Case Study: Knowing your numbers to fast-track growth in business

*All names on the case studies have been altered for privacy of my clients. Results vary from people to people and are not guaranteed

When Eliza* reached out to me on Instagram, she said she needed to organize her finances. She couldn't understand that she was working so many hours every month, and had little to nothing to take home. She had been in business for 2 years and never organized her finances. At the end of the year she'd give her tax accountant a box of receipts for her taxes.

Eliza was so frustrated because she knew she was making good money, she didn't know where it was all going. During our discovery call I asked her what would be her desired outcome from working together, she said the following: "I'd love to have a money system that I can understand, that I know what I need to do it and when I need to do it, something simple that when I hire a VA she can take over. I want to understand where my money is coming from and where my money is going. I want to be able to invest in myself and my business, but I also want to be able to pay myself a real salary every month".

This all sounds great. But I needed a little more detail, Eliza told me that by the end of the year, she'd like to be making 6-figures ($100,000+) and she'd like to pay herself about $4,000 every month.

The proposal I sent her was 2 fold:

1. Set Up Accounting System: One-time project: I would set her up with a new accounting system, with the 2.5 years of data. The project included: Adding all transactions and categorize for the 2.5 years, do the bank reconciliation for the 2.5 years for her bank account and credit card, indicate the main categories and vendors for her investments, create dashboard with her KPIs

   For this client, an automated accounting system would not work, I created a worksheet [like the one you can get from my shop, the Income and Expenses tracker], videos of how to use the worksheet, a checklists of when to do each task, and a dashboard with the KPIs [so anytime she update the worksheet, the data is automatically update].

2. One on One Coaching: 6 months package: She chose a high level coaching package which included money management.

   The goal here was to focus on money mindset, entrepreneurial mindset, pricing strategy and creating a blueprint for the next 5 years in business.

When we started the first project, I noticed that her first year in business she had brought in $80,000, and her second year $150,000. She was already making 6+ figures!

The issue for her was not her ability to welcome in new clients and opportunities to make money, was keeping the money. As fast as she received, she was spending - with little to no strategy.

Eliza is a great example of what happens when we ignore our money in our business: we set goals that make no sense at all, because she had no idea of what she was actually bringing in. When I show her the metrics, she was in awe. And proud, and ashamed. She was feeling a lot of feelings - supportive and not supportive - because she couldn't understand how she was making so much money and her account was always in the negative.

When we started the coaching, there was a lot of self-forgiveness to be given: it's important to understand that we always do the best we can with the information we have available. For 2.5 years, she didn't have information to make better decisions, she didn't have the knowledge and skills, and she didn't have the mindset to be able to look at her numbers from a curiosity standpoint.

In my coaching, I use the 95/5 method: 95% of the work is mindset and 5% is strategy. And they work in tandem. We did uncover some money stories, we had to de-program them from her unconscious and add in program that would support her goals. We audited her prices and offers to make sure that they were aligned with her long term vision.

Eliza is a manifestor in human design - this shows that she's multi-passioned and that she needs support with following things through in her business: for that, we created automations for lead generation, onboarding and off-boarding; we also created a bank account to start saving to hire her VA - she needed someone that would be able to push her ideas across the finish line and that would comfortable with her flow of energy: work-rest cycle.

By the end of the first month, we had her offers at a competitive price, a launch schedule for the next 12-months, and we had started her money management in a way that felt good to her. Throughout the next few months, we did her bookkeeping together, she was able to understand her financials better, and because she was not ignoring it anymore, she was able to pay herself $2,000 from month 1 to month 3.

We did an expenses analysis to show all the places she was spending money, and we only kept the ones that were real investments. Things that were nice to haves, softwares that overlaps, or even things that she was not using, we were able to decrease her expenses to the point that she was able to hire a VA, and pay herself $3,000 starting on month 4.

By the end of our 6-months working together, Eliza went from working 50+ hours per week, paying herself $0 to $1,000, having a lot of seasonality in her business, feeling like she couldn't take time off, to working 25 hours per week, having on-going support from her VA, being able to hire experts on a project basis, save for taxes, pay herself $5,000 per month (more than her goal), understand her money and have a clear view of it, and reach $300,000 in revenue that year. Her business went from no profit, to a 25% profit margin.

Eliza shows us that without understanding your money, you cannot scale your business in a sustainable and profitable matter.

If you're interested in learning how I can support you grow your business, you can apply to work with me.