The Math and Mindset Of Making Money with Tara Newman

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED Diane: [00:00:00] Hey. Hey, today's guest. Tara Newman is the founder of the Bold Profit Academy and host of the Bold Money Revolution podcast. She incorporates energy, money, and strategy into all her work with business owners, and we're diving into that now to understand how your personal finances could be impacting your profitability. Hey, Tara. Welcome to the show. Tara: Hey Diane, how are you? I'm so excited to be here with you. Diane: I'm excited to dive into this topic with you, but before we get started, let's do a little bit about you and your business journey. Tara: Oh sure. So my owner's statement, I like to share my owner's statement cause I think it speaks to what I'm here to do, not just for myself, but for everyone. And my owner's statement is to build a business that is in service to my health and creates extraordinary wealth for myself and others. I know that you are really an advocate for lifestyle businesses, right? Where you're building a business that suits your life and not, you know, a business that basically destroys your life, which is very easy to do. And I started this business because I was burned out, and this was my answer to burnout, which I always chuckle about because. Most business owners are severely burned out, and so starting a business and a business being the answer to burnout seemed like a radically weird idea when I, I started, but that was the purpose for this business. Diane: That's interesting because often I will say to people like, if you're feeling super stressed and stuff getting a job is a way less stressful way to. probably the same, if not more money Tara: I agree with you. Diane: But funnily enough, I burnt out of corporate and then started the business cuz I couldn't bear to go back to corporate and put myself in that same position to burn out again. Tara: Yes. So, I agree with you and I tell people the same thing, and I say that a lot because entrepreneurship could be, horribly damaging to your mental health, to your physical health, to your [00:02:00] financial health, to your spiritual health. And it really takes a very specific type of person to put themselves in the position of being a business owner. And we have unfortunately led a lot of people to believe over the last, say, 10 years, that anybody can be a business owner. And I don't think that's, know, being a business owner requires you to rewire your brain from the way human brain works, , and you basically have to override all your defaults as a human to really succeed in what I call earning income independent of an employer. because I, I, I really, you know, am I an entrepreneur? Am I a business owner? Am I a freelancer? Am I a solopreneur? Am I a self empl, whatever? Like the people that I speak to are established experts who likely left a traditional nine to five job for a reason out of necessity. And that necessity usually looks like three things. It looks like access to c. Or cost of childcare, it looks like chronic illness. I have chronic illness, so it looks, you know, chronic illness and you're working in a place that was, that isn't inclusive to allowing you to navigate your health or, and usually, and or the environment that you're working in is really stressful or toxic or manipulative in some way, and that is causing health issue. So I say, and or it's like a little bit of both usually. So they, they start, they wanna start a business. And the original goal, I would like to bring everybody back to the original intent of you starting a business was to free up your. Scheduled to have some autonomy and agency to be able to do work that is meaningful to you, that is largely within your strengths, and to replace [00:04:00] the income that you are making in your traditional nine to five. You did not start outgoing. I wanna have a hundred thousand dollars months. That was not the original intent. Diane: It's true, right? You didn't, you weren't like, okay, so by the end of this year, I hope I made eight figures. Especially if you were in a corporate business where you saw what actually went into eight figures, right? I always like to say to people, , you have to kind of step back on a regular basis, and I don't think we do this enough and just go like, okay, hang on. I built this business for me. Like that was my original intent. Whether that was time or money or impact or whatever it was that that got you to start your business. you can't ignore that. You can't suddenly hit the point where you're at multiple se six figures and think, I wanna hit seven figures. I'll just do whatever it takes. or you just turn into a bro and you hustle and you burn. . So how do we get people to recalibrate their business around that original goal of like, Hey, I wanna replace my income. How does that suddenly run away from us to now we're working however many weeks we're over hiring, we're doing all these things, cuz now we wanna make multiple seven figures that most of the time we are not a hundred percent sure that we're going to use if we're even profitable. Tara: Mm-hmm. So I think it's a couple of things. I have a principal that I operate from. in my business and in my