210 | YOU are a CEO! (Time to talk MONEY.)

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Written By Melissa Klug

Whether you are a solopreneur or you have a team—YOU are a CEO! Your pro organizing business needs you to talk about money—and that’s what we’re doing today.

Mastering Business Finances: Tips, Mindset Shifts, and Empowerment for Professional Organizers

I am talking to Danielle Hayden, founder of Kickstart Accounting Inc., to demystify the world of business finances.

From actionable strategies in bookkeeping and tax planning to understanding the different financial roles like CPAs and CFOs, we are breaking  down essential financial concepts and highlight the critical importance of knowing your numbers.

The discussion also delves into mindset shifts necessary for business success, especially for women entrepreneurs. Knowing your numbers actually means FREEDOM--and financial guidance can save and grow your business.

00:42 Tax Day and Financial Conversations 
04:00 Introducing Danielle Hayden and Her Journey
08:25 Understanding Bookkeeping and Accounting
18:57 The Importance of Knowing Your Numbers
22:46 Budgeting and Financial Planning for Small Businesses
26:46 Support for Business Owners with Financial Challenges
28:07 Creating a Safe Space for Financial Conversations
29:34 Taking Responsibility as a Business Owner
30:28 The Importance of Nonjudgmental Financial Support
32:58 Understanding the Infinite Game of Business
35:33 The Role of Gender in Business Ownership
39:57 Practical Tips for Business Finances
41:20 Overcoming Financial Disorganization
45:22 The Importance of Separating Business and Personal Finances
46:50 Navigating State-Specific Financial Regulations
48:21 Breaking the Taboo: Talking About Money
52:07 How to Get Financial Help and Support
53:18 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

You can listen here, read the full transcript below, or find us on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you love to listen to podcasts!

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Hey Pro Organizers, my name is Melissa Klug and you are listening to the Pro Organizer Studio Podcast. Professional organizing changed my entire life. After 20 years of working at huge companies, I started working for myself. I opened a professional organizing business, grew it to six figures, and I never looked back.

Now I get to spend all day, every day, teaching organizers around the world. How to find clients, how to market and sell yourselves, how to turn this business into what you want it to be. Whether you have been in business for 15 minutes or 15 years, you have a home at Pro Organizer Studio. I'm excited that you're here.

Let's get started.

Melissa Klug: Hey Pro Organizers, it's Melissa and today it is October 15th when I am recording this. And if you filed an extension on your taxes in the United States, as I hypothetically did, it is tax day. Perfect day to put this out. I am having a conversation with Danielle Hayden of Kickstart Accounting about something that a lot of business owners including myself, do not love dealing with, talking about, thinking about, and that is taxes and bookkeeping and knowing your numbers and all of the things.

And I wanted to have her on because she herself is and was a small business owner, and she only helps other small business owners and specifically women. I am just really, really urging people to know their numbers because that's the only way any of us can have a viable, long term business.

And listen, just want to say, a lot of the times when we have something on this podcast, it is because, it's not because I am perfect at it, it's because I have things in my business that I need to improve as well. And one of the things that I just really, frankly, do not enjoy doing is all of the kind of back end financials of my business.

Yet, I do them. because it's important and I don't ever enjoy it but what I'm trying to do after talking to Danielle is she had such really good reframing of some of the things that typically bother me and so ever since she and I had this conversation I'm like oh I can't wait to get this out to everybody.

Cannot wait for you to listen to her and I really hope you take everything to heart. 

Before we get started trending with the financial conversation is one of the things I talk about on this podcast a lot, which is I always encourage organizers to raise their prices.

I want you to look around. I want you to see what your market is doing. I want you to get paid what you are worth. One of the first things I tell people when they join our group is, what are your prices and let's raise them. And we have lots of great coaching on that subject.

Well, I'm going to practice what I preach. And on November 1st, Our prices for Inspired Organizer, because we are adding so many things to our program, are going to be going up significantly. So I want to give people a chance to get in for the last time. One of our programs, the price has not changed since 2016, when it was originally established.

And I'm changing that. This is the perfect time to one, get a great business expense two, get lifetime access to our Inspired Organizer program before lots of things change. And it is a great way to get in with the loveliest group of people in organizing.

 I would love to have you be a part of our vibrant, exciting, knowledgeable, financially savvy community. If you want more information, you can schedule a Zoom with me. You can go to ProOrganizerStudio.com/join. You can send me an email at hello@ProOrganizerStudio.Com and I will send you more information. Any of those ways, I would love to talk to you. Alright, let's get started with Danielle Hayden.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: The way that we always start out, especially when someone's new to our audience, just give us, give us your whole story as much or as little as you want to tell us.

Danielle Hayden: Oh my God, we could be here for hours. Danielle Hayden founder of Kickstart Accounting Inc. I founded my company nine years ago. However, I, like so many other people have had a long windy road to entrepreneurship. I was originally a creative. I started my career as a hairstylist

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Interesting.

Danielle Hayden: I know I am, I am left brain and brain.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: I love that.

Danielle Hayden: so what I found when I was working as a hairstylist that I had this knack for using the numbers to grow my book of business. And I was trying to teach the other girls in the salon that I worked with how to read their paycheck, how to use the numbers, how to grow their business and really take.

Control and empowerment because they were all just sitting in the back room like, Oh, when are more clients going to come in? How do I make more money? So really taught them how to become better managers of their money how to get control and, and how to find empowerment. So fast forward, I went back to school cause I thought I was going to own my own hair salon. And along the way I found accounting, which just saying to my soul, I love the black and white of accounting and it's really, really quiet in the office. Like I remember sitting down for the first time and be like, Oh my God, I don't have to talk to anybody for hours.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: That would be, that's my dream by the way. Wait, I don't have to interact. Great. I can just be by myself.

