Andrea (host):
Welcome to the Lead Like a Woman Show where we feature top women leaders who share their inspirational stories on life and leadership. Let’s go!

Andrea (host):
I am excited you’re here today to listen to the Lead Like a Woman Show where we are passionate about empowering female leaders to empower others. But before we get to the show, I want to share with you an incredible once in a lifetime opportunity. Lead Like a Woman is hosting a retreat for like-minded women who are looking to learn how to communicate better with their audiences. So as an attendee, you’ll create a signature speech, you’ll get one-on-one coaching with professional speaker coaches, you’ll reignite passion in your business, and you’ll have a chance to spend time with other incredible like-minded women. This three-day mastermind retreat is designed to expand your influence and step into your next level of confidence and courage as a leader. We’ll be meeting Thursday, April 25, starting at noon Pacific Time, and we will end on Sunday, April 28, at noon Pacific Time. We will be at a luxury location in San Diego, California, where we will have the time and spend the energy to really, really ignite your passion. I hope you’ll join us there. Please head on over to leadlikeawoman.biz/speaks, that’s S-P-E-A-K-S. Now let’s get on to the episode. Andrea Heuston here. I am the host or the hostess of the Lead Like a Woman Show where I feature strong female leaders and how they’re changing our world. We have over 40,000 people on social media. We’re sharing our message of empowering female leaders to empower others. And our goal this year at Lead Like a Woman is to chart in the United States. We have charted in 27 other countries. Listen to me here, 27 other countries. Let’s chart in the US. And for that, I need your help. I need you to keep sharing it. But I also need you to like it. And I need you, if you want, to create a comment. So go find Lead Like a Woman wherever you listen, share it with one other person this week, just one. That’s all I’m asking. It can be any country in the world, but I’m looking for you, US, right now. And if you have time, give us a rating. In this episode, I’m excited because we’re going to talk about scrappy financial practices, and I love the word scrappy. But before we get to that, this episode is brought to you by Lead Like a Woman Speak HER, H-E-R. Speak HER is an exceptional online resource site dedicated to empowering women in leadership. We are helping 1 million women own their stage by 2031, whatever that stage may be. Check it out at leadlikeawoman.biz, and there’s a big pink button at the top in the right-hand corner that says Speak HER. Again, Speak HER. The best way to find me: just type hashtag Lead Like a Woman in your search bar. Or I’m always on LinkedIn, and I’m all over there. So this week, we’re going to shout out to Katherine Morgan at It’s Not About the Money Podcast. I’m deep into listening to her content right now, and it’s super valuable for all women. You can find it on all podcast platforms. And she’s English, so it’s fun for us Americans to listen to them as well. Every week we’re going to do a shout-out, just so you know. This could be anything at all. It could be a podcast, it could be a book, it could just be a conversation. So send me a message if you’re interested in me shouting you out. Today I get to interview—and I’d love to say I get to because it is an utter privilege to do this—and I get to interview Kathy Svetina. Kathy helps women-owned businesses with $3 million and above in annual revenues build financially healthy and sustainable businesses. She is the founder of NewCastle Finance, a company that offers fractional CFO services to women-owned businesses. She’s also the host of the Help My Business is Growing podcast. For nearly 14 years, she did senior-level Financial Planning and Analysis for Fortune 500 companies. She saw firsthand how big companies use financial information to drive their businesses forward. And she shows small businesses how they can use those same strategies to create thriving companies. Kathy, welcome to the Lead Like a Woman Show.

Kathy (guest):
Oh, I’m so excited to be here. Thanks so much, Andrea. And you know, I’m going to steal that introduction about leaving a review on the podcast because I need that too since I am trending in other countries as well. So yeah, I know it’s crazy how that happens. I know.

Andrea (host):
We charted number one in Careers in Peru recently and like, who is listening to us in Peru? But thank you. Thank you to all those, and I appreciate that. It’s just fun to see, isn’t it?

Kathy (guest):
It is.

