Mastering Money Matters: Strategies for Financial Success with Staci Millard

When we're working with numbers, it's not really about the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It's about solving for something. And so when we start looking at profit in our business, what we want to actually do is reverse engineer our problem. We know where we're wanting to go and we're trying to work everything backwards to what are these action items that I need to do in my business that are going to lead to the results?

Welcome to Fast Foundations office hours. Thanks for coming. If you didn't know and if you're listening to this, if you're watching the recording, listening to us, this is Fast Foundations. If you don't know what Fast Foundations is, go to fastfoundations.com and if you want to mastermind with us live, you have 7 days left to sign up for our next event. And you guessed it, fastfoundations.com next event is where you find out about that. And if you want to find out about this and come to Fast Free Masterminding and learning every single week, every single Wednesday, it's hump day. FastFations.com Office Hours is how you find out how to get in this room, this virtual room, totally free. Just click on that link right there. We got an awesome guest speaker coming at you today, just like we do every single week. Jim, what I miss?

I think you got it. Excited to kick it off. Stacy, you ready? I'm ready to read your bio. Awesome. So everybody, I'm really excited to introduce not only one of our Fast Foundations alumna, but a good friend of the Fast Foundations community. And Stacy Millard is a mom of two and a multi passionate entrepreneur. She grew up and sold her first seven figure business before she was 35, all while raising her daughters. And she prides herself not only on her own experience growing a business, but also on the thousands of small businesses that she's helped over the past 15 years. And she believes in three non negotiables for every successful business. Making money, heart led impact on those we serve and having a great life because of our businesses and not being in spite of it. Stacey works as a fractional CFO and business mentor for entrepreneurs, helping them scale and have the success that she knows that we can all achieve. And Stacy, we're so grateful to have you today. And the Zoom stage is yours. Take it away.