Danielle Hayden: it was, it was so cool, you know, fast forward nine years and here's, I talk all day again. So it wasn't meant to be, but, so I I found a niche again where I was helping this midsize businesses, the board of directors, the CEOs the, the management team, how to use our numbers to make business decisions.

That's literally what we were doing and I'm like, wow. Every single business owner, I don't care how small you are or how big you are, deserves access to the same financial information because you deserve to be able to make the same business decision. So we started it back in 2015. Helping business owners understand their numbers.

They can make better business decisions. Now, here's what I learned real, real quick, though. You can't build a budget and you can't business plan. You can't file your taxes. You can't tax plan. You can't do any of those things without bookkeeping.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Correct.

Danielle Hayden: You just literally can't. So we had to make a huge pivot in the first year of business and we use bookkeeping as the vehicle.

So once we, when we work with our clients, we do the bookkeeping first. Once we have the foundation created, now we can file your tax return. Now we can do tax planning. Now we can build you a budget. Now we can add on like financial planning, right? But we can't do any of that until we have everything all organized and set up and ready for you as a business owner to make those business decisions.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Well, and I, I think that there is a lot of everything you're talking about. There's a lot of fear around it, you know, like knowing your numbers you know, all of those things. And then just a lot of us don't. Understand it. So we're gonna get into that. But I do just really quickly. I'm just laughing to myself that you went from the most talky profession

Danielle Hayden: Yeah.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: to the least talky profession.

That is a pivot that I think is probably unprecedented.

Danielle Hayden: I mean, seriously, it really is. And I didn't, I didn't last long in like I didn't go, I spent like one year in Ian Ernst Young and I very quickly found myself in corporate accounting because I wanted to work with people.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Yeah.

Danielle Hayden: I wanted to, I wanted to talk to my management team. I needed to collaborate. I needed to talk to the board.

I, I always say I, I'm in, I'm in business because I want to help people run the business. Yeah. And now I'm just, now I'm talking all day. Yeah. Yeah. Shut me up. And here's the best part about that. They'll never forget my best friend's mom. She said it was like one day when you were like 11, she's you never talked like you never spoke.

You were so quiet as a kid. She's and then one day you just started talking and it was like, you had something to say, everybody was going to listen to it and you never shut up.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: I love it. It's fantastic. I'm just glad that we all get to benefit from you talking now. It's great. So, okay, so, this is going to sound insane, but I'd just like to lay it out for everybody. Can you explain the difference between bookkeeping and accounting and, and all of the things? Because I think that there are a lot of people that don't realize that, you know, there are big differences between all of these things.

Danielle Hayden: All right. I was shocked when I came into business and people are throwing all these terms and they were using them differently. And I'm like, Whoa, okay. There's a lot of confusion because it depends where you came from. You know, if you came from small business, if you came from corporate, you know, depending on what your background is, you're going to call these things all different things.

So yeah, let's clear the air once and for all. A bookkeeper is the person who's doing your bookkeeping. All that means is you, and I'm going to use the word business owner a lot, and I don't care how small your business is or how big your business is. The day that you file your LLC. You are a business owner.

Okay. So I'm using the word business owner you know, interchangeably with CEO and you, my friend are that. So as a business owner, you're out there making money, you're out there spending money and the bookkeeper is taking the bookkeeping, all that making money and spending money, and they're putting it in an organized fashion into your accounting software, and they're creating.

this really beautiful puzzle for you. Like I hate puzzles, but that's how people feel. Right. It's you have all these puzzle pieces and your bookkeeper is the magician who puts all the puzzle pieces together and you just get to come by and be like, wow, that's all put together so pretty.

That's a beautiful picture. Right. So your bookkeeper, What's the picture of your financials together? Your accountant, it's really an interchangeable term because if you came from corporate, like sometimes your bookkeeper just becomes a label of account, but generally speaking, your accountant is your CPA or tax accountant.

So I hold the CPA designation. It is a very, very, very hard, very hard test

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: can't even imagine. Thanks.

Danielle Hayden: That, that gives you a licensure that says that you are able to perform audits, attestation, taxes. So this is generally your person who is filing your taxes for you. So your tax accountant, their only job. Is to file your taxes.

You do not ring every time you have a business question. You do not call them for business advice. You do not call them for coaching. You do not call them for literally anything, but your taxes. And the mistake I hear, I see so many people make so because their tax accounts, the first person, most of us hire, cause I filed this LLC to file my tax return.

Shoot. Let me call my tax accountant. They start calling them for everything. And their only job is to file your tax return. You might have also a tax strategist. So somebody who is helping you with tax planning, and again, not the same qualifications, not the same. No, it is the same, same team. Then we have our CFO.

So our CFO, I think that this can be interchangeable with a business coach, but our CFO is the person. So. Let me define it chief financial officer. However, in small business, the way I define a CFO is the person who's going to help you start to look forward in your business. So bookkeeper looking backwards, CFO, we're looking to the future.

So I'm going to start creating a business budget. I'm going to make business decisions for the future. With my numbers, where's your bookkeeper is going to tell you, this is what happened in the past. Here's what you need to start doing. Here's what you need to stop doing, but your CFO is going to help you look to the future.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: And I, I do think that one of the things that I will say personally, as someone who works with mostly small business owners, I will encourage people always and I'm sure you have some strong feelings about this, the minute you, when you said the minute you file your LLC, the minute you become a business owner, which I don't care if you have one employee or 10 employees or 20 employees or 200 employees, you are correct.

