Finance For Business – How To Get Started

A lot of people have this idea of what investments they need to make for their business and they’re wrong. But I don’t want people to think that this is the thing that’s going to push my business forward and spend the money get absolutely no return on their investment. And then they’re out of money. Welcome to the imperfectly empowered podcast with leading DIY lifestyle blogger on a full. Where women are inspired with authentic stories and practical strategies to reclaim their hearts and homes by empowering transformation. One imperfect day at a time. Hello, and welcome back to the imperfectly empowered podcast. I am your host, Anna Fuller today on the show we have Johanna book whites. Johanna is the host of the limitless podcast and founder of frankly co, which is an online community for driven female entrepreneurs that provides them with actionable steps. For super growth and success here to share her expert advice on how to work smarter, not harder. Welcome Johanna book whites. Hi, how are you? Hi, good. How are you? How’s good. Good, good. I was laughing. I was looking through your media kit and. You worked with Johanna, right? Yeah. The other Johanna. Yeah. Yeah. She is good at what she does. I saw her mark all over it. Yeah, she is so good. The best. She’s so good when it comes to like all things branding, like I’m like the least creative person ever. Yeah. I have no idea how to use Photoshop or like illustrator, whatever she uses. So I just like send it to her and I’m like girl working magic. yeah. I like know it’s gonna be awesome. Loved it. It was really, really good. Does she offer different PA? I’ve had her on my podcast and I don’t think I even asked her these questions, but does she have different packages or is it like one? Yeah, she has all different packages depending on what you want. Like everything from like your brand messaging to like completely redoing your website, like media kit stuff for me, I. Originally hired her with like the messaging and everything like that. But at this point, anything that needs to be on brand, I kind of just use her for just because like, I wanna have that consistency. I feel like it looks a lot better. So anything like via branding, I’m just like, okay, send voice. Here you go. yeah. How does she charge? I didn’t even like get into the pricing. Yeah, I know that. And I see why, but how does she charge? So you can schedule a free call with her. I actually don’t know because she raised her rates since I started working with her. Yeah. I like was one of the people who got in based on her lower rates and it was still really expensive. Yeah. Like it was not cheap at all. Yeah. I mean, I know that’s her clientele. She’s looking for luxury branders so I get that. Yeah, it’s super, but I think her prices went up more since then. So. Yeah, you can just talk to her. Cause I don’t wanna quote you a price then she’s like, why would you say that? It’s like 30% more now I’d be like, oh my gosh. Yeah. I’m not worried about it. I was more curious if she does by the hour, if she does packages, like how is she? No, it’s by packages. Yeah. So it’s not by the hour. It’s literally just based on like what it is that you need and what it is that you’re looking for. So I think like the website pricing is gonna be like super different than if you just want like a media kit or something else done. Right, right. Because those would be a lot smaller, like the full website she does. Like her whole process is like you literal. Have a call with her for like over an hour and a half where like mm-hmm, with the brand messaging and everything like that, where she kind of just holds information out of you and just like makes everything sound really good and create all these different touch points that you can then also give to like the rest of your team members. So you have that consistency pricing for that is definitely gonna be higher, but I don’t know what you need or you looking for. Yeah. Well, and I don’t know that I would technically be her target market cause I’m not necessarily looking in reality. My target market is moms. You know what I mean? I’m like, yeah. So not necessarily, I don’t know that my brand actually would be. Even appropriate for her. I’m not looking for a luxury. Look, if that makes sense. Like that’s not even my target market where yours feel like totally is cuz you’re specifically targeting female. I think for her, like some of the stuff that she does, it’s not necessarily the person’s target market is luxury. It’s more so just like how they wanna appear as a brand. Right. It could obviously totally work for you too. I think it just depends what you’re looking for. And if you wanna spend that money, I don’t . Let’s be honest. I mean, I appreciate her, what she does really well is the cohesiveness is what I appreciate with the look and that’s. But anyway, I was curious. Yeah, well, it looks fabulous. Well, Johanna, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. It’s so fun to have you. I was just chatting with her about her website and her brand is, it looks fabulous when we talk about branding and marketing, she and I were just saying how we are, Ugh, clueless. When it comes to the visual branding approach, maybe not clueless, she’s probably less. Clueless than I am, but there’s like a whole art to it and hers looks fabulous. So if nothing else, you just wanna check out our website because she is stunning and her website looks stunning. But anyway, thank you Johan. You are the owner of frankly co and I love this. You have mentioned on your website in your media kit. This company was named frankly co and you have the definition of Frank being to communicate in an open, honest, and direct manner. And you’re specifically targeting Thema entrepreneurs. And I love this whole concept that it is a community driven on open communication, direct feedback, and the support that so many women need in their business, whether it be. A brick and mortar business or virtual business or a side hustle, whatever it is. So let’s press rewind a little bit and tell me your journey where you started before we dive into your expertise on working smarter, not harder as businesswoman, which I know I need before we get into that. Tell me a little bit about you and. What got you started on this whole journey? Oh man. So my journey is a little bit interesting and I think a little bit different frankly, is fairly new in a project that’s like super close to my heart. And I’m really passionate about, I started my career in finance, like strictly financial forecasting planning strategy, about as fun as that sounds, uh, in a very corporate environment. My head already. Just thinking about it. Oh, my word, I need you in my life. yeah. It’s like spreadsheets for days. PowerPoint presentations. That was my every day. I worked at a big bank. Then I worked at an investment bank and I always knew I wanted to start my own company. I didn’t know at the time, like what I was passionate about or what really like resonated with me. I just wanted to start a company. So anyone listening. Don’t do that. , it’s like the worst advice ever. Don’t just start a company because you’re like, I don’t wanna work in corporate anymore. Let me just find a problem in the market and solve it. So I did, I found a problem in the market and I solved it. So I created an app originally for fitness trainers, and this was like, Before there were a ton of these apps out in the market. Mm-hmm because I used to work out every single morning with trainers before going to my finance job, because it was very stressful. And that was where I had my sanity. And every trainer was saying how they really wanted to start getting online, but they struggled cuz they had no idea how to do it. They were working at these