Andrea (host):
Actually, you cut your teeth in corporate financial services before opening your own firm. So I saw you at Aon and other financial companies as well. But you opened NewCastle Finance. Now what created that impetus to go out on your own?

Andrea (host):
Ah, ah, that’s funny because I will say this, that I never wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Kathy (guest):
That’s funny because I come from a family of entrepreneurs, and I have seen the issues that they have and the struggles that they had. And I’m like, “Oh, my goodness, I don’t want to deal with this. I just want to stay in the corporate world.” Especially, I mean, if you know anything about the finance corporate world, we are getting paid really, really, really well. And, you know, doing stuff on your own business is just—you got to build that. There’s a lot of work and, you know, financially, it’s not as rewarding at the beginning. So I was like, “I’m not doing this.” But as it turns out to be that after I left my last job, and I’m like, “What am I going to do?” And I realized that just the way how I think about business, the way how I like to work, it just does not mesh well with the corporate environment, unfortunately. And you know, having this entrepreneurship blood in your veins kind of comes out eventually.

Andrea (host):
I got to hear about that in a second. I want to hear about the blood in your veins, but keep going.

Kathy (guest):
So essentially, this is what happened. I’m like, “I am going to go on my own. Give it a good college try.” And here I am five years later.

Andrea (host):
Look at you. Congratulations on five years of business. That’s a big deal and a big milestone that deserves to be celebrated.

Kathy (guest):
Yes, yes, it does.

Andrea (host):
I usually ask another question, but first, before I get to that, I want to know really about the entrepreneurship blood in your veins. Does this run through your family? Or is this something you just found within yourself?

Kathy (guest):
It actually runs in my family. So my dad, he had a couple of businesses over, you know, his span of his working years. He had about five businesses that I can even think of. And then my aunt, she had her own business, and my grandparents had their own business. So it was—oh, my goodness—one generation, it was two generations. Wow.

Andrea (host):
That’s crazy. But also, I totally believe in that. You can either start something because it’s a fire in your blood, or well, and you’ve seen this work before or not work, and you know what you want to do with it. So I think it’s fantastic that you have that. It’s kind of a family legacy now.

Kathy (guest):
Yeah, exactly.

Andrea (host):
You know, a lot of people, when they start a firm, people want to say, you know, “What went wrong? What were your lessons? What did you learn?” I don’t want to know that. How—I want to know when you started NewCastle Finance, what went right?

Kathy (guest):
That’s a very good question. I think one of the things that really went right was the fact that I started to have the freedom to build something that I really like, and I’m proud of. And I come from—I’m a builder, you know. I love playing with Legos. I like to build things. And so I took that creativity and put it into the business even though, you know, it’s hard. Especially, I come from finance. Like, that’s my expertise. I’ve worked years and years in it. But when you start building your own business, you have to know marketing, you have to know.

Andrea (host):
Yes, yes.

Kathy (guest):
You have to know operations. You have to know—manage people, if you have employees. And I have two people in my business right now. So building that was daunting. But it was also fun. It’s very, very fun. It is.

Andrea (host):
Isn’t it? It is. It’s—you have to look at it, look at it that way. Or else, why would you do it? You have to be enjoying yourself, for sure. But you also have to kind of look at, it’s a different mindset to own a business than it is to work for somebody else because you’re responsible for you. You’re responsible for your own abundance. But you’re also—generally speaking, when you start hiring people—responsible for others’ livelihoods.

Kathy (guest):
Yeah.

Andrea (host):
That’s a big thing to put on yourself. So there’s that risk you have to take. There’s that tolerance for risk as well. Your focus, though, at NewCastle Finance, you know, with your fractional CFO services, is on women-owned businesses. Tell me why you focused on women. Why?

