Raising Your Business: For Moms Growing Their Business and Raising Their Family
If you're tired of hustling day in and out trying to get your online biz to the income level you're dreaming of, hearing business advice that just WILL NOT work for your life as a mom (5 AM club, anyone? NOPE), and trying to figure out HOW to reach that "work less and earn more" holy grail that's been dangled in front of you since you first Googled "work at home ideas for moms"?
Well, that's about to change!
We help incredible business moms JUST LIKE YOU to go from struggling solopreneurs to Confident CEO Moms! Inside this show, we'll be diving into the highs and lows of raising your family AND building your business. I'm giving you my best strategies for working smarter, not harder - and building more leveraged income with content that converts, an offer suite that sells, and the systems to keep your business AND home running smoothly - well, most of the time!
Nothing is off the table! And to make it even better it won't just be me! I am bringing in some of my biz besties, mompreneurs & fellow industry leaders to give you their best stuff on building your business SUSTAINABLY!
If we haven’t met before, let me tell you a little bit of our backstory! I started my virtual assistant business as a mom of 4 little boys, just wanting to make an extra $1K a month to help support my family. After growing a 6-figure service based business, and having my 5th child (and first girl!) in 2020, I pivoted into coaching moms through building their businesses in a way that worked FOR their family. Multiple 6-figure years later (for me AND my clients), I want to share everything I know about raising a family while being an ambitious business owner!
For more on episodes, blogs, and ways we can help you visit www.yaelbendahan.com
I am so excited to connect with you - let's hang out on social:
IG: www.instagram.com/theyaelbendahan
Raising Your Business: For Moms Growing Their Business and Raising Their Family
55. Manage Your Money Like a CEO Mom with Kimberly Tara
So you're a successful CEO Mom, crushing your revenue goals and serving your clients like a boss. But when it comes to managing your finances or talking taxes? You'd rather hide under a blanket fort with your kids.
Sound familiar? Well, grab your favorite beverage and get comfy, because we're about to demystify the world of business finances – CEO mom style.
In this candid and eye-opening episode, I'm joined by Kimberly Tara, a CPA and certified tax coach who specializes in helping mom entrepreneurs keep more of their hard-earned cash. We're diving deep into the financial realities of running a business while juggling sippy cups and client calls.
Get ready to discover:
- Why looking at your numbers is like ripping off a Band-Aid (scary at first, but so worth it)
- The surprising tax deductions hiding in your everyday mom life (little league sponsorships, anyone?)
- When it's time to level up from DIY bookkeeping to professional help (hint: sooner than you think)
- How to find a financial pro who won't make you feel like a toddler trying to do calculus
If you're ready to stop treating your business finances like a junk drawer and start building real wealth, this episode is your golden ticket. Let's dive in!
Don't forget to screenshot this episode, share it on social media and tag me for the chance to win a 1:1 Momentum coaching call with me 😀
Links mentioned:
12 Tax Deductions You’re Missing That Are Costing You $$$
LINKS
📈The CEO MOMS Growth Matrix - feeling stuck or plateaued at your current revenue? Snag your custom roadmap for sustainable growth from $0 to multi-6-figures in this FREE training! >>> yaelbendahan.com/matrix
🔥Join my FREE 3-Day Program, LEVERAGE - the process that’s creating multi 6 figure years (even if you’ve been stuck riiiiight at 6 figures for way too long) working nap times and being a full time mama. Claim your spot here >>> yaelbendahan.com/leverage
💰Offers in Your Pocket - 11 Offers You Can Pull Out of Your Pocket and Sell This Week! Only $9 - yaelbendahan.com/pocketoffers
✨Join the Collective
In the "building" stage of your business? Join the MOMentum Collective - my most accessible mentorship program for moms growing to $5-10K months.
💃 Apply for the CEO Mom Mastermind if you're ready to scale sustainably to $15-20K+ months. Read more about the mastermind here OR go straight to the application here.
Want to chat about the mastermind before you join? DM me on Instagram - instagram.com/theyaelbendahan
I don't do many interviews on her raising your business podcast. Although that might change this year, I don't know. We'll see. But this interview is a really good one. And I wanted to get Kimberly onto this podcast. As soon as they possibly could and the stars align. And this is when it happened. I actually recorded this back before I had my babies. This was a thing back in June 20, 24, but everything that we talk about remains exactly the same and just as relevant, Kimberly's actually coming into my CEO, mom mastermind to do a guest expert training on finances, managing your finances. S-corps was tax deductions, all that fun stuff. It's going to be amazing. And I'm really excited for this. And I just wanted to give you a little taste of what it would be like to hear her. Talk to you about your business. Listen to this entire thing, take notes. I highly recommend paying serious attention to this because. As an entrepreneur. Managing money could be a little scary. Even though making money might feel easier than actually managing it. And I really felt like it was important to bring this conversation to the table about what to do once you actually have the money, how to be a good steward of it and how to make sure that you are making the most of your income and keeping as much of it as you possibly can, because that's what we're here for. Welcome to the Raising Your Business Podcast. I'm your host, Yael Ben Dahan, founder of CEO Mom Academy, mom of six and lifelong reading addict. This podcast is here to empower moms to run their businesses and lives like the powerhouse CEO they are. I want you to believe that you can have the business success you desire. And be present with your family and to give you my best tips and strategies for how to make that happen. I'll be sharing the honest reality of balancing business and motherhood, biz models that work for you, marketing simplicity and the mindset of a CEO mom. Now let's dive in.
Yael:Welcome back to the podcast and I do not do a lot of interviews on this podcast. Mostly because I just I like to use it as my anchor content. So I like to have I have so many things I want to talk about, but every once in a while I come across a person who I'm like, You must be on this podcast because people need to know this stuff. Okay. Like it is really important. And to me, I think the management of money and financial awareness and tax awareness, all kinds of stuff is one of those things that we are not taught. It is not a natural skill, necessarily. Unless you literally go out and Try to learn it. It's not going to come naturally to you. And it's something we have to deal with a freaking lot, especially as a CEO mom. So I'm so happy to welcome Kimberly Tara to raising your business. To tell us all about her experience as a CEO mom and a tax and financial expert. So thank you so much, Kimberly, for being here.
Kimberly:I'm excited to be here and I'm honored because I listen to the raising your business podcast and I know that there aren't a lot of guests, so I'm really honored to be here.
Yael:Okay. I'm just, I'm so stoked. I'm so stoked about this conversation. We almost started this conversation like twice before we started recording and I was like no, this has to go in the podcast. This is really important. Okay. So do you want to give us a little background on, on you and your background as a CEO mom and how you got to this place of what you're doing currently doing and tell us what you're currently doing.