gyms that were charging a fortune in new. But they were barely taking home any of that. And so they knew they could reach more people by creating an online market for that, but they just didn’t know what to do. They had no idea how to market it. They didn’t know how to do payments. So I was like, oh, let me create something for you. See if that’s an option. Cuz I had so many friends who were trainers and it was a huge network, especially in New York. So when I started, I essentially created. Two sided marketplace for trainers and for anyone who was looking for a trainer and it also allowed gyms to make more money, sell products online. And it had like live classes, personal training by itself, where you could just do it virtually and also just like on demand content. And it made everybody a professional video editor, no matter like who they were and it was cool. Like it worked, it was great. I wasn’t passionate about it at all. yeah. So if you start a business that you don’t have passion in when road bumps come because they will you’re miserable. So I financially it was like, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. And sure. I didn’t have to go into a corporate office every day, but. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t feeling fulfilled. And I knew I wanted to kind of do something differently. And as COVID came, obviously like the app became more popular and all these trainers were also saying, Hey, we wanna have our own app. So I just started white labeling and licensing the app. And then it even expanded to different industries. Like not even just fitness, like anyone who just wanted to leverage the technology. any type of content creator. I was able to license it to them. And while that was super cool and it gave me more time, I knew that I needed that time to like figure out what I wanted to do. Yeah. What actually was important to me, what did I really care about? And I started to get this idea after I allowed that to kind of come in, uh, frankly, And I’ve been in the process of selling my old company, which has been so cool in itself. And that also allowed me to even do some like, like acquisition consulting, totally by accident where friends of mine were like, I own a company you’re selling yours. Could you help me sell mine? I was like, oh, okay, sure. Why not? Let me learn something new. And I actually was really good at it. And I got to pitch like Sony and Snapchat. That’s amazing. It was so cool. I kind of realized what I wanted to do with, frankly, because I experienced the pain points, what you didn’t want to do. Yeah, exactly. And like with frankly, what the pain points were being an entrepreneur plus taking my corporate background and my background in strategy and finance and kind of like, and tech from starting an app already and kind of blending that all together to really serve female entrepreneurs because. They’re awesome. I wanna help them. I wish I had that help when I was starting out too. So here we are now. I love what you said earlier. I’m not gonna quote you exactly. But you said if you are in a business that you’re not passionate about, the road bumps are that much more painful. And I think it’s an interesting point to sit on for a second. It doesn’t necessarily mean the road bumps. Won’t be there. Even if you are passionate about what you’re doing, the problem is that the inevitable road bumps that come are that much more difficult and almost feel that much more disruptive. It’s like the road bump could be the same size, whether you’re passionate about what you’re doing or not. But if you are miserable in what you’re doing, they feel that much bigger. And so I think that’s a really. Important thing to hone in on is you had to experience just how disruptive and painful those road bumps were. doing something you really weren’t passionate about to leverage sort of point you in that direction. So I love that. Tell me a little bit about some of the road bumps that. You are experiencing in a business, you are passionate about chat with me about some of the challenges that you’re facing and how you’re overcoming those currently challenges I’m currently facing are probably a little bit boring. to be honest, because it’s, that’s not a bad technical yeah. It’s super technical when it comes to the app. And so one of the main things that I want, frankly, to be able to provide is. Kind of to cut the fluff, to give everybody what they’re looking for, because we’re so lucky how there’s so much information all around us. It’s such a blessing, but it’s also so painful to spend hours going through data, to find an answer to a question we have, that’s not curated for us. It could be like for someone’s business, who’s bigger or smaller. Different industry. And then we just take that and we try to apply it to our business, but we’re not feeling good about it. We’re not confident. We don’t know if it’s the right answer and then we’re panicking for the next, you know, week, month, whatever, just like trying to see if we made the right decision. So in order to be able to provide. Like entrepreneurs with the exact answers that they’re looking for. I need to source data and organize data in a very unique way. So it’s making sure that I’m able to do that properly as well as like build in the technology like AI to make its. Smarter. So the larger, the community grows, the more we’re able to better like provide those answers. But I wanna be able to still do that from the start. So the way we’re gonna do that is like to give you the answer, but then also give you resources. Cause I’m all about action. So it’s like, here’s your question. Here’s the answer that we think would be best based on your business, where you are the size of your business, the industry you’re in. And if you wanna do it yourself, here’s what you can do. If you wanna hire somebody, here’s a recommended, vetted resources that we trust that you can use to hire. And we’ll also sort that by price too. So the whole organization of data I love is fun. I love it because it is not the same thing to have resources as it is to. Applicable answers. They are not one in the same. And so you are solving so many problems for business owners. I love that. So for people who maybe missed this initial step, so frankly co is going to be an online community, but she also is creating an app for this online community in case you missed that part. So the app will be specific to her business, frankly, co and talk to me a little bit about. The types of business women, you foresee this benefiting, cuz there’s obviously we have the brick and mortar businesses. Maybe you’re a CEO of whatever. Maybe it’s a niche industry or maybe it’s a larger corporate, but then we also have personal brands that might be strictly virtual platforms and there is no brick and mortar business or service. Tell me a little bit about who you’re trying to tailor this for. So, this is really for all driven female entrepreneurs. And I know that sounds like a huge task and, you know, challenge accepted. like, that’s where we’re going from here. She’s like, bring it, bring it. I started an app for fitness drainers. I can do anything. Yeah. Yeah. Basically it . No, no, I’m just kidding. I am limitless. I am. Yeah. That’s like my podcast too. So like that’s the whole idea behind either. You’re the wall behind me. Yeah. . And so I think for any type of business owner, like I said, like with the data, we’re going to custom curate it based on your industry, your size, your revenue. So if you are a brick and mortar business, like we are gonna be able to have those answers for you as well as if you’re a personal brand and online business. Even if you’re just starting out, knowing you wanna start an. You have no idea what to do and helping you there, or if you’re like six or seven figures