You are a CEO and you are a business owner. I believe that you must pay someone to file your taxes for you. You, I just, I still hear about people who have decent sized businesses. Listen, everybody's got to do what works for them. But if you own a business, please have someone professional do your taxes.

Danielle Hayden: Yes.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Period.

Danielle Hayden: Yes, period. So here's the thing. Been around for a long time, which was a lot of business owners. And you, you mentioned at the beginning, there is a lot of fear and shame around our numbers. And I'll never forget my first year in business, I had a old family friend do my taxes. Although I was a CPA, I was like, you know what?

I want this like checks and balance. I'm going to do the bookkeeping. He's going to do the taxes and just, you know, make sure everything's right. I walked into Joe's office and he hadn't updated his office since I've walked in that office while I was a kid. He had that old brown paneling. It was

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Yeah, I know exactly. I have a vision. I know what that looks like.

Danielle Hayden: Yep. Yep. We can all visualize it. Hot summer day. I actually have naturally curly hair and it was sticky and stuffy. And I remember walking into his office. I was so ashamed. I didn't grow enough. I didn't pay myself enough. I didn't do the bookkeeping throughout the year. I felt so overwhelmed. And I walk into this man's office and he shakes his head at my, at me and calls it my little business.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: I don't want that.

Danielle Hayden: Why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that? And I walked out of Joe's office and I said, No one should ever have to feel that way again. Now, Joe, I'm sorry if you're listening. I, I'm like terrified he's going to hear me talk one day. However, shame on you, Joe. I, I was a growing business owner. I needed somebody to come in and create a space for me.

For no judgment. So when, so you need to find as a business owner, you need to find the right team. When we work with our clients. So we do the bookkeeping tax and CFO work. When we work with our clients, we have a role. There is no judgment. There is no place for shame. You're going to give us access to the closest thing to you, right?

We feel that. And we understand that. Okay. deeply, deeply. And so you need to find a tax account that you want to work with. Now, can I tell you one more story about the like tax woes? Okay. So if you, if you are doing your own bookkeeping and you're doing your own taxes, You have so much risk. So people say to me, I'm just, I'm not very risk adverse.

Like I'm, I'm just, I'm kind of in this business owner thing. I'm just, you know, I'm so scared of risks. That's why I'm doing it myself. It's the exact opposite. So we had this client come to us last year. And she had been doing her own bookkeeping. She used HoneyBook and she was using QuickBooks online.

She's I think I'm doing really awesome. I just, I'm growing past a point where I think I need a team. I want to offer this to you guys, to you guys. Like I think I'm doing good. I think I'm in a good spot, but I'm just going to have you guys do it in the future. So 2023 and we're like, Whoa, you don't want us to file us.

What was happening was that all of her sales were duplicated in QuickBooks. Yes. She created the sink with HoneyBook she was buying the payments. Now we worked with a lot of business owners in this industry. So we've seen it happen over and over and over. Now we, we did what we call a catch up for her.

So we went back and we recategorized all of her sales. We applied to everything correctly. We restructured things. So luckily we caught it. She knew what her, her accurate profitability was. We filed her taxes correctly. Had she not come to us, she was about to like seriously overpay in her taxes.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: I was just about to say that's actually a problem. That's a better problem than the other problem, which is she had paid in way too much money. But she had also lost probably, you know, thousands, tens of thousands of dollars by overpaying. I mean, it's definitely better than the alternative,

Danielle Hayden: Well, she had paid estimated taxes all year based on, on her income. So at least she was able to get the refund from the IRS.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Yeah,

Danielle Hayden: she didn't work with us, nobody would have caught that.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Correct.

Danielle Hayden: So to your point, five minutes ago, sorry. To your point, if you're doing your own taxes, you are putting your business at risk.

You're putting your family at risk. You're putting your suppliers at risk, any employees you have at risk. And I don't think anybody wants that, right? I don't think anybody's like doing it maliciously. I just think we think in our heads, like we have some superhero cape. Like I have to do it all myself.

Please, for the love of God, stop doing things you're not qualified to do.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Yeah. And I, I just think that there are situations that, I mean, like you said, the education that you went through and the, the work that you have Have to do to become anything in the financial sphere, an accountant, a certified financial planner, any of those things, there's a tremendous amount of education that comes with that.

I can make someone's underwear drawer look really pretty, but I have no idea what cogs is. I mean, I do, but you know what I mean?

Danielle Hayden: Exactly. And you know what? I would say I can't do what you do. Like I need you, like I desperately need you. And, and we need each other. And so we don't like, we can all retire superhero caves and say, I, we each other and how can we best use each other's strengths,

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Well, and I will say too, just on the, please, please go get professionals to help you. I'm very much. And I've talked about it on this podcast and it's hilarious because I love helping people with their business. I mean, I do things for people all the time. I, I coach them. I do all the things I, I'm a DIY girl at heart.

Like I, I like to do a lot of things myself in my business. And this is one where it's a non negotiable for me. Like you have, you have to have an accountant. My accountant has saved me literally tens of thousands of dollars. That I would normally not have and it's just it's really, really important to have that person on your side.

I am definitely not smart enough to do it. Let's just talk though about the whole know your numbers thing. Because I think simply because we're not experts at this sometimes you just go well, I'm just going to mess around and well, I've got money in my checking account. So I've got money in my business banking account, so I must be fine or whatever.

But tell me about that fear around knowing your numbers.