Kathy (guest):
One reason is because I want more women to own large corporations and businesses that are above a million dollars. Because if you go out there, you will see that there are not a lot of women there past a million, and a lot of that is because they’re not getting that financial support. And when it comes to high-level financial strategy and finances, it’s very much male-dominated, very much male-driven. Absolutely. And the way you do your finances, the way you look at it, it’s going to look very different if a man is doing it versus whether a woman is doing it. For me, for example, the way I look at the business is I look at it very holistically, like the way you treat your employees, the way you go out on the market. Yeah, that matters so much. And you know, I always said it’s so easy to have a profitable business; you just slash the costs. And that’s it; you have a lot of profit. But what is that really going to do to your business and to your brand, and to your reputation, and how you’re putting that energy out into the world? So yeah, these are all the things that you have to look at when you think about the business, and, you know, if you really want to grow, you have to be aware of all that. And you have to be comfortable with the person that is giving you that advice, that is advising you. And we as women, you know, we generally like to work with people who are like us.

Andrea (host):
So sure we do. It’s really interesting. It’s grown over the past few years; only 4% of women-owned businesses ever break that $1 million mark. Yes, according to Forbes and some of the government sites out there. Now, in 2015, that was only 2%. So we’ve seen some growth in the last nine years. And you are contributing to that growth. So you have, I don’t know, a saying or theory or a belief that you can run your woman-owned business like a billion-dollar brand. I love that. And it’s about scrappy financial practices. I would love it if you could tell our listeners a little bit about running your woman-owned business like a billion-dollar brand.

Kathy (guest):
One of the things that I have seen, and this bothers me so much in the small business world, especially with women that I’ve worked with, is they’re focusing on minimizing taxes, and just everything is around taxes. Like, “My books are done for taxes.” I’m like, “You’re not running your business to pay tax.”

Andrea (host):

Oh, That’s not smart, is it?

Kathy (guest):
Yeah. So let’s stop thinking about that. And let’s start thinking about it holistically in finance, not about tax planning. I will say, you know, it’s absolutely important, obviously, right? Bookkeeping is important. But these are foundational things in your business; finances for business are so much more. So that’s why I’m saying, the stuff that I’ve learned in Fortune 500 companies is yes, they do their bookkeeping and they do their taxes, but where they really spend the most of their time and money on is in the future of financial planning and analysis, which is called FP&A. And this is a segment that is so, so, so missing in the small business world.

Andrea (host):
So what’s interesting about that is that I’ve run a business forever, 29 years this year, and we do financial planning and analysis, but I’ve never heard “FP&A” ever. So that tells me that I am not exposed to what I need to be exposed to. But what are some examples of insights that can have ROI for your business using FP&A?

Kathy (guest):
First of all, the reason why you haven’t heard of FP&A before this is because no one really does outside of corporate finance. Many times I go to parties now that we’ve started to go to parties, and people ask me, “So, what have you done?” I’m like, “Oh, I’ve done FP&A.” And they’re like, “What is this? You’re an accountant?” Like, “No, no, no. That’s better.” So the things that FP&A does, in the simplest possible way to explain this, is you’re looking at the numbers that you have. And obviously, the numbers need to be accurate. This is where good bookkeeping and accounting comes in, right? Because if you don’t have that, you cannot do this. But once you have that foundation, you’re looking at the numbers and you’re trying to get the insight of what are the trends that you’re seeing in the finances, not just in your numbers and your P&L and your balance sheet, but also in the numbers like the operational numbers. Oh yeah. And you’re marrying all that with your finances, and you’re trying to look at the future, project the future. And to do this, you know, there’s no course, there’s no professional certification, although they’re starting to do these now, that you can actually take to be a good FP&A practitioner. Because good FP&A practitioners, it’s really about experience. We’re almost like business consultants, because you need to know a lot about the business, a lot about the numbers, and marrying those two together.

Andrea (host):
It feels like you have to have experience doing that in order to do that. Is that the case? Yes, 100%. So where does the fractional CFO come in for a woman-owned business?