teaching, that's called math over mindset. And I, I'm, you come from a, you come from a Diane: controversial. I mean, I'm on board, but Whew. I can feel the hate coming. Tara: let me, let me unpack, let me unpack. Okay. You come from a finance background. I come from a psychology background. My background's in industrial organizational psychology. You cannot come at me and tell me that I'm devaluing mindset. seven years of psychology training under my belt. And that's not considering the continuing education and the coach training. Okay? So don't come at me with, I have limited [00:06:00] beliefs. I will tell you exactly how I feel about that when I'm not on a podcast being recorded. So here's why I say math over mindset. Oftentimes we make a big deal about something because we don't understand it or we can't see it, and we're mentally making it like a mountain out of a mole hill. And I can, and, and so if I say to people, okay, let's just. Su suspend our beliefs. Let's just pause our beliefs for a minute and let's look at the numbers or let's look at what's true and factual. So for example, I had a client who was spinning out on paying PayPal or Stripe fees, and they're, they're charging me so much money, PayPal and Stripe, and I. yes. Because you are charging so much money, like it was like on a $20,000 proposal or, or contract that she was awarded, right? So I'm like, okay, so let's just do the math. Let's look at this through the lens of profit first. I'm a profit first, certified professional, and we started to do the, the math and the numbers and I said, okay, when you see. That is listed as an expense of doing business, and here's how much money going through the profit first system you have allocated for expenses. Does that still feel alarming to you in your body? Is that still activating you? and she's like, no. I'm like, okay, so why was it activating you? And she was like, well, you know everybody, you know personal finance. It's like you shouldn't pay any fees. I'm like, right. But this is business finance, not personal finance. So your parents can get on their bandwagon about how you are a piece of trash because you have bank fees that you've had to pay, or late fees or whatever. But that is not applicable. to running a business, and so we have to do the math and the [00:08:00] facts and then reevaluate the mindset. That's why I say that, and I know that there are very popular personal finance people who, it's all about your inner psychology. It's not about the math, it's not about the spreadsheet, and I don't think they really understand how women have been conditioned around money. We don't even understand the. It's not something that we've been taught. We don't have the language for it. So if I give you the language for it, does it make it less scary if I make this simple for you? Does it make it less scary? Because we've been taught to fear money and we've been taught to believe that we're irresponsible and that we can just think our way out of this, and that is not true. Diane: And I think it's interesting because I think it's almost like how much of that fear can you remove? Like I'm scared of something that I don't understand by that fear of like, okay, I don't wanna look at a spreadsheet, I don't wanna look at my bank balance. I don't wanna do any of those things because I'm afraid that I don't understand the thing and therefore I'm not gonna be able to do it. And how much of that can you remove and then go, okay, now I'm still scared. What is that about? Like, am I scared Because genuinely I don't have enough money to pay the bills, which is like a factual thing, not a limiting. or is there something in there that's that's making me make bad money decisions because of sudden conditioning from how I grew up? Or society or, or what I've been told. Right. And I think is that where we're kind of saying like, Hey, let's do this first step, let's do the practical piece that we can easily clear in an afternoon before we start deciding that it's all the complicated stuff that needs some work. Tara: listen, it's, it's actually not. Quick and overnight to rewire your neural pathways. That takes some time, it takes some intention. It's heavy lifting. It [00:10:00] winds up entangling itself in other things, and that is 100% important and a part of the journey. I just got done saying that being an entrepreneur, being a business owner, earning income independent of an employer requires you to rewire how you think as a human. and if we can, we make it a lighter lift by looking at what is true, what is fact, what is right in front of us. The knowing your numbers and, and, and putting it through a different lens instead of trying to rewire things that might not even need to be rewired. Diane: Yeah. And I think it's one of those things that kind of like carries on with us. I think people talk about like if you don't sort out your limiting beliefs at a hundred K, they're still gonna be there at a million, right? But the same is true of if you don't get over the fact that you're terrified of a spreadsheet that's controlling your profit and loss at a hundred k, think how terrifying your spreadsheet's gonna be at a million. I don't know that people are tackling it at those entry levels of