Ask Me Anything with Bernadette Boas

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Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at BlogTalkRadio.com/SheddingtheBitch or share Share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back. 818-572-2910. Good day, good day, good day everyone. Happy Tuesday. It's a beautiful Tuesday. I, you know, after having dealt with the— we didn't deal with the vortex, mind you, but at the same time here in Atlanta, Georgia, we got down into the low 20s, which is, I'll just call it uncommon. We certainly do at times, but at the same time, compared to the 50 below, 30 belows that were going on in the Midwest, We got lucky, but, and then today it is going to be 70. So, we have had very much like the rest of the country, we have had some major swings in the last few days. But it is not helping my cold and congestion and my trying to get the final pieces of my bronchitis to vacate and leave my body. So, excuse me if I still sound a little froggy, and I might have a hack or two. I'll just be honest with you. But it's also Ask Bernadette, so I take your questions, stories, and your challenges that you might be having in your career, business, and life, and you can be posting them and/or emailing them anytime throughout the month on Facebook or Twitter or Shed in the Bitch pages. I get most of them through LinkedIn because I'm very active in some of the groups that are out there, and then I'll mention this program and I will get some direct messages there. I even get them— I'll be upfront and honest with you— I even get them from my clients. When my clients are dealing with something that I think generically would be something that probably you're dealing with as well, then I'll certainly sanitize it, as they say, you know, remove some of the details and/or at least take any of the branding, I'll call it, out of that situation. And I'll bring them right here. We actually have one of those today. I actually also had someone reach out to me through Facebook in a direct message, so we'll discuss that issue as well. So we have a little bit of relationships, and then there's a couple of business questions. Oh, and actually there's a money question. I'm planning to address all 4 of them, but if we run out of time, I just want to be upfront with you. If we run out of time, then the fourth question that I received in, I will make note of it, like I'll provide all the details on a blog post and we'll share it on Facebook and Twitter as far as that last question, which is about dealing with a peer, actually a senior director, and challenges in addressing that individual. So that's what we do here. So if you still, even right now at this very moment in time, you have a question, a story, or a challenge that you're dealing with that you want to talk about, feel free to even call the program at 1-818-572-2910, and I'll be more than happy to include you in the conversation, and so you can ask your question while you can remain anonymous. So don't worry that you would have to disclose who you are in order to get your question addressed. We would leave you— your name out of it. At the same time, if you are listening live and you're out on our BlogTalkRadio Shedding the Bitch radio page, then you can scroll down in this specific episode's portal and you'll see a chat function, and you can also chat with us there. Of course, Deborah Parker of Parker House Virtual Services is out there manning the board, so to speak, and also our Twitter and Facebook pages. So should you need anything from either one of us, we are here for you. All right, a couple of other things before we get into your questions. Thank you so much. I need to send out thank you out to the hundreds actually high hundreds of you that sent me birthday greetings all through this past week. Last week was my birthday show. It happened to fall on a Tuesday, and being part of that show and chatting and engaging with us, I want to— I would be sending you a free complimentary copy of Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business. And one of them, I'll protect her name because we'll be discussing her question that she reached out to me about, and I'll, in exchange for her sharing and trusting me and my input, I'll be making sure she gets a copy of that book complimentary. So if you at any time want to engage, want to collaborate with us, feel free to do so, and I'll be sure to also get you a copy of that as well. Pardon me. I also want to make note of our last episode that we had. So last week, like I mentioned, it was my birthday episode, but we also just talked about if you're stuck, what do you do about it? And if you're unsure of what your goals and plans should be for this week, month, year, whatever the case might be, what are some pieces of tips and advice that you can use to kind of get yourself unstuck if that's what you're feeling. We also talked about shedding the excuses, you know, getting over excusing, ignoring, failure to really confront a difficult situation maybe or a difficult person, and what you could do to kind of shed those away because as long as you're making excuses, you're finding ways to avoid or ignore, if you're avoiding confrontation, it's just holding you back. It's not serving you. It's just holding you back, and that's also something that I had dealt with on a couple of situations, so I was sure to share those in that episode, Shed the Excuses. They kill dreams. We've also had conversations about rocking your new year with your rich