Your 2024 Financial Strategy with Katie Bell

Katie Bell: 1:12

Hi, welcome back to this week’s episode of the treat your business podcast. My name is Katie Bell, and I’m going to be your host for this episode, I am really excited that you’re joining me again to listen, thank you for, for all your support and for all of the lovely comments that people send me about these podcasts. And I genuinely love to record them. And we’ve got some really exciting plans for next year on the podcast. So did you listen to last week? Is my first question if you did not go back and listen to that, because I want you to listen to these in an order. Because over the next four weeks, we are going to be talking about your 2024 game plan. We’re going to be making sure that we dive into how you can create your 2024 strategy, your game plan your your map, your route, whatever it is that works for you. But to do that, I need you to listen to last week’s episode first, okay, because that’s really, really important. It was all about what we are tolerating in our business, and what we are no longer going to tolerate in 2024. But we’ve got to know that first before we can set the map. This week’s episode is going to be about your financial strategy, the numbers, the stuff that we generally want to bury our head in the sand and never ever look at. So I want you to think about some answers to these questions. Are you taking home? What you want in your business? Or are you being paid last? Because I promise you, if you had to be replaced in your business, you would have to pay somebody a lot of money to do everything that you do. So that’s my first question. Are you taking home? What you want? My next question is, is your business profitable? A business has to be profitable to be sustainable, the more profitable your businesses, the bigger impact that you can make. If you don’t know if your business is profitable or not, that’s going to be some of the first things that you need to go and find out, have you accounted for tax. So quite often we get to this time of the year, it’s January for sole traders, that’s can be quite a scary time, and then are panicking that they haven’t really accounted for tax. And I want you to look at your take home income. And I want you to imagine that your take home income is like a thermostat on your wall. Okay, and it’s set at a current temperature right now, a current level in 2024. For you to receive more and keep more, we have to increase your thermostat, we have to uplevel it, we have to change it. And this again comes back to what I talked about last week is that we can’t out strategy, a faulty mindset. So if our mindset around money is not where it needs to be, we might make money, but we’ll lose money. Or it might feel really hard to make money. So we always have to balance the two, when I’m talking to you about you need to do this with your revenue and your expenses and your profit margins. We also need to do all of that. But also check in on what level our thermostat is set up currently. Because I’m going to explain to you that the thermostat right now is giving you the money that you’re receiving right now. Because you’re putting it there’s an energy won’t go into it vibrational energy out there. And that is what you’re attracting back. So it’s representative of the thermostat that you are set up. So we need to elevate, we need to increase your business in the main should be run by numbers. Now I like lead a lot with my heart and I I part of me can be an over deliver a part of me wants to make the most wonderful experience for my clients in both my physio business and my coaching business, that sometimes my heart can lead and not my head, also known as my heart can lead and not the numbers. So I could run the risk of things not being profitable. Because I’m like, Oh, I just want to get them this. And I just want to do this. And I just want this and I want that I want Max, it would be amazing. But in the mean, your business needs to be run by numbers, it doesn’t mean that you can lose all the gorgeousness and the fluffiness and the specialness around it. But we just need to make sure we’re running a profitable business. The more profitable you are, the more you can have the fluffy stuff. While you can be generous, the more you can do extra little bits for for your clients. You have put a lot of work into growing your business. But growth without financial health will kill your company. Everybody strives for increased revenue in their business year on year. They’re like, Oh, well, I did 50k This year I want to do 60k Or we did 100,000 or 150. Or recently on our one of our strategy, our strategy days, a couple of weeks ago, somebody said to me, I’m doing 350 What should I push to? And actually, for me, it’s like well, you can strive for whatever revenue you want, but it’s more about what taiko you want. Because then we can look at What revenue you need to make that happen? There’s no point just chasing the top line figure, if you don’t have any financial health under that, because you’re just going to be busting a ball to make no more money. So money is, I was gonna say is a is the foundation but actually I think it’s a foundation I feel like money is one of the foundations that we teach, and that we encourage you to, to learn and understand. Without money, we cannot take our message, your product, your services to the world, our impact stays small. And I for one know, I have no doubt that you listen to this are the most amazing physio, the most amazing osteopath, that you know, deep down, it might be squashed down. But deep down, you do know you’re really good