and you’re looking to continuously grow and scale, the app is going to be for those people too. And I think one thing that I found kind of cool is with the first company I started, since it wasn’t on purpose in terms of what I felt was aligned, right. For me. Not only did not like the struggles I found. Like there were like literally like little roadblocks everywhere I turned. Yeah. Doing now, what I feel is more aligned to who I am somehow. It’s like, yeah, sure. There’s still a little bit of like things to navigate and figure out, but everything is just smoother. A really good friend of mine referred to it as like, when you are creating something that’s not aligned to who you are. It’s like you’re pushing a Boulder uphill, but when you are doing. Something that really feels authentic to you and feels good to you. It’s like you’re pushing like a couch through like an ice skating rink where it’s, you have to put a little bit of effort, but everything just kind of glides and that’s what I’ve found to be true so far. So knock on what I hope that continues. now I have to ask, because I can’t skip over this being the not technological person that I am. How did. Initially know how to create an app. I mean, just the thought of that gives me palpitations. Where do you even start when you create an app? How do you do. Oh man. Yeah. So I that’s a whole nother world outside of financing. Where did you get those skills? Yeah, so I made like a ton of mistakes there. So I had, let’s go more about the mistakes yeah. So I researched a lot of like places where they help you develop apps. So there’s so many online resources that it’s not like your own development team, but what they do is that they work with each client individually, and then they help you produce an app. And there’s a lot of them out there. And there was one that. Very reputable. It was in Forbes. It was like written up everywhere and, and it had some really big names to it. So I went ahead and I met with them. They seemed really great and I hired them. So anybody who creates an app. Do not pay for anything up front, make your own payment plans and do all that. I got a huge discount for paying it full. So from the finance side, I was like, okay, this makes sense. And they’re super reputable. They ended up going outta business within six months and it was all over the news. It was such a disaster. And I like literally was sitting there. What do I do? I just lost like everything I had saved and I had no idea what to do. And so I was like in panic mode. So I started going on. Book in LinkedIn. And I was like, do I happen to know anybody in the tech industry? And on top of my head, I was like, I absolutely know nobody. I know not one person, everyone I know is in finance or maybe marketing, but no one is in tech. And I found that someone who I went to school with when I was in seventh grade, happened to have started his own company. And it was just acquired by. So I messaged him on Facebook and he was like, wait, is this a joke? I literally haven’t talked to you since we were like 12 years old. I was like, yeah, I know. Welcome to Facebook. Yeah. And I connected with him and I told him what happened. And he was like, oh my God, that’s horrible. He’s like, let me introduce you to my team. I was like, okay, same thing. They were really reputable. They worked for Amazon. They did work for Alexa for Toyota for bill and Melinda gates foundation. Jaguar. They worked with all these different companies and they built this sky’s app and it was acquired by TikTok. So I was like, it was good enough for TikTok. It shouldn’t be good enough for me. And so I talked to them for probably two months and we just had back and forth conversation and he was, the guy was so nice that had developer and like, he totally understood where I was coming from. And he’s like, yeah, if you wanna go out, do. I wanna do something for you that I’ve literally done with nobody. He’s like, I’m gonna work for free for the first two months so that you can see what we can build off of what you already had and, and help you and build that trust because it really sucks the situation you were in and fast forward two years later, like I love this team. They’re complete superstars. They’re so nice. They’re so smart. And I would recommend them to anybody, but like finding a good development team is so hard. So let’s give them a shout out. If people wanna check them out, who are they? Where do they need to go to find them? Yeah. So the head developer, his name is Alex tink. They don’t have a website currently. They were based half in Seattle, half in Ukraine, but pretty much all of them left Ukraine and are working abroad now with everything going on there. So. So they’re like rebuilding their website and trying to do that now as well. But anyone can reach out to me and I will make an introduction. I actually introduced them to someone recently. They were like, oh my gosh, they’re so good. I was like, yeah, they’re the best. They’re so cool. So if you’re looking for a development team, then you can contact Johanna. We’ll make sure all of her contact information is there and she can connect you to that team. I love the concept that you’re conveying here, which is there was a mistake made. and it was drastic and it had consequences that I can’t imagine the feeling of seeing so much money. And I’ve heard other entrepreneurs talk about this too. It doesn’t mean that you don’t go for it again, it just teaches you how to go about it smarter and I think that’s a beautiful example of that. It doesn’t mean that you just stop or that you don’t go for it a second time. You just change your strategy a little bit. I love that. So that’s how you’ve created an app. So before we actually dive into more of your expertise here, just in the entrepreneur world, share with us, what is one goal? That you would like to see happen yet in your lifetime, it could be professional. It could be personal. Any goal that you would like to still see happen? I love asking this question, cuz you’re like in the works, which is so fun. We could bring you back in a year or two and we’ll be like, look at all the things that happened. But at this point right now what’s a goal. What do you wanna see happen? I think for me, like my overall life goal and focus has kind of shifted, especially in the last two years where happiness is the number one priority and like living in aligned life and like a very spiritual life and just like helping people for me before I always was very. Focused on the wrong things. And happiness was like the last of my priorities. I thought it wasn’t feasible. So I was like, forget it. Let me just do well with work. Let me just have that success on paper mm-hmm and who cares about the rest of my life and making that shift and changing my mindset and doing all the hard, painful, not, and pleasant work has completely changed my outlook and helped me live a happier life. So I wanna continue to do that and also help other people do the same. So when you talk about happiness, I always think it’s important to clarify this, because you said before, it was less about being happy and more about your own success on paper, more about making a certain amount of money. Mm-hmm tell me how the definition of what made you happy changed what initially? So. Yeah. So for me, when I was younger, I really like struggled with physical health. I had a lot suffered with like anxiety, depression. So I really felt happiness. Wasn’t an option. I always thought everything was like external. I didn’t think anything was internal. So I didn’t do that internal work. I just focused on external circumstances. So I was like, I won’t be happy, but I’ll be satisfied. Right. If, if I have great success on paper, at least I can say I did something. Mm. And. That’s like not a happy