plan. So if you are anxious and maybe you are sitting right now in the first week of February and you don't have goals laid out, you don't have a plan, you don't have an attack list, so to speak, then we provided you some tips and advice as to how to go about doing that. And then also in this timeframe, I'm going back to about early December, we also talked to Lisa Orban about keeping the rain steady on chaos so you can retain balance in your life. So look, look back at blogtalkradio.com/shedinthebitchradio for all of our past episodes. You can also find all of our episodes on shedinthebitch.com. You can look down and you'll see radio channel, and you'll find all of our episodes actually for the last several years we've been doing the program. You'll find all of our episodes there as well. All right, I am going to go and get some water just so I'm not hacking in your ear for the program. So we're going to take a quick break. When we get back, we're going to dive into a relationship question that I received through our Facebook page. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate-sized clients. Go to NGTaxSolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at Media Relations at sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone. It is Ask Bernadette, the day that we— that I take your questions, stories, and challenges and hope to provide you some tips and advice that will allow you to move forward in whatever it is you might be dealing with. So the first one is in regards to a relationship issue. And I'm going to read part of what it is that she wrote to me and what— and then I'll read you in detail my response. Responds. And it did go back and forth for a little bit. Bottom line is this young woman was having an argument with her boyfriend and he started making some low-blow comments to her about having a large butt. And she says, I didn't make any type of insult to him that would warrant this. And I guess he was just trying to get even by hitting me where it hurts. I twice demanded that he apologize to me, but he refused. So I walked over to where he was and slapped his face, told him it was being— he was being disrespectful and to leave my apartment immediately. He got angry and shoved me. Do you think I was too harsh with him? Not sure where to go from here. Now I'm reading you this because I want you to kind of pick out for yourself from that, those comments, whether or not you can relate to it. Have you been in that situation yourself? And how did you deal with it? And if you shared that situation with someone, what was their feedback to you? And what did they pick out of that situation that was described— that kind of raised red flags for them. So keep all of that in mind because this is what I— my response was. I first thanked this individual for reaching out and apologized for their distress. And then I went on to say, I won't say your slapping him was appropriate, regardless of the blow-blow comments. And him then shoving you should be a huge red flag. That a shove could turn more serious. I then went on to say, I would not give it a second thought about being too harsh. You are blaming yourself for him being disrespectful to you. I would consider if you wanted to be involved with someone who physically shoves you around. So, if you heard that initial situation, you heard that negative comments were flown uninvited, you know, with no real cause for one person, especially a loved one, throwing a very hurtful, negative, low-blow comment to another person. However, I, you know, I definitely want some— I hope that you hear in that as well that it doesn't necessarily then warrant you to then physically— and some people might say, yes, the slap is just a slap, but other people might say, well, that is an assault. And that is just as harsh as the low blow verbal comment as well. And I certainly will never advocate slapping someone across the face. I will tell you, and that's the reason why I also wanted to bring this up, is I will acknowledge and confess to you that I was in my, I want to say, mid to late 20s, and I was in a bar with friends hanging out. And, um, I— well, I was drinking. I was not drunk. I had maybe a beer at that point in time. And a drunk gentleman— I won't call him a gentleman— a drunk man was standing at the bar, and he was making some very crude, more sexual type of comments to me based on my, my, what I'll call, voluptuous body. And I turned around and told him that I didn't, didn't like that, didn't welcome that, and I would appreciate it if he just basically shut up. And he went on to then turn it negative and start calling me a bitch and some other things. So I slapped him across the face. Well, the moment I did that, I knew that that was totally not only dangerous, which I'll get to in a minute, but it was wrong. It was absolutely wrong on my part. I'm, you know, lowering myself to him and his negative and sexual comments by even, even doing that. Let alone, it's dangerous as hell, especially in a bar type of environment. Fortunately, he didn't, didn't respond physically with that, but it would have also— it is wrong doing it even at home in a private environment like even this individual had. Because then, you know, it's you against them, and if it did go from a slap to something else, that could be a very, very dangerous thing. But before, you know, putting it on him, for her, it just wasn't appropriate as well. It was not. So I just kind of wanted to emphasize that to her. But I also then needed to, you