Kimberly:Yeah. So I like to start with, I'm a mom to four little kids because sometimes I dive right into my like professional journey and I forget to talk about the kids and the husband, which, they're like, they're my everything. We have four little kids. They are seven, five, three, and one. And I have really set up my business here in the last 18 months for them so much. It's just been such an incredible shift. As we've added on a kid, as I've shifted into that mom mindset, how it's changed not just for me, but also for my team and also for our clients. And so I just, I love what I do. I am a CPA and certified tax coach, and we are a tax strategy and preparation firm for CEO mom service providers. I will add the caveat that if I say anything specific about taxes, I do mean us taxes. So if you're in a different country, there's probably, there's going to be a lot of takeaways that you can still use. Just checks, Check your tax code because it's going to be a little different from the U. S. But it's funny because I actually got started in college as a chemical engineering major. Thought that's what I was going to do because I liked chemistry as a sophomore in high school. And there aren't that many options if you want to use chemistry. There's just not a lot of job options out there. Had this I'm a type a Enneagram three planner, have it all figured out. And so I realized somewhere along the way in my second internship for engineering, that this was actually not for me and I wasn't excelling at it. And engineering is a really hard discipline. So you have to really love it. And I was sitting in an accounting class for non business majors, fulfilling one of my electives. And it hit me that's what I was supposed to be doing. And so within two weeks, I had switched to the College of Business. I was on my new trajectory to become an accountant, having these meltdowns in the process because my world at 20 something, 20 years old was coming to an end, and Ever since then I just, I have found my true calling. I did my public accounting stint and almost a decade ago my husband and I moved from Atlanta, Georgia, back to new Orleans, Louisiana, which is where I'm from. And I took the plunge. I always knew I was going to be an entrepreneur. I just didn't know it was going to be in my mid twenties and that I was going to be 10 weeks pregnant, that I was going to find out at 10 weeks that I was pregnant at the time, but it has just been this like incredible journey of serving clients and growing me, growing my family, growing my clients. growing, my team growing. It's just I don't even, I don't even know how to explain how awesome it is. But we get to work with CEO moms every day. We really believe in educating them and encouraging them to ask questions, which is something that is not heard of in the financial space. So really creating a. A safe, supportive space for our CEO moms to get this financial education that is so critical to the long term success of their business is just what I'm here for.
Yael:Oh my God. I love that so much. And so are you saying you primarily that's who you work with is mom, business owners who have, who are like the CEOs of their business and yes. And no, absolutely nothing about the taxes.
Kimberly:Yeah. And it's so funny because, they tell you, so when I started, I was just like a local, I made all the mistakes everybody does when they're in business. And look, I'm privileged. I get to see, and you see some of it too, but I really see the dirty backend of a lot of businesses, because I'm fixing stuff. And so I made all the mistakes that, that everybody else does. I was undercharging. I was charging by the hour I was over delivering and I was this local. accounting solopreneur, right? That if I was so worried about replacing my corporate salary, that I said yes to anything. And I was burnt out. So I made six figures in the first 12 months. But I was burnt out by 18 months in, and I was pregnant with our second child at the time. So it was like, okay this isn't going to work. And everybody tells you to niche down. So over the last, years. I really, I would say really in the last 18 months is when I took that seriously and decided that I My kids, we're done having babies like four, I, four is our limit. God bless you for doing six because four I'm just, everybody says after three it's not, I don't know, like four hasn't been hard, but I, we just know in our hearts that we're done and we feel complete in our family. So I kept saying when everybody goes to school, I'll grow my business. When everybody goes to school we were only gonna have two kids. I'm a planner y'all like. Four kids later. I'm like, they're never all going to go to sleep. I'm never going to get all five kids, all four kids, five years old and up. So I just decided that, I was ready for something more. And I also felt like we could provide a better we provide a very elevated Premium service for our clients. We are not your typical like tax mill CPA firm. That's really what sets us apart. And I just felt like I was always feeling this stress and anxiety because if I was with the kids and I built flexibility into my business, like that was the whole point, but I felt like if I was at the kid's school, I was checking my phone for emails from clients because I don't want them waiting, for a response. And then if I was working on my client stuff, I was worried about the kids. And so it dawned on me that. While it's scary to not be a solopreneur and all of those thoughts that come up about hiring and having employees is a pain. I've seen firsthand how much of a pain employees can be. They don't care about your clients as much as you do. They're not going to care. They're not going to be as invested in the business as you are. Yes. All of those things can be true, but also I had to take that leap of faith because I knew that if we had somebody else and it wasn't just me, my life would be way less stressful and our clients would be better served. And so I decided to take that leap of faith, but with that, it meant I need to, I needed to not customize everything. And I needed to niche down because I've never, I never marketed before that. Like we, we just, we have a 97 percent client retention rate and clients refer people and referral partners and that was just it. That was enough, but we needed to. I needed to be able to afford another CPA salary to do what I do. So I had to market and I had to do stuff. And it was, it probably took me, this is embarrassing to admit, but it probably took me about like 10 months and four iterations to get comfortable with CEO moms as my niche, because I'm a three wing two. So that helper was coming in while I'm leaving women who aren't moms out. And that was really hard. And even we have some bail clients and they're wonderful and they're family men. And so I was like I'm leaving them out. And I also didn't resonate with the word like mompreneur or mom boss, because I'm not, I don't like, if that's how you identify, like you go girl and you do your thing. And, if you make two or 3000 a month as a side hustle and that serves your family, that's incredible. The CEO moms that we serve, they are running a Full six figure, multi six figure, maybe seven figure business. And so I was struggling. And I think once I realized the CEO mom word, almost, it was funny because after I started saying it, then I saw yours and I'm like if she's doing it, I can do it too, like this. This is definitely a thing and it just it landed because like we really are like we're the CEOs of our business where the CEOs of our houses but like more importantly for me because I know that's you know a lot of your interpretation of like CEO moms that were CEOs in both things and I totally agree with that. But also for us on our end, as I came up with that terminology for how we were niching down and serving, it was, they are running businesses. They might have contractors or a small team. This is their livelihood. This isn't side hustle money. This is a business that supports themselves, their team, and their clients. And they need us and they're making. Money and they need to understand how to keep more of it, pay less in taxes and build wealth. And they needed somebody who was going to do it on their terms because that person understood what they were going through, juggling both motherhood and running a successful business. And men just don't get it.
Yael:No, they don't.
Kimberly:Even if they're dads. My husband is wonderful. He's so helpful, but he doesn't get it. He doesn't lay awake at night wondering, did I order the right school supplies? Are we signed up for the right camps? Do, should we think of a new therapy for this kid? It's not that he's not concerned, but he's just not. Like he doesn't have the same mental load that I have and he doesn't, and in our family right now, and this is a choice that our family has made, he works a full time W 2 job and that's where our health insurance benefits come from and they match his 401k. But I'm the primary parent during the day, during the week. So if somebody's sick, if somebody. Is home from school. If somebody needs a change of clothes at school or a last minute doctor's appointment, that's on me. And so I have to shuffle appointments at the last minute sometimes. And I need my clients to give me grace, but we give our clients that same grace back when they have to do the exact same thing for their family.