Danielle Hayden: So I call it the report card effect. If you're anything like me I talked too much at school once I turned 11 and my mom thought if she grounded me that maybe I would stop talking and that my grades would get better. Natural. But I, I saw so many of my friends going through this, especially my entrepreneur friends who, who we're so used to getting report cards.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Yes.

Danielle Hayden: And our report card tells you if you pass or fail, like literally you failed, you're held back. Okay. Now let's fast forward because we're not robots. We're people. And so now you're taking all this history from your childhood and you plop into entrepreneurship and you say, Well, my accountant's going to send me my numbers.

I'm going to find out if I pass or failed. Of course we're scared. Of course we're not numbers people, right? Like of course we don't want to open up the financial report. So if we can, if we can change that reframe to think, Wow. My numbers are an opportunity to do things differently. We had a client who she had invested in like a second stream of income.

And when she, when you looked at her point of sale system, like seriously, Melissa, like hockey stick revenue, like. Lowing it away compared to her, her original business. And she had to hire some contractors to help her fulfill her contracts. And what was happening every month when we looked at her financials.

So we send our clients their financials on a monthly basis, but their snapshot. The snapshot is an easy to read document. So Katie would read her document every month and she was like, Oh, my debt keeps going up. Like what? Why is my debt going up? Hold on. My cash is going down. My, my profits going down. Now, if I, if I look at my point of sale system and my revenue, that's skyrocketing, I'm good, but everything else is not in the right direction.

And it was around August. So she started this in January, around August. She called me, she goes, I have to close it down. I'm putting my family in jeopardy. I'm, I'm, I'm going to end up in bankruptcy. I, I, I can't take on this much debt. I can't keep on paying my contractors this way. I, I know I've had this growth, but I, it, it, it doesn't profit wise make sense.

And she shut it down by the end of the year and she saved her business. She's in business today because she saved herself.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Yeah.

Danielle Hayden: Imagine if Katie only looked at her financials when she prepared them for the taxes.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Right. Yeah.

Danielle Hayden: Right. So what so many business owners do is they wait until the end of the year. They throw their financials together.

They look at it one time, maybe, maybe their tax accountant just files taxes with it and, and they, they, they never made a business decision with it. So knowing your numbers is about finding,

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: I love that. It's a positive rather than a negative.

Danielle Hayden: yeah. And nobody's going to come and tell you, you failed. Even if you lost money, you didn't fail.

And you get to learn from it.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Correct.

Danielle Hayden: So if you don't wait and you're actually look how cool I lost money last month. Well, what the hell did I do wrong? Like you get to look and if you made money, how do I make money? What happened?

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Yeah. What did I do? to be able to understand those patterns, too, in the organizing business, it can be cyclical.

Danielle Hayden: Yeah.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Summer, depending, and all of this depends on a lot of different factors. It depends on where you live. If you live in an area like I do, where people go to their cabin every weekend, organizing might be not on the top of their list.

 But if you are in a cyclical business, as we can tend to be in, you have to plan for those peaks and valleys, and you have to have the peak months service the valley months.

Danielle Hayden: So that's why we talk about budgeting so much with small business owners, because there's a power in budgeting that when you have your bookkeeping in place, right? So we, we, when we know where we've been now. Because we know where we've been, we can now see, well, shoot, summer's a really slow time, but I still need to get paid because I have a family and I need, I need to pay myself.

So let's budget out my spending instead of acting I got, I'm a millionaire during the high months and let's even that out and budget our, our money accordingly. And that there's our thing when we hear the word budget, they're like, if people are like, all right, did y'all gonna tell me where I have to stop spending money and I got to cut back and no more Starbucks and I'm like, literally not saying that I'm like, here, let me give you 100 a month in Starbucks, but let's plan for it.

You know? Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: No, that you have to plan for it. The, but the, the know your numbers thing is so much more than, and you really touched on it. It's, it's so much more than just finances too, because it's everything that goes into finances. It is, For what we do, how many potential clients do you have coming into your business?

What do you, what are your projections? What do you think? How many hours a week are you able to work? I will sometimes have people come into some of our programs and they say I really want to be a professional organizer because I want to have my own time. I want to be my own boss and I would like to make a hundred thousand dollars a year, but I only want to work three hours a week.

So I'll be like, we have a mismatch. On expectations versus reality. But some of that is also I had a boss many years ago that said, hope is not a strategy. And it's, it's true. I think as a business owner, there are times you're like, oh, I hope things get better. What am I doing to go make them better?

And how can I plan out so that I don't have as many panic months?

Danielle Hayden: Yeah. One thing that clients will come on a call with me and they'll say, do you know like they brace themselves like, where should I cut back? And I'm like, cut back spending. You told me at the beginning of the year that your goal was growth, right? You wanted to bring on more clients and X amount of revenue.

How were you going to get there? They were just going to fall from the sky. If you're not spending eight to 10 percent of your sales and advertising and marketing, you can't expect to grow. So when, when we work with our clients, we walk them through their healthy percentages. So that means an each area of your spending, you need to be spending a healthy amount of money.

To, to have a growing business. Now you need to align your spending with what your intentions are for your business. So if you're in a season where you know, I really need to grow my team and I'm not going to work as much, and I just really want to find some balance. Your, your, your. Spending structure is going to look a little bit different.

You might not be spending as much in marketing. You're spending more on your team because you want your team managing your clients. So your biggest expense during that time is going to be more in payroll than it is in advertising and marketing, which is perfect. But we as business owners. Need to think about what our intentions are.