Amazing. I'm so excited to be here. First of all, I have to say that literally one year ago today's my birthday. One year ago today we jumped on a Zoom call. I was one year out from having sold my business. I had purchased another business on that day. It was such a big day. And here it is one year later, my one year anniversary with fast foundations and I'm presenting with you guys and it's just what a full circle moment. I am so grateful for everything that you guys gave me in the last year. It has just been, there are no words for the community that I found and how much things really changed for me in a year. Despite having been a really successful entrepreneur, Community is everything. And I had lost that when I sold my practice and I found that with you guys. So super grateful to be back in the community. So many familiar faces that I just are a part of my daily life now. Alex's dancing videos on Instagram are like my favorite things. So excited to be diving in though, about money. And you can see here, guys, slides are a little stuffy. I tried to throw in some lightning bolts, especially because we're talking about cash and numbers and that can be intimidating to people. But we're going to make this conversation really fun. And at the very start, I just want to. When I look at this very first slide saying, money, I don't know about you guys, but for me, even after all these years of working with cash, I get this little bit of a sense of like, oh, what about the imposter syndrome? Do I deserve it? How do I handle it? And that's what I want to take some of the stigma away from, from about earning money in our businesses. And the very first thing I think is that when we start thinking about money and earning money, we get down to the measuring. How do we measure what we have? How do we know what's coming in, what's going out, what's left over if we're healthy? And so the very first thing that I would love to chat about is this narrative of I'm not good with numbers. Because we'd all love to have more money in our lives, whether we want to admit that out loud or not. Some of us are so heart led, we want to be like, we're just here for the impact. But money is possibility. Money allows us to do so many things and so we do have to bring it back to how we exchange energy with money. And so people start saying to me, I'm not good with numbers. And they hope that the money just arrives. And this is the very first thing that we need to address. I challenge every single person, whether you're on this call or you're listening to a replay, or you're listening to the podcast to remove the narrative of I'm not good with numbers from your vocabulary. The problem with this is it really becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Every time you speak this into existence, it's just going to repeat itself. Even if you were to hire the most knowledgeable, impactful person to talk numbers to you, when you keep saying I'm not good with numbers, you're almost preventing yourself from understanding what they're trying to say to you. I really want us to move past that I'm not good with this and really understand we actually don't need to be great at every area of our business. I would challenge you that there are some areas that are non negotiable, like leadership, but just every single person is responsible for health. We all have one body. We all have one body to live with life and we are responsible for it. We are not all doctors, we are not all fitness professionals. We use people who know what they're talking about to bring more education and more advice to our lives. The same thing with the financial health of your business. You don't have to be a mathematician, you don't have to be an accountant, and you don't really actually have to be good with numbers. You just have to be open to understanding them. So if you are somebody who said, I'm not good with numbers, I don't know how to use them, let's get rid of that and move past it so we can just open ourselves up to what we are going to learn. Okay. And next thing I want to talk to you about is it's actually always about more than the numbers. Even with a background as a CFO and as an accountant. And to me, it's not actually about the numbers, it's about all of the things that we're doing and being in our business that result in those numbers that we can look at. The way I look at numbers is there's like the tangible thing that we can see that we can measure, that we know that we're on the right track. So Zach's on the call, Zach's a great member, he's in the fitness industry. Zach, every time you're working with a client, you're measuring their success based on their physical body. We can see, do you have energy? Are you eating? That means are you eating right? Are you sleeping right? Is your mental health in the right place? But we can all measure that from what that physical body looks like. That's the numbers in our business is, are all the inputs working together? Are you spending your time in the Right place? Are you spending the money in the right place? And then if that all works out, then we have profit left at the end of the day. So that is what we're looking for as an end result. But it's always about way more more than that. So you don't have to be good at the numbers because it's actually about all the things that you're going to do that lead to the right results. One of the things that I really love when we're talking about how we get to profit in our business is how I look at it. I you guys may be in a completely different place, but I love puzzles. I like figuring things out. Whether it was a story in a book teaching how this person did this and this person did this and what's the last person? I don't know if you guys did those puzzles in high school where it's like you use log project to figure it out, or maybe it was in algebra. But the idea is, is that when we're working with numbers, it's not really about the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It's about solving for something. And so when we start looking at profit in our business, what we want to actually do is reverse engineer our problem. We know where we're wanting to go and we're trying to work everything backwards to what are these action items that I need to do in my business that are going to lead to the results? I think that's one piece that's missing because a lot of people go to the accountant and you're getting a picture that's like really after the fact. Like, here's the numbers that ended up with. But we're not understanding that. How do we actually get there? And that's that reverse engineering process where you might be getting a financial statement or some bookkeeping and there's all these numbers on the page. What you actually want to do with them, if you can have a perspective changes, it's not did something end here? It is, how can I reverse engineer these to get closer to the goal that I want? The forward movement and progression is actually what we're looking for. The first step in doing that to actually getting to profit is creating a vivid vision. A lot of the time people think like, we're going to go to our accountant and we're going to say, okay, I want to hit a million dollars this year. How is that going to be done? And I actually have seen accountants early in my career that would just throw some numbers on paper. And I think this is where that Disconnect comes from because we may be reverse engineering, but whose plan is it that we're doing that with? Right. If we're outsourcing all of that success to the accountant and we're not giving them that clear picture of what