Yael:That is so beautiful. And I think that is really just like the best example of like really women like women supporting women is like such like a catchphrase, but it really is so important. And there. I have, I listen, I'm like, I'm very lucky because I've come across so many amazing coaches and people that like are not moms, but they can very much like hold space and respect what moms are handling. On the other hand, and I've discussed this with when I was interviewing a few of the moms for my CEO, real secrets of CEO moms who became mothers after they had business owners. And they were like, you can't explain it. You can try, but you cannot explain the entire chemical, physical, mental, emotional identity transplant that you go through when you push that first baby out.
Kimberly:And to be honest, it keeps happening with it's obviously most impactful with that first baby. First child, but I'm not even the same mom person, woman that I was four kids deep. Then I was five years ago, seven and a half years ago when I pushed that first baby out, like it's it's still changed with the dynamic and the needs. And so now and you'll understand this and anybody who has more than three kids will understand this. If I give 15 minutes to every kid. By the time an hour's over, I got to go back to the first kid. Cause it's been 45 minutes since they had some of my time. So by the time you do that, there's just, especially when they're little, there's so much that they need from you. And there's so much of you that you're giving to them that it's just different. And I've actually I know right now. For the last three years, I've been in a space where we're really only working with other moms, other CEO moms, because again, it's that camaraderie. It's that solidarity. And it's that true understanding. And I have some friends, some amazing friends who are incredible business women, but they're not moms yet. And I appreciate their empathy and I appreciate their support and I appreciate their positivity, but again, they just can't get it the same as the other CEO moms who really understand what I'm going through.
Yael:Yeah, a hundred percent. And there's a certain, for men, I feel like there's a certain compartmentalization that they're able to do, right? Like, when I, and I always say this, like, when my husband calls me from work to just say hi or check in, I'm like, what are you doing? I'm like, not like in a bad way. I'm like, I can't believe you thought of me. That's so nice. I'm like, I'm actually impressed because he's a paramedic. He goes to the house. He's okay, like now I am in paramedic mode. Yes. That's it. And and whereas that is not the case for me, I could be deep in work and I'm still going to have my kids. Number one, knocking on my door, even if my husband is sitting on the couch. On the couch. Oh, yes. They'll be still knocking on my office door to ask me questions. And I got three notes just now. I just did a live training. I got three notes under my door from three different children with requests, questions. That, that's their preferred method of communication.
Kimberly:I guess my oldest two could do that. The youngest two, they just beat on the door until I come unlock it. And it's oh my gosh, I hope the pod mic is like, Not letting that amount, that sound come through.
Yael:Cause they're just, that's why we have the good mix. That's we have the good mics, but okay. So I love it so much. So I, and I really agree and appreciate with this, like this whole, the whole idea of that you're like you serve. And it's funny, I was just talking about this right now on my live. I was just doing my live leverage event. And we're talking about signature offers and how identify your signature offer. And it was like, who are you most equipped to help? And who do you most want to help? Yeah. And those two do not necessarily overlap always, but you can probably find a good overlap with that. And I know that I was also called, I can marketing strategy anyone in any sort of service based consulting for a space business. I could write, but I don't. And I choose to work with mom because that's really where my heart is. And I feel like I can help them because I can hold that space for them in a way that. Another random coach may not be able to. I love it. And I
Kimberly:think too, like in the training, like you were saying it's like when I stepped back and thought about our favorite clients and who was coming to us and who was reaching out to us, it was moms, because again, they resonated, that I talked, not openly, but I share that two of our children have autism and that there were die free. And so it's, how we're talking to them about money and how we're talking to them about finances and. How we approach travel from a financial standpoint. And so I think it's just it's this incredible opportunity to be aligned in like holistically instead of just. Compartmentalize because like you said, women, we just don't compartmentalize if we're having if our kids home, I can't tell you and you've probably had this too. We've had so many moms have, their kids sick and they're just sitting on their lap while we're having our zoom meeting and they're not distracted and we're not distracted. Because great. We can do those two things.
Yael:And, but even even if they're home, they're not sitting on your lap, you're still aware of their little satellite. I literally have
Kimberly:one, two monitors going one sleeping. And these are the ones that I set up on the TV because it's summer break. And so they're watching TV so that they don't come beat on my door while we're having a podcast interview. So yes, if you see me glancing down, it's occasionally I'm just like, Hey, every, I still see one, two heads. I'm counting one, two,
Yael:right? I love that so much. Okay. So let's talk about money. Cause this is, I think, Ooh, it's a very triggering thing, I think. Because first of all, as entrepreneurs, we can be very talented at making money, less talented at managing it. Yes. Because like I said, that's a learned skill. So I feel like while as entrepreneurs, we could be very skilled at making money because making money is like a relatively simple thing to do. Okay, you have something of value, someone pays you money for it. Whether the thing of value is your knowledge, whether it is a service, whether it is a, an object, you make the money, right? That is not the problem as such. The skill, I feel, comes in. I'm not saying making money is not a skill. Of course, the skill of sales is a skill. Marketing is a skill. Of course. But managing money is an entirely different skill than the actual earning of the money. Yes. As entrepreneurs, we can like all of a sudden hit on this amazing we're like, wow, I'm so good at this and making money thing. And then and I know for me personally, like I was never given education about how to deal with money. And I literally would get scared and just spend it on stuff. Yeah. I'm like, I couldn't even handle seeing it in my bank account. Cause it's stressful. I don't know what to do with this. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that there are so many.
Kimberly:And there are so many incredible coaches like you and marketing experts, and they're out there helping women make more money, but there's less conversation because I get it. It's less exciting, but there's less conversation around. How do we keep it? How do we manage it? How do we make it work for us so that we don't have to keep making more money? And how do we have it? Really benefit us both in our business as well as personally.
Yael:Yes. I love that. That's why, and that's why, by the way, Kimberly's, this is why we get along so well, first of all, we're both three wing twos and we're both basically twins. I don't, I just feel like we, and it's funny cause we chatted and then I was in new Orleans for an event and I found out I met her, like when I met you online, like a minute later, you were like, I was in New York. I live in new Orleans. We could have met. And I was like, her podcast is called CEO. Mom's building wealth. This is why we get along so well. Because I also
Kimberly:have to add the caveat that wealth is not we're going to talk a lot about money, but I also believe that wealth isn't just about the money, but how do we use money as the tool to help us with the other things that build wealth in our lives?
Yael:Money brings wealth. I guess it facilitates the feeling. And again, a wealth is like your health, your family, your experiences, right? That is that it gives us the feeling of the fee. To me, like there's like the feeling rich, the feeling wealthy. And then there's the actual like spending of the money. It's like almost one can facilitate the other, but just having the money does not make you wealthy. It's, I think it's the things that you use it for. Like I have my business, not just so I can have money in the bank, but so I can use it to. Give my family the life that I want to give them to create the financial freedom to and do investments and things like that in the future to be able to build that up for us. So I don't have to always work as much as I, as much as I do, which I may want to, I may not want to, I don't know. I know people talk about that and I'm
Kimberly:like, I don't see myself working. I love what I do. I don't really see myself not
Yael:doing it.