know, kind of make sure she saw the red flags. You know, we often as women kind of just allow ourselves to be assaulted or abused, whether physically or verbally or emotionally, and we try to excuse it. We try to even blame ourselves, like she was. Was I too harsh? And yet, if, you know, we can't be blaming ourselves if we want to have respectful, loving, true, caring relationships. We have to recognize that we never deserve verbal, emotional, physical abuse in any way, shape, or form. And that doesn't only come with the hand, it also comes with one's words and one's actions. So she came back to me. So that was my response: pay attention to the red flags, you don't deserve to be, you know, pushed around, don't blame yourself, you know, don't allow people to disrespect you. She then came back saying that she spoke to her mother about this and that her mother said, "No, you know, no man should ever lay a hand on my baby." And which was lovely and sweet, and you could definitely feel for that mother. She then went on to tell her mother, "Mom, please calm down. I'm okay, really I am." And then she went on to explain that her mother's just being overprotective. I responded to this because, again, she in many ways is dismissing and not putting the blame on this guy. And she's excusing it. And she's even excusing her mother's reaction by saying, "Oh, she's just being overprotective." Yes, she is, and she should. It's, you know, a mother, and her child has been verbally and physically assaulted. You may not like that word. I didn't like that. I didn't like the word rape for a long time, and so I covered it up by saying assaulted and some other words.— but it is what it is. And, you know, until one acknowledges the truth of situations, you're not going to be able to confront them and overcome them. So I did respond that once a man raises a hand, or even a shove, it probably isn't his first and it won't be his last. Take care of you and do not allow it. No man is worth that. You are worth so much more. Stay safe. So I'd be interested if you are listening to this live or when you download it, what your feelings and thoughts are in regards to that. And if you have any— and again, since this is my interaction with this young lady was via Facebook messaging, you know, you can only say and do so much. So there's certainly a lot more, and I shared with her that, you know, I am here if she needs to talk and wants to, you know, elaborate. But if you have any thoughts, if you have any advice, if you disagree or agree, then feel free to go out onto our Shading the Bitch Facebook page and share your thoughts of what would you do, or if you have been in a situation where you have been verbally, physically, or emotionally assaulted, abused, what was that situation and how did you handle it? And, and again, if you need advice and some support in regards to it, I would love to provide that to you. Keep in mind one thing, you know, women should not be abusing men, men should not be abusing women. We should be treating each other with kindness and respect. And a loving relationship— love does not involve anything that looks like demeaning, curt, disrespectful, cruel, unkind behavior, actions, or words. They just— love just doesn't involve that. And it goes both ways though. It goes, you know, both to yourself and to the person that you might be, you know, encountering. Now, not to say that it isn't easy to never say, you know, a negative, you know, thing to somebody or never, you know, never kind of overreact or react poorly to a situation. It comes back to what we always talk about here and what I have to remind even myself on a regular basis. We, you know, it all comes to self-awareness. Moment by moment, minute by minute, hour by hour, paying attention to what it is that we're— that's going on in between our ears, you know, and in our heart, and making sure that we're taking the breath that we need to actually think before we were to speak or act on something. Because even that 1 or 2, 3, 4, 5 seconds of just pausing will allow us to reset a situation and recognize, you know, how she should respond in this situation. For instance, what she should have responded as opposed to that slap is simply say, you know, I'm putting my foot down. You know, in order for us to have a relationship, you cannot disrespect me. You cannot offend me in such a way. I didn't do anything to deserve that or earn that, and even if I did, someone who loves me should not be treating me that way. It either needs to change or this relationship has to move on. And again, when you're in a heated emotional state of mind, it doesn't come easy, but that's where just this patience, this breath, this calm, you know, and self-awareness comes in. It's hard, but it definitely is something that can be worked on a daily basis. Okay? All right. Let's see. Because that was such a heavy conversation, we're going to take a break. We'll come back and we'll address a cash flow budgeting and planning question that one of our listeners sent me. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate-sized clients. Go to NGTaxSolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker.va@phvs.com. @gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone, this is Ask Bernadette. It is an opportunity for you to ask your questions. It could be about your career, it could be about your business if you have one, it could be a situation in your your personal life that you just need some guidance and some support with. And you can ask those questions, tell me your story, or even just emphasize a challenge you might be having on Facebook or Twitter, our Shedding the Bitch pages. You can send them through LinkedIn to me, directly to me through my Bernadette Boas profile. I do get them directly, rarely though, but I will get them to bernadetteboas@sheddingthebitch.com. And you can come right here onto the program as well at 1-818-572-2910 should you want to share with us and get some input live on the program. All right, and we are watching the chat room, which is also on the blogtalkradio.com page of our Shedding the Bitch radio channel. So you can always go to this particular episode and scroll down and you'll see a chat function there as well. And we keep an eye on that throughout the program to ensure that if you do have a question or a story that you want to share with us, we are there for you. All right. Our next question came as a business question. And then as I looked at it for myself and for others, especially at the beginning of the year, the first couple of months of any year, I get— I get my— I'm sorry, I just got a text from a client. I got distracted, my apologies. I get this question especially the first like 8 weeks of the year because I start working with my clients on resetting or redefining or even defining their business goals, let alone their personal life goals. And it always comes down to money. And in the business case, it comes down to cash flow, though rarely do they use that. They just, you know, will call it expenses. But cash flow, budgeting, and planning. Yet when I look at this and when I start discussing this with my clients, they'll also then discuss their personal budgeting and spend. So I thought it would be important for all of us, even at the beginning of the year, I won't say especially, I was about to, but I cut that off because we could be doing this and should be doing this all year round. But we could be also taking this advice into our personal lives as well. So the question was, what do I do and how do I get my budgeting, my expenses under control as I go into a new year? The first thing I would tell them is it's February. I was actually asked this question maybe the third week of January, and so the comment I had then was it's the third week of January. This question should already be addressed. And what I mean by that is this. We know a new year is coming, whether you're working for corporate or you're working in your own business, or if you're even doing your own planning. You know that the new year is coming. So you want to be working on your plans actually in November and December, and getting your plans in place, getting your, you know, your budgeting, your task list, whatever the case, your goals clearly defined, your measurements, all defined long before January 1 would come around. However, we all know that, and even this, you know, I was guilty of this, not guilty, that's a bad word. I fell victim to not knowing, not feeling complete and whole with what my goals should be this year. We're going to talk about that in a minute. But, you know, you know it's coming around. So when it comes to business, you know January 1 is coming around, so in November, December time period, you should be looking at what you did in 2018, and what you want to be doing and need to be doing in 2019 and coming up with your plans, your budgets, your goals. All right? However, if you have not, every day is a day to reset, so you want to do that. From a personal note, this always comes up because all of a sudden Christmas will come around, a big vacation will be coming around, or maybe even like they know that a big, tax occurrence is happening, and yet they did nothing toward budgeting and planning for it and even contributing toward it. So I always say, well, you do know that taxes is every March or April, whether it's business or personal. You know when your vacation is every year. You know Christmas is coming. So again, you know, once it ends one year, start planning and acting on it for the following year. So that would be my first just piece of advice is if you have to go to a calendar right now, wherever that might be, on your phone, on your computer, in a, you know, physical planner, then go and put a calendar appointment on a date that's appropriate for you to start creating your plan and then start acting on that plan, whether that's, you know, depositing something every Friday, every week leading up to that particular event happening. All right? So you have an opportunity to do that right now. What you want to do is you want to think about what— I don't want to get into the whole goal conversation because we talk about SMART goals a lot. So you can always go back to previous episodes and even blog posts in regards to goal setting. But in order to come up with a budget, you obviously need a plan. And to define plan, you need what goals you have for your, in this case, your business. What is that revenue projection that you have? Based on that revenue projection, what is it that you want to take home as income, and so that goes to the personal side of things, right? So you have revenue that will also allow you to really think through your expenses, what you're going to be able to invest in your business. It also— that number will also give you an idea of then what can you anticipate to be take-home income, and what is that goal that you have there? So once you have that plan and those goals, you can come up with that budget. What percentage, which is going to