business, and it's still with them in their successful business. Tara: I hate to break it to your audience and I say it with love, like that stuff never goes away. You're going to tackle it at different levels, but what's gonna happen is, is you're just going to get better at. Processing it, which will make it quicker and less heavy for you to move through. You know, looking at your mindset and, and doing some mindset work is less about changing the way you think and more about having a process for navigating uncomfortable thoughts, Diane: I know there's a lot of societal conditioning around money and women, but you know, when you come out of corporate or you start your first business, you know absolutely nothing about marketing. . when I have a conversation with friends who aren't in business and I talk about some like social media strategy or like webinar funnel, it's like I'm speaking Greek to them, but somehow we manage to jump that [00:12:00] hurdle of like, this is so new and so scary and so terrifying and I don't know anything about it, and I'm so unqualified to do this in those other areas. But somehow when we get to money, which often shows up in sales, but then also shows up in profitability, We just almost seem to just, I don't wanna say give up. Maybe it's like we're paralyzed, we're frozen. Tara: I'm gonna preface what I'm about to say by saying I. I'm a sales focused coach, so I coach on sales. Yes, I coach on marketing. I talk, I coach on profit first, but I am sales focused and the reason why I think people kind of go down that I'm gonna, I suck at marketing, but I'm going to figure it out and do all the things and jump through all the hoops is because. They are consuming marketing messages that are telling them that they need to do that one. Diane: Mm-hmm. Tara: So when people come to me and tell me, and I ask them like, what do you think is standing in your way? You know what, what is your goal? They are repeating to me, marketing messages. Nobody realizes how brainwashed they are. No matter how much or how little time, that's why everybody's goals are not in alignment because they've been brainwashed into thinking a goal is their goal, but it's not actually their goal. And what I'm saying right now I'm aware is causing going to cause a lot of cognitive dissonance for people and it's gonna make them very uncomfortable in what I'm saying. I'm used to. So one, I think that they're, they're being told that this is important and this is what they need to do because they're consuming their marketing messages. Two, listen, I think, and, and I think it's fun. . I, I think that creating content and, and it's ego, it's ego fluffing. It's fun. It's, it, it's not as maybe scary or real, real. I mean, honestly, all this social media stuff to me is, is fantasy land Because I can get you having income coming in right now without marketing. [00:14:00] You could just go and make sales, right? And at some point, yeah, you're gonna need to go and do that marketing, but the marketing doesn't matter unless you convert the lead to a. Diane: Mm-hmm. Tara: followers, downloads, pages are not going to feed your family. Diane: maybe we need to work out how to get likes, follows and page views on our money spreadsheets so that people will build them. Tara: I mean, maybe. I mean there's, I mean, listen, so, uh, so here's another controversial opinion that I've started going forward with probably in the last six months. If you are unable to. , look at your bank statement or your credit card statement, and I know that there are a lot of people out there who are uncomfortable with that and can't do it. I worked with a lot of those people, and when I say this, I don't mean this in a disparaging way, but if you are struggling to look at your bank balances and your spreadsheets and understand even, and I get that, you might feel activated by that, but if you can't do that, you. you should not own a business period because you are going to cause financial harm, not just for yourself, but for others. So when you start to take on payment plans and when you start to say yes to things and when you start to buy systems and software, but you have no idea if you have that money or not. And then you start putting it on credit cards, and then the credit card interest rates start going up, and now you're out of room on your credit card way quicker than you were before, and you start defaulting on those payments. There are people and businesses on the other side of those payments. So not only are you driving yourself further into debt, and running the risk of just completely going out of business. I've seen this more times than not, especially over the last year. You're now making it a real pain in the neck for me and Diane and other business owners that now you're defaulting on, on, on payments to us that [00:16:00] we are needing to pay our team and to pay our, our, our salaries and to put food on our table and that level of. Irresponsibility is not okay. So if you can't get a cash flow system in place. If you can't look at baseline, just look at your statements, look at your bank accounts. You don't have to know what they say. You can ask someone for help. No one really decides to go into business. has a, a, a finance