Kimberly:Like I see myself stepping back and maybe doing 15 hours a week at some point, but I like working. Like sometimes I have to remind myself, like Kimberly, it's time to go downstairs and just be mom and enjoy being mom. Yeah.
Yael:And that's also by the way and I think I mentioned this before and it's okay. Like I had a friend who was like, I gravitate towards work more than I gravitate towards playing with my kids. And I feel really guilty about that as a mom. And I was feeling guilty. That was the other way around. Like I would neglect my business to be with my kids. Cause that was my first, that was my default. That was my default to go to. And I remember my coach at the time saying, You never really like, and so I would be worrying like about my business is going to suffer and she's worrying that her kids are going to suffer. And she's you never really need to like, worry about that because she, sorry, maybe it was vice versa. She was worried her business was going to suffer because she, because she, and she felt she had to be on top of it. I was worried my kids were going to suffer and she said, no, because you will always automatically gravitate towards one thing. And that is okay. And that just because you don't enjoy sitting on the floor, playing dolls or Lego does not make you a worse mom, but And just because, you do enjoy, like sitting on the couch, just, nap trapped under a baby does not make you a worse business owner. And there are going to be periods where you gravitate more towards one or the other. You will always naturally pull back and that's okay.
Kimberly:Yeah. It's just everyone's personality. And I would argue what you just said about gravitating towards one or the other at a time is more important because for so long I was trying to do, I was trying to give not 50 50 to both, I was trying to give 100 100 percent to both and it's just, it killed me and it really wasn't good for either of them and now I'm really focusing on 100% Of one or the other at right time. And so this is a little uncommon. We're hitting our summer schedule. We're trying to figure out how to make it work, but I've really been trying to hold boundaries. Like I work when the kids are at school, when they're out, when we have sitters and if we don't like I'm mom to them, but that's taken me. Eight years, seven and a half years, seven years to get to that point.
Yael:Yeah. Always a work
Kimberly:in progress.
Yael:And again, and you can't always do that if you have kids who are at home with you and figure out what works for you. And and being, I know in the summer, my kids are going to have more screen time than they do the rest of the year in order to allow me to work. And that does not make me a worse parent for allowing it. And it does not mean that they're going to see me and be like, Oh, my mother neglected me because she was always working while I watched Bluey or whatever else there, I don't know the Avengers, but yeah. It's not, it is what it is. It's summer. We're busy. They don't want to go to camp because they don't like sports. I'm like, fine. That's part of why mine
Kimberly:are home. We're just doing some half day camps this year.
Yael:Yeah, I'm like, please. They're like, we don't like camp. It's always outdoors and we don't like being outdoors in the heat. And also we don't like playing sports and we also don't like color. That's basically all camp. I'm like, okay, fair. So you don't have to go. I'm not going to force you, but don't expect me to be your entertainer all day.
Kimberly:See, you're lucky because yours are like old enough to do that. If I didn't have the two littles, I could probably get by with that. But the who and Arthur boy, he is just menace to society. I feel like. No,
Yael:when they, no, when they were little, they went to camp. Yeah. Yeah.
Kimberly:Yeah. Now we're trying this half day thing. We're trying to, I'm trying, we're trying to have some balance Yes. For their needs as well as my needs.
Yael:a hundred percent. And I, it's good for'em to get outta the house. There's no it's
Kimberly:they
Yael:do. As much as they say they don't want it, it's good for them need, it's good for everybody, especially the boys who need to get some energy out. Oh my God. Yeah, 100%. Okay, back to money. We keep
Kimberly:digressing.
Yael:I know. So let's talk about money because it's important. What do you find are the main roadblocks your clients come up against? Yeah. When it comes to the management of the money, or when it comes to, being tax aware financially, or what do you think are the main Issues they have when it comes to that.
Kimberly:So my top two are one, you as the CEO mom, not looking at your numbers, like just thinking that if you push it to the side or you push it to the bottom of the to do list, or if you just ignore it, either problems are going to go away or it's magically going to be okay. Or it's going to float into your brain through osmosis. So not looking at the numbers, whether or not you want to And trying to understand them to me that's going to be our biggest, our number one that I want you to overcome. If, if you're struggling with this, you have to look at the numbers. And so in order to look at the numbers, that means that either you need to have or you need to be consistently keeping up with. Your numbers, even if it's just in a spreadsheet, this doesn't have to be complicated, especially if you have a very simple business. We work with some coaches and consultants who, they might work with only 10 clients a month. So we're not talking a high volume business. So for them to record. The money that those clients are paying them every month and then keep track of their expenses in one bank account and one credit card. It's not that tough, but you have to be consistent and you have to do it. And so I think for me, that's always number one, where I start. Sometimes I start with mindset. It depends, but number one is like actually. Looking at your numbers and seeing what's on a piece of paper and not being afraid to do that.
Yael:Yeah. The awareness. And yeah, I think that the whole idea of what, what you what you track or what was it? What you manage
Kimberly:gets measured.
Yael:Yeah. No, what you measure grows, like kind of thing. Once you're on top of it and and it really is it can't be scary. Cause you're like, oh my God, shoot. Oh, I'm on a profit this month. Now what do I do? It's better that you know there's not enough profit this month so you can do something about it than ignore it until the end of the month and then be like, oh, shoot, now what? It's the month. Or ignore it until
Kimberly:the
Yael:next
Kimberly:year,
Yael:right?
Kimberly:Or ignore it until the next year. We, literally we've had clients come to us and they're like, okay, so I need to get last year's taxes done. And it's okay, can you send us the profit and loss? Oh, I haven't done that yet. It's February. Why weren't you doing it all year long, right? So that, that kind, so we've got some of the mindset in there that comes around with it, but here it's looking at your numbers, not being afraid to look at your numbers, trying to understand your numbers. And we can, we're going to talk about what understanding your numbers looks like, but also keeping consistent and accurate and timely records so that you can make business decisions because you can correct. A loss, no profit. If if we're at the beginning of the month. So if last month, Whoa, what happened? You are immediately starting to make corrections and shifts and changes right now, you're not waiting six months down the road to figure that out. And so for so many reasons, that's where I want to start is please don't be scared to look at your numbers. And in order to look at your numbers, you have to consistently keep track of them.
Yael:Yeah. And it's so easy to do with something like QuickBooks and stuff. And I have my own I have my spreadsheet where I have here's my goals, right? This is what I want to take home. And just okay, this QuickBooks will just track like what's going in and out, which is fine. And that's that's where you get your PNL from something like that doesn't really matter. Yeah. So
Kimberly:like where you just moved from QuickBooks to zero, same stuff, like QuickBooks wave zero, those are probably going to be your top three accounting softwares. A good old Excel file is also fine.
