Making More Money Won’t Build Wealth If You Don’t Know How to Keep It

My financial hygiene definitely came from my mom, and she, whether she's aware of this or not, or whether we had the conversation or not, she's the one who taught me that it's not about how much money you make, it's about how much money you can manage and keep and allow to flow through your company in a responsible manner. Welcome back to another episode of the Yes And Podcast. I am your host and serial entrepreneur, Bunny Young. I am here to help you build a business and a life that you absolutely love, make sure that you are building and designing a life and a business that works for you, not the other way around. That is the purpose of the Yes And Podcast. And I have some stuff that I cannot wait to share with you. This is a very special episode to me because I have been guesting on a lot of episodes lately and also in conversation with other female CEOs. And entrepreneurs around money, one of our favorite topics here at the Yes And Podcast. And I have a really different relationship with money than a lot of those women that I'm in masterminds with or that are in other CEO groups with me. And it's something that I work a lot with clients on, is this aversion to charging more or declaring your value or Can clients really afford that? Are they going to pay that much, etc.? And what I want to share with you, well, we have to kind of go back in the Bunny Young time machine in order for you to really understand that there is a lot of, there are a lot of things around wealth, money, earning money, managing money that I have learned and I have gotten better at. And I have made tons of mistakes and set giant Piles of cash on fire, and I probably will in the future as well. So by no means am I perfect around this, and I want you to know that one of the biggest contributors to my wealth dynamics and understanding is my mom. And so growing up, I had my mom kind of as this model that I wasn't even aware of of.

confidence around managing money, and she just took me on errands to the bank and deposited cash and checks from my dad and mom's company. However, my mom was not just the person running the office. She actually ran the office for a long period of time for my grandfather's company as well, and she just had this tremendous amount of confidence around finances and around money, around how much to charge, around value and boundaries with clients and with their customers.

And For example, like if a customer was unhappy, she had the confidence to be able to, and this is like super rare, but she had the confidence to be able to address it financially and in other ways and without a scarcity around like needing to hold onto that money in business because she understood that the lifetime value of a customer was more important than the $500 for that service or whatever it was. And I just watched her. This is something she's totally and completely not aware of, that we have never had this conversation. And I've done my best to appreciate her and compliment her. And the thing that was pointed out to me that caused me to actually sit down and record this podcast episode is that when you are living it, when it's your normal, it's often difficult to kind of see because it's like, Asking somebody, what was it like growing up next to the beach? Well, if you've never grown up anywhere else, then that's just your childhood. That's just your normal. And so having a woman in my life that controlled the finances, made all of the financial decisions, wrote all of the checks, yeah, she had my dad's support in all of that, but my dad went out and worked and fulfilled these service calls and the jobs that my mom would book, then they hired somebody else to help my dad out in the field. And then my mom hired somebody in the office. And so my mom was running the company. My mom was making these things happen. My mom was making the money happen. My dad was fulfilling it in order to make sure that there was a positive return for these people's investments. And then we'd get this These piles of checks and piles of cash, and we'd sit down with this deposit slip, and it had all these lines, and I always had to flip over the deposit slip because we had more checks than you could put on the front of the deposit slip.

And I'd write all these checks' numbers down and the amounts, and I would total it. And I'm aware that this was all cash that we were putting into the bank. And my mom had this really great reminder for me.

Because we'd have thousands of dollars that we're depositing in the bank, and it's like, oh yeah, we have thousands of dollars. We get to go spend thousands of dollars. And she's the first person that explained to me, when you make $100 or $1,000 or $1 million, X amount is going in a separate account for your taxes. And she would pay estimated taxes, and I would help her with that from a very young age. And then X amount is always going into a profit account, or kind of like what I call in my company is like an O-S-H-I-T account. My mom's for sure listening to this episode, hopefully. So, I'm going to do my best not to cuss and make her proud. If she listens to all the rest of the episodes, love you, Mom. Sorry. Not sorry. And thank you for always loving me for being me. And so that, one of the times that she decided to hire somebody else, we had this conversation about her, basically, she's the one who taught me about putting money into a separate kind of account or carving it out of the business to make sure that the business can afford hiring somebody else. There's a difference between thinking, yeah, the business can afford this, and when you're taking on the responsibility of somebody's paycheck and their family as well. It was really amazing to have this system where for 3 months you would put that employee's paycheck into another account or into a separate line item, And you're proving a couple things. You're proving to the company that the company can afford to take on this employee. You're proving that the system works as far as the cash flow and the profitability. And the last thing is that in the event that there is a downturn in income, you have 3 months of that employee's salary to be able to still contribute to them and support their family.

And so for us in consulting, we get huge contracts in September, October, November, and then typically we get income in January, February, March, which is great, and then there's speaking income that comes through throughout A Better Place Consulting's year.

