65: How to Conduct an Effective “Money Date” for Your Business and Create a Monthly Financial Workflow featuring Shanna Skidmore

Are you ready to gain clarity and confidence in your business finances? Maybe you peek at your numbers every couple of months, but let’s be honest, that just isn’t good for your business, and it is probably adding to the intimidation and overwhelm of the task. In this episode, Shanna Skidmore of Skidmore Consulting shares how she crafted her experience as a Fortune 100 Financial Advisor and is now helping entrepreneurs and her students build a profitable businesses they are comfortable and aligned with. If you are ready to set up a “money date” to help manage money and be less stressed, this episode is for you!

The Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast is brought to you by Dolly DeLong Education. This podcast is for creative business owners who want to learn tangible steps to automate their business through workflows, systems, tools, and strategies to go from scattered to streamlined with purpose because even muggles can become automated wizards.

Meet Shanna Skidmore

Shanna Skidmore of Skidmore Consulting is a former Fortune 100 Financial Advisor turned business consultant. For the past 15 years, she has worked in finance, helping entrepreneurs worldwide make more money and manage it well. During that time, she unlocked the blueprint to building a profitable and sustainable business designed to align with the life you and her students want.

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I have created an easy-to-use template that will help you take control of your finances because you will have clarity and confidence in knowing where your money is going!

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Review the Show Notes

The sexy-not-so-sexy topic of financial systems

How Shanna Skidmore conducts an effective “money date” for her business

Shanna’s proven, practical system for building a profitable, sustainable business that works.

How you can tackle your bookkeeping in just one day a month. 

LINKS MENTIONED

The Bookkeeping Template For Creatives and use code PODCAST for 20% off!

Profitability Playbook

Blueprint Model

CONNECT WITH SHANNA 

Website

Consider the Wildflowers Podcast

CONNECT WITH DOLLY 

instagram.com/dollydelongeducation

facebook.com/DollyDeLongEducation

pinterest.com/dollydelong

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REVIEW THE TRANSCRIPT:

Dolly Delong
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the systems and workflow magic podcast. I am your Systems and Workflow BFF Dolly DeLong and I just want to thank you again for choosing to tune in to another episode seriously means the world to me you all. So when this episode airs, it should be around Valentine’s Day. So in true mom fashion and cheesy mom jokes, I’m hoping you are having a sweet week, and to sweeten your week even more, let’s talk about systems and workflows. Specifically let’s talk about the sexy/not-so-sexy topic of financial systems because that always seems to be like a hushed topic, but yet a hot topic. So we are diving into that this week. And you all know how much I love encouraging you the listener to dig into the backend of your business’s numbers and data because I believe it directly correlates with your growth and it does impact your bottom line. So in this episode 65 I wanted to bring a very special guest who I talked about constantly in previous episodes, I spoke about her on my blog posts, and I’ve spoken about her on social media, so you all are in for a treat today. Now before I formally introduce her, I just want to share some things that she’s helped me out with my business. This guest literally helped change the trajectory of my own business financially and she helped me see the value of running my business in a more lean and healthy fashion. She also helped me save up for VA, which has been invaluable to me through my maternity leave and she also helped me see that I could in fact take a full month off and live in Montana, without fear of not working, not making money, because I was prepped financially with her guidance. Finally, her podcast Consider the Wildflowers is always in the queue in my earbuds because I love learning from her and her guests so much about just the behind-the-scenes of business decisions and real-life conversations that a lot of people don’t talk about in business on the online space, so I’ve learned a lot from her. Okay, so let’s just introduce her Shanna Skidmore is here on the show. And before we dive into the topic of financial systems, Shanna, do you mind introducing yourself to the audience so that they can get to know you more?