Yael:So we have the accounting software. Which is like what kind of tracks that, but I also have my own like internal spreadsheet where I, yeah, I set my goals and I literally have, it's really cute and everything. And it has, I literally put in every bit of money that I make in there. And I have at the bottom, like how much I made that month. I have like my, my, my salary I want to take home. And then, any marketing budget I want to spend and then I do that. So that I have like my, this is my goal. This is my minimum goal that I have like my minimum goal plus savings. Then I have like my like overflow goal. And I always have that. And even have a little thing that calculates how much more I need to make towards each of those goals. And it's just fun to look at because I
Kimberly:don't do that mind. Like I'm like, okay, I have this fancy PNL. I pay, like I outsource my bookkeeping as a tax strategist in CBA. I actually outsource my bookkeeping. Cause it kept falling to the bottom of my pile. I was taking care of all of my clients stuff and I wasn't taking care of my own stuff. And I look at that, but I keep an MRR spreadsheet. And so as new clients come in, like I add them so that I'm keeping track of my MRR. I know my projections of who's falling off, who we hope renews. I have the day. So I know what day their payments run. And I keep that in a spreadsheet. So Could, is there a way to probably keep that in zero? Yes. But this is my this is my spreadsheet where I can always go back to and feel safe. And so right now it's I'm looking at that MRR and I'm like, okay, this is what we're going for June. And this is and we have like our overall, like annual goals of revenue and stuff. But I know what it needs to be to like get there. And yes, it's very fun to watch.
Yael:It is. And it's, and then again, it just becomes like a game. It's okay, I have, that's a very high achiever.
Kimberly:And I know
Yael:I was literally, I'm like, this is, and I also I didn't used to have the day cause I also, now I also have a day of the month that all my expenses go out to, I have the real, so like I've the day of the month where everyone's payments come in and the day of month where everyone's things go, and like every one of you goes out and it's I can really be like, okay, Oh, it's the second. So I'm going to have this going in and it's coming out and it just, and it's. Yeah, this is the geekery of it's fun. I think it's
Kimberly:fun. Now my spreadsheet is not pretty. This is not an extra so it's not
Yael:pretty. It's just cool.
Kimberly:Yeah. Ours, ours are very function over form. We, I actually had to pay someone to make them like prettier because I realized that like spreadsheets are scary for a lot of non financial non business people and they don't love spreadsheets. So ours, our templates are very pretty, but my stuff's just very like. You can see formulas and stuff
Yael:just needs to work. It just needs to work. Okay, fine. So step one is awareness is financial awareness. Okay. Step
Kimberly:two is going to be finding the right professional. And I truly believe that everyone should have a professional on their team, on their side, but it's really important that you find the right person for you. From a credential standpoint are they actually who they say they are? Like, do they, because here in the U S a CPA is a certified public accountant, but like I started my career in auditing. I didn't even start my career in tax. So it was funny because somebody was like, can I ask you a tax question? I was like, no, my mom still does my tax return because I was like three months out of college and I was in the audit department. So just because they're CPA doesn't mean that they're a tax CPA, just because they're a tax. Preparer does not mean that they're a tech strategist, right? So I want you to think about, and there are all different types of accountants and CPAs out there. Do you need a bookkeeper? Do you need a CPA? Do you need somebody who can help you with payroll? And so being aware of all of these different professionals out there is really important. Being aware of what your business needs is really important. And then once you get past, in my opinion, once you get past, like what you need, those credentials, it's really important. It really is important to feel a fit with that financial professional that you, because we say that we have a relationship with our clients and some people get weirded out by that. It's not a relationship. It's, like we, we work together. No. This is your livelihood. This is, these are your family's goals. This is your short term life, your long term plans. This is everything. Like we have a relationship, you have to trust us. And that is the number one feedback that we get from our clients is that They've never trusted anyone as much as they trust us. And that means the world to us because that's how we want them to view it. We, so you need to feel like you have a personality fit with this person, that they are going to take the time to educate you in a safe, supportive space. You're not getting like condescending answers or like rude scoffs that they're not responding to. Oh my God. That's such a thing that I hear right now is like I'm, I've been waiting three weeks to hear back. I've been waiting a month to hear back. And it's just that's not acceptable. And so I really do think that it comes down to finding the right personality fit, because when you find that right personality fit, you are inevitable, inevitably going to be more comfortable having vulnerable conversations with them. And no matter how you slice it, money, financial and tax conversations are vulnerable, especially as a woman.
Yael:Yeah. Oh, they're like, I feel like they're like the most vulnerable apart from like sex.
Kimberly:Yeah. I think I have a feeling that some of our clients would probably rather talk about sex than money and taxes. Seriously. I legit I think that.
Yael:Yeah. Because it's also, I think it's also, there's a certain element of shame as well. If you feel like you're not managing it and it's I should know this. I'm an adult, and again, like my husband and I It's funny because my husband and I got married when we were very younger. I was 18, he was 19. And I just Y'all make us
Kimberly:look old. We were 23 and
Yael:24. Oh, ancient. But we were literally teenagers. And I just, I don't know why. I just assumed that, due to some of his male equipment, he just absorbed financial knowledge. He, I was saying he knew more about it than I did, which is not saying much. But again, we didn't really know we didn't have the skills to like a budget or no one ever taught us that kind of thing. We were just like, okay, put money in the bank. We have to spend, try to watch what we spend or whatever, try it, try to have more come in than goes out basically, try to save stuff if you can, and that was basically like, that was our full awareness, but then start having kids and your expenses start going up and you have to start really moving things around and talking, we don't, we had to buy a house when we bought our apartment and it was a lot of stuff that we had to learn and we ended up going for financial consulting and like education with a specialist about this because. We really did not have those, the knowledge or those skills. And so it could be a certain level of shame because you feel you're letting your family down. You're letting yourself down. You're not a real grownup who understands money, right? There's so many ways that we can shame ourselves around so many different things, especially the guilt. The mom guilt is real about so many. Oh my gosh. Yeah.
Kimberly:And we make decisions differently. And I think that again, that's why we choose to work with CEO moms, because, like there are some, Coaches, marketing experts out there. They're like, just go all in, just take the risk. And it's I can't risk it all. I've got this roof over my kid's head that needs to I'm okay being without a home. I'm okay going hungry for a day or two, but I'm not going to impose those poor money management decisions on my kid's wellbeing. And that's a totally different feeling when you're making decisions about how you use your money in your business and life. It's just, it's totally different.
Yael:A hundred percent. And that was where I always like, and that's why I'm a really like very soft seller because I know what it's like to be on the side of the person being like, I really want to make this. This feels so aligned. This feels such a great, like this, I know this is going to be a good investment but I have five
Kimberly:children and I really need to think about them. Because I'm literally picking between investing in you or groceries for the week. Yeah, literally,
Yael:or like school or summer camp should they choose to go, which they did it, but yeah, exactly. And so that's the thing. And it's, so it's not that I don't believe you're a good investment or it's not that I don't believe whatever I don't want to go all in on myself, it's that I also I'm not just investing in myself. I'm also like investing, could be investing at the cost of other things. Yeah. Which is again, I'm not saying that you shouldn't take risks and you shouldn't go all in because I, and I have made very scary decisions. I paid 20 K in full for programs and gotten ROI out of them. Okay. So I, I'm not a stranger to making big investments. But I also understand the other point, the point of view of, it's not just about me.