way, obviously to live. And for me now it’s to be happy internally, regardless of what my external circumstances are. So whether frankly makes like a billion dollars or whether it makes like nothing, I can still be happy today. It doesn’t matter what’s going on around me because things are always happening. Happiness is from inside me and I can live this like beautiful. Happy enjoyable, peaceful life and be connected to God and to universe who, however, whatever word for that resonates with anyone. Listening to me, that’s kind of the most beautiful shift that I’ve done in my life and the hardest work I’ve done. but by far the best and most rewarding. And it’s interesting, you didn’t expressly say this, but I’m hearing it in what you’re communicating is the before and after I’m hearing the, before. Almost more of a youth centered approach and happiness. Isn’t an option for me. I can just be satisfied with my own success on paper and the after I’m hearing so much of the focus is yes, it’s still that you can choose joy, but I’m hearing that you are gaining that because you have a very clear focus on the way that you can serve other people. And I think that’s a beautiful. Dichotomy that exists there. It’s kind of an interesting tension, I would say. Yes and no, because even before for me personal life, I would be like, what can I do for other people? I can’t be happy myself. So how can I help others? So it would be like first service based person. So you would be IM a service person. Yeah. Right. I think before it was almost to a point that it was unhealthy zero boundaries zero me time. Cuz it was, I was like, well I can’t do this for myself. So let me just like give all of me to everybody else around me. No matter. Whether or not like, that feels good, whether that makes sense. Whether that’s healthy, it was kind of irrelevant. So the only thing I was like for myself was like, let me just check the box of financial success or looks good on paper mm-hmm yeah, I think that’s such a great point. It’s an interesting thought that you can actually be serving people out of a. Unhealthy place. We always think of serving other people as inherently positive thing. Yeah. It can be done out of an unhealthy personal place. So I thank you for pointing that out. I think that’s an interesting, what would you say to somebody who feels like that’s where they are right now? I would say, take a step back and kind of identify what you’re doing and why. And I think we’re really lucky to have these like amazing emotions that sometimes drive us crazy. Yeah. But if something’s not feeling good, that’s an automatic sign. You might not know the reason why, but if you don’t feel good in that exact moment, you can try to take a step back and think about, is this a pattern? Am I doing something that I’ve done in the past? If I like pull everything out of it? Why am I feeling the way I’m currently feeling and usually can find a lot of things. And it’s a little bit of a digging experiment to try to see what you can uncover. And sometimes you’ll be surprised where pretty quickly you’ll kind of find out a lot that’s going on there. Mm. I love that. So many words of advice here from Johanna, we are talking about a lot of different things. We’re gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, stay tuned for a speed round of this or that with Johanna and her expert advice on how to work smarter, not harder for your business, right? When we come back, you have tried it all worried. You will never lose the extra weight or reclaim the energy you once enjoyed. Want to achieve fat loss without spending hours in a gym or eliminating entire food groups from your diet. 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And start your own transformation story. We are back here with Yohanna book whites. We are gonna play a quick round of this or that two options, no stress. Whichever one comes to mind this or that. Would you either cake or pie? Oh, neither. I don’t eat sweets. girl. What in the world? You don’t eat any, so what do you have a favorite suite or treat of any kind? What would you dark chocolate yourself with? Okay. Dark chocolate, pure dark chocolate. I don’t really like favorite everything’s me. I like the salty. No, I like who actually who? Dark chocolate. Oh, I don’t know that one. It’s really good. Oh my gosh. That’s so good. Okay. So I’m not a chocolate person, so I guess I’m also strange but so no, I’ve never heard of that one. Okay. Would you rather shoes or purses if you’re gonna splurge, would you rather splurge on shoes or purses purses, purses? Do you have a favorite brand? Oh, that’s I love Dior. Dior is like one of my favorite brands. I don’t own that many. I have like one bag, but every time I just see it, I’m like, oh, it’s so pretty. yeah, Dior. There you go. I’m like the one purse girl. I get one high quality purse and then I wear it to the ground. I love that shoes. On the other hand, those are my weakness purses. I couldn’t care less shoes. Those are my weaknesses. Okay. What’s worse laundry or. Dishes. Yeah. Would you rather go shopping in a store or shopping online? Ooh, so I’ve always said shopping online, and then I recently did shopping online for like a personal branding photo shoot and oh my gosh, it was such a paint. unbox everything. And then like send everything back that now I’m like sort of leading towards shopping in the store. Yeah, I do understand that. I think it depends on what it is you’re shopping for and how many return trips to ups for Amazon. You need to make. Exactly or for any company. All right. Last one. Would you rather go to a cabin by the lake or a house on the beach for like a beach house on the beach? Yeah, a hundred percent house on the beach. Do you have a favorite place? Do you, can you picture the place right now that your house is going to be, where would you go? Oh, I, I took a trip to the Maldives for the first time ever. Oh, I mm-hmm and it is like complete paradise. I’m like a huge credit card points. Maximize your points situation. I get the most three flights and like business class around the world for free. So I use that actually to, to go to the Mald to use. And, oh my gosh. So what credit card do you use for anyone else interested? What do you use American express? Platinum card for, I mean, it depends where you spend your money, but like I could spend like 45 minutes talking to anybody just about this. Cause I used finance girl. Yeah. I used to African American express. So a hundred percent platinum for travel gold card. If you spend most of your mind money dining, then get the gold card. Interesting. Okay. And is this for business or personal? Is it a personal business card? Both. Okay. So the, so the platinum card, you could do personal, or you can do business, but it’s by far the best travel credit card, there’s a fee, but the fee is like offset because the value that you’re getting is way more than what you’re actually paying an annual fees, but you have to use all the benefits. Otherwise it’s not worth it. And gold card is also just best for if you spend most of your money at restaurants, bars, grocery stores, then that that’s the card for. Okay. So American express platinum is the best travel credit card for the travel reward. So if you travel a lot, you need the American express credit card. And then you said gold is especially beneficial. If you do a lot of eating out, shopping for food. Yes. Yes. Which who of us? Well, we don’t eat out a lot, but shopping for food. Good grief. Like I spend half of what I make on food for my children. yeah. Grocery stores are a good one. Yeah. Okay. I love that. I could talk that kind of stuff too. Cuz I’m all about learning the hacks to make the money that I’m spending work. Better for me. Exactly. Work smarter, not harder. Let beautiful