Shanna Skidmore
You are the sweetest, thanks for having me. I literally was kind of tearing up over here just hearing everything that you have shared, thank you for that. It is an honor truly and a privilege to do what I do every day. We cannot start crying already. As a new mom, myself, I know the value and getting to spend time and having freedom and flexibility in your business to spend time doing the things you love or being with the people you love. So what I get to do is such a gift. So hi, I’m Shanna Skidmore, I am a former fortune 100 financial advisor and I have worked in finance now for over 15 years. I have degrees in money and business and psychology and an art degree and I always joke that I felt like a misfit puzzle. I never knew how all those interests and passions fit together so I worked in finance and personal finance for a long time, for about five years and right after college. That’s how I met my husband, Kyle and then he wanted to go back to school, so we moved to Atlanta, Georgia, from Tennessee where I was born and raised, and that’s actually where I got my introduction to corporate finance. I was hired by an investment firm so I always say, think Shark Tank but not Shark Tank. They were working with a startup fashion designer, and that’s who I got to work with. So I did all the operations and finance for her business for about 18 months and that is when I saw all of the ways my brain works come together and that someone can be great at their craft, but the business side doesn’t always come naturally. Finance and Business aren’t taught in any education now. I started, you know, the “creative field”, which I think everyone’s creative, my husband’s an engineer, and he’s one of the most creative people I’ve ever met. So, now we work with real estate agents and I just had a medical clinic reach out to me, I’ve worked with pharmacies, and I doctors, and anyone needs to know how to run a business. So what I saw were the fundamentals of business, pricing profitability, and understanding how much you should be spending on overhead versus the cost of goods versus what should my profit be. In business, there are actually a lot of pretty standardized numbers and formulas, so I was teaching this one-on-one and I got to the point where I was charging 10s of 1000s of dollars to consult with businesses, it was totally worth it because I would see them turn around their profit for 5x 10x amount of 12 months, which is amazing and so wonderful. But I thought I keep saying the same things over and over and over what if I could create, almost like the business course that I wish art schools and pharmacy schools and anyone wanting to be an entrepreneur could take, and that’s in 2016? Why did I develop the blueprint model? That’s where I teach fundamental finance to business owners. So you can know how much money should you actually take from a business or are you pricing for profit? Like, what is the formula for that? I mean, it’s been super freeing. I’ve worked with 1000s of business owners now around the world and to give these standardized numbers and formulas, where people can know with certainty, yes, I am pricing correctly, or you know what I did overspend last year because I really wanted to take that class or go on that trip, or whatever it is. So every single day, I get to help more people work for themselves and get more freedom in their life and flexibility in their schedules. Now my husband and I work together, and we hope it’s a legacy we pass on to our daughter, Madeline, and to all the entrepreneurs we get to work with. So clearly, I love what I do. It’s truly a blessing and Dolly, thank you for your testimonial of sorts, because it really lights me up and fuels me to keep doing the work that we do.

Dolly Delong
Everything that is said about you is true and this is not in my notes. For those of you who don’t know who can’t see, I’m an avid note-taker, and I have notes to stay on topic and I’m going a little off-topic right now. Shanna, I just want to share with you that you served as one of the catalysts to help me understand more about finances, even my husband has noticed that change in the past year, and he has expressed so much gratitude and appreciation. He is always like, wow, like you’re finally paid yourself and, wow, you’re doing this and you’re actually taking time off. So he has noticed a difference too and so I feel like I’m just now getting started. Knowing more about my money and where it’s going and how to be lean with it, has been a game-changer for me and it continues to be a game-changer for me.

Shanna Skidmore
Dolly, you’re the best. I remember when you reached out and you were considering taking the blueprint model. And it’s an investment of money. It’s not inexpensive. It’s also a big investment of time. I mean, you have to sit down and you have to like with the work you do create workflows and systems in finance, and in our business, and you wanted to make sure it was the right investment for you. I know that you are like, Can I do this? And I think so many people are either feeling intimidated by money or don’t call themselves a number person, I want to empower each person to almost simplify numbers. So for you filling geared with what are the few numbers I have to know and the few numbers I need to look at? I think you would say like, that’s what you feel empowered. It’s not like you’re walking around like Oh, I’m gonna be a CFO, now. You’re gonna pay yourself and you know how to take maternity leave. That’s the beauty of making the finance side work for you because it complements the business you want to create and is complemented by running your numbers the way you want, so I love hearing that.

Dolly Delong
Well, thank you. Thank you for that introduction and again, I have to admit, I’m fangirling over here, of course. But I’m also very thrilled that my audience gets to finally meet you because like I shared before I talk about you constantly. I talk about money and setting up systems for your finances constantly on this podcast and I know that anytime the topic of money comes up, I know that creatives either like shrink back or they want to learn more, they’re curious, but they just don’t know where to begin. So I am so excited about you, sharing your systems with us, and a simple system to get started with money. As you may or may not know about this podcast is that I like to get down to the nitty-gritty, and tell us right away, I treat this like a masterclass episode because my wish and hope are for the creative business owners listening to this to take action right away. My hope is that after listening to this episode, they will have the immediate action steps to take and implement a financial workflow that not only makes sense for their unique business, but it’s easy to understand, and it’s easy to apply. So are you ready to dive in?