Kimberly:Yeah, every dollar I made a lot of investments last year, and that, they were strategic and they were a means to an end, and they've paid off this year, but it took a lot of money away from our family, in the sense that I I paid myself, but that was literally it, there was nothing left over because I reinvested it all into the business okay, that's money that, in theory, could have come directly to our family if I hadn't chosen to do that for the long term I think there's also, I think there's also a lot of shame I've noticed more shame from our CEO moms who are coming to us when they're coming from another CPA or tax professional. And they've really truly been let down. Like they'll be like, oh I don't know how I got so behind on this, or I don't know how I owe so much. And we have a lot of conversations with them about the fact that I think that they were let down, that they were doing all of the right things. They hired someone, they were trying to get help. They were working with a financial professional and that person let them down. And so I think that there's a lot of shame around that too, that like I paid this person, I've been working with this person, but I'm literally possibly worse off than I was before. And so I'm seeing a lot of shame around that too. But I don't think that I don't think that CEO mom should have shame. I think that the CPA who let them down should.
Yael:100%. And again, I think we need the, we need like the education, around it as well. And that's the important thing too. And I will say, I actually do have an American business and I, so I do pay taxes technically to the states. I also pay taxes, it's a. It is very complicated to be a doodle dual citizen of the United States. We have one
Kimberly:client there in South or Central South America. I'm not good with geography. Y'all it's either in South or Central America.
Yael:One of the Americas down there.
Kimberly:My husband takes care of that for me. It's South of me. They're in that same time zone though, which makes meetings really easy. Yeah. And it's a whole different ballgame and right now we're planning for them to come back. To the U S and what that's going to mean for their taxes. And that's the strategy part that we're working on right now for them because they've been getting an exclusion. So yeah, it's yeah, it's a whole different ball game. And yeah, taxes are scary. When you have a nice person that you're working with, who's taking the time to educate you, they can still feel scary. And so I just think that unfortunately in our profession, so many tax professionals are missing the mark on educating their clients, treating them like human beings who didn't go to school for four years for this.
Yael:And then they're like, yeah obviously it's like this, you're like, it's not obvious to me hello. And then we,
Kimberly:and we have so much misinformation out there on social media these days. And so it's not only I could go on a rant on this for days, there's so much misinformation out there from the fact that. People who aren't tax strategists are giving tax advice because I guess their CPA told them and their business coach. So they should be sharing these tax tips with their clients and their social media followings. And it's yeah, that we don't know why your CPA did that for you. So please be quiet. Cause you're not a tax professional. And then even these tax professionals out there, like everybody's giving like half of the story. And it's here's why it worked for them, but you need to be careful because here's why it may not work for you. And because every situation. is unique. And so we live in this day and age where everybody's just willy nilly. Oh, I heard this. Let me throw it out there so I can get clickbait. I can get more likes and engagement. And it's yeah, you're really leading people down the wrong road because you don't even understand what you're saying.
Yael:Yeah. And I'm 100 percent seeing
Kimberly:a lot of stuff that way.
Yael:A hundred percent. So that's actually, I wanted to get to that because let's talk about my favorite, like probably my favorite Schitt's Creek sketch ever, which was like, it's a write off. Who writes it off? I don't know. They're write off people, right? It's so good. It is so good. And I feel like that's that's basically the level of tax Awareness that most people actually have. Yes. We can write that, I'll write that off, I'll write that off. So can you tell me what are some what are some things that everyone that everyone knows can be probably written off or like that, just by the way this could be written off X, Y, Z. Yeah. What are the surprising things that people maybe don't know they can actually know? Yeah.
Kimberly:Yeah. So like the whole write off thing and then the other thing that I would say people do is like in December, it's go buy something, go buy a car, go buy a G Wagon, you can write, you can depreciate it all. And it's like how is a G Wagon going to be substantiated in front of the IRS when you have an online business? Like where are you driving that G Wagon to? And you're still, and here's why I don't. Like the go buy something as a tax strategy. I don't really think it's a tax strategy because unless you have already planned to buy that thing, unless you've already budgeted to buy that thing. It's not really saving you as much in taxes as you think. So let's say you're going to go buy. You're going to invest in something that's 10, 000 unless you had already budgeted for that and you really need it. And it's going to give you an ROI. You're probably only maximum saving about 4, 000 in taxes. So you're still out six grand of your cash of your money. So I don't like that to me. That's not a tax strategy. You're still out your money now. If you've been budgeting and monitoring and that, like you've been trying to go buy that 10, 000, whatever that is, and you have the cash for it, then yeah, let's do it before the end of the year, if it makes sense. But that's why you should be working with your tax strategist proactively throughout the entire year so that we know in November, if we're going to do that or not. But yeah, missed deductions is the first step when it comes to tax strategy, because it's the easiest and you can do it without A tax professional, like you can do it. So the first thing is I see so many business owners missing expenses because they're not keeping track of them in QuickBooks or zero or on a spreadsheet. And they're putting purchases on this card or on that card, or they're writing a check or they're paying Venmo. And they have them in eight different places and they don't bring all of their expenses together. And so they literally are just missing out on things that they paid for that they even know are a business expense. They just forgot that it was on that card instead of this card. So staying organized and having a system so that all of your business or business expenses are in one place is like easy step number one to ensure that you don't miss any expenses. Next, we want to talk about Like you said, some expenses that are maybe obvious and some that aren't obvious, that could be deductible. So some of the ones that I see missed are like marketing opportunities. Everything to Kimberly is a marketing opportunity. If I'm having lunch with somebody or dinner with somebody, we're talking about work. If I'm at a meeting or an event it's networking, right? So literally almost everything. Everything in my eyes is marketing and what you can do, what we do is we teach our clients how to turn expenses that might not be deductible into a deductible expense. For example, let's say you have a kid in little league and they're asking for donations to buy the t shirts for the season, right? You say hey, if you put my logo on the shirt. I'll buy it, right? I'll pay for them. Because now it's a marketing expense for your business instead of a donation. And donations don't help you as much as you think you should always donate, give tithe and give out of the goodness of your heart. But right now with the U S tax code, they're not super beneficial for most taxpayers. So if you can make it a marketing expense where your business is being seen and it's bringing, it's generating revenue. Now we have a marketing expense. Same thing with uniforms, right? So this is a missed one. So a lot of a lot of people in the online space, it's oh I have a photo shoot so I can write off my clothes. You can't technically. They're not a legitimate business deduction and they're not a uniform. It, in order for it to be a uniform, it has to be something that has your logo or some form of identification on it and you're not going to wear it out. So like my photographers, for example, they wear a lot of black, right? Either a black dress or a black top and black. pants or something like that. And they wanted to write all of those off. And I'm like, but you could wear a black dress or black leggings technically anytime. So we went ahead and put a small logo in certain places. And now it's deductible because it truly is a uniform that they only wear when they're shooting weddings. And so it's little tweaks like that. That we can make things like meals. So meals are only 50 percent deductible in the US. So you can take the whole meal deduction on your profit and loss statement, but there's an adjustment that's going to be made when it comes to tax time, and they're going to disallow 50 percent of that deduction. But there are some loopholes to turn meals into 100 percent deductions. And so if you can follow the rules, now you're getting a hundred percent instead of 50 percent for possibly some of the meals that you're having. So it's little things like that.