What are our goals? Then how do we actually physically spend money to hit our goals? And that's the power of knowing your numbers and budget, right? Like I know my numbers, I know what I did. So I have some history of what worked and what didn't. Now let me plan for the future.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Yeah. What do you recommend for people who, let's say you have the people who are the blinders people, do you have a what is your plan for them? Let's say one of those people came to you, what, what would you be doing with them?

Danielle Hayden: So if you are somebody who is area for you is you just want to bury your head in the sand. And it doesn't have any impact on how you spend money because some people, like I'm burying your head in the sand. You might be a keeper or a spender. So that means you have a lot of money in savings. Like I just want to keep all my cash or you might be a free spender.

Either way if you were to come to our firm, we hold your hand in a way that's going to feel really supported. So opening the door for you to say, Hey. We're going to meet you at your speed. We're not going to let you disappear. We're going to hold you accountable. We're going to hold your hand. Right? So here's what we need from you in order to get started.

We're going to meet with you on a regular basis in order to get all that information. And then we're going to do it for you. Right? So for anybody who's somebody who's put your head in the sand, get it off your plate. Right? Because then once, once we, once we have access to everything, You can go put your head in the sand because at the end of the month, we're going to send you your financial reports.

We're going to wave a flag at you. We're going to be your accountability partner. Hey, Hey, come out to play. You're going to book a call. You're going to review your financial statements because you're going to like your team because we actually are, are cool people who actually talk to you and talk about what happened in a nonjudgmental way.

Oh shoot, that's how much money I spent. Oh my God. Like safe space to be like, I cannot believe I actually spent that much money. Or. Celebrate. Who, who can you really go to, to say, guess what, I hit my first month of 10, 000 in sales.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Big deal.

Danielle Hayden: Like most of your friends are not calling because they'll be like, Oh, cool.

You're paying for dinner on Friday,

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Right.

Danielle Hayden: right? I mean, maybe, maybe your partner can't call your mom, you know, like your mom doesn't get it. Your partner might not get it. So having a bookkeeper who you like to talk to. You can celebrate Oh my God, it's my first 10, 000 a month. How cool. Like I'm so excited.

And they're there to help celebrate with you and then commiserate when things aren't good. So if you're somebody who is burying their head in the sand, find a team that will be there to celebrate with you. Find a team that will be there to help you softly take your blinders off, not abruptly, just softly, just start to pull them, pull them back and find somebody who you want to talk to.

And, and that might not be me you might think I'm really annoying, but find whoever it might be to do that for you, one thing that my team told me to stop saying, I think it's really important,

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Whatever it is, I'm already going to love it if they told you to stop saying it. So

Danielle Hayden: you have a responsibility. As a business owner, you don't get to put your head in the sand. You literally aren't allowed the day that you took out your LLC. The day that you decided to take money from a client, the day that you signed up to have a vendor partnership, you spent money as a business. You now took on responsibility. You don't, you don't get, you don't get to just put the blinder on. I'm sorry. Like tough love get over it. I don't care if you're a money person. I don't care if you like numbers The government doesn't care the IRS doesn't care.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: great.

Danielle Hayden: Nobody's coming to save you You have to take responsibility for yourself. And what that might look like is asking for help and that's okay.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: I really, I, I did not go back to it when you originally said it, but I want to go to it now. I think that when you talked about being nonjudgmental and how sometimes there are people that are judgmental and that is something that we deal with in our work people, you know, being nonjudgmental when you're an organizer is incredibly important.

And so you have to find someone on the other end, if, especially if money is something that is you to you, you need to find someone that is not going to make you feel dumb or less or anything when there, when you have these questions, because when you start a business there are way more questions than anyone could ever ask.

That any one person can hold in their head, right? And a lot of us have never had to do any of these things before. And so finding someone that you connect with in the same way that we have clients that when you said, I, I might annoy you. Same thing with organizing clients. I might not be your cup of tea.

Cool. Go find that person that really connects with you and speaks the same language as you.

Danielle Hayden: Yeah, absolutely.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Cause there is a lot of I, it's just as funny as you were talking thinking about the whole knowing your numbers. I'm like, I do not enjoy getting on the scale. I do not enjoy looking like finances and that type of thing.

I think are in the same category of

Danielle Hayden: think so

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: just ignore it, it will go away. It definitely doesn't. And like you said, the government doesn't care. I'm sure that you have seen this reel a million times with the TikTok, but it's okay government. Can you tell me how much money I owe? No, you have to figure it out yourself.

Well, what if I get it wrong? We send you to jail. So

Danielle Hayden: so true.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: It is a very complex system. And I, you know, I should say we have people that listen all over the globe. So obviously this is a very American centric conversation, but I'm sure taxes are no fun in really any country.

Danielle Hayden: Yeah. I mean, even even across borders, I mean, we all have our version of it. So

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: There's no way that, you know, what the Canadian revenue system or anything, and you're like, we're all not having fun with taxes. Right. So, yeah, but, but knowing your numbers and just confronting them and being honest with them and I think just taking them Like it's just a data point. It's not a good or a bad, it's not a value judgment.

It's not a measure of your worth. It's just the, and knowing them can allow you to get better.

Danielle Hayden: tool in your tool belt is how I like to consider it. You know, your financial statements, your, your, your, like each one is just a tool in the tool belt that you get to learn from. And, and doesn't mean I don't do it. All right. You don't do it. All right, but I think we're both able to say, hold on let me learn from it and continue to grow.

I keep on hearing lately. It's I'm, I'm called to hear it about the infinite game where we're, we're in it. We're in this it's, it's not a sprint. It's a marathon. It is. I'm, I'm, I'm never going to win. You know, if we can start to think about owning our business, it's I'm never going to win.