Shanna Skidmore
Let’s do it. My favorite thing, yes, let’s talk money.

Dolly Delong
So Shanna is going to be sharing a system for you all today called how to conduct an effective money date for your business and essentially, this is her money checklist and what you should be looking for numbers-wise every month, and how to track your numbers, etc. So, Shanna, I’m gonna let you kick us off because again, I’m not a CFO or anything, but I just like to learn how to apply this to my business.

Shanna Skidmore
Let’s do it. So as I mentioned before, my husband and I worked together in finance long before we ever got married, and started our business but we always were very competitive with each other. So we would get together on Friday mornings, we would grab breakfast, and would go over our numbers for the week. When we worked as financial advisors, it was, how many calls did you do? How many clients did you book? How many policies did you write? That kind of thing. We started to refer to this as our money date and so it kind of just stuck. When we got married, we would have money dates, as well and we would sit down and we would talk about our personal finances, and our goals. Are we overspending in any areas? What are some debts we want to pay off? So we would have these monthly money dates, and when I started my business, I started working with business owners, I’m sure dollar that you’ve heard of like a “duty day” or something that’s a funny name, but where people work on the back end of their business, and it is so true, we can get so busy just doing the day to day client work or, you know, whatever we’re doing, that the back end of our business just really gets neglected. I know this is you’re speaking your love language right now like love and on the back end of your business. So I was like, what if we created a money workflow that all of our students and clients could follow? So we just used our little loving term of money dates, and it kind of stuck. I mean, we’ve done this now, for almost 10 years, we’ve taught this to our students and clients, and we call it your monthly money date. So we do this once a month, we do have clients that want to look at their finances more often and so they’ll do it weekly. I always tell people to find the consistency that works for them, but a minimum of once a month. Now inside of my membership and mastermind program, I actually lead students through this every single month, we do it on the first Thursday of the month, and just have kind of that silent co-working. It’s just for accountability, so you can find a group of entrepreneurs and do this and just sit together and go through this checklist. You need about four to six hours depending on how quickly you work and how thoroughly you want to look at everything. We do it together as a group in two hours. I don’t always get through everything, but I block off one day a month to work on the financial side of my business, you can combine this as well with that, “duty day”, there’s got to be a better word for that.

Dolly Delong
That just sounds so funny to me.

Shanna Skidmore
So work on your finances and the backend of your business, if you can just carve out one day a month to stay on top of it. I always tell people, I’m a finance person. I love my bookkeeping, and I still do it all in-house, because I just want to know all the tedious numbers. So I do all of that myself, but working on my finances, doing all my bookkeeping, looking at the backend, my business, it truly just takes one day out of the month. So stick to it like Christmas, even though I love doing my bookkeeping, I have been in situations when before scheduling this money date, where I was getting three months behind on my bookkeeping, so I just want to always tell people to give themselves grace, but it feels so good. This year, my books are ready for my CPA, I’m on top of it and that’s what doing this every month will do. So that’s the first thing, schedule a money date in your business and I would love to walk through, Dolly just what I do on that day and let everybody just make themselves a checklist. The first thing that I do is actually, we use Asana as our task management software. Dolly, I know you love Asana as well. Do you use Trello? Okay, Trello. So Trello or Dubsado, any kind of task management software, we I love Asana on my side, everybody. They all are very similar. Just find the one that works for your brain. I set up this workflow in Asana as a template and I’m sure it’s the same in Trello. So that way, I think it was Albert Einstein who said, never memorize anything, you can look up. So I’m like, once you create your money workflow, Dolly, I know you’re on board with this, create that workflow. Then for me, I can just duplicate it every single month in Asana. So I never have to remember all of these tasks, because there are a lot of tasks, but that way, I just work through them. So that’s my very first thing on my money day is to duplicate my tasks in Asana so that I have the template for the upcoming month. Now, as I mentioned, I also do all of my bookkeeping in-house. So if you have a bookkeeper, these first few steps will be done for you, which is really great. But since I do my bookkeeping in-house, and anybody who’s doing their own bookkeeping, whether use a bookkeeping software, we use QuickBooks Online, which I highly recommend. A lot of my students use Wave, which has come with great reviews, or all my students in the blueprint model, receive an Income and Expense Tracker in a Google Sheet. So you can also just manually do this, you want to go through and categorize all of your spendings. So that’s step number one after you duplicate the task in your template is to categorize all of your spending. That means pulling up your business bank account and going through your bookkeeping software, or if you’re putting it into a spreadsheet, inputting all of those categories. So you want to say, okay, this expense was for meals, this expense was for labor, this expense was for a new education purchase, you just want to tell whatever system your tracking system where your money went. That’s just really helpful to know, like, where did all my money go this month? I always look at that, how much did I spend. So that’s step number one, we have a business account, and then a business credit card. So I do that for both and then I want to input all so step number two is to input all of your income. Again, if you have a bookkeeper, they’re doing this for you. We want to go through and categorize your income as well. One of the biggest things that I see when I’m working with clients is I’ll receive a profit and loss statement and a bookkeeper or they’ve done it themselves, or however, it just has sales. Everything just goes into sales. And that’s a great place to start. It’s like great, well, now you know what your revenue is, if you live here in the United States, the IRS will be happy, they need to know how much your revenue is. So that’s step number one. But if you can get to a place where you’re categorizing your income, so it tells you information. So, as a CFO, what I do, I analyze the data, so like a CPA is filing it with the IRS, your bookkeeper wants to make sure it’s categorized and credited. The role of the CFO and what I teach my clients to do in the blueprint model, my own kind of you want to be your own CFO, how do strategically analyze those numbers. So if you can break your sales down by either your packages or for me, we have education products, so I want to look at which ones are bringing in certain revenue. So we have ours broken down into several, I’m sure you’ve heard of like income streams. So breaking that down will give you an additional piece of information if you want to get a little more detailed. So our money comes in through Stripe or Paypal or however you receive the income you want to go through and that’s step number two. Okay, Dolly, feeling good?