degree. Well, you know, Diane probably does, and even, even still, I was responsible for p and l in my, in my traditional corporate job. And I still didn't get it because it wasn't going into my bank account. And that took a lot of time for me to learn and understand, but we have to be committed to doing that no matter what or. You know, small business is a community. It res it revolves on itself when you look at the data I don't know how much of your audience is women, but when you look at the data on women and business, 88% of women's small business owners are making less than a hundred thousand dollars in revenue in their business. That's a US based study from Amex in 2018, and I can tell you that it has not changed much and has likely gotten worse now because almost every statistic on women and money is going in reverse. Post pandemic. This is a wake up call. And then when you look, there's a study from Babson about what can we do to support women entrepreneurs? It's that women should be buying from women with what money. I ask with what money? If you're, if you're 88% or less than a hundred thousand dollars in revenue with what money are we all buying from each other and. [00:18:00] That is a really important insight to keep in mind because if we truly want to help each other rise, if we truly want to support women in small business, we need to be paying each other and we need to be making good on those commitments. Sorry, rant over. Diane: No, no. It's interesting because I think there's some of that, like women need to be buying from women that, so you then feel pressured. And there are definitely some male coaches and some female coaches who I wanna say like guilt marketing or that kind of savior marketing. Like this is the thing that you need and it's just the only thing. And so, , you get people going more into debt and then here comes that cycle of like defaults. and I know some large names in the industry who will feel nothing for sending a bailiff after you if you default. Right. So I don't think people understand the defaulting on a payment to your coach is as serious as defaulting on. Your rent or your mortgage or like you have a contractual obligation and they can take legal action. Tara: Mm-hmm. Diane: Right. And I think we missed that in the like No one talks about that in marketing. No one highlights the piece of their contract that says like, I will come after you if you do not pay me, kind of thing. But it's there. I will say one of the pieces of advice I got really on really early, In business was to look at my bank account every single day Tara: Yep. Me too. Well, I didn't get that. I did that. Diane: Yeah, like, you don't have to do anything with it, but you have to open it up and look at that number because there's that power and that unknown, like you're scared of the money because you don't know the money. Like your bank balance doesn't change if you look or if you don't look. right? And I think a lot of people are like, if I just pretend it's not happening, it won't happen. But actually, if you're pretending it's not happening, you can't do anything about it. You give up all control, all influence in that space. [00:20:00] And I think that's even more dangerous than trying and making a mistake, is to just never look and look. There are some days you don't wanna look. There are some days where. . Oh, that's, that's an uncomfortable number, right? Let's go do something about that. But the ostrich approach I don't think has ever helped anyone. And I think traditionally women, you know, didn't know what was happening in the finances. Like the man took care of all of it for you. Right. And probably even in our parents' generation, that was happening for some of us and. we've kind of continued it, and I'm with you. Like you, that's not how you run a business. Like you could never, I could never imagine the CFO in a large corporate not having a way to access the number on the bank account at like at his fingertips, Tara: Mm-hmm. Diane: because you can't make any kind of business decision without knowing that number. Tara: none. Diane: So how do we bring people back to, we talked about people like having other people's goals, right? So marketers have sold you the dream of seven figures, eight figures, big exits as if you're a tech startup and all these things. How do we pull people back into, what is that goal number? How do we like, let's, let's put some realism on here. Tara: Yeah. So I think that a key performance indicator, a K P I for your business is not revenue. That is a metric that is a lesser. Of important number to track, but your K P I for most people is going to be owners' pay. How much are you actually paying yourself? Right. And this is. it gets real dicey real fast when you are responsible for earning income independent of an employer, because you would work a traditional nine to five. You show up to the office, you check the boxes on your job description. Sure you're probably getting some extra stuff on your [00:22:00] plate. Whatever clock out paycheck gets direct deposited into your account on a weekly, biweekly basis. Diane: Like Tara: and dust. Diane: I miss it so much. Tara: Done and dusted. That's easy. You don't even have to think about it. You're