at what you do. And that goes for all of the clients that I work with, I have no doubt that the impact they could make on the health and wellness of their community is chuffing massive. So this drives me to do what I do because I impact the health and wellness of the bigger community by meaning by allowing and supporting you to do your best work. So sometimes we can feel like slaves to our business, which is an interesting point, because many of us go into running our business or becoming self employed, and then into a limited company or whatever, because we want more freedom. We want more flexibility. But actually what ends up happening is we seem to be exactly the opposite. We feel like slaves to our business. So without enough money, you cannot realise your authentic self. Money provides opportunity, it provides freedom, it provides flexibility. As I said, I don’t have one tiny doubt that you are on this planet for a much bigger reason. But you only yield as much power as your energy source can provide. And your energy source is money. We have to learn how to be profitable. Nevermind, we never got taught this show. You know, we didn’t I never learnt it. Nevermind, we’ve never had a day’s training around it. This is what we are here to do this is what I’m here to do is to teach you a new way. We’ve got to learn how to be profitable, we’ve got to learn how to collect money, we’ve got to learn how to keep money, we’ve got to learn how to control money, and we’ve got to learn how to grow money. The idea that we just need to increase our sales. Now sales doesn’t like five with you replace that with like, I just need to see more clients, I just need to sell more products, I just need to sell more packages, I just need to teach more Pilates classes, and then the profit will go up. That is like wrong. Fact, increasing sales does not instantly increase your profit. Bigger is not better. Growth is like half of the equation. This is like I feel like I hope I don’t offend me when I say this, but I say it with a lot of love and kindness because I feel like they just need to be educated a little bit more. This is like the guys. Sorry, guys, I’m picking on you go to the gym. And their upper body is like big and beefy and muscling gorgeous. And then I looked down and their calves are like the spindly twigs. Okay, so like they’re only fixing half of it. Okay, it’s the same growth is only like half the equation. Bigger does not just mean better. So I want you to know, and understand that if you take nothing away from this podcast today, this let this one little thing be the thing that you take away. Profit is not a year and ever. If you are somebody that waits for your accounts to come back from your accountant, and then go, oh, I made 20,000 pounds this year, wrong way of looking at it. It must be baked, literally baked into your business every day, every patient, every class, every transaction, we’ve got to think about profit first. This is what we call the profit first model. We’ve got to figure out the things that make more profit and the things that don’t. And we need to get rid of the things that don’t make you any profit, or we need to change them. We need to look at a different model. We need to increase your prices. We need to streamline your expenses. We need to make things more efficient. We need to put systems in place we need to get your team performing better. All of these are ways that we can increase profit. But so many business owners that we work with at the start are so blooming busy doing so much that is making them no money. But if you don’t know what is making you profit or not or what your margins are, how can you decide where to spend your energy insurance. I feel like I’m beating the insurance drum a lot over the last last few weeks and I’m not apologetic about it because I feel like thrive is going to, we’re going to have a revolution. Yes, a revolution thrive is going to lead the revolution, to get insurance companies to see our worth. I am so done with all of you being paid crap money for being the most amazing physios, I’m done with it, I’m fine if they listen to this and tell me off. Anyway, where was I. So without an effective winning management system, we get stuck in trying to sell, sell our way out of our struggles. So I want you to imagine that like, we’re setting over the next few weeks our strategy, like our plan, our roadmap, our goals, where we want to go in 2024, what we want to achieve, right, that’s point B, that’s the vision. So we know where we want to go. But unless you are super clear about where you want to go, like you have a roadmap, and it has got the left turn and the right turn and go forward and go backwards and turn around and go around this roundabout unless it is very, very specific, which most people’s isn’t, it’s too vague. We just tried to sell our way out of the struggle and into the vision. Because we just think if I just do more, I’ll make more and then I’ll be happy wrong. So what then happens at point A is that we take on a troublesome client, or somebody that is really not our ideal client. Holding my hands up, I have done this in the past as well. I do not do this anymore, we quickly invent a new product and try and sell it really fast just to make some cash, we quickly hire thinking that’s going to solve the problem. And it really doesn’t. We do like last minute promotion, Black Friday, Christmas offers all these things, we drop our costs, just to get some cash through the door. Or the big one for you guys is that we go, I’ll just do it myself. I just do it myself, because I can get it done quicker, and it will actually