Dolly Delong
So great. I’m writing this all out.

Shanna Skidmore
Okay. All right. So, to recap, just have someplace where you keep this in a template where there’s a Trello Board or Asana, that makes it simple, then to do your bookkeeping tasks. If you’re doing your own bookkeeping, put in your expenses first then your income, then in the accounting world, the third step is what we call reconciling your account. So I always associate this with the good old days of when we had checkbooks. Yeah, right?

Dolly Delong
I have a little ledger that I keep in my wallet for when I use my credit card, I just need to track it.

Shanna Skidmore
You’re so on top of things, very old school.

Dolly Delong
I’m like an 85-year-old woman stuck in 2023.

Shanna Skidmore
Well, the good news is you get to balance your checkbook every single month in your business, where you pull up those bank statements, pull up these business accounts, and just make sure it all matches that is the goal of what’s called reconciling your accounts. If you have a bookkeeping software like QuickBooks, or Wave does that as well, you can actually go through and check mark every single entry so it matches you just go to reconcile the account, and it’ll walk you through it. Technically, for your books, and your bookkeeping records to be accepted, if you’re here in the States, by the IRS, they have to be reconciled and reconciling is your friend because that just ensures that there are no double entries. I love to reconcile because it’s like have you ever found you return something and then that return never processed? or that’s what going through this every single month will find you so much money. I did this one time that I’m embarrassed to admit, this is my first year in business. I had a client that asked me to change up their payment plan. So I had a six-month schedule, and they wanted to break it up a little bit more than that. So I said, okay, that’s great, but you know that if you break your workflow, we break the workflow. So yeah, you forget, somehow, six months later, or six months behind on my bookkeeping, this is why keep a money date. I realized I never built her. I mean, six months after her project was complete, I realized I never built her for one of those additional payments, and that was 1000s of dollars out of my account because, at that point, I didn’t feel comfortable, my oh, actually, I didn’t charge you enough. So this again, it’s tedious, but there’s so much money, you will find or save or stay on track with. To reconcile those accounts and again, if you have a bookkeeper, they should be doing steps one, two, and three for you. So at the end of each month, or whatever schedule you’re on with your bookkeeper, you would want them to send you the report that all of this is done. So you would want to see your profit and loss statement, which we’ll get to as another step in the process. But they will do these one, two, and three for entering expenses, entering income, and then reconciling your accounts.

Dolly Delong
Nice. Entrepreneurship is fun, at least I think so. But most entrepreneurs struggle in one very important area in their business, finances. Did you know you can create systems around your money? Systems around your finances allow you to keep track of your finances, plan for tax season, monitor expenses and prioritize your money so that you’re always turning a profit and it doesn’t have to be mind-numbing. As a creative business center, you need to understand the numbers behind your business, so let’s make that happen. For just $27 you can grab my bookkeeping template for creatives, this easy-to-use automated spreadsheet will help you track your expenses, guide you through the spreadsheet with video trainings, and dig into basic data that will influence the numbers of your business. So grab the bookkeeping template for creatives in the show notes of today’s episode, and use the code PODCAST all one word for 20% off.