Even if I hit six figures, even if I hit a million dollars, those are just milestones in the journey. I didn't, I didn't win the game. So there's no, there's no failing in the game either. Right. It's just. It's just an infinite journey.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Someone has to someone goes away from the Superbowl, not a winner. It does not mean that they have had a terrible season.

Danielle Hayden: And that's a game. Like owning a business isn't a game. So it's not a one time event where that's finite. There's a Superbowl and, and it is finite. Whereas this owning a business thing is, is infinite. And as long as we want to keep doing it for, and so we can keep on showing up to say it even if I lost money last year, I can still show up and do it again. Who knows? I might lose money again and I, I might do better. And look, hey, if I lost money for the last 12 months, I'm just going to consider it a rolling 12. And guess what? In my rolling 12, I didn't lose money. And guess what? I won.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: I love it. Do you ever, I'm trying to, I'm trying to think about how to phrase this question. Do you, are, is there a time that you say, hey, you know what, I think that you've given it a college try and it's just, it's maybe time to, okay, interesting. Tell me, tell me more about that.

Danielle Hayden: It's not my decision to make. We have, we have never once told a client that it is,

I do consider us more of a coach than a consultant. And, and I don't think anybody who's coming to us to say we are presenting you with the facts. Here are the facts. The facts might be, this is the third year in a row that you lost money for me to say, you should stop trying now, you know, like I can tell you.

Hey, you lost my last three years. What can we learn? What should we do differently? What would success look like? What are the things that we can do to get to success? Who's the business coach I need to hire? Here's the marketing changes I need to make. Here's the things I need to do to change my, my, my, my team.

But yeah. It's never going to be my decision. And if you have a business coach or a CPA or a bookkeeper who's telling you that I would question who you have on your team because that's not their choice. your choice when you're done.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Do you see a difference between men and women business owners?

Danielle Hayden: course,

Our male clients, it's so funny when we do a discovery call with a man versus a woman most of our men, by the time they get on the call with her, so yeah, I need help. I'm not doing it myself. It's here, take it most of our male clients know that they're not gonna I'm not a CPA.

I don't know how to do bookkeeping. Why in the world would I ever learn this? I've got shit to do. I'm going to go, I'm going to go make money and grow this business. I'm going to do what I'm good at. You do what you're good at. So there seems to be a little bit more like cut and dry of I'm not the person for this role. You are do it. And, and so we, we actually, when we. We tend to find them to be like an easier kind of sign up in the process. There's not as much emotion in the handover of information either of Hey, here's my stuff. There's not as much I don't know that they're taking as much judgment.

And then there's a, a change around spending of money. And I don't know that this is, Bully across men and women, but there seems to be a little bit more of I need to spend money in order to grow this business. And, and I, and I know that all men have a different personality style, money personality style.

It just leans a little bit more towards the same thing with, with hire a bookkeeper. They also know I don't know how to run paid ads, so I'm going to, I'm going to hire the paid ads guy. So there just seems to be a little bit more, I don't have to do it all.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: It's not to generalize, but are women trying to figure out how I can do it myself or asking for help is hard or,

Danielle Hayden: think it's the asking for help. I think it's the asking for help Hmm, I'm not big enough.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: okay.

Danielle Hayden: I'm not worthy. I'm not enough. This thing, it's just my little hobby. I'm doing it on the side. I'm not a business owner. I'm not a CEO. So I started with that at the beginning, you have an LLC, you're a business owner.

You're the CEO of your business, period,

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: If you've been paid more than 1 for your services, you're a business owner.

Danielle Hayden: And you're the CEO of that. So I, I think that that's the biggest mindset shift that I see for, for women. I'm not enough. And, and that, that if I'm not big enough, then I can just wear my superhero cape and do the bookkeeping on my little thing that I'm kind of doing on the side. It's not that important.

It's not going to be that big of an impact to my family's taxes, right? There's a little bit of straight in your spine when you hire a bookkeeper and you have a tax account. I'm not going to be the one doing this. I deserve help. I deserve, I am big enough. I am enough to have somebody else come and tell me what I need to do.

I don't think we're doing DIY bookkeeping and taxes because we want to. I think it's a deeper mindset problem of like I'm forced to like. I haven't made it yet.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: You have to. Yeah. It's I like that concept of worthy. Like that a business is only a business. If it gets to a certain magical.

Danielle Hayden: Yeah. Who said so?

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: right?

Danielle Hayden: Like literally who said so? So we, when we work with our clients, we have pricing tiers. So our clients who are doing less than a hundred thousand dollars, you have pricing that fits your budget. If you're doing 500, 000, There's price because right, because it's going to take us a little bit longer to do that client.

But to be clear, most accounting firms don't do that. So it's an anomaly that we do this, but we do it on purpose because I believe that if you're bringing in 50, 000 this year, 75, 000 this year, you still deserve a bookkeeper. You still deserve tax help. You still deserve access to the numbers. And I want you to have access to the numbers. Like, how do you think that you're going to get to half a million dollars? Everyone.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Everyone starts out small. Everyone does.

Danielle Hayden: We all do.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Yeah. You do not there. I actually just put up a pocket at the day that we're taping this. I put up a podcast and I just said anyone who is if you ever hear the phrase overnight success, there's literally no such thing as that. And same thing. Like you don't get to be a billion dollar business.

without starting with your first dollar, like period, the end, everybody starts small. So is there a kind of a sweet spot of when someone in their business needs to start thinking about this? I assume you think it's day one. Is there, are there some people that you're like, Hey, get through six months and see how it goes, that type of thing.