Kathy (guest):
So a fractional CFO obviously has that FP&A experience; really good ones do. And where it really comes in is, again, it’s looking at the business strategically. What is it that you’re doing? And where do you want to get to? What are truly your goals? Helping you develop your goals, helping you develop, you know, a hiring strategy with your HR person, if you have one. If not, sometimes it’s the business owner. It’s really looking at all these pieces of the business. And I always say, everything that you do in your business is eventually going to end up in your finances. Yeah, that’s true. Someone, you know, who’s going to take a look at all these different pieces. And they’re going to give you pros and cons of the decisions that you’re going to be making and how they’re going to affect your finances. Because they have had experience in the past. And because the way their mind works is that they’re looking at it from a risk and reward type of angle for the finances.

Andrea (host):
So hiring a fractional CFO doesn’t mean you’re bringing in your own accountant, doesn’t mean you’re having… I mean, that’s not a finance team, obviously. And I give this advice to the women I mentor who are starting businesses or trying to grow a business: You’ve got to capture your tribe. And that tribe includes a bookkeeper, fantastic bookkeeper, and accountant. And those two are separate things. A banker who you know and has your back. That’s where I see women run into issues with business; they don’t develop that relationship with a banker. And that has been one of the primary relationships in my business for the last 29 years. And I’ve utilized that. If I have an issue, I’m like, “Help! You help me.” And I know these people; I can text them if I need to. A business coach is number four after that banker, business coach, because I believe in coaching and mentoring. And that friend that you can drink a glass or a bottle of wine with and cry on their shoulder because you need a purist. So for me, those are different things: the accountant and a bookkeeper. So I’ve never really talked about a fractional CFO, that role. But when you get to that certain point in business, when you get to that point where your business is growing, and you don’t have a handle on it necessarily financially, because you’re like, “Wait, I just started this business in my garage; I was a doer. Now you’re a business owner. Now you own something, you created something.” And there’s that importance to it. So you have a podcast called “Help! My Business Is Growing,” which, frankly, I love that. That’s fabulous. So tell me a little bit about, or tell our listeners a little bit about, why you need help when your business is growing. Why do you need that help? Why? Because you can’t see the forest for the trees. But I want to hear more from you.

Kathy (guest):
Oh my goodness, yes, you definitely need help. And you will feel that when your business starts to really grow, you will feel it, because you’re going to need a lot more structure, not just in finances. Finances are one part of the business, obviously, right? But you’re going to need HR infrastructure. Like if you got above 50 employees, for example, in your business, sometimes even 20 employees, depending on what state you’re in in the US, if you’re in the US, there are certain compliance factors there. And the reason why you’re going to need that is because, you know, if you are not meeting that, there are some huge penalties, which again, as I always say, everything you do in your business ends up in your finances. That’s true. Your finances, because you’re gonna have to pay those penalties. But people can start suing you. I mean, there’s all sorts of things that you need to be aware of when you have a business, and it’s very complex. So what I… The reason why I started this podcast, “Help! My Business Is Growing,” is because, you know, I am usually the first kind of line of defense when people have these types of questions. And I’m like, “Listen, I’m not an HR expert. I’m not a sales expert. I’m not a marketing expert. I know a little bit about a lot of things. But I need these experts to come in.” And this is why the podcast was born. And we go very, very deep into a lot of topics. Like, for example, we just had an entire episode, 45 minutes, on how to run one-on-one meetings with your staff.

Andrea (host):
I love it. I love that. I can’t wait to listen to that episode. That is incredible. I want to add to that list of the five people you need. There’s actually six; I forgot a lawyer. You’ve got to have a lawyer that you know and you trust. Now, you don’t have to be paying them a monthly retainer. There are other models out there. And there’s a company out there called Equinox Business Law that practices all over the country. And they specifically work with small businesses on a fully different model. And they come in and they work with your financial people, including your fractional CFO. So super important. Check them out, Equinox Business Law. My friend, dear friend Michelle Bomberger owns and runs that company. So Kathy, you have created something called the Financial Health Check. I want to know a little bit about this, and what insights does it provide?