not responsible for making sure you get paid other than showing up and checking the boxes on your job description. Right. And I, I realize that I'm, I'm, I'm making that a little simplistic, but on purpose, right? I understand that we work when we were working hard in, you know, all those things. Not as hard as you work when it's your own business, so, so, you know, there's a myriad of other jobs that need to be done in order to get paid as a small business owner, and one of them is understanding how to get yourself to the salary. You need. So it starts with your personal finances, and this is where things can get really tricky. A lot of people don't understand what they're spending on personally. They're not looking. They're spending maybe up to their means or beyond their means. And if you're a small business owner, there is no kind of living other than below your means because you don't have control of your revenue going up or down. Personally, you don't have that control in a traditional job. I mean, you could be laid off, you can be fired, whatever. I don't think there's any more or less security one way or another to be, to be quite honest when you, when you dig into it, but, Diane: though in the job, it's more like yes or no. It's more binary. Like the money's coming or the money's not coming. In your business, it's the money's coming, but how much of the money is coming? Tara: things fluctuate And so we have to understand what is that number that you actually need, and that is going to be, For all of us. I live in a high cost of living area. I have two children. I have three dogs. I own a house. Right? You might be single living in an apartment where you don't need a car and it [00:24:00] doesn't cost as much for utilities and you don't have as much on groceries. Cuz have you seen groceries lately? Holy Moses. And that's, that's the other thing is like so many people, Haven't looked at their personal expenses and how inflation has truly changed. for them, right? And, and they're, they're continuing. They're like, why aren't, why are things tight? Why isn't it, and this isn't just for people who are in a lower income bracket, people who are making $250,000 a year or more are fear feeling this as well. Sure. They might have more discretionary income, but that discretion is gone in a lot of cases. So everybody's really, really having to make adjustments. So once you understand how much you're responsible for on a personal. Difference of are you single versus are you married? Do you have a financial partner at home? How much do they contribute versus how much do you contribute? All of these things actually make a difference when it comes to your business and how much you pay yourself. So after you understand what you need on a monthly basis, you start to understand. what you need to do in your business in terms of revenue, and that's where Profit First really comes in handy because it gives us a framework for reverse engineering our revenue goal based on what we actually need to live on. So if you're somebody who, and this is almost everybody at this point, if you are somebody who was earning a six figure salary in a traditional nine to five, a hundred thousand dollars a year that's not a hundred thousand dollars in. I just want to say that because that was actually one of my rude awakenings. I will be very honest about that. You might actually even be today years old when you've learned that a hundred thousand dollars in revenue is not a hundred thousand dollars take home pay because there are business expenses and taxes and you're gonna wanna put some profit aside so that you can build up a cash cushion in your business to [00:26:00] weather some storms and and so on and so forth. So if you. Diane: have to buy your own laptop, your own desk. Tara: you have to be investing in you and your growth. You know, that doesn't ever change. So in a downturn economy, it's not, how do I stop investing in myself to pay myself more? It's how do I cut my personal expenses so I can continue to invest in myself and my business so I can be here in three. And that's why you need to understand what are those levers that you need to be pulling. And about a hundred thousand dollars in, in revenue in in salary is about 200 to $250,000 in revenue. Diane: Yeah, and I think people get really like caught up in, are we talking about like I'm paying myself an actual salary or are we talking about me taking the money out of the profit line? And honestly like it doesn't really matter, in my opinion, where you wanna report that from. That makes you the happiest if you wanna see all the profit and then take your salary. Personally, I think you should have a salary line. , but I think people like use that as another reason to not calculate it. It's like, oh, well I'll take the minimum taxable salary out and then it's really, I'm taking profit so it's not a draw. And I think people like to make it super confusing. Do you care like where this shows up in their reverse engineering? So when you say we need a hundred thousand, are you thinking like after investments and everything that's like the profit line that you're looking at? Tara: so what, the way I do this and, and you know, you, and you and I were just talking