Shanna Skidmore
Okay, let’s keep going. We’re feeling good. We’re really good at the details, Dolly. Okay, so from there, we have in my business, what we call a client tracking document. It’s something I teach all of my students to do as well. It’s a way to really book if you’re service-based inquiries versus booking, so that’s actually the next step in my process. Someone on my team fills this out now, but it’s really good to track how many inquiries you have and how many people are booking. So you just want to make sure that’s up to date and if there are any inquiries just sitting out there that haven’t gotten back to you to follow up with them. So that actually steps four, and the process called fill out our client tracking and update that client tracking document. If you’re a service-based business, it’s a simple document we use in Google Sheets. If you are a student in the blueprint model, you get a copy of this spreadsheet, and it’ll just walk you through how to track your inquiries and bookings every month, even if you’re not in one of my programs, I highly recommend all service-based professionals have some type of document like this. So you can see if you’re booking well, where people are falling off in the process. You can also see high and low seasons, we track inquiry months versus booking months, and this has been really helpful. People ask me a lot about how you take a month-long sabbatical or if you can’t really plan in your maternity leave, it just falls when it falls, but I’ve had a lot of people implement sabbaticals. Once they have this document. There’s like, I never booked anything in July or when we lived in Minnesota, there are no events in Minnesota in February, everybody’s inside. So knowing that it’s like we’ll take them up off, why not? So that’s just a little client tracking documents from there. So from there, so step number five, you want to pay any bills that you have in your business. So most of our bills are all set up to auto-pay. I highly recommend auto-paying as much as you can, but if you get bills from so we have a copywriter that does contract work for us. I have a virtual assistant that does contract work for us. Any kind of bills that come in like that. We will schedule those to be paid. So we would pay our VA every Two weeks, sometimes you have to do that more than once a month. But that’s really helpful just to make sure any outstanding bills are paid in your business. Okay, so what are we on? Number six? Yeah, there, we also want to send out any invoices or payment reminders. So people ask me a lot like, how do you not look at your bank account or do these things, it’s, I just want you to have this system in place, you know, everything’s taken care of, which is great. So when we onboard new clients, we let them know how we bill and something that we say is we’re gonna bill you once a month, that works in our business for other people. If you stick with Dolly, she’ll teach you how to do it all in Dubsado and so just making sure if there are any outstanding payments, at this point, we have a lot of student subscriptions, hundreds, if not 1000s of payments every month, and so we don’t have a payment collection system. So this kind of feels like the bill collector, it’s the worst. But it’s helpful just to go in and say, hey, did your card expire? Let’s get this back to good standing. Sometimes, if we need to cancel them, we have procedures and workflows, and if they’re two months behind three months behind, we have been able to recoup, I cannot tell you how many people have just forgotten to update their cards, or didn’t realize they still owed you money. Having this in here once a month to make sure all your invoices are sent out up to date and sending reminders on payments, we don’t do it in a way like hey, pay your bill like geez. It’s like, hey, did your card expire? And they’re like, you know, why did I’m so sorry, you know, and so it’s just helpful to send out those reminders. So that is step number six every single month, we want to make sure we’re sending out invoices and payment reminders.

Dolly Delong
That’s good. Can I just insert a personal opinion about that? I am a firm believer like money is so personal to everyone, and so step six, sending a reminder, even for me can feel icky because I’m like, oh, I don’t want to make somebody feel like they have to pay me even though they do need to pay me. I just don’t want to cause any awkwardness between us. Literally, I’m so thankful for autopay. This is not a plug for Dubsado anybody, you can do this with your own CRM system as well. But I’m thankful for auto pay and thankful for those payment reminders that you can set up on the back end and you can even have like you said, a canned email that takes your emotion out of it, it’s just, hey, just a reminder without getting personal about it or taking it personally or being offended or whatever. I’m so sensitive about that myself.