Kathy (guest):
So the Financial Health Check is essentially a roadmap of where you are right now and where you want to be and what is the bridge that you need to cross to get there. There’s always a way to get there. There’s always a way to get there. But you have to know how to get there. It’s almost like your GPS, right? So I like that. So one of the things that I’ve noticed in working with small businesses is that once they start to grow, and they realize, “Oh, I need more than just a bookkeeper and accountant; I need someone to help me plan.” Yeah. And they go in to hire their own fractional CFO, sometimes they are hurting because the fractional CFO is not able to help them. And why they’re not able to help them is because, you know, the accounting is not done right. The accounting team is taking, you know, three, four months to close your books so that the fractional CFO actually gets the information, or the operational data that they have is completely all over the place. It’s not clean, it’s not scrubbed. So it’s really hard to work with that. Right, right. So what I ended up developing, this assessment, which is actually its own standalone product, is to bridge that gap. So right now, you know you need a fractional CFO. But there are also other things that you need to do to prep that before you hire someone. And this is going to tell you exactly where you are and what you need to do.

Andrea (host):
I like that. So it creates a roadmap. Really?

Kathy (guest):
Yes. Because you got to cross that bridge that you didn’t know was there in the first place. And also, I would say it’s a custom roadmap; it’s not something that, you know, your business is different than my business. So what you focus on is very different than what I focus on. Even though there are some obvious overlaps. But your business needs are different from mine. So the Financial Health Check is always dynamic. It’s very customized to you. And I look at essentially five pieces. I look at your foundational part, which is your bookkeeping and accounting, obviously. And usually, the way I talk about this, I think about it in the imagery of a house, because that’s really easy.

Andrea (host):
I like this analogy so far, keep going.

Kathy (guest):
So if we’re taking this imagery of a house, your foundational piece, the way you’re laying the foundation, is the bookkeeping, accounting, obviously. And then you have your walls, which are the structure together; that is your financial analysis, meaning you’re taking a look at this data, you’re looking at the trends, you look at the insight right now. And then what comes next is the internal design of the house. Okay, so that means that, you know, you’re not putting a bathroom and a toilet in the middle of your kitchen; it doesn’t make sense. Well, that is your financial systems and processes. What are you really using, the type of software that you’re using to get all this data? Does it make sense for your business? Yeah. And is it efficient, right? Is it efficient? Is it easy, repeatable? Or do you have to spend, you know, weeks and weeks to get that information? Because that’s going to be a problem when you’re trying to analyze it.

Andrea (host):
Yeah, no kidding.

Kathy (guest):
So wow, the fourth piece is the roof of the house.

Andrea (host):
Yeah, I was hoping you’d get to the roof piece before the rain. Got it?

Kathy (guest):
Yeah. Or the snow? In our case here, Chicago? Oh, yes. Obviously, the financial planning and the strategy is looking at taking all this data now that you have and planning for the future, seeing, you know, these are your what-if scenarios and best case, worst case scenario. What do we need to do to eliminate, you know, the bad things and emphasize the good things? So that’s the fourth piece. And the fifth piece? Can you guess what it is?

Andrea (host):
I can’t. I want to know.

Kathy (guest):
Alarm of the house.

Andrea (host):
Oh, it’s the alarm. Look at that, I never would have guessed that.

Kathy (guest):
I like that. And that is your internal controls. And this is essentially the piece that is missing so much in small businesses. It’s making sure that you’re safeguarding your assets. So, you know, that makes sense. And because small businesses are very, very open to that, unfortunately, because usually, you know, they give all the keys to the kingdom to one person. Yeah. And unfortunately, people take advantage. So making sure that you have these placeholders in place, so that that doesn’t happen.

Andrea (host):
You know, I have my very first employee. So for me, that’s my very first employee, when I incorporated the company, I learned some really hard lessons. And you know what? You don’t have to learn lessons like that. Take a look at the Financial Health Check that’s on her website. And we’ll share that information in the show notes a little later as well. So we’ve said we want to talk a little bit about scrappy financial practices.

Kathy (guest):
Tell me, what does data come in? We can talk about data. Well, let’s

Andrea (host):
not talk about it for days, because some people tune out. I’m a creative. So you know, give us that overview, because data helps with those scrappy financial practices.