transition. Exactly. . Here we go. We’ve already started working smarter, not harder for your business. I mean, that was not gonna be one of my questions, but it is an excellent one. Are there? Other ways that you, since we’re talking practical things, credit card, other resources like that, that we need to be aware of as business owners that we could be using. So American express platinum, we talked about that. Are there other resources that you would recommend, like little hacks tips and tricks? I mean, for me, I’m all about efficiencies. So there’s so many like automation tools that are great, depending on like a specific role or task that you’re looking for, that you don’t have to hire for. And you don’t have to do it yourself, obviously, depending on the size of your business. So if you could find that, let automation tools tell me anyone who knows me, knows I’m all about efficiency and when things don’t work smoothly, it drives me insane. My VA would be like, it’s so true. If she was sitting here beside me, I like automate everything so that she has to do as little as possible. So tell me automation tools. So the two most popular ones that I think most people are, at least are familiar with are like email marketing tools, any type of automation or CRM there, and also social media posting. So there’s like a whole variety of super cool tools that are out there. Again, it’s like more based on the size of your business. Definitely like invoicing that’s. Again, super easy, super straightforward, like QuickBooks. I love everyone should just like use it. It’s very simple, very easy to use. Talk to me about QuickBooks. I love this because I Johanna knows this. I was on her podcast. I’m very early on in my business and again, not a business woman by education. Certainly. So one of the things that’s been a huge hurdle for me has been the financial aspect of running your own business. Cuz I came from a brick and mortar job, emergency medicine. Pretty black and white, the financial aspect of it, where then going to owning my own business. The financial piece was a huge hurdle for me to figure out it took me way too long, way longer than it should have to open up a business account with my bank and keep it separate from my personal, but this is the stuff no one talks about because no one it’s like people assume if you own your own business, you know what you’re doing? It’s just not true. you have to learn somehow. So. Well, I would love to hear with quick books. What are the tips and tricks for keeping track of your finances, your spending your income with quick books? So like I use PNC business. I’m sure there’s probably better ones, but that’s the one, cuz that’s our personal banking. It’s easier to go into one place. But then I know that they have certain tools. I think QuickBooks is one of them are into it. Is that the same thing? Yeah. So Intuit actually owns QuickBook. Got it. Okay. So is there a way does, if I am logging everything, like I just keep track of everything in one account. That’s where I do one credit card for it, one debit card for it. So everything is just kept track in that account. And then is a way to automate that into QuickBooks, cuz that’s my next step. People y’all hearing this in real time. so when it comes to, I’ve not done that yet. The first thing everyone needs to do is make sure that they actually have like a legal business filing. I feel like I’ve talked to so many people recently who are so far in their business yet they fully skip that step or they realize that there’s a different legal filing that they should have made. Can people use legal? Is that what you’re saying? Like Ancor policy talk about that. That’s perfect. Yes. Yeah. So talk about that. Anybody who’s actually looking to get venture capital funding needs to be like a Delaware corporation. It’s just like the tax laws are, are better. So anybody who’s actually looking for venture capital funding, 95% of those firms are gonna want you to have that as you like you for your legal filing. Yeah. Like a hundred percent. Yeah. That’s like the number one thing. If you’re running your own business again, you can look. State for state. Cause they have different rules, but like I love legal zoom. Someone was telling me they paid like, I think like $30,000 for a lawyer to file their business. And I was like, are you doing, I was like, it’s like 500 bucks depending on your state on legal zoom. And it’s done. I used rocket lawyer. People used to, I was like, do not do that. So the first thing I, yeah, so the first thing is I know , it’s like, I’m like, I can’t believe it don’t do that. So first thing is, make sure you have your legal filing and then you can open up a bank account. So the bank account that you want for your business. Fully gonna depend on how much money you’re gonna start with in that account. And if you can estimate how much you think you’re gonna continuously put into it, because each bank might have a certain limit well, where they will charge you. If you don’t have a specific balance in the account. Mm-hmm so like that’s, you can use bank of America. You can use cabbage now, which is owned by American express for like small. So they have like all different kinds of banks. That, again, like you just kind of have to do a little bit of research based on the fees and how much money you’re gonna put into it, then nobody should ever have a, a debit card, unless it’s just like, like logistics to hold it. Please do not spend money on your debit card. Everything should be charged on a credit card. Cause it goes back to that. I love that. You’re saying this because I actually cannot tell you how many people told me the exact. and it makes no sense to me because as long as you’re paying off your credit card balance, mm-hmm , you are making money on the money that you’re spending. So I understand. I think it’s that Dave Ramsey idea, like the idea of you don’t want any I don’t know. Maybe it’s Dave Ramsey. Maybe it’s not, I don’t know, but that concept that, like, you don’t want any debt at all, but the credit card debt is only debt. If you don’t pay it off, correct. Each month. Exactly. And I think people just like panic about it, cuz they’re oh, I don’t wanna spend money on a credit card. Right. And it’s like, if you think about it, let’s say you say I have $2,000 that I’m gonna spend each month. I would spend that $2,000 on a debit card. Don’t right. Spend that $2,000 on a credit card. You’re not spending $5,000 and you’re not spending less, you’re spending the exact amount, the same amount that you were gonna spend with your debit spend on your credit because you’re making money off of the card. Like if you can literally pay for a business expense and then get a free trip around the world in like business class, like why would you not do it? That’s like the greatest thing ever. Men. Yes. I couldn’t believe how many people told me that. And I do understand the principle. I would say, if you personally struggle with paying off your personal credit card with regularity, then it follows to me that you’re going to struggle paying off your business card regularly. But I think this is true for personal or business. You can discipline yourself to make sure that you are at least paying it off monthly a hundred percent. You’re making money by spending money and you can get the American express platinum. And only spend what you have, right? It’s like, it goes back to those basic principles. Don’t assume like, for me, like coming from a forecasting background, I’ve seen so many businesses who like forecast these ridiculous numbers of how much they think will make in a first year. And like, I hate to be the one to immerse their bubble and be like, Good luck. I will literally like come to you for advice. If you actually made that much money in your first year