Tell me a little bit more about that.

Danielle Hayden: I would say get some consistent revenue prove your business concept. So, do you have a, do you have a business? Are you going to be selling on a regular basis? If you do a one time project, of course, you don't need a bookkeeper or tax accountant yet. But if you are, Actively searching for clients and taking projects on an ongoing basis.

You've proven the concept you've proven that you people want it in your area and that you are, are regularly going to be in this function. That's when it's time. So yes, to your point, like if you just started yesterday and you haven't taken anything yet, no, that's not to say we don't have clients like that, because there's some people who are like, Hey, I'm about to get busy And in six months, I'm gonna have time to deal with this.

So I'm gonna get you in place today. And then when I get busy, like this is already good. So we do work with clients like that all the time, or just I didn't got to get this bookkeeping and taxing in place. I want to set it and forget it. Now I'm gonna go make money. on your mindset and how convicted you are in your business.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: So this is something that we see a lot as organizers. So this is kind of a, this is less of a business owner question and more. And it always it makes me have secondhand anxiety because it's not my problem yet. We see it. So I'm just trying to think about how to formulate the question. Right. But example, I gave a presentation one time and a guy came up to me and said, you know, I'm so disorganized, you know, especially in papers.

I paper everywhere. He's casually says. I haven't filed my taxes in 10 years. 

Do you have any just advice for a situation like that? Just in terms of Hey, you got to get your stuff together.

Danielle Hayden: I mean, start now, wherever you're at, right? If you, if you haven't done in the last few years, I think it was, can start to become this mountain.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Yes.

Danielle Hayden: So, don't get there. Like seriously, you guys don't get there because the banks actually have a really hard time giving you access to statements. We just did a catch up for a client.

Five years. She filed her taxes in five years. She had to call the bank. Two. send us PDF statements that we then had to convert in order to be able to get the information to QuickBooks. So the longer you wait, the more expensive it's going to be for you, because now she had to pay the bank for her statements.

She had to pay us a gazillion dollars to go through and manually input all of this work from the PDFs into QuickBooks, because you can't do that with any type of automation when we're going five years back. So don't be there, like wherever you are, stop. And, and you, there's no paper anymore. So like when I say get organized, I mean, have a business checking account and a personal checking account. Have a business credit card and a personal credit card. When you go out to dinner, if you talk, you know, about you're going with your mom, then you pay with your personal card. If you go to Walmart and you have business and personal stuff, separate the transaction.

You just organized it.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Separation of church and state.

Danielle Hayden: Yeah.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Very important.

Danielle Hayden: hard. Just, and, and, and especially like you guys know how to organize. All right. So Organize your thoughts around it. Business goes out of business or someone without a personal, and we don't need to keep a box of receipts or papers or anywhere. I don't know. Does that answer the question?

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: You should see some of our clients though. You

Danielle Hayden: I get no shame. No shame. I totally get it. There's areas. I'm, I'm the same way with you. I was telling the story this morning. I got pulled over a few months ago with my daughter on our way to a doctor's appointment and the cop came into the window and goes, do you know why I'm pulling you over?

And I'm like, I really don't actually, he goes, well, your, your texts have expired. And I'm like,

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Oh,

Danielle Hayden: that my birthday, I drive a leased car and I'm like, Oh shoot. I'm like, Oh, okay. I'm like, when they expire, he's December, it's June and I'm like, Oh, I'm like, that was a long time ago. Okay. I'm so sorry. So I was back to the window.

He's like, all right, good news. I'm not going to tell you. We all have our thing, right? That's my thing. My personal admin tasks, I can't seem to get organized, so I get it, right? Like I just tell you that story is that I get it.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: I am. We're confessing things. I'm currently looking, I'm staring right there at a, a decently large pile of mail that I have not gone through. Now, I'm sure 98% of it is just gonna get shredded, but there might be that 2% that's really important. I don't know. So we all have our, we all have our things.

Oh,

Danielle Hayden: So my mail, I actually also hate my mail. My son's in charge of that. So he

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: I love that.

Danielle Hayden: and once a week, anything addressed to kickstart, he scans and he scans and he emails it to me.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Oh, that's really great.

Danielle Hayden: Job for any of our kids.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: I love that. So what tell me just a little bit more about if you had to give two pieces of advice, we're going to take it. We're going to say early business owner and experienced business owner. Do you have anything that you

Danielle Hayden: Separate your business and personal. So like we were just saying, like normally that's, that's the first advice I give to anybody is make sure that those are separate. You are not your business. Let me repeat that you are not your business. And when you are spending personally out of your business account, you're doing what's called piercing the corporate veil.

Now when somebody comes and sues you or you get audited, you've just now exposed your entire personal life as well. So stop spending personally out of your business account. Take owner's draws. I don't care how big or small you are. You are taking owner's draws, which transfers the money from your business account to your personal account.

Now you pay the daycare bill, the, the mortgage, the, you know what I mean? You pay your personal bills from your personal account with your owner's draws. When you become an S corp, when you are when you're making enough money that it's tax advantageous to become an S corp and you put yourself on payroll then you're paying your personal expenses from your personal account.

So I think that, that to me, if you leave with nothing else. Make sure that's separate. That way, when you go and you have your taxes done by your professional or you've, you hire the bookkeeper, you're ready to start setting budgets. You have everything in an organized format so that they just take the business checking account and the business credit card.