Kathy (guest):
I can give you an example of one of the scrappy financial practices. For example, if you have customers, and you don’t really have a good customer database, especially, yes, like you have contracts with customers, and you know, one customer is for six months, the other one is for a year, one is for three months or whatever, right? And now you’re trying to figure out, okay, what is my revenue coming in? I’ve done a spreadsheet somewhere and I live on a couple of spreadsheets. Just stop that. That is a scrappy way of looking at your business. What you should have is, if you have a lot of customers already, you should have a system, a CRM, right? Yes, a CRM. I get excited when I see customers using a CRM, or potential leads in there. They have a probability of what it is, they’re going to close it, how much is it going to be for. Absolutely. I mean, this is valuable data for your finances, because now your financial people can take that information and use it to project the future. One thing that I will say with that is that although your salespeople might be adding those numbers, finance people will know that. Yes, we will know, and we will take that data, and we will massage it to see what happens, you know. I’ve had that so many times when a salesperson would say, “Oh, we’re going to close a million dollar business,” say, in, you know, in the next two weeks, and then it doesn’t happen, right, but they just put it in so that it looks good.

Andrea (host):
Or that you want that; it doesn’t look good, then in the end?

Kathy (guest):
No, it doesn’t. So what I would do as a finance person in that case, obviously, you know, I’ll have a conversation with the sales leader. Please don’t do that. Also, I will… I know what is reasonable and what is not. And I include that reasonability, I guess if that’s a word, in the financial projections, in the financial projections and make it so that it really reflects what you know, what we think the future is going to be like.

Andrea (host):
Okay. So what’s interesting to me is that should we all be using a CRM? That’s what I come to that with, if you’re not managing your customers, if you don’t know where they are, if you don’t know where they are in the sales funnel, if you don’t know who you have, if you don’t know who to talk to, you can’t protect what you need. I mean, for my company, especially, we’re doing a big, big, big proposal right now for a company that we’ve never worked for before. They found us on Google. That’s also crazy. But we’re doing this right now. And if we get this project, we have the people who can run and manage it, we’ve got the mindshare within the company, but we’re going to need contractors. So without that CRM tool, how do you know what resources you’re going to need? You don’t? It’s very, very interesting.

Kathy (guest):
Yeah, a good thing that you also brought in is not just, you know, the revenue planning, but also the resource planning too, because if you’re gonna close, you know, a couple of million dollars worth of business, now you need to know, do I need to hire people? Do I need to buy something? Do I… There’s all these things that happen after you close the business. And we need to know that and hopefully, you know that in advance so we can prepare. Because if you need to hire people, you can’t just magically have that happen within 24 hours.

Andrea (host):
Right, right. And if you need to hire people, you also need to consider hardware and software and IT support and health insurance and all those things that come with that. It’s not just saying, “Hey, you got a job.” Come on. But that’s not what it looks like. Even more, you have to also look at all the things around that. So that financial planning, and really looking at the insights that data can provide, can help your company grow smart, and it can help you also not just make money or create things to pay taxes, as Kathy was saying. So Kathy, you know, every one of us has had a mentor or we’ve had an influence on our life that’s helped us grow in a really positive way. And I would love to know if you have a piece of advice that was given to you that still resonates with you to this day?

Kathy (guest):
That’s a great question. I think one of the early jobs that I had in my corporate career, someone told me that it’s not really about the numbers, it’s about the people. And that’s true. And yes, we in finance work with numbers, but you also have to develop a lot of the soft skills. That’s my takeaway from it. Oh, that’s so true. Yeah, you have to be able to know how to connect with a person. You have to be able to know how to take these numbers which are, you know, admittedly dry a lot of times…

Andrea (host):
They can be. Yes, I will agree with you there.

Kathy (guest):
And how do you bring that to life to a person that is not, you know, thinking about finances all the time and gets excited when they open up a spreadsheet, which admittedly I do, but I know that it’s so funny. How do you take that information and make it palpable to someone who doesn’t live in that world? And so that’s something that I have been cultivating for a couple of years now. And trying to figure out, you know, how do I communicate well, how do I… How am I able to give that insight to people so that they’re actually able to take action? So it’s not about the numbers, it’s really about how you are presenting this to the people because the numbers are just a vehicle to get to where you need to go.