about , you know, people looking at their bank accounts on a regular basis, right? That's considered bank balance accounting. We, we tend to look at our bank balances and go, that's how much money we have. That is not necessarily true. Another thing that was a, has been sometimes a rude awakening for my clients is when they go in and they're like, oh, but I feel like really horrible about myself. I don't have a lot of money in my checking account. I'm like, well, you're not supposed to. That's an inflow outflow account. , that money's going in, money's coming out. Do you have enough money to pay your [00:28:00] expenses or not? Coming in and out of that account, you could have paid all your expenses and that account could be zero. I don't really care. I don't. I don't care. Right. So as a Profit first certified coach, what we do is we look at four different envelopes. It's Profit First is based on the envelope system really. in the envelopes being your bank accounts. And the way we separate it is profit comes off the top. So no matter what you're going to profit, you can profit in any economy, you could profit at any revenue amount. It's coming off the top. And then what you do at that profit is you keep. , you first pay your debts with that. So if you have high leverage credit card debt, you're gonna be wanting to allocate that money to paying off your credit card. And if you do have credit card debt, profit first is one of the best ways to get out of credit card debt because of this framework. And so you're gonna put that money aside. If you don't have debt, you're gonna keep half of that in the business to build an emergency fund, peace of mind fund, cash cushion, whatever you want to call it, for your own mindset, right? And then half of that you can take as a quarterly distribution for fun and amazing things or however you wanna reward yourself for the effort that you're putting in. Then the second envelope that you're gonna put money into is your ceo. Your owner's pay. So you're actually double dipping and paying yourself first. You're gonna pay yourself first by profiting, and you're gonna pay yourself first by your owner's pay. And this really is a mindset shift. So we are gonna talk mindset, right? We, we know the math, and now we're gonna talk mindset. The mindset shift here is that everybody has been conditioned to be a good girl or a good boy and pay their debt. Pay their expenses first, and it leaves you paying yourself last. And what that leaves you with is the scraps. And so we have to, as business owners, condition [00:30:00] ourselves that and tell ourselves it's okay to pay ourselves first. The third bucket is your taxes, because nobody likes to be kept up at. Worrying about the tax man coming and carting you off to the clink for not making your payments. So we're gonna just save that on a regular and ongoing basis so you can put your head on the pillow and sleep well at night. And the last bucket is actually your expenses. So it forces constraint, it's Parkinson's law and it forces constraint to say, okay, this is what you have left to run your business. Which is very counterculture to being online, opening an app, and seeing all these things that you should be buying to solve problems you don't know if you have, Diane: Mm-hmm. Tara: and spending very indiscriminately on things that you think may lead to more revenue without actually being sure of. And so it really forces you to use some critical thinking as to how you use the money that is left over. And then if you actually open these bank accounts and you open your app and now you do that bank balance accounting, you see a much more accurate portrayal of your cash flow. Diane: Mm-hmm. Tara: what you would normally see. So instead of seeing, I have like just this pile of cash sitting in a savings account and I have like no money in a checking account. You can see, okay, my taxes are covered, my profit is, is building my, I have money there to take for my owner's pay. I don't care if it's $500 a month. It's something, take it, pay yourself, because I so many women. it's more likely that women aren't paying themselves than they aren't paying themselves. And I am really here for [00:32:00] all of us keeping more of our money. We work hard for it. We are experts. We have paid our dues. We have. Decades of experience. If we were to go and get a job working for somebody else, which I know we are all loathed to do because we wanna have that agency and autonomy, then we have to be able to pay ourselves six figures. So aside from a bottleneck to people actually paying themselves a living in healthy wage, and I always, my clients always get to the point where they're like, things cost money. And I'm like, yes, they do. And then we just have like a really good laugh about it. And so , because it's just funny, like that moment where you're like, oh, like I wanna do these things that I'm seeing people do on social media and connecting it to that costs money, Diane: Right. And therefore, if I put that in that bucket, that's how much more revenue I Tara: right? And we wanna plan for you to be able to do those things. I had a client say to me, my husband's just really mad at me because we haven't bought a condo in Florida. And I'm