save you some money. But that mindset in itself is going to be one of your biggest stumbling blocks because you only have 24 hours a day. And for most of you are spending a lot of time in the clinic room. So we then create this, this like trap, survival trap, and it becomes this massive monster. And for some of you listening to this, I totally get, you’re going to feel like you’re managing a massive monster at the moment. And I’m here to tell you that you have a choice. And that together over the coming months, you can change this, you don’t have to keep taming this monster and keep trying to fix the monster. Sustain profit profitability depends on your efficiency. So we’ve got to make your business a simpler business a more efficient business, because that’s the way that we’re going to sustain profits all year round. And part of the problem is that many of us have very old traditional methods of accounting, or we use accountants accounting methods, which is some of it is bank balance accounting. So we focus on our revenue, we look at what’s in the bank. And have you ever been in a point where you get your p&l back from your accountant at the year end? And you go, Oh, but it says I’ve made 30,000 profit, but I haven’t got 30,000 pounds in the bank. The accounts go? Oh, yeah, well, that’s just an accounting term. Oh, right. So I haven’t actually got the cash there. Oh, no, no, you’ve spent that. Oh, okay. So this is because we’re bank balance accounting. And this is the old version, that the old fashioned, or the more traditional way is that we take our sales, we minus our expenses, and then we go, oh, that’s the profit or not. If we continue to run that model, you’re never ever, ever going to make any profit. We need a system that tells us the truth about the health of our business. And this system is called the profit first model. And this is what we teach. When you are in our activate and elevate programmes. When you learn this system, you no longer have this monster that feels completely out of control. And even people that say to me, I’m rubbish at numbers, I hate numbers, I feel so overwhelmed with numbers, even those people learn to love this system. So we can stop panicking. Every month and every week and going from one transaction to the next transaction. It’s time for you guys to eat first. Now, I could spend probably a full week explain the Profit First month to you and probably still not do the best job because I’m not an accountant by nature. But this is the model that we run in our business, both businesses. So to find out how this profit Miss Profit First system can work for you. Then jump on a call and we can we can look at your finances and there is zero judgement for those of you who have been on a business or marketing audit call with me, aren’t they great? So I love them because I get from the outside to be able to look into your business and just really work through it with you in a very simple format. I would say one of my strengths is to break something really complicated down to something super Be easy, because why would we not want that. And we can work through what your numbers are looking like, where there are opportunities for improvement, where we can cut the fat, reduce those expenses, make things more efficient, what is making profit and what isn’t making profit. So we can get you more time back and put your energy into the things that are going to make a difference in your business. And we also can decide what your take home figure is going to look like. And this is something that you can all do, after this episode today is to just decide what do I want to take home? Not what do I want to but what do you need to take home, like as a minimum? Okay, that is like your now goal, then we have a better goal, and then we have a best goal. And I like those now. And better. So now he’s like, Okay, I’m making 1000. But actually, to cover all my bills, I need 2000. Like, that’s the noble goal. That’s a goal might be like, God, well, 3000 would be amazing. Because it provides me the extra 1000 means I can spend 500 pound on holidays, 500 pounds on kids clubs, or whatever it is, you’re going to spend that money off, putting into pension or whatever. And your best goal needs to be a stretch, it needs to make you feel uncomfortable, but I don’t want you to make it feel unrealistic. Like back years and years ago, I used to be when I was first being coached, I used to hear people in the room say I want to make a million pounds. And I’d be like, Oh, God, you absolute chuff. Because they’re making 500 quid in their business. And it’s not that they can’t go make a million quid. There are people all over the world making a million pound a month. But what I’m saying is, that’s not going to help you right now, if you’re making 500 or 1000 pounds a month. So we want it to be a stretch. I hate the word realistic, but we need to we need to make it feel like it is within the future. Like we can see it. We don’t know the how because if we knew the how we will be already doing it. But we just know that we have the potential to get there. So go and decide what you want to take home. It’s time for you to eat first. Thank you for joining me on this week’s episode. I have loved talking about the profit first model and we are going to be talking about your marketing strategy and your sales strategy for the rest of the month. So please tune in again. And don’t forget to like this share this with anybody that you know that could really benefit from listening to this as well. And please leave me a review because I do read them and they do mean the world to me. See you soon.