Andrea (host):
But you’re right, you do have to have action. Yeah, I like that. I do like that you have to develop those soft skills. It makes me think about the book, The E-Myth. Now, The E-Myth was written a long time ago now, because The E-Myth Revisited was actually released 20 years ago. So Revisited was the updated version. But it talks about why most small businesses don’t work and what to do about it. It talks about being a practitioner, and the story that The E-Myth uses is a pie maker. This pie maker started making pies and things started going crazy. So she opened a bakery and hired employees, but she’s still making pies. So she’s still the doer, she doesn’t have that picture, she doesn’t look at the financial picture. She doesn’t look at what it means to hire somebody. And so the business failed. So it’s about what you can do about it. And I think those soft skills combined with data and really, really looking at it, because it creates a picture for those of us who are very visual learners like me, data can create a picture. But it’s looking at that and figuring out how to make smart financial and scrappy financial decisions in order to grow, but to grow smart. And this is what your company does. This is what Newcastle Finance does, love, love, love that. So, you know, Kathy, I believe that every woman on earth has a superpower; we all do. And I can tell you some of yours from sitting in this seat. But I want to know, Kathy, what is your…

Kathy (guest):
You know, one of the things that I’ve developed over the course of my career, and especially in the last five years since I’ve had, you know, this business, is connecting the dots. Oh, so I know a little about a lot of things.

Andrea (host):
That’s important, too. It makes you dangerous. Remember? Yes, that

Kathy (guest):
makes me very dangerous. But I always say I like to stick my nose into a lot of things, but keep my hands out. Oh,

Andrea (host):
I like that. Oh, connecting the dots. Because you know, a little bit, but you’re just gonna do something you’re not fully confident with when you do. Exactly.

Kathy (guest):
So just like in the example, you know, when I work with a business, I see, because I have seen this in the past, that they might have a people problem, they might have a culture problem, they might have an operational problem. I don’t know how to fix that.

Andrea (host):
No, that’s not your core specialty.

Kathy (guest):
Yes, because that’s not my core specialty. Like I said, I keep my hands out. But I know enough that I can connect the dots to see the problem brewing and coming and becoming bigger if they don’t have someone to help. And I know people that I can connect them with that will help. So that is really my superpower, connecting the dots and then finding the people that can fix things.

Andrea (host):
You’re a resource connector. Wow. That’s incredible. Kathy, you know, we’ve had such a fun conversation with you today, I could talk to you for hours. I feel like… Kathy Svetina, founder and CEO of Newcastle Finance, where can we all find you online?

Kathy (guest):
You can find me on LinkedIn, I hang out there a lot, a lot. You can find all my videos, all my resources that I have in there. And if you want to, you can go check out my podcast “Help! My Business Is Growing,” especially if your business is growing, because it’s going to give you a ton of resources and experts that you can go and tap into if you need that help.

Andrea (host):
So you can also find her at newcastlefinance.us. I want to say that again, because it’s not that common: newcastlefinance.us. And her Financial Health Check is on that site. It’s a product that she is very passionate about. Kathy, thank you for being on the show today.

Kathy (guest):
Thank you so much, Andrea, it’s been an absolute pleasure to talk to you.

Andrea (host):
Thank you. This has been so fun. And listeners, I want you to remember that we all have superpowers. Kathy has the superpower to connect the dots. She puts her nose in but not her hands. I have superpowers and listeners, you all have superpowers. Please use them for good. And thank you for listening today to the Lead Like A Woman Show, where we are passionate about empowering female leaders to empower others. One last thing, remember, share this podcast with a friend today and go give us a rating. I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks for being here.

Andrea (host):
Thank you. You’re listening to the Lead Like A Woman Show. We look forward to seeing you next time. Make sure to subscribe to get future episodes.