be profit eventually, what percentage of my revenue do I have to spend to put toward expenses? What percentage of it do I want to kind of put in an escrow and build up capital so I have, you know, I always have things and monies to invest? And what am I going to take out? As income for myself. So once you have your budget, you can then— and you should be on a weekly basis tracking to it. So if in February, for instance, you have a revenue projection of $10,000, of which, you know, $5,000— I'll make the math easy— $5,000 of it is going to go towards expenses of any kind, even income, so of any kind, then as of right now, which is, depending upon how you, you know, if you started on February 1st, or do you go with the fiscal year, which could be actually today, or I'm sorry, yesterday, February 4th, Monday, the first Monday of the month, then you could be tracking toward every day, or at least on the weekly basis, toward your spend and toward the revenue that you've projected to ensure that you're going to, meet both of those plans that you came up with by the time you're getting into your third or fourth week of the month. Because if you're not, then you need to make some adjustments. You need to maybe go out and find more clients or sell more products, more services, or you need to, you know, back off on what your expenses are and not spend what you anticipated in order for you to then to make your monthly plan. So you want to plan, you want to budget, create that budget, you want to track that budget, and then you want to ensure that you're making those adjustments and refining that plan if you're not meeting it. All right, now that's definitely from a career business perspective, looking at it more from budgeting. In your, in your business. So revenue, and actually revenue, spend, and then profit. Now if you take it into your personal life, and maybe it is that vacation, maybe it's that special event that you're going to be going to, maybe it is Christmas, whatever the case might be, you can be creating a similar type of budget. You can create not only for your household income, for instance, where you're going to spend money, where you're going to invest money, where you're you might tithe money, where you might just simply save money. And then you also want to be able to— once you have it, you want to be able to track it and make adjustments to it as you go forward. So no difference whether you're a stay-at-home or you're in the work environment. If you want to get a handle on your cash flow, your budgeting, your planning, then you actually have to do those things. You have to start with a plan. Turn that plan into a budget, and then take that budget and ensure that your cash flow, you know, what you have coming in is greater than what you have going out. That's cash flow. And, you know, when there is kind of bad situations happening, then you make adjustments. If there's great situations happening, you can make adjustments as well because you definitely want to put more into saving as capital for future investment and/or you want to be putting it away so you ensure that going forward, should there be a dip in business, you can cover those expenses, whether they're variable expenses or they're fixed. We won't get into all of that, but— so getting a hold of your cash flow, budgeting, and planning in that regard. Now, I want to add another note, because this can go in the workplace as well as at home. You also want to take a look at your overall plans and your structure of your business, meaning the roles and responsibilities in order to run your business. And you want to be able to ask yourself some valuable questions around whether or not— because what I'll often get is, "I don't have the monies to get the resources," meaning people, "to then be able to help me do the things that I need to be able to do." And I'll ask them to kind of clarify and lay that out for me because I want to understand clearly their thought process about how they came up with that conclusion. A lot of us tend to, especially in business, will tend to just automatically say, oh my gosh, I don't make enough money in order to hire somebody. Well, you know, in today's— age with, you know, tons of apps and different online services sites like a Fiverr or an Upwork, there are very creative ways for you to be able to farm out work. So backing up though, what I will first ask them to do is I will first ask them to kind of lay out for me What are all the things that they, you know, all the roles and responsibilities that they have for their business? And then based on that, first tell me what are their best skills in order, you know, where do their best skills fit in being able to tackle those roles and responsibilities? So where do they excel the best? So they might be best at sales or marketing, or they might be really great at doing the budgeting and the forecasting and the, and the administrative type of functions, more operational functions. They might be best at social media, and/or maybe they're really good at handling hiring people, but they need to get an idea as to where their skill set fits best as the owner, the CEO of their business, and/or the VP or manager at work, and where should they start considering either delegating it to somebody that they do work with or that works for them. Maybe they have to hire or contract work. Maybe they need to even forego it and delete— what I call delete it off of their to-do list. So, for instance, where that's concerned is if you only have