we're looking for, they're not actually helping us get there. So the very first step in creating profit is having the ultimate clear vision. And this is a process. It's like painting a picture, but you keep adding different layers of paint until you really come up with something that you're, that is clear, that you're looking for, that fits together, that feels right. So if you haven't already, I would love, love, love to suggest you actually read the book. It's called Vivid, Vivid Vision and it's by Cameron Herald and it talks about creating the most clarity. Like you could almost create a movie from your vision of what your business is going to look like. And the more details that we can add in and the more clarity, the better. Because when we start applying numbers to it, we're going to have to change that. Like I said, it' you have to add pieces and maybe take away some pieces. But without the vivid vision, we're really just throwing a bunch of numbers on a spreadsheet and that's not good for anybody. We really want to have this clear picture of, okay, so what does asking yourself questions like, what does my day look like? How much am I working? When you ask that question, it's the analogy like where you pull the string and all of a sudden more appears. That is what happens when you go through this process where you're like, I only want to work eight hours a day, but I want to also impact 100,000 people. And you're like, oh, maybe I am not going to be able to do everything in my business, then maybe I need to hire somebody. And all these layers kind of start adding together. So when we go to create a financial plan for your business and understand how are we going to have profit, how are you going to make this business sustainable and long lasting and how is it going to pay you and all of the people within the business, we have that level of clarity. So first step is creating that vision of this is what I want the business to look like. And then you start applying numbers and saying, here is what I'm expecting to happen, then this is how much I think it's going to cost me. And the magic really happens when you start putting those numbers to things and you say, okay, so this given month, what would it look like in my business, if I was at that goal, here's how much money I would be making, here's where I'd be spending it because of the people. You're assigning dollar values to all of those pictures that you had created. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, this doesn't work out. And then that's the opportunity to go back and ask yourself, how would I need to change that in order to have what I want now, how all these pieces fit together, this is how I break down profit. Okay, so there's really three things in business that you're thinking of. One is revenue. That's the money coming in. Two is your direct costs, the money going out. And then three is fixed costs. So the way that fixed costs and direct costs are broken down to get more technical is those fixed costs are those things that happen every single month no matter what you do. They're things like insurance and your cell phone. It doesn't matter if you're working or not working, you're still paying those. The other piece behind that is direct costs. So you might have a coaching program, and maybe you have a coach who is underneath you to help you facilitate that person direct cost to fulfilling the program. Or maybe you're renting gym space to offer services directly to your clients. I want you to think of the profit in those three ways. So you're taking that vivid vision that you created and you're saying, how am I going to run this really awesome business that makes money? I can still have an impact. The vision is always led around how do I serve my client, how do I serve myself, but also how do I make money doing it? And as we play with these puzzle pieces, as we change pieces in and out, we come up. That really works. The reason that all three of these components are so important is because there are so many ways to run a business. You can have two identical businesses, and what I will say is literally their numbers will actually look completely different. For example, we have may have a business in an industry that one is brick and mortar. They have a storefront, they value it. Another one might be home based. I was talking to somebody yesterday who has a brick and mortar business. They love the feeling of their clients coming into their office. They love the feeling of their staff coming into the office. That's really important to them. That was a part of their vision. And they're in an industry where a lot of people actually work remotely. So every single business does has their own twist to it. But when you have Your vision for your business and then you're putting the math to it. The magic is made because you're getting very intentional about how does my model become profitable. Another great example of this is like, we have members in this group who are all in marketing. Some people, they love offering this model where they're doing a high volume. We have a ton of clients, we have subcontractors to fill this all, and it's really awesome. And others, it's, no, I only work with a few clients, but it's a really high ticket price point. And every single one of those is needed in the market. There's a need, obviously, because we have businesses doing it, but there's a need for every one of it. An interesting concept that I heard yesterday from a therapist was talking about how I want to add this in because I think it's important. This therapist was talking about how you know when to use like a friend's ear to talk through a problem versus hiring a therapist and with business when we're in these groups. What I also love to offer to you is deciphering when you're going to use a lending ear of another business owner and having that sense of community, that feeling of, hey, friend, Christina and I were together last week. Christina, what do you think of this? But also deciphering sometimes when you need the help of a professional who's maybe able to apply a certain concept across business. And the reason that I bring this up is because sometimes if you're not talking to somebody who, you know, has the experience applying that concept against throughout all these different industries or different business models, you might get an answer that from somebody who's not at your stage of business, maybe they don't understand your intricacies in your industry and all these different things, you know, really asking if you're trying to get advice and you're like, hey, friend, like, I'm not having great results asking them, are you in this industry? Do you have advice in this stage, Maybe you're asking more mental questions of, oh, how did you overcome scaling versus the tactical questions. That is one of the things that I think I was. I loved the most about fast foundations and like the crew is that everybody really gave great advice. And I think we really were intentional when we're like, oh, I don't really know about this, or here's my experience, but you should go talk to this person. So I say that when because we all deal with different business owners and different stages. And it's sometimes the advice that we get may or May not apply to us. And we really need to think about that based on how we're going to run our business, based on the different industries that we're in, based on all of the different intricacies. I really want you to think about how to money is involved in your specific vision. Okay, so this is what I want to break down for you in 20 