of business, you cannot forecast that. So if you’re struggling with like your own financial forecasting, like just, just stick in the beginning to like realistic numbers of like what you’re currently making and assume, I think I’m gonna spend X amount each month in the finance world, we call that runway. So if you get venture capital funding, you wanna know how much money. Let’s say you get a hundred thousand dollars in funding. Right. How long is that a hundred thousand dollars going to last me in my business before I need to start looking for additional funding. So it’s like kind of like estimating how much you’re gonna spend each month. And that part’s really important. And when a QuickBooks comes in is like, if you’re invoicing someone, like it does all that for you. And then you connect it to a specific bank account like QuickBooks, whatever your bank is, you literally connect it. And it shows you how much. Money is coming out and how much is coming in and the number one thing that’s so simple that I don’t know why most people don’t do. I think it’s a lot of it goes back to like that fear is look at your bank statements, look at your credit card statements. Just take a look at it each month because you’ll save money. Like how many times has someone accidentally double charged you? I don’t care if it’s like Amazon. Sometimes they make mistakes too. Yeah, it happens. You call your bank, you call your credit card. The charge is gone, but you won’t know that if you don’t look, same thing with points. Right. Sometimes in their automated system, a charge. So with a business credit card, or like Amex platinum, you get a multiplier. Meaning if I spend a thousand dollars, depending on where it is, I can get five times the points of that. But sometimes if it’s categorized incorrectly in their system by accident, cuz technology also makes mistakes. It won’t give you that multiplier. So you just have to look through because you’ll. Saving money and making so much money. If you just take the time each month, like again, it could be like an hour less, less than that. It take you 20 minutes to go through it, but you can allocate an hour if that’s what you’re more comfortable. And I think a sneaky way to monthly, uh, expenditure that it’s so easy to miss, whether it be personal or business are the little subscriptions, the $5 monthly subscriptions. Yeah. Amazon is notorious for this. It’s like, there’s this show that comes on. Right. And I just wanna watch the show. I don’t want anything else on this particular channel. So I subscribe to the channel for $7. I get the one week trial and then I watch the show and then I forget to unsubscribe to it. And you’re being charged that like $7. Well, when you do. Seven times you’re 50 bucks a month. So I love that advice looking over and I’ll be completely transparent. This was not something that I was financial planning. Budgeting was just not something I was nurtured to do. Neither my husband or I were so becoming a business woman. I grew up in a very financially responsible home, but. I wasn’t taught necessarily how to budget and financially plan. So then when I became a business owner, that was really hard for me to figure out, I also know you have to spend money to make money. Yeah. So that was challenging too. And I was really blessed, even though I took a significant pay cut. We made lifestyle changes that allowed us to pretty much just live on my husband, but it was still really. Tight. And he’s amazing and has taken on extra things to give me the space to slowly grow my business without that panicked feeling of we’re dependent on me making X amount of money. So I’ve been able to just stay neutral, meaning I don’t pay myself. So I’ve only fully been a business for one year and I’m trying to keep it so that it’s exactly, I’m basically spending what I’m making. So I’m told to expect two to three years before I can pay myself. Does that sound. Right. that’s what I’m being told it fully depends on your business and your lifestyle. Yeah. Yeah. That’s not easy. Yes. Or no question fair because it also that’s you spend and all that stuff. Yes. I’m taking it slow and steady because I need to maintain my sanity But what advice would you give to what is the balance between, let’s say I’m a single mom and. Don’t have that partner who is bringing in the extra income in your personal expertise, what is the balance between spending money to make money? And at what point does, you know, an entrepreneur take out a loan to try to grow your business? How do you approach that? Cuz I’m so blessed. I have somebody that I’m living off of, but what about the woman who doesn’t or whose savings is depleting rather quickly? So that’s such a good question and, and it can be a little bit tricky. So the number one thing again is just to first find out what you currently have and how much you’re spending without knowing that in your personal life and professional life, you can’t do anything looking forward. You need to know what you have today. Let’s say, you know, you have GI next. Spend coming up, whether personal or professional, just plan for that. So you need to be fully sure that you know, that when it comes to a business loan and spending money to make money, this is where it gets super tricky and very dangerous. A lot of people have this idea of what investments they need to make for their business and the wrong. And I hate saying that. Cause it sounds so mean I’m so horrible. If you don’t know what you say it you’re doing, frankly, frankly, open conversation here. Yep. But I don’t want people to think that this is the thing that’s going to push my business forward and spend the money get absolutely no return on their invest. Or such a low return, and then they’re out of money and I’ve seen this so many times. And the thing that kind of puts someone over the edge will be different in different industries. Mm-hmm , but a lot of the times, like what we believe we need to actually spend money on we don’t. And the number one culprit of this I’ve seen is like Facebook ads where people will deplete like every single thing they have for their budget and get the absolute. Worst return on their investment. Don’t get me wrong. Facebook ads can be phenomenal, but it’s very, very tricky. And again, like don’t put all your eggs in one basket and don’t assume that this is the thing that’s going to like, help me. Don’t assume if I hire this one person now, all of a sudden my revenue’s getting increased by 50%. It’s better. I think to spend less. Across like different areas. I mean, from a finance perspective, I do cost benefit analysis, which is a little bit complicated for anyone who’s not as familiar with it, but I try to identify how much money I need to spend. And then I create a scenario, the worst case scenario, the average scenario, and then the absolute best case scenario. Usually the best case scenario doesn’t happen because you’re being highly optimistic with these very large numbers. And you’re like, Pushing it a little bit. That be, this is the best case scenario. Money’s just raining from the sky best case scenario. exactly. Kind of goes back to also valuing your company where you are today based on how much you’re making. Yeah. What would you say when somebody is approaching their business? Whether they’ve been in it for a long time or they’re relatively new and starting out, generally speaking, what is worth focusing on at the beginning? What is worth spending the money and the time. To really hone in on and get right. Whether it be a website, marketing advertisement, branding platforms in your expertise, what would you say is the first thing that you need to be spending the money on? So if you asked me two years ago, my answer would be very different to now. I love that was not a. Big believer in branding. I