a small, maybe online business, Manufacturing or fulfillment may be critical, so you absolutely need to have the money for that. But because you're going to outsource that, you don't necessarily need to hire somebody to hire somebody. So you don't need any HR functions, for instance. So don't worry about those things. Or don't worry about— maybe you need to do social media, but it's social media that you can do versus having to hire somebody to do it. So you just want to make sure that you as the manager, the leader, the CEO, are taking a realistic look at all the things that you would need to invest in, and from this budget cash flow that we talked about, and where is it that you need to do that investment. And, you know, so where is it that you can do it yourself, Where is it you can delegate to somebody maybe that you do work with or works for you? Maybe you can hire or contract someone. And again, there's a lot of different— if you even just Google how to find the best, how to find someone to do my social media, how to find somebody to do graphics, how to find somebody to prospect for me, how to find somebody to create a brochure, whatever the case might be, you'll find all kinds of creative, inexpensive to expensive ways that you can use a third party to do work for you that you might not be thinking about. Once you know all of that, then you can apply your budget against it. So if you're going to be doing something, that will save you from having to pay someone else to do it. So that money now can go over to the third spot where I have to hire or contract somebody. So just get control over where your priorities lie and then what is that going to cost you in order to get it done. Now, say you don't have the money today in order to get it done. Doesn't mean you just don't do it and/or you don't plan for it. Maybe you now need to spend more time prospecting and creating more revenue so you then can put that revenue toward that hire or that allocation of expense. But it has to be thoughtful. You have to kind of— you have to plan it. You have to prepare for it, and then you have to act on it. Now, in some ways, I also tell people to do this in their personal life as well. So, of course, I work with— majority of my business consulting work is with entrepreneurs, whereas my executive leadership work is with corporate. So my entrepreneurs are people who, a lot of them work out of their homes. Well, then they get caught up, you know, feeling that they have to do the, you know, the laundry or the landscaping, or they have to run their errands, or, you know, they have to do things that eat into a good amount of their, their what I call revenue-generating time, their actual where they're going to earn revenue or income. And so what I will have them do is to go through this exercise is they obviously, you know, will have a revenue number of which they want to hit. And I'm hoping that their revenue number also came from what income they want to be able to take home. So obviously, if you want an income of $100,000, for instance, your revenue projections of your own business can't be at $75,000. Obviously, that doesn't work. It also can't be at $100,000. Because you want to be— income means it's take-home. So obviously there's expenses and everything else and overhead that comes over and above that $100,000. So based on where all their expenses and their spend— their expenses and spend come in is how they're going to get down to their bottom number of what they're going to be able to afford from an income perspective. So assume they did all that work. Now you know you want to take home $100,000 you know, at home, um, from your revenue. So based on that, then what I tell my, my clients on a personal note is then determine what your hourly rate will be in order to earn that. What, you know, what is the hourly rate from that revenue of which you're going to take income from? Um, in order to, to do that, you just simply take— and I use a real simple, you know, you take $2,050 So there's 2,050 hours of any given work year that a 9-to-5 employee would work. Now, I think it's maybe even 2,096 or something like that. But from an exercise perspective, I don't get people hung up on that. I say use 2,000 hours or use 2,050 hours. So take 2,050 hours, divide it into that revenue projection that you have. So if your revenue projection— I should have made it easier on myself. So say your revenue projection, it was $100,000, then 2,000 hours into that $100,000 would be $2 an hour would be your hourly rate. All right, so someone can check my math and see if I'm totally bogus on that. But so you come up with an hourly rate of what it is you need to earn in your business in order then, you know, to get down to a to take the expenses out and get down to the income you want to be able to bring home. So if that's the case, then what I have my clients do every day in their business is before they go and do any task, before they go and do any task, they need to ask themselves, is this task worth $50 or less, because if not, then I could go and spend $25 on a landscaper, somebody to run my errands, or someone to do X, Y, or Z, because I can spend time in my business, in my revenue-generating hours of 9 to 5, and to earn the $50 I need from a client in order to eventually reach my, uh, revenue and income goal. Does that make sense? You're— so you're basically trying to really understand and get a handle on, from a cash flow budgeting and planning perspective, um, how much you're worth at work, how