minutes. I cannot apply to you, but the intricacies for you and your specific business, and here's how you would do it because we're all so unique. But I really want you to think of these three pieces and how they apply to your vision. And I want you to think of it as art, not as I'm going to set one specific vision. And then it's just going to be there. I want you to think, okay, with these changes because we all know we reiterate things in business, right? We try things and we fail, and then we want to try things again. That is the magic of doing business. So if you're always thinking of these three things when you're like, you know what, this is what I'm going to try next. And you're thinking of, how do I, how is this going to change my direct costs? And if that changes this, then how is this going to change and always going towards, is this going to be profitable? That is the key to using numbers in your business. If I taught you nothing else, it is being able to apply those ideas and then look at how it affects your profit. And then when it doesn't go back to one of these three numbers, do I have to then increase revenue? Do I have to reduce some costs? Do I have to renegotiate with a manufacturer? And coming back to those three basic numbers. This is also why chasing revenue, for example, doesn't always work because it has ripple effects. Do you have the inventory? If you add more revenue, do you have people to fulfill those services? So always thinking about the three pieces and how every change that we make is going to affect us. One of the other things I really love to stress is that the numbers, the most important part and the success you'll find from using numbers in your business is about planning ahead. Is about the intention that you bring to business. Not doing things like. Because just the sake of doing it, not doing things by chance. One of the areas I would say that I see this the absolute most is the with paying ourselves, we always think of it as an after effect. I don't know why we think if we run a successful business, then we'll be able to afford to pay ourselves a lot. But when you don't plan ahead, when you're not like, hey, this is what I want, then we actually haven't set the roadmap to get there. So then we're never ending up at that spot. We all of a sudden, like I said, like, we've got these three pieces. So if we're like, oh, we're going to have a bigger business than we're going to pay ourselves, all of a sudden we add more revenue because we think that's the solution. But then another cost comes up with it, or another opportunity to invest. And it's always like this continuous thing where we're always chasing the carrot, but we never end up there. So it cannot stress enough to use numbers to plan ahead for what you want. One of the most important ways of doing that is cash flow planning. And I cannot stress this enough. In terms of. Your thinking becomes so different when you are looking at the amount of cash you're expecting to spend and expecting to come in, because you start becoming really clear. For example, when you're hiring, if you're deciding that hiring is your next right solution, you're going back to that vision. You're like, yep, that next step requires me to have another person. But you're thinking about the cash that's going out. You become a lot more clear of like, how that person starts in your business. I told you it was never just about the numbers. Right? So, yes, we want profit. We're going to hire somebody to do that. We're going to hire them out to our clients. We're going to make money off of it. But the clarity comes in, oh, I have to spend this salary every single month. I need to bring in enough money to do that. So you start getting clear on how are you bringing in clients? Are you bringing in the right number? How efficient is this person? What of feedback do I need to provide them week one, week two, week three? About their. The work that they're doing, are they doing it in the amount of time I, I have budgeted for? Based on that idea of I want to make profit off of this, Maybe you have a whole month that you're like, you know what? In my cash flow, I know I'm just going to spend your wage for the entire month. You can follow me around, you can figure out my best practices, but maybe not. And when you're looking at the finances, you become a lot more intentional about how you work with people. Casual planning is critical. You're thinking about the money that's going out and the money that's going to come in and how that affects the profit that you're ultimately looking for in business. One amazing thing that I would also like to point out here is that there's this example of blackjack players. So anybody who knew how to, like, count cards, One of the things that they do when they are playing the tables in Vegas is they never bet at all. So even though they're incredible at count, at counting cards, and they really believe, like, the next card, this is what they should bet. One of the things is they never bet everything because having saved a little bit for them allows them to make that next. Like, if for some reason they made an error, it allows them to make that next move to start building their cash up again so they can make those bigger bets. They never leave themselves with nothing so they don't end up out of the game. It's so important because when we cash flow plan in business, a lot of times we're going all in on, like, a return on investment. Like, I'm going to go all in on this next thing, and we're not leaving ourselves room for that, like, next leap, that next thing that we need to do. If this doesn't work out and we never want to end up having to leave the game of business, we want to keep playing. So think of that when you're investing. The last thing I will leave you with is time is actually your greatest resource. Of course money is. But I can tell you, every single one of you who's listening has a value. You can do something to earn more money. You need time in order to do it. So I need you to be really intentional about what your time in your business. And I want you to start thinking about how absolutely nothing that you do is free. Because we have this thinking that if I'm doing it myself, it's free. And it's absolutely not. You are costing yourself in other ways. So if I could leave you with one, like, final thought. Is anything you're doing in your business, I really. The most profitable businesses are very intentional about how they spend their time. So ask yourself, if I was to pay somebody, I was to have to pay somebody to do this, Would I be paying them? Is it something I would be investing in? And start using that to guide yourself in your own actions. There's so many times where I realize I do things and I commit my biggest resource of time to things that aren't really needle movers. And asking myself that question has helped me really refine and it's helped so many of my clients. Ask yourself, would I pay someone else to do this? Understanding your time is not free to your business. You want to pay yourself eventually. Okay. I hope I've given you some mindset changes on how money affects your business, how you can have these three pieces that if you bring it all back to a vision and how it affects the three pieces of profit, you can really have that clarity. You can set the lever that I want to make this much money in business, and you can easily get there because you've planned and you've been intentional about it. Please do not leave the success of your business to chance. Use numbers to plan ahead and get to where you want to go faster.