And they make these beautiful, they like, you know, magic wand right into financial statements.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Well, tell me a little bit more about how you do your work. So, one of the other things that I talk to organizers a lot about is and again, we're just using the United States as an example. You know, we will have people that come to our coaching group and they will say, I don't want to pass my discount on to my employee or to my clients anymore. I'm going to take my container store discount and, you know, how do I need to account for that? And I'm 100 percent of the time, I'm like, you got to ask an accountant.

In your state and sometimes even in your own municipality, there might be different laws and rules like there. Someone in California has very different laws than I do in Minnesota that someone does in New Jersey, whatever. So can you talk a little bit about how the state by state thing works with the kind of work that you do?

Danielle Hayden: Yeah, so we are national, so we work with anybody in the United States, so when we work with our clients, we can do both the bookkeeping and tax from a federal and state level but you are right two, two big things differentiate state by state, it is your, your payroll and, and the laws around your employees and your team and then sales tax.

Okay. And, and whether or not you're going to pass that through or how you're going to collect and pay. So those are the two big things that you really want to make sure that you have that resource. It doesn't, they don't have to be in your state. Like I said, we, we work with clients in every state. We have the research tools to be able to help you in your state.

. Is there, is there anything that I haven't touched on that you wanted to talk about? 

Danielle Hayden: I think the big thing that I always want to tell people is it's okay. We all have a lot of shame around it. We all have our thing. It's not an easy topic for anybody. I talk about this stuff all day, every day, however, it's still, it's still hard for me like to talk about kickstarts finances, like kickstart account, isn't this like I'm running a business too.

And I met with my bookkeeping and CFO team this morning and it's still hard for me to hear things. And it was like, kind of felt awkward sometimes. And I'm like, okay, well like I can do it too, you know? So it's not just you and it's okay, but guess what you have to do it anyway you have to do it anyway.

So just like I went to the gym this morning and I'm going to drink this whole freaking cup of water that even if I don't want to, I'm going to also look at my numbers. We're going to do the hard things.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Well, and I, I really like that because one of the things that I am passionate about, and I saw this through, so I came from a corporate background, and you I saw that and, and I, I have this in myself too, women don't negotiate in the same way. That's why I asked you about the differences between men and women.

Women don't, don't negotiate salary the same way they don't negotiate. Like talking about money for women, again, not to wildly generalize. It can be harder. And I think that there is a lot of whether it is shame or whether it is just, I don't understand it and I'm embarrassed for not understanding it.

I should know, there's recrimination I should know these things. Well, how should you know these things?

Danielle Hayden: And, and that's why we hire all women. So I, I mean, we have a, a woman like lead team because we want to create that space for you to be able to say, I know you explained it to me like 10 times, but can you

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Can you explain it again?

Danielle Hayden: like 10 more times for me? Like there's, there's a, there's a a space where you can go and, and feel.

I don't think that's always the case with numbers. There's not a lot of spaces for women to come in and say, I just really don't know what you're talking about. Can you say that again?

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: And just in the same way that we ask people to hire us, we ask people to hire us and bring us into their most personal spaces. Money is your most personal electronic space.

Danielle Hayden: Yeah. Well, you guys do is vulnerable. It really

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: super vulnerable, but money's very vulnerable. And what, one of the things we're trying to do inside of our coaching group is talk about money more.

Like we had someone the other day that just posted about, Hey, our team had our first 40, 000 a month. That's. Crazy, right? Like that's that's amazing. But she broke down. Well, here's where that 40, 000 went. And, and so we're just we're trying to be a little bit more open about that. But it's really hard. It feels like it's supposed to be.

It's supposed to be secret.

Danielle Hayden: Yeah. Like I said, you're probably not calling your friends, probably not calling your mom. You know what I mean? Like we're not, we're not having my, my mom told me growing up, you don't talk about money, religion, politics.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Yeah, money, religion, politics and sex.

Danielle Hayden: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You let that one out, ironically.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: But honestly, I think we talk about all those other things way more than we talk about money. I think you could add up like if you talk about all four of those things, we definitely talk about three of those things all the time. And we don't talk about money. We just don't. So just being open and transparent about it, I think is great.

So

Danielle Hayden: Start talking about your money. The only way that you can grow your business is to know your numbers and to talk about the money. We have to, we have to do it. And there's, there's people who want to do it with you.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: absolutely. We'll tell people if they are in this we'll just call it a valley of a valley of shame or I don't want to know or whatever we want to call it. And people want to crawl out and get some help. How can they get in touch with you?

Danielle Hayden: Kickstart account inc.com is the the best place to go. Book a call. My, my team is really probably nicer than I am. They're, they're great humans. Great women who just really wanna help and they show up every day to make a huge impact in, in the world and in your communities. So, come book a call, talk to us and promise we won't bite.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: And one of my biggest passions is making sure that women can have thriving businesses so that they can keep it going too. And I think that's the biggest thing about money is, you know, money may not be everyone's goal for their business, but it does work, you know, you do need money to be able to move on.

And so

Danielle Hayden: day, you have to pay your taxes

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: Yeah. You have, you have to. And so at the end, like you, in order to be, to have that longevity and in order to keep your business going, like I want you to keep your business going so that people can continue to get helped. So

Danielle Hayden: yeah, absolutely.

Melissa Klug | Pro Organizer Studio: love it. Well, thank you for joining

Danielle Hayden: Yeah. Thank you for having me here. Appreciate it.

Speaker 3: I have a brand new free workshop called how professional organizers can get clients without using social media. It is available on demand 24 seven at P O roadmap. com. That is a wrap on this week's pro organizer studio podcast. I will see you next week. Have a great day organizers.

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