much you have to earn, and how much your business has to earn in an hourly basis. Because then you can allocate your time and even your team's time in making sure you're doing— working on the right thing. So, for instance, let me give you a for instance. I have a client that earns $300 an hour based on her coaching and consulting work. Yes, I also coach other coaches and consultants. So, she can earn between 9:00 and 5:00, she can earn $300 an hour based on the work that she does. Well, she was also trying to do things during her 9-to-5 day that was taking her away from either serving clients or prospecting new clients. So she was running errands, she was doing her own grocery shopping, which granted we all do, but doing her own grocery shopping. She was even spending some time, because she works weekends, doing her own landscaping. And I had to stop her and I said, "How much does your— would a landscaper cost for you to hire to do the landscaping at your house?" Now, I have no idea what her house is or looks like, and she actually couldn't answer that question. So I said, "Do me a favor, go and find out. Go and ask a couple of landscapers in your area, you know, to just give you an estimate on what it would cost them to do your landscaping on a weekly basis." So she came back and she said it was like, you know, $80 or something, $80 a visit to do her landscaping at her house. And I said, okay, so spending, uh, 3 or 4 hours every weekend on your own landscaping thinking you're saving yourself money, saving yourself that $80. However, you're also taking time out, even on Saturdays, you're taking time out of you being able to prospect especially prospect on the weekends, or serve your clients. So you're spending 4 hours, so that's $300 an hour that you would be earning doing your own— doing work. So that's $1,200. So you think you're saving money, you think you're saving that $80 by doing your own landscaping, when actually you're losing a boatload of money because you could be earning $1,200 by using those, that same 4 hours to be doing your prospecting or your marketing or even serving clients if she takes them on the weekends. So that's just what it is, why that exercise is so important and why that technique, I'll call it, is important for people to consider every day whether they're in their business or in their life. Because a lot of people even stay at home will think that because they're at home, they could be doing their own, like for instance, landscaping. And yet, they could also be doing other things that are as much more valuable than the $80 that somebody else would come and do probably in an hour or 2 hours. So, it's an exercise that can be definitely used for every spending decision that you would be making for yourself. Does that make sense? I'll lay that out, those exercises, those few exercises about planning, budgeting, tracking it, doing your assessments, and making your adjustments. I'll also write up about, you know, making decisions on whether you do it yourself, you delegate it, you delete it completely, or you hire and contract it out. And then this idea about your hourly rate, using your hourly rate whether you're a stay-at-home or you're at work, define an hourly rate because that will help you with any spending decisions that you might make at home or in the workplace. All right. Okay. We're going to take one last break, and when we come back, I'm going to be addressing a question all about whether or not setting goals is really important or should one just go with the flow. We'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to NGTaxSolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium size businesses. Email Deborah Parker at Deborah Parker va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everybody, it is Ask Bernadette. We're taking your business, career, or life questions, stories, or challenges, and we're trying to provide you some guidance, tips, and advice that will help you kind of move forward, get unstuck if you are, or just simply provide you an opportunity to breathe through whatever it is that you might be dealing with. So we've been talking on this particular program, we already addressed a relationship issue, whether or not it's appropriate for one to slap another and then the other to retaliate with verbal and some shoving, some verbal not comments, some verbal demeaning insults and a little bit of shoving. So you can go back if you're just joining us now, you can go back and listen to that. And then we talked about cash flow planning and budgeting, which is always a hot topic this time of year. So we addressed it both from a business perspective and a personal perspective. Now, this next segment, question— pardon me— this next question came out of, and I actually felt very humbled by the fact that over the last several weeks I've been sharing with you my own dilemma in regards to not having my RICH plan, which I even, you know, kind of preached to all of you, my goals and objectives, what I call my RICH plan, laid out for 2019 yet and the stress that it was providing me. I also then emphasized, and she's probably sick and tired of me saying this, but I also emphasized how Deborah, Deborah Parker of Parker House Virtual Services, the guru on the line that takes care of you and I throughout the program and in our social media throughout the week, she had provided me some, loving advice a couple of weeks ago in regards to the fact that, you know, I just need to take a deep breath. I need to not worry