Yes.

Love it, Stacy. Thank you so much. Everybody. Please give a little round of applause here. Throw a birthday emoji. Throw a little celebratory in there for her. Happy birthday and Happy Fast Foundations anniversary. That's so cool. I remember we were talking about it. We were planning it out. It was the perfect way to celebrate. And I'm just. I'm so glad we met at the events. You came to our Cabo retreat. You just, you give and you serve so much. And you mentioned community, and I love the community aspect of it. You're so emblematic of that. If you just ran an event with Christina and Steve. And we just love seeing how it all comes together. You guys met in Fast Foundations, same as RT and I, and we're running our next event in a few weeks. We've got a few Mastermind members here. We always talk about money. We always talk about numbers. We have to. Right? It's so important, and I'm just really glad that you're bringing it up and you're presenting it in this way to really have it make so much sense. And we're bringing in Chris harder for this next event as well. He's one of the best at giving us the slap and telling us how we should be really thinking about it and getting us to dream big as well. So appreciate you. Thank you for being here. And this is how we want to celebrate you is with what we call rapid fire takeaways. This is an opportunity to pour back into Stacy, share one thing that either you learned or reframed or something that just resonated. Zach, you're first up for me. I see you.

Cool.

I'll jump in. Yeah. My name is Zach Thagerberg. I am super, super grateful to have met Stacy last year in the round of Fast Foundations that we were in together. I've learned so much from Stacy in the last year and yet I jump on a zoom call today and she manages to still blow my mind with stuff. So I think my big takeaway from today, I always appreciate when teachers or coaches can put things in perspective that connect with you. And Stacy even made an example of me today and it really clicked for me when Stacy was referencing accountants that just lay out numbers and don't talk about the action steps or how you're going to make those numbers come to reality. That's like me sitting there with a client and saying here's how much weight you're going to lose every week and this is where you'll be in three months and then not giving them any of the action plans to actually accomplish that. So yeah, I, I just really appreciated that example because it did. It was a big hit home reminder of how intentional I have to be with the numbers and controlling them, having a say in them if I want business to be where I want business to be. Thank you, Stacy.

I love it.

Thank you, Zach. Sarah, I see you next.

Sarah Hubr. I'm in the the current session or the current event offering and super excited to have found this community. For me it really goes back to the very beginning and I know I've shared that in the chat, but it's that reminder of swapping how we think about it from the not able to do something to that it's a not yet. And even when I'm starting to try to price my course offerings and my VIP day or whatever it is I'm offering, it's not about where I'm currently at or that value. It's. It's actually adding that dollar amount to my experience and what are they really getting as that value add to it where it's more than just an end result. That's our big goal for it. So just that reminder of the money does. It does matter in there and it has to be a factor and finding that right value. Thank you.

That's so great. Thank you, Sarah. Alex, next up, my man.

Oh, Stacy, you're just fabulous. I love most how you bring your experience.

You become.

Not everybody can turn their experience into something that can be taught and you do that and you share it. There's these incredibly high level concepts. You make them so simple and that's what I saw today. It's what I consistently see from you and it's where you are going to keep meeting people where they're at that and geez. Helping small businesses thrive.

Very well said.

And Christina I'm Christina.

For those of you who I don't know.

One of the things that I loved and that really resonated was when you were talking about how, like, people will say, I'm not a numbers person. Because even today when we were, like, trying to price out our second event, I was like, I can't do the math on this. I'm not a numbers person. I need you to do this. And instead of just being like, I can go get a calculator and challenge myself and then and double check my numbers. So I think there's like leaning into your strength, but then also being able to develop that sometimes too. Good reminder.

Love it. RT bring us home.

I just. First of all, Stacey, thank you for being here. Thank you for doing this for us and with us. And happy birthday. Appreciate you spending that with us now. Two times. That's just fantastic. I just love and appreciate the subtle and probably continuous reminder that you probably feel like a broken record when you say that time is your friend and it's not all about money. A small amount of money over a long period of time can turn into a very large amount of money. And I've heard a lot of people talking about that recently and just reminding ourselves that time is your friend in general. But also I think we talked about on the last call might have been two weeks ago, like the 10 years in the making, just like how we see people like Hormozi up here who had just got his book right. It's been 10 years he's been hustling. And you don't make millions and hundreds of millions of dollars tomorrow. You have to start somewhere. Thank you for that. That reminder and continuous reminder, it's always helpful.

Stacy, how can everybody that's here, who most of us know you, but for everybody who's here and everybody who's gonna be listening on the podcast, how can they connect with you? How can they best stay connected with you? And this is the first I heard about it, but there's another event coming up in your future too.

Christina's just dropping the deets, eh? Yes. So, Stacy Millard on Instagram, S T A C I and Small Business School podcast, if you want to hear more about money or have those concepts broken down 20 minutes, it's like, that's tight to teach something that is going to change your life. So make sure that you're just investing your time understanding money in, like, those tidbits. And there's lots of resources to do that.

Hey, this is Jim Carter. Thank you for joining the Fast Foundations Podcast. We're excited to try this new format. We're grateful you were here to be part of it with us. If you missed the live event, you can join us every Wednesday. Sign up@fastfoundations.com office hours and we'll see.