But for a long time, there are these big pops twice a year, and if we didn't get those big pops, or if we just waited in anticipation of those big pops, and they— either way, you've still got payroll that you have to make. And so rather than going to our line of credit, we could, use that money that we had put into the payroll account that every single person that we've hired has this 3 months of backup and pay them from that, and then also make sure to replenish the accounts when the additional contracts come in. And so my financial hygiene definitely came from my mom, and she, whether she's aware of this or not, or whether we had the conversation or not, she's the one who taught me that it's not about how much money you make, it's about how much money you can manage and keep. And allow to flow through your company in a responsible manner. And if you're always focused on making the money, then there's like 80% of the equation that you've missed out on. Because if you make $1,000, but you're not profiting $1,000, you're actually, your expenses are at $1,002. You're paying $2 every single transaction for the honor and pleasure of being in business. And so measuring that profitability was something that we knew, I knew at a young age, and we did together in the company to be able to take all the deposits and then, okay, we've got to pay X amount to the manufacturer for this product, you know, COGS, cost of goods sold. And then we've got to pay the employees.

And so at the end of the day, out of that $1,000, what we actually take home is maybe $180 or whatever it is. I'm making these numbers up. I think my mom's profitability in her company was probably more than 18%. And that's being able to kind of look at that, the difference between gross profitability and net profitability.

And I know a lot of coaches who are like, yeah, we made $500,000 in that launch. And it's like, did you? Having a $500,000 lunch is something that we should probably have a whole nother episode on. And having a $500,000 launch is incredible. Kudos to you. What was your profitability? Because that's really what impresses me in business. And as a coach who primarily works virtually with my clients and has the Defy program to help lots of clients with basically a program that is over a quarter million dollars of my own coaching that I've put into a program and systemized with accountability. Like, that's the stuff that I'm thrilled about because it reduces our overhead because I'm able to help a lot of people by doing something once and putting it out there to the masses. And the thing that makes the most sense to me about that is the impact that I can have. And then secondly, I mean, I wanna make sure That the more people that go through it and the more streamlined I can be, and the more results that I can guarantee, I can actually take parts and pieces of that and put them at different price points to be able to help people at different price points, all with knowing that there's going to be an ROI on that, which is very different than my parents' company that had not just a brick and mortar as far as a warehouse and had products that they were selling, but they had mileage and cars and trucks and equipment and all of this kind of stuff that my mom had to factor all of that in. Now that I have a team, and now that I have the responsibility of not just one, but 5 different companies, that's stuff that is a little bit more complex. But starting out, it made more sense to me to have a business that had very little overhead to increase the profitability. And Hmm.

I—

it's funny to me when I have conversations. I will share with you the first time that I was fully aware that I was a little different is when I graduated school and got my license as a therapist. And I guess it was even before that. I think on set doing stunt work, I— the inefficiency Of some of the planning of the construction of our set, of the training, of our rehearsals and the timing. Like, that inefficiency bothered me. And I was like, look, if you're having everybody here and you're paying us all for the day and you're only using 2 of us, like, that's costing you money. And it's also really annoying for the 16 other people that are just sitting here watching you do it.

And I gave that feedback to our manager. And it's like, oh, okay, well, most of the people in our stunt company from management were not stunt professionals, or most of the people in management from our stunt company were in leadership positions as stunt professionals, but they were not business professionals. I was not aware at that time that I was a business professional or that I had this business knowledge.

And yet I had grown up for 20 years watching this woman who literally Did all of the financial stuff, but also spent so many years managing the logistics for a several-million-dollar trucking company that, you know, at the height of everything, has clients like Disney and Procter& Gamble and 3M and all of this kind of stuff, and managing the logistics for not just the employees and the trucks and the maintenance and all this in Southern California, which is really difficult. Because driving in Southern California in and of itself is pretty difficult. And so by the time I got into these situations, I'm kind of like hearing my mom's words come out of my mouth. I'm like, oh my gosh. It's that whole thing of, I spent the last 9 years as a teenager just being frustrated with my mom and everything that she was doing, and now I'm sounding like her. So then I graduated with my master's degree, and I went to work As a therapist. And I went to work in social services actually before I graduated, and there was so much inefficiency there, and from note-taking and from scheduling clients and follow-ups and all of this. And I'm like, can't we just make an Excel sheet and kind of plug this in? Because we're wasting all this money and driving, and why can't we do virtual?

And my supervisors are looking at me like I have a third eye.

And it's like—

I'm here in this business, in social services, optimizing systems because business is in my blood. And so I got really frustrated with it without the realization of what I'm sharing with you right now of why I was frustrated. I was just feeling burned out, and I started my own therapy practice, and I was able to schedule clients. This is after having my own swimming company and lifeguarding company. I was able to schedule my own clients, and I was able to get booked out with half the amount of clients and make more, 3 times more than any else in my class that had graduated with me.

