I was a CPA who couldn’t pay herself: why it’s time to change how you run your biz
Many of you see the outside of my life/biz now and probably feel a little bit of envy - I take (mostly) unplugged vacays to fancy places, I work wayyyyyy less than I did in my 9-5, and I have a biz that runs without me constantly managing every single detail.
But it hasn’t always been like this.
If you rewind to the early days of my biz - things were rough.
I was working way too much (think 10-12hr days plus weekends).
I was paying my team $8-11k/month and I’d take home about $1,500 after all expenses.
Aka my attempts at scaling were just magnifying pre-existing problems in my biz like poor expense mgt, over-giving to clients etc..
And I remember the exact moment when it all came to a head and I knew something had to change.
This is a bit hard for me, a CPA, to talk about, but I remember this moment like it was yesterday (even though it was years ago). Here goes.
I’ll set the scene:
I had just gotten out of the shower at my townhouse. I was doing hair and makeup, and sat on my bed to quickly look at my phone and confirm the time that I was meeting friends for drinks at POP.
I quickly checked my credit cards and my bank account and the results were shocking:
- Both credit cards had $0 credit available - they were maxed out (I don’t remember exact amounts, but it was probably $20-30k of debt)..
- My personal and biz bank accounts had a grand total of $400 in them.
- I didn’t have a debit card so I literally had no way to access any cash.
I made the hard choice to cancel drinks that night.
I’m not proud of this, but I lied to my friends - I said I had a migraine. But I didn’t. I was just broke.
I thought - “How could I - let things get this bad? I'm a 39 year old CPA…." [insert full shame spiral]
I had made all the mistakes I was telling my clients to avoid:
I wasn’t charging enough for my services,
I was sending proposals for work that would cost me $24k, but I’d get $20k in revenue; and
I was working wayyyy too much because I didn’t really trust my team (it truly seemed like my biz would fall apart without them).
And you know where the results of these behaviours really started to show up? In my finances.
I knew it had to stop.
I knew that unless I figured out how to run my biz differently, I would never be able to hit my million-dollar revenue goal, take that (unplugged) vacay to Bora Bora or build a company that runs without me obsessively managing every single detail.
I’ll be totally frank - this is exactly why I’m such an amazing business consultant today: I’VE LITERALLY MADE ALLLLL OF THE MISTAKES IN MY OWN BUSINESS.
Because of this, I know how to teach you exactly how to scale your biz so that you don’t have to hit financial rock bottom before you figure out how to pay yourself at least $10k/month.
If you’re still reading, I know that some of what I’m saying is resonating with you, friend, and you know that you need to stop doing some of this stuff too - whether it’s not charging enough for your work or working way too much because you can’t trust your team.
I see you. I know how much it hurts when you have yet another month where you are working 24/7 but paying yourself $3k.
That’s why I’m getting even more excited to talk to you about a new way to run your biz. Because I can guarantee you that there is a better path forward than cancelling plans with your friends because your bank account says “nope”.
Next week, I’ll start talking a bit more about my program, The Formula, that I know is going to show you a very different way of doing things.
I created this program to help solve these exact issues for you so that you can actually build a business that allows you to take that unplugged vacay to Bora Bora. Why? Because you’ve built a company that runs without you managing every single detail.
Stay tuned!