where we can go to find out more about you and your amazing CFO services, and we’ll call it a day.
Kathy (guest):
Well, you can find me on my website, newcastlefinance.us. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn, I hang there all the time, Kathy Svetina, I’m the only one there. And you can also check out my podcast, “Help! My Business is Growing.”
Darla (host):
“Help! My Business is Growing,” what a terrific name. Kathy, thank you so much for joining us.
Kathy (guest):
Thanks so much for having me on, Darla. I appreciate it.
Darla (host):
Alright guys, that is it for this episode. I do hope that you got some value from this and saw some eye-opening thoughts, right? I mean, Kathy said a couple things I’m like, “Oh, I need to go back and maybe kind of circle back and check on some of my processes there and who I have holding the keys,” right? Um, yeah, so definitely some eye-opening stuff there.
Darla (host):
And if you’re not a 5 million or 3 million or a $10 million dollar business, right? Just I hope that she did put a plan in your head, the idea of how important it is to really just wrap your head around knowing what’s happening with your balance sheet situation for your business. I’m losing my voice, I can hear my voice going. It’s going, alright guys, that is it for this episode.
Darla (host):
Make sure to follow us on YouTube at Designed by Wingnut Social so you can see us and all our goofiness and catch those bloopers at the end. Sometimes the visual part of those is what really makes them special. Remember, until next week, to get out there, get uncomfortable and be great.
[Intro voice]
You’ve reached the end of this episode of Designed by Wingnut Social, but that’s only the first step into accelerating your business the wingnut way. Head over to wingnetsocial.com or call us at 786-206-4331 to see how we can help take your business from meh to amazing. We’ll see you on the next episode of Designed by Wingnut Social, your digital marketing tightly fastened.
[Bloopers]
Darla (host):
You’re stuck on a deserted island but you can have your one Facebook. I’m sorry, edit. That’s not the first question. It’s a long way to Tipperary. Today’s guest, Kathy, today’s guest and Mike Tyson suddenly. Oh Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, why? Why Peter? Why did you need a peck of pickled peppers? Are you that into pickles? I think you need to check yourself. Good boy, mango.