Yael:I'm curious. Yeah.
Kimberly:So if it's for the entire office or for the public, so like setting up like a coffee and drink and bakery station, it's going to be 100 percent deductible because it's for the office. It's for when clients come in for when customers come in. So that is not for the benefit of one person only same thing. If you're having food catered into the office. The office for the team because it benefits the business for them to keep working. So like we always had when I've worked in public accounting and it was busy season, so like March through mid April, we had dinner catered every night, right? Cause they didn't want us to leave. Because we needed to work. It was, it was more, it was a better ROI for them to keep us there, feed us for 30 minutes and let us go back to our desk versus getting like in Atlanta traffic, going home, not coming back, right? So things like that are times if you're having like a holiday party or company picnic or sponsoring something like that where everyone's involved, all of those are going to be 100 percent deductible. How do you make sure that you are establishing everything for those purposes and following the guidelines and also keeping track of them separately? I can't tell you how many of our clients come to us, even from bookkeepers. And they're all like, any food is just thrown in the 50%. And it's in, in where we shine, it's we ask questions. We dig deeper. I'm like, tell me more about what you do for your team. Tell me more about how you run things. And I'm like, Oh, yeah. All of these, we can plop out and we can carve those out and move those to a hundred percent. And so now instead of having, 20, 000 in meals and expenses, that's only 50 percent deductible. Now we've got 10 of it in 100 percent deductible and only 10 of it is in 50%. We just save them 10, 000 in expenses.
Yael:That's amazing. That's so cool.
Kimberly:It's fine. If
Yael:you're hosting, if you host like an event, like a networking event and you host it and you cater it, that's a hundred. That's would be an example of a hundred percent. Yes. That is so cool. I see that. That's so interesting. And and that's the thing. I have people are always like, oh yeah, oh, it's oh, it's on, it's on me. It's on my business card or whatever. I really feel like I, I literally I remember like one time I did not put this on my car, but I just remembering this like one time. I, we were all going out, me and my friends were all going out. We, it was like a little bit last minute and it's like my friends from high school. So I remember like my friend comes in and she's I got out of my pajamas to come to this, because this was like towards more of the beginning of my business and And she was like, because I have to ask you what the hell you do, what on earth is a funnel? Why do you keep talking about funnels? Can you please explain this to me and explain to me what you do and what you actually do to make money? Cause I do not understand it. We get a lot of that
Kimberly:from our clients too, like working with like their local CPAs. They don't understand what a funnel or an online business is. They're like, you make 300, 000 as a blogger? No way. I don't even want to get into that.
Yael:I know. And I was like, wow, that could have been like, that could have been like a training. And I could have abducted that. I made my friends minutes.
Kimberly:I asked my friends. I make my friends ask me a tax question so I can write this off. Let's talk about work. Yeah. Let's talk about, let's talk about what kind of clients I serve. Let's talk about how I can help you. Oh, you're thinking about buying some rental property. Cool. Let's talk about that. So what they could mean for you. Let me talk about how we could help. Marketing.
Yael:I love
Kimberly:that.
Yael:Yeah. And and and we like, we love what we do. We can talk about what we do
Kimberly:like to everybody. And I'd answer their questions anyway. But if I can make sure that I do it in a way that makes it a legitimate business deduction, even better for me.
Yael:Oh, I love that. And and I think that's That's I think the beauty of that kind of stuff. And I think you have, you don't, you have a freebie or something about like tax deductions, not freebie. I think it's 7 or 9 or
Kimberly:20. I don't even, I don't even know. But we do our freebie is our 12 most. So you're going to hear like uniforms on their marketing, things like that. But then our ebook, I think it's got what I've learned, I guess is a trip wire. And I think you can grab it for five. I think it's 35 normally, but if you get it, when you opt into the freebie, I'm pretty sure it's only five bucks or something like that, and that is 205. Tax deductions that you're missing. And so it just goes through and it gives you like in very simple terms. It's not like it's not an accounting language. Very simple. One to two sentences explaining it. And I just, I recommend that everyone run through this list of 205 because it's going to spark things like. I had no idea that I could deduct. I had no idea. I love that.
Yael:So yeah, so we will definitely put that link to the freebie in the description because I think that everyone needs to know this. And I think 5 is money well spent. If you can spend, you can save considerably more than 5. One,
Kimberly:one deduction, one deduction. Literally one. And you know what, it's
Yael:just I, every time, it's funny because every time we get like our salary, because I get my salary, like I work my salary through a payroll company, like as an, as as an And every time I get my salary thing and I just look at it and I'm like, I feel very taken advantage of. I'm like, this is really sucks. And
Kimberly:so it's how do we work around that? So if you're an S corp, you have to have that salary, right? That's your reasonable owner's compensation. But what is the minimum justifiable amount? And we run reports, we have a software that we pay an exorbitant amount of money for. To make sure that our clients are paying themselves the minimum owner's compensation, but not a penny more. And then we move on to reimbursements and then we move on to distributions. And we have this whole waterfall of how we want our CEO moms to pay themselves so that they're not paying more in taxes because payroll taxes are a whole different thing from income taxes. We've just talked about income taxes today, but yeah, you got payroll taxes too, and state taxes, depending on I think you're in New York. So that's
Yael:no, but I think my business, I think my business is registered in a different state. I can't even remember which one it's okay.
Kimberly:Florida or one of the nine states that have no state income tax.
Yael:I think it's one of those. I'm pretty sure it's one of those. It's not one of the more expensive ones. But they know they specifically did it. I know they say that. Oh yeah, we specifically did it. It was something like Minnesota. Something with an M maybe, I don't know. One of. something. I don't remember. It was somewhere in the Midwest. I remember. But like again and then the people that I work with are very specifically like their expertise is American Americans living in Israel, running businesses in the States and, and getting paid in Israel because it's a whole, it's so complicated. It is so complicated. Yeah, this is such great information. And I think that again, like Even if, even if you can't work with a, you're not ready for a CPA, so at what point, I guess my point at what point would someone be ready to hire you what level of income should they be, like, just having a bookkeeper, and at what point should they be, like, no, I really need a tax, like a tax strategist CPA.