didn’t know anything about it. So honestly it just came from like lack of information and knowledge. So that’s like shame on me, but like I thought I could just go on five or spend 25 bucks and get someone to make a logo and like, boom, branding’s done. like, no, boom. That’s it just a logo. Everyone knows if you’ve not heard Johanna’s. So now I’m getting you to it’s white, right? Johanna white. What’s her last name. Yeah. So if you guys missed Johanna white was on my podcast, she talked all about visual luxury. Bla branding is literally what Johanna’s talking about here. Like her expertise is creating so much more than a logo, which is exactly what. Johanna’s talking about and Johanna did hers actually. Yes. Johanna white did this. Johanna’s visual branding. So we’re pulling it full circle here. So I actually met her and I did not know anything about branding. And I literally said to her, like, honestly, I’m not trying to be disrespectful. I just need to understand what is the difference in hiring you versus paying 700 bucks for someone to do. And $25 for a logo and calling it a day mm-hmm right. I’m not trying to be of your business. I genuinely just don’t understand the difference. Yeah. That sounds like a really great option. And she kind of explained it to me and I’m not gonna say it how she said it, cuz I would totally butcher it and just listen to the podcast guys. Johanna goes into it. She explains it. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was so nervous, but it was something inside me told me it’s a good idea. You can afford it, just hire her. And it’ll be great by far, probably top two best hires I’ve ever made in my entire career. The difference it’s had on my business, I can’t even begin to explain it. I feel like branding is. So important because it even comes down to just having that consistent messaging. Even if you just take that one piece of branding, if you like throw out the visual piece, if you throw out everything else and you just take having consistent messaging so that when you speak about your business, it’s the same everywhere. That makes such a difference. Because one you’re so much more confident when you’re talking about what it is you do. You can talk to anybody and clear and you could talk. Anybody about it, whether it’s friends, family, a random person on social media and you feel good about it, that makes such a difference because people then understand what it is you’re doing and nobody is gonna actually work with you. If they have no idea what you’re doing, even if you’re the best at what you do, even if you have the best service, the best product, no one will be able to work with you if they have no idea what it is. So I would say the number one thing is. Figure out your brand messaging, make it super, super clear and consistent and be able to talk about it everywhere. The same way I love that. Give us a real life example, your brand message. Well with frankly and limitless, the podcast is frankly limitless. That’s what we’re. Yeah, yeah. Give us that. But there’s more or less the same. So frankly itself is the one liner is that it provides driven female entrepreneurs with everything they need to know to grow. And then, you know, if I need to talk about it further, we go into the pain of finding your information, how you don’t feel good, cutting the fluff because the end goal is you wanna feel confident and confident in. Decision making. So you actually can have the time and the money freedom as well, because you don’t just wanna have financial success. You also wanna be able to enjoy it. You wanna spend time with your family? You wanna sleep at night. Amen. Girlfriends. Amen. That’s my goal. It’s not just money. It’s time. Absolutely. So that’s for frankly, and for limitless, it’s just having those open, honest and direct communication. Being able to have these incredible conversations with other female entrepreneurs to provide anyone who’s listening with the exact next steps that they need based on that entrepreneur’s proven success tactics mm-hmm because again, all that action information is great, but if you can’t take action on it, you need that theory. Plus application. Yeah. I mean, it’s very, very consistent. I mean, even on your website, it’s consistent, you’re, providing female entrepreneurs with those resources so that they can become limitless. And then your podcast is all about women who have either in very early stages like me or who have been doing this for a long time and inspiring women who either. Dream of being an entrepreneur or are an entrepreneur with other people’s stories. And so I love it. I love it. So branding is what Johanna is saying. Branding is one of the top on her list of things to spend money on. Get really, really clear on your message. Is there a technical, maybe less abstract or I should say general concept. Is there anything else that you would say this is worth spending? Money on or focusing on initially. So in the beginning you have more time than you have money, right? Yeah. And I think that’s pretty true with like almost anyone who’s starting a business. And so I think it’s important to take that time first, before you even think about spending money and to be really, really clear about what you’re doing, the value you’re bringing. Who you’re bringing it to and how you’re gonna communicate that value. And the communication piece goes back to the, the branding and the messaging. Okay. So once you actually are super clear on all those components, you can start investing money in ways to optimize them. Right? Mm-hmm . So for the communication piece, it’s easy. Hire someone who’s great at, at putting everything you’re thinking to life towards the visual brand and have that consistent piece when it comes to a product or service. Perfecting it, however, like if it’s a product, then different investments will come into play and you’ll have to spend money on that. When, if it’s like a service, you can experiment a little bit. And especially like, I mean, anyone who’s actually doing an app, you have an idea of all these things that you think your target market needs and you will be wrong about most of them. There’s a great book called the lean startup that literally talks about this. And it’s about having. Cycle of testing, building a lower quality product at first, just as like the test product and as an app, it’s like a beta testing. Mm-hmm , mm-hmm, where everyone knows that there’s gonna be bugs. There’s gonna be issues. But the point is to test out features and the value those features have. For the people you’re building this for. Right. Right. Because if I might think that you need all these different things and then you’re like, no, I actually only need one of those, all the other ones I’m not even gonna bother using. But then I just spent all this money trying to build you like the sun, the moon and the stars. And you’re like, I don’t need any of that. I don’t need the sun or the moon. I just need the stars and not the stars noting me. exactly. So I think that concept right there is, I think is T. . And it’s the idea that if you are wanting to create anything, really a service, a product or whatever, you need to pull people, you need to basically find the people that you are wanting to serve, and you need to either be pulling them on what they want. You need to be testing, whatever it is that you’re creating before you blow X amount of money and time. Yeah. On that. Talk about that and do what they want. Yeah. And be willing to accept the criticism when they say constructive criticism. I don’t want moon or the stars. exactly. And like, you need that because how can you best serve if you’re providing something, that’s not actually what they’re looking for, how cool. And everyone is afraid to have conversation with their customers, cuz