like, oh, I didn't know that was on the plan. What, how are you been planning for, for, for buying the condo? And she's like, well, we haven't. I'm like, one does not just wake up and buy a condo in Florida, Diane: Yeah. Like, Tara: like, we need a plan to buy Diane: you're not getting like a deed coming through the post box said, oh, congratulations. You now own a condo, Tara: And I try and be as like, humorous as possible about this stuff because it does feel heavy and scary and it's good, you know, I think we need to just laugh at ourselves more. And so I'm like, okay, well this isn't gonna magically appear, so let's put it on the plan. Let's put it on your, your revenue goal calculator worksheet. So you are actually working toward, [00:34:00] making sure that you have the c e o pay the owner's pay to cover or, and save for that condo that y you know, your partner wants to have. And, and you'll get there. The answer to having everything you want isn't elongated timeline. Diane: And I think what this allows you to do as well is to take that step back and be like, okay, this is how much money I actually need slash want to live comfortably, and then this is how much revenue that's gonna take. Versus going, I wanna make seven figures cuz it's popular. And then realizing that you're actually completely unprofitable and you're making seven figure. And seven figures is walking out the door to pay to make seven figures and you are a burnt out, stressed out mess who hasn't paid themselves in six months. Tara: So what we really need to understand, everyone, me, Diane, you so we can support you, is why is that seven figures the. Diane: Mm-hmm. Tara: Why? Why is that the number? Because when I start to really dig underneath and ask why I hear that you want to provide financial stability for the long term for your family, I might hear that there is something around being wealthy or your net worth, and I wanna tell you, and hopefully crossing my fingers, Diane Cosigns for me, you can be a millionaire without having a million dollar. Diane: Yes, Tara: That is true. Diane: a hundred percent Tara: So when you have profit and you have owner's pay, that is actually the quickest path to becoming a millionaire because one of the things you're gonna do with that cash flow, so when you have money coming in and it's separated out you can then take your owner's pay and put that into other cash generating assets that will work for you instead of you having to work so hard for your money. Diane: one more time for the people in the back. So you mentioned that you have like a worksheet that you use with your clients to do this because I [00:36:00] think while I'm following you, I've mentally drawn the spreadsheet in my brain cuz that's how my brain operates. It's color coded, it's beautiful there. I know that we've probably lost some people along the way and can we steal that from you? Tara: absolutely. It is free, free, free, free. And. Diane: free 99. Tara: free and it's my greatest service to business owners everywhere, and you can keep using it over and over and over again. There's a training in there, there's like additional trainings in there when you download it. And what it's going to do is you're going to put, I wanna describe it because people are like, it's a spreadsheet. I'm not downloading it. Tara, listen, I've heard it all, folks. I've heard it all. So, you're gonna download it. You're gonna put in your expenses. Tara, I don't know what my expenses are. This feels like a really heavy lift. I don't wanna have to talk to my partner about it. We don't do well in financial conversations. I wouldn't even know where to find the money and how much we're paying for things. I get it. Because up until I started my business, my husband managed all of the. I completely abdicated everything to him. So if you're like Tara, but you have this knowledge, you know, no, no, no. I've gained this knowledge over the last eight years. This was not something that came naturally to me. So what I want you to do, if that sounds like you still download the spreadsheet, do the 12 minute training that I have with it, and I want you to do your best. Yes. I want you to guess. . Okay. And that's it. And then you can maybe do it six months from now and go, oh, I have some more of this information. And then six months from then and be like, oh, I have even more of this information to fill in. And when you put that information in there, it's gonna tell you how much on a monthly basis you need to be bringing home. And it's going to reverse engineer it, and it's gonna tell you what. Revenue goal needs to be. It's going to tell you how much of that is gonna get put aside to a profit. It's gonna tell you how much of that you can take home. [00:38:00] It's gonna tell you how much of that needs to be set aside for taxes and how much of that you actually have to invest in your business. Now, these numbers are for what profit First calls a fiscally elite business. So if your numbers are not there, it's okay. , it's okay. You can get them there. Over time, Diane: Mm-hmm. So if you could only say one thing, Two business owners, if you, if you could only impart one piece of knowledge, maybe it's the thing you feel like you're screaming into the