And so they started calling me and being like, what are you doing? And I'm like, well, this is Business 101. I'm sharing with them some of my scheduling tips and billing tips. And I only, I chose to only do self-pay because the, when I calculated the amount of time that I would spend on insurance versus how many people that I would have to see to make it worth it to accept that rate on insurance, it was just like, I could help 40% less people because I was spending that 40% of time that I would be with a client on administration and insurance. And so I explained all of this, and I showed them my Excel sheets at that time and documents and how I was automating systems in the business and how I was structuring my notes so that every single session was templated. And I still do this with my coaching clients where every single session is templated and we're following A pattern and a path. And they were like, can you teach me how to do it? And I'm like, I'm a therapist. Why am I going to teach you how to run a business? And that, that's really probably the biggest aha moment that I can tell you that I had as far as, oh man, like I know business. I know what I'm doing. And I remember my mom and our accountant had a conversation with me because my mom used to say, you know, the only thing I told her I never wanted to do was own my business. And be an entrepreneur. And I had a lot of resentment built up around— I was an only child, I wanted more attention, and even though my mom was always there, I felt like, because it was the only experience that I had, if my mom had a real job, then she could actually take time off away from work.

And what I realize now is that my mom took a ton of time away from work, and I just didn't have anything to compare it to.

And so, Like, being able to have this conversation and share this with you and say like, yeah, the only thing that I never wanted to be growing up was an entrepreneur. And now, not only am I an entrepreneur of multiple companies and an owner of multiple companies and a serial entrepreneur, and I'm coaching other entrepreneurs on the very thing that frustrated me as a child, which is how to have a successful business And be present for your family and not be super stressed and overwhelmed and burned out about consistent clients and consistent money and have a business that actually works for you. And so that really came foundationally from understanding what my mom taught me around money, and you can apply that to managing your time, and you can apply that to managing your resources, you can apply that to managing your energy. In business. And so when you are growing your business, if you have good financial hygiene and good financial discipline and good systems, it's almost impossible to fail. When you are spreading yourself so thin and trying everybody's different systems and all of that kind of stuff, that's where I see a lot of business owners get in trouble. And that's why I think that a lot— this episode, I think, would save a lot of businesses. And small businesses from going out of business if they understood more about money. And I think it will give you, if you put these practices into place, a lot more freedom of your time, of your energy, of your money. And because I know that not every single person had the benefit of growing up with my mom as their mom and growing up with being a third-generation entrepreneur and in business, I wanted to record this episode and I wanted to share it with you. So that you know that this is your permission. It's never too late to start, and that there are systems and structure around the finances of making money that whether you own your own company or not, which most of you listening to this do own your own company, that you can start today. And yeah, like, I even make separate bank accounts for these different pillars of our business, and something that we go through in DEFY to make it even easier. But I just want you to know, if you start to think around less about, I have to make this much, and start to treat everything that you're making with that respect, then you have more confidence, and you know what you can afford, and you know what the metrics are to grow to when you're scaling your business, when to hire, and you can make confident investments at that point. And the second reason that I wanted to record this episode was just to thank my mom. Is I do not do it enough for all of the lessons and for all of the times when she had no idea. Mom, you had no idea I was watching. And all of the kicking and screaming while I was filing and filling out the deposit slips and watching you schedule and using that carbon paper that just drove me nuts. And I know it drove you nuts because I would draw all over your desk and there would be carbon paper and then I wouldn't realize it, and so there'd just be all of my drawings all over everything that was on your desk. You're welcome for all of that artwork, and look what all of that has gotten us to now. And I don't think that I would be half, a quarter, an eighth of the business owner that I am now if I had not spent all of that time with you. in the office, not just learning your systems or your practices or your business acumen, but also seeing your discipline and seeing the, the fact that women can have so much power over business and so much of a positive impact on business and normalizing women being successful in business, super successful in business. And normalizing women giving men feedback around business and being respected by men. So I thank my dad for that and all of the respect that he showed my mom all of those years, and my grandfather, all of the respect that he showed my mom and her knowledge in business all of those years, and my mom for continually modeling this, not just telling me this because it wasn't a whole lot of spoken words, Because I don't think that, Mom, you understood how exceptional you are at business, and I hope that whatever you think I can accomplish in business, you see that that came mostly from the lessons that you raised me with. So, thanks, Mom. And to everybody listening, I hope you get a chance to thank my mom too, and also be able to take this Adopt my mom for the 21 minutes that this episode is going to be, and take those lessons and use them for your advantage to make this world a better place, to have your yes and lifestyle. And I would love to have you review this episode, write a review. It takes a couple seconds. Leave a 5-star review. That takes milliseconds.

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