then they’re like, oh, they know, I don’t know. It’s like, no, like that’s a good thing. People appreciate that because then they’re like, you know, You have the money you have the time you’re building something for me. Thank you so much for taking my feedback and I’m interested in I’m gonna buy from you. Yeah, exactly. Agreed. Feedback is amazing. And obviously you need to be able to know how to filter that feedback to what you actually should use. And what’s completely useless. Some points are more obvious than others, like, especially on social media, kind of easier to figure out what makes sense and what doesn’t for your business, but that’s like, you need the feedback. You need the conversation. You need to be able to know how to. Be better and where then you can spend more of your money on. Absolutely. Let me ask this last question. So we’ve been talking a lot about people who are early on in their entrepreneur journey. Obviously Johanna’s expertise spans whether you are brand new or you’ve been in this for many, many years, which is why. You need to check out all of her resources, frankly, company and get on that beta test for her app. Listen to her podcast, et cetera. But let me ask this last question. Let’s say there’s been female entrepreneurs who have been doing this for a long time. Their experience, maybe their six, seven figure entrepreneurs more. In your experience, what is the most common thing that you see entrepreneurs even experienced ones do wrong or not have focused on or end up having to go back? And focus on more. Hopefully that question is clear. We were talking about what early entrepreneurs need to focus on right away. Is there something that you’re seeing female entrepreneurs who are experienced frequently have to go back and redo or something that they mm-hmm should have been doing better? So the number one thing is usually the foundation. So if you don’t have a solid foundation and that could be everything from like your operations to your systems, even having a legal business filing in the right state, as you grow and scale, your foundation is not in place to support that. And then you start to see those cracks. Like Facebook is a great example. They had created something in one way and it’s like some technical aspect that I won’t get into. And as they grew and they scaled, they were like, wait, the technology we built can’t support that. That was a huge mistake. We tried to cook corners by saving money, and then they had to like shut everything down and rebuild everything. And obviously at that point they had so much funding that it was easier, but for like a smaller size company, you’re not gonna be. Flushed with billions in, in venture capital funding. And the other thing that keeps happening also is the hiring and the culture. I found that like the larger the company, the more they struggle with leadership, culture and productivity, and they really need more support. In that specific area as they’re growing. And a lot of people also hit plateaus and they’re not able to really identify why. And so it’s being able to kind of also take a step back and look at all the different systems, processes, like people, financials and all the different components of your business and being able to have an analytical mindset going into it. So for the experienced, uh, female entrepreneurs listening, you’re saying with the hiring that they find they need more focus on middle management type of. Like education and resources, or what specifically with the hiring do they need to be focusing in on more? So there’s two components. One is that they realize maybe they hired someone who might not have been the best fit and not knowing how to proceed, how to try to either bring out the best in that employee and how that communication and develop them, or whether it’s time to kind of separate and figure out a proper plan that makes. In that aspect. So that’s like a big one. And the other one is also having jobs that unfortunately you don’t really need, right? That goes back to like where to spend your money. Sometimes you will have people who are working for you and it’s amazing. You have amazing jobs. And everyone’s like, oh, I don’t want a robot to take my job. In some areas, it’s better to have automation because you don’t need a person to be full time on something very specific and knowing where you need to hire, where you need that knowledge, where you need that human resource. Be providing it versus like an automation, automation tool is so important and it’ll save your business money, but it’ll also like help you make money because you have someone who is the best at what they do working for you. You can pay quality people more as opposed to quantity. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Obviously, there are so many resources. I mean, these are just examples of the benefit that you would get from Johanna’s community. You talked everything from startups and practical things, the business credit cards that you need to much bigger corporate problems hiring and knowing. When you need to cut when you need to develop, when you need to reallocate resources and correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the point of the community that you’re creating is that there will be other women who can speak into these experiences and collaborate and help share. Is there anything else that you want to communicate about frankly, co or limitless and where can people find you? Yeah. So one of the things that I’m most excited about for frankly, is this like optimized search engine to give you those automated answers. Clearly I love automation and, and everything that’s efficient. Amen. Amen. We’re hard or not smarter. Amen. So I’m very excited for like this specific AI tool, but from the community ask. Yes, you will have those resources for that feedback. So, as we had talked about, if you need to talk to your target audience, and maybe you haven’t really built up like a great social media following yet, like you could pop it into the community and that’s where people are able to provide that feedback. So that’s where the community aspect comes into play to be able to provide advice. And then obviously knowing who to hire, like I said, we’ll have those vetted tools, which I think is pretty cool. Cause I always made a bunch of mistakes clearly with hiring . So I, I. Super cool. So, yeah. So if anyone wants to find me, frankly, co.com and the limitless page is there too. So if anyone wants to hear cool conversations like that, hopefully give you actionable insights for your business. Come on over and listen. And one of my favorite things now with limitless too, is we have women who talk about the mindset and money. And growth mindset. And we have like that aspect and even like trauma healing to, and how it affects the workplace to the technical things like LinkedIn marketing, to leadership, how to build the best team and help like bring out the greatest and, and to branding. So kind of touch all different points of your business and don’t sleep on mindset, cuz I used to, and it’s such a big one. Yeah, absolutely. Well Yohanna, I have certainly learned a lot. I know I could learn so much more from you and I just pray, pray. God’s blessing over your heart, your home, as well as your business and the many, many women whose lives you will touch and change. So I thank you. And it’s so fun to have you on here. Thank you for having me. This is so much fun. Yeah. Take care. Thanks for listening to this episode of the imperfectly empowered podcast. I would love to hear your thoughts from today. Head to your preferred podcasting platform and give the show an honest review and let me know what you think. Remember, you cannot be redefined only redeveloped one imperfect day at a time. Your story matters and you are loved.