abyss and you just wish everyone would listen, like what would that one thing be that you would want to be like ringing in people's ears? Tara: you can build a business that is in service to your health. And creates extraordinary wealth for yourself and others and not run a seven figure online business. Diane: The quote card just writes itself, . Oh, this has been amazing. I feel like we've just nerded out so hard. It's just like my, my monetary soul is so happy. So to finish up, I always ask my guests the same couple of questions. First of all, what is your number one lifestyle boundary for your business? Tara: Oh gosh, I actually have a lot, but my number one lifestyle boundary for my business is being radically clear on who I work with. Diane: Oh, say more. Tara: Knowing who. you work with in, and I'm not talking about like the Marie Forlio, my person shops at Lululemon and drives Lexus Diane: Drinks a cha Latte Tara: yeah, but actually from a place of buyer psychology. Know who your person is. It saves you time. in terms of it saves you money in your lead generation. It's in, so you're not going after a ton of junk leads. You're focused on high quality leads that will convert quicker than leads who are just anyone. It saves you time on sales calls and in your marketing in that conversion, they convert quicker [00:40:00] and they don't give you a. They don't start to tax your mental health or your physical health or your stress levels. These are people who are happy to pay you, who value what you do, who are really committed to getting the result that you wanna see your clients get. And it's just ease, ease, ease. All around Diane: It sounds magical. Everybody's gonna instate that like boundary, like going forwards. So finally in this one might be a little bit harder, but what is the worst piece of cookie cutter advice you have been given as an entrepreneur? Tara: So again, I'm a sales sales coach, sales trainer, so everything I look at is sales focused. And I think some of the, the worst cookie cutter advice is people are just gonna click to buy. They're just gonna click on a link and buy from you. You know, the online business space really sells the dream of passive, passive, passive, passive, passive. And the truth is, is that if you want income coming in on a regular and consistent basis, that requires you to be proactive. Diane: especially like you can see even the passive, passive, passive. People are going, oh wait, we're coming into a recession. Ooh, high touch, high touch. Hang on. Let's all change our messaging. So if even they, they're already seeing it and we are already seeing that people's. buying threshold has raised dramatically, like when you're trying to buy groceries or you're trying to pay for something, like what are you prepared to pay for? It's either the super low ticket that's selling really well at the moment or the like, more premium priced, high-touch done for you. Type of, I don't wanna be in a mastermind. Can you do it for me? Or I, I wanna be in a high ticket mastermind to get through the recession or whatever. So I think that's a really dangerous piece of cookie cutter advice going into 2023, more so than any other year, I think.[00:42:00] Tara: Yeah, I think, uh, you know, I don't do high volume, low ticket. That's like a burnout model for me. It's way too expensive. I've seen people who have shared their income statements. I appreciate their vulnerability in doing so, but when I go and through it, comb through it with the numbers, my husband runs a manufacturing business in a very high cost of living area. And to be honest, uh, their expenses run equal to his in a product-based manufacturing business in a high cost of living area with 20 employees and rent. Diane: Yeah, I mean just like inventory and rent. And the level of like cushion that that kind of business also needs to keep, you know, because it's so physical. Tara: they're actually not paying themselves six figures. And if they are. I've seen income statements where they've made like 2.2 million and 1.1 million has gone into ads, and by the time they got done with team and everything else, they were bringing home about a hundred thousand dollars on 2.2 million in revenue. That's a lot of work for two little pay Diane: It's a lot of work and a lot of mental capacity to support that team as well. Like I think people forget about the load of being responsible for other people's salaries. Oh, this has been. So fun, like I feel like you and I could probably talk for another six hours on this, but ,where can people find you on the social so they can learn more about you. They can come and tell you how much they hate spreadsheets, but that they've looked at their bank balance. Where's the best Tara: I'm, I'm here for all of it. So you want the revenue goal calculator, you can go to the bold leadership revolution.com/revenue. And I have a podcast, Bold Money Revolution is, uh, my podcast where you can come and find me. I don't hang out on the socials all that much, but I am [00:44:00] on Instagram at the Tara. Diane: Awesome. Thank you so much for this. I think it has been exactly what people needed to get a little bit of a kickstart in this first quarter of the year. Tara: Thanks for having me, Diane.