about a grand plan. I just need to do what I need to do at this very moment in time. And I had been expressing over the last few weeks how much that has helped me. Well, it definitely caught a bunch of your attentions because one, from just, you know, listening to the program, the percentage of the people that listen to it, to the, to the number of people that have reached out to me, uh, it kind of humbles me because I— it kind of obviously hit a nerve. It hit your nerve, uh, and so they were asking, so, you know, are you okay? You know, now what, we're 6 weeks in— no, 5 weeks into the year. You know, how have you been dealing with the fact that you don't have goals and you're just going with the flow? Because I've been challenged with that myself. And so I was very, very, very happy that I was able to kind of disclose my own challenge and possibly help some of you with that as well. And I want to just, if I could, if you would allow me, I want to give you a couple of things I had mentioned on the program over the last few weeks. A book that I found. It's a 365-day devotional called Jesus Calling. And please don't get, you know, all worked up if you're not religious or spiritual in any way, shape, or form. It's more about just the, the themes of these devotions each day. And it basically comes down to this: the, the theme, the common theme throughout this is take a deep breath. It is almost like what Deborah told me. Take a deep breath and just let life happen. That, you know, always having plans, always having goals, always overanalyzing, always being in your head does not necessarily mean you will be successful, or you will be happy, or satisfied, or at peace. And my challenge is just that I really have been wanting to just find peace and comfort in the fact that I'm either going to have a plan with defined goals that I act on like I usually do, or I'll be just as peaceful and comfortable with just going with the flow and doing what I need to do right now in this moment of time. So over the last, you know, several weeks, um, I've been reading these daily devotionals, and that's the common theme. So I just want to read you a few, a few things that might also just kind of provide you some breath as well. For February 4th, which was yesterday, Monday, which happens to be my— was my sister's birthday. Love you, Ann Marie, if you're listening. But the commentary, the devotion was focused around: Do not wear yourself out with analyzing and planning. Instead, let thankfulness and And trust be your guides through this day. The best way to get through this day is step by step with me. You are— that's just for me. That's just a note for me. Sorry. So, the best way to get through this day is step by step with me. Another one that I really loved was your focus gets snagged on a given problem. Circling round and round in attempts to gain mastery. Your energy, your energy is drained away from other matters through this negative focus. Worst of all, you lose sight of me. So feel free to take the 'of me' out of there if you want, but I just think that those, the, you know, that common theme Don't wear yourself out analyzing and planning. Your focus gets snagged on given problems. How many of us can relate to that? That we just get in our heads, we let it circle round and round until it just drives us absolutely nuts. And actually, very much so in these words, circling round and round in attempts to gain mastery. How many of us allow our fears, our insecurities, our doubts our negativities to control us, to gain mastery over us. Um, and your energy is just simply drained away from other matters through this negative focus. So many of you obviously had hit a nerve. Um, my own challenge and struggle, and I must say, uh, I am much closer. I won't say I'm there because, you know, spending 55 years of, of regular planning, goal setting, and acting, and not letting things just go, and not letting things just, you know, kind of float away. It's not going to happen overnight, but I, you know, through everything that I've been doing and thinking and reading and just kind of considering and sitting with has just provided great room for breath and great room for peace and calm. So, I would just, you know, suggest back to all of you that should you be dealing with a similar situation, lead with your heart. Allow yourself to just be. And many of us do need to do some inner work, so we do need to sit quietly and go inwardly and be honest and truthful and confront some demons. That we— that always kind of catch us off guard and/or just continue to hold us down. And listen to yourself, listen to that spirit, whatever that might be, and whoever you might call him or her. And just listen to yourself and trust in yourself that you'll be okay and that you'll figure it out and that it will be very clarifying for you. And then just let go. And just kind of go step by step. And I just hope for you just as much as I hope for me that that peace and that calm and that clarity comes. And I know it will. And it has day by day. And I just hope the same for you. So, I want to thank you. I will post that fourth question and provide some input to the fourth question that I, noted at the top of the hour on our Shedding the Bitch blog page. So go to sheddingthebitch.com for that. But for everybody here, thank you so much. I look forward to talking with you again next Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Thanks everybody. Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. See you next week.