Kimberly:So I really firmly, so you need a bookkeeper before you need a tax strategist, right? Because without knowing your numbers, how can we do our job and how can you make financial decisions on what your next investment is? So I think that as soon as you can scrape four to 500 a month together to have a bookkeeper, like that is what you need to do. I would say when it's time to really start interviewing for a tax strategist is when you're starting to hit that 000 gross revenue mark. That's, and so we offer, so we prefer to work with our clients personally on retainer, but we have a couple of one off options, like a strategy call, like a one hour strategy call, that they can come and ask questions so that they can get a good understanding and walk away with one strategy. That's going to help their business, but they're not locked in to a retainer commitment month over month until they're making more consistent revenue. As you're approaching the six figure mark, you should be Definitely be working with a CPA and a tax strategist because as you approach that six figures, that's when it's time to start really understanding how much you're paying in taxes. What type of strategies can you put in place? What's coming down the pipeline? And most of the business, most of the CEO moms that we work with, they are growing rapidly. They do want to be sustainable. They do want to be smart with their money. And so as they're approaching that six figure mark it's time for them to start looking at working with us. And if you're over the six figure mark, you should definitely be working with a tech strategist.
Yael:Okay. Okay. I love that. Again this is, it's really important, again, to know at what point you need what and it's funny because First of all, bookkeepers can cost even less than four or five hundred dollars a month. I'm saying, I
Kimberly:Don't go much less than about three fifty USD because they're probably not gonna be super good if they're below about three fifty to four hundred US.
Yael:That's good information. But, I'm saying, the thing is, it's first of all, you can start yourself. Okay. Yeah. Start yourself beginning on top of things. All right. You don't need to wait to have a bookkeeper to have QuickBooks or Xero or Wave. All right. Cause it is very simple. Like even a, I'm not, I'm a words person. I'm not a numbers person. I'm a numbers person, not a words person. Yeah. There we go. That's why that's our difference. We found our first difference. We found the first difference. There you go. But that's why we need each other. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. The word people need the number of people. I like numbers when they're in my, going into my bank account and they make me happy, but that's as far and honestly,
Kimberly:like sometimes it's even because I need this too. I am a numbers person, but thankfully, I was raised in a family with numbers people. And so I'm like the exception to the rule. And I didn't realize that till I turned about 30, like how fortunate I was to know, to learn all the financial things that I learned, but I still need a sounding board. So sometimes you just need a third party who's neutral, who's not emotional about your business or about your finances, who can just help you talk through that decision.
Yael:A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And again, I'm saying the same thing goes for like the word, I'm saying on the word side, right? Like why can't, I write all my own copy and stuff, but very often send it to other people to look at because we're sometimes we're so close to our own stuff, even in our area of expertise that we're like, okay, what am I missing here? Or is there something I'm missing? So yeah. There's, and there's things that's obvious to us, right? So if you are like, Oh no, I'm good at numbers. Like I, just because you're good at numbers does not necessarily mean that you are a tech strategist or a bookkeeper. And so that's the thing that comes less natural to us. Like I know I always outsource design because I know I completely suck at design. Yep. That is not even the same as I ever considered doing myself because I'm like, no, I don't like it. I don't do it. That's not how my brain works. I don't do it. But I'm less likely to outsource like words, copy, things like that, because that is my area of expertise. But I will still send stuff to my coach to look at. I'll still send stuff to, my, for my copywriter friends, I would even have, I have a copy coach in my mastermind and sometimes I'll send it around, but I can, you have a look at this, please. Because again, Just because we are good at something does not necessarily mean that we don't have our blind spots when it comes to our own stuff, right? Especially because we're so close to our
Kimberly:own stuff.
Yael:Exactly. It's so personal. It is so personal. And money is so personal. And we take it personally. We think about it personally. It's emotional. Even if you
Kimberly:try and separate it, it's still emotional.
Yael:Yeah, 100%. So you need to have that. You need to have that like unbiased detached kind of energy coming in and being able to look at things, from that. And I have someone with someone
Kimberly:in a way, who's going to be kind about it and who's going to be like educational. So we're not teaching our clients like how to do tech strategy, but we do. We do want to make sure that they understand it, that they have this like foundational knowledge and education. And I know for me will get better.
Yael:I always wanna I'm very, I'm a very much like of a why person. I'm like, yes. Okay, tell, don't, just, don't, just give me a fact. I need to know why this is the case. Yeah. Because when you understand why, you can then extrapolate two other things. Yeah. Like I always say, whenever, when I'm creating SOPs for people like, or like for team members or whatever, when I'm creating SOPs, I literally just created a training on creating SOPs, which is why this came to mind. As I'm doing, as I'm going through and as I'm recording what I'm doing, I will say, I'm doing this. This is why I do this. Here's why I do this. Because people, the more people understand the why behind things, the more educated conversation you can have with them and the more you can actually like make like good stuff happen. Questions
Kimberly:the right way. I see so many CPAs and it's they asked me that, but I didn't understand it. And it's of course you couldn't give them a writing the right answer if they didn't explain it to you.
Yael:100%. 100%. This is really important information, and I cannot stress enough it is not the fun, it's not fun. This is not the sexy stuff. The sexy stuff is the marketing. But it can
Kimberly:be. Building wealth and keeping more of your money can be pretty fun and sexy. Okay that, that part is,
Yael:that is fun and sexy. That is what I'm saying, but the idea the thing of dealing with money and dealing with financials. You hear financials, and you immediately go and you're, people like just shut down, right? So it's not like the most like exciting, not as
Kimberly:glamorous as it's not as easy as the marketing sometimes,
Yael:but it is it's really the foundation of your business. Okay. It really is. Cause like a business is not making money is not really like a business. It's not.
Kimberly:No,
Yael:like a really fun, expensive, maybe hobby, but yeah, I want to say that hobby word around the IRS. So yeah, a hundred percent not. So thank you so much. This was so good. And I've learned, I learned so much. And I know everyone who's listening is going to learn too. But just as you wrap up and I'm going to put this in the description as well, but tell us where we can find you where should we look for you? Connect with you, reach out if we have any questions. Yeah.
Kimberly:And then come hang out with me over on Instagram. I'm at Kimberlyterracpa. You'll get a mix of everything. It's inconsistent. I've learned that's my human design projector coming out that like I show up and then I'm gone. Of course, I'm a projector and I show up and I go away. And, but I love the voice DMs on, in Instagram. Like it's just my favorite thing. Cause I just like really talk. I'm a connector and I just love talking with people. So come send me a message on Instagram. I'm happy to chat and talk.
Yael:Awesome. Thank you so much, Kimberly. This is amazing. And yes, guys, please listen to this, download her thing, get her. 5. It's well worth it. I have it. I think I have it. Probably got it from some bundle. I know I got it for some, from some bundle. So definitely check it out because it is a hundred percent worth finding out all the things that you could be deducting that you're not. And let's just, stick it to the fricking, like they take enough money as it is. Let's be honest. Okay. So I can't, these kids are expensive. We need it. We all need it. We need every penny we can take back from that. So so much again. This has been amazing and I really appreciate you being here today. Thanks for having me
I can't thank you enough for listening to Raising Your Business. I hope this episode has inspired you to take another step towards building a business and life that you love and growing your income in a way that works for you and your family. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a second to rate and review and let's connect on Instagram. Screenshot and share it on Instagram stories so we can get the word out to more mom business owners like you. Tag me at the EL Bendahan and share your biggest breakthrough from today. See you next week.