Shanna Skidmore
No, I mean sending out it feels like you’re a bill collector, and it’s not very fun. You know how to automate things you know me into I’m like, so not tech savvy, but we actually worked through with clients, our one on one clients, we don’t do a lot of one on one work anymore. But all of our clients are set up on auto-pay through dubsado because it’s easier for the client and we did not want to have to remember to send out invoices. So we set up that system and dubsado as well, it was so helpful. So I’m a big advocate. Anytime you can automate anything I know we’re speaking the same language, automate it, then we don’t personally have enough subscriptions that are behind to justify paying a service to collect payments. But there are a lot of services my peers use to collect payments on things like student subscriptions because churn rates can really affect your bottom line if you’re having people drop off. So and I haven’t figured out a way to automate, we have canned emails and all that, but we still send them out, so maybe Dolly can teach me how to automate that.

Dolly Delong
Well, if there’s listening to this episode, and you want to create, that is like a more affordable version.

Shanna Skidmore
Dolly is the workflow queen. Yeah, so we just have very few, like five or fewer a month typically. So for us, it just made sense to keep it in-house and send out we have pre-written emails, and honestly, our community is just so wonderful. I think it’s all and how you say like, hey, oh, we gotta get this paid and they just take care of it. But if you have any kind of product payment plan, I think just knowing and assuming there are going to be some that drop off.

Dolly Delong
Yes. That’s a good reminder to everyone.

Shanna Skidmore
We’re at seven? Fill out your Income and Expense Tracker. Okay, so this is personal to the blueprint model, but we have this spreadsheet. It’s incredible. Every single year, I teach my students, and I teach anybody who will listen to create a money plan for their business. So this is just a big forecast for your business. Okay, how much do I need to sell? How much do I have? As far as budgets? How much can I spend on travel this year? How much can I spend on education this year? And that this big form will tell you, hey, how much can I pay myself, it’s this beautiful document and call your money blueprint. So you can look at it every single year and know here are my goals financially, and I noticed becomes a math problem. If I sell what I need to sell, and I don’t overspend, I will always be able to pay myself. That’s something I hear so much, Dolly, how you said that to take a paycheck from your business is actually pretty scary to start taking consistent pay because income always will fluctuate no matter what business you’re in. So I can teach people how to like, we’re going to reverse engineer those numbers. How much do you need to make? How much do you need to sell, knowing that money plan? So we create this big, beautiful money plan, but I always tell people, why don’t we create this money plan, stick it in a drawer and then forget about it for the whole year. So I created for my students in the blueprint model, a spreadsheet called the Income and Expense Tracker. This is really cool way we can put in our money plan. So we have kind of our blueprint for the year, our goal, then we want to put in, actually what we’re spending. So that’s each month we go in and just put in what’s actually what we actually sold what we actually spent. It’s really neat because it tells us if we’re tracking towards our goals, or it’s like, hey, alert, like you’ve spent a lot on education this year, or you’ve really spent a lot on travel watch that doesn’t say that we see it in this spreadsheet, negative or it’s really close, or I only have this much less. So it’s just a really helpful way. You worked really hard to create this forecast, this money plan is a blueprint for the year. Let’s stay on track with that every single month. So that’s what I look at that Income and Expense Tracker and number seven pins just to really make sure how am I tracking for my goals. And my overspending in any area is this amazing way? Like, have you ever gotten to the end of the year? I know some listeners have said, just know you’re not alone. I hear this from my clients all the time. You get to the end of the year, and you’re like I made how much money? What? That’s one response. The second response? Where did all that go? Where did all that money go? I didn’t even myself or like where did all that money go? And so having this beautiful plan, which again, we can do in one day, a month, I know exactly where my money went? And then I always follow up with the question, is that where you want it to go? Because we have the power to have a lot of control over how we spend our money and have less control my own how much we can sell, but to forecast well, and know how to set realistic but optimistic goals. That’s what I really want to teach people how to do but this plan just ensures okay, hey, you know what I need to really watch how much I’m eating out. I need to take fewer trips to the coffee shop. Darn it. Being able to make those small tweaks each month is so much better than getting to the end of the year and realizing wow, I wasn’t able to fund that vacation because I drink too much coffee. That’s a bummer, you know? So that’s what that next step number seven is, look at the plan and track it. How are we doing towards our big year plan with that Income Expense Tracker?

Dolly Delong
Can I share one thing?

Shanna Skidmore
Like I’m talking so much.

Dolly Delong
Oh no. I love it. I’m learning so much alongside everyone. Like it’s a good reminder. I know a lot of creative business owners follow this podcast, especially a lot of photographers and I have a background in photography as well. And after I went through BPM and I followed this, I started tracking what I was spending during my busy season because my busy season for family photography is traditionally the end of August to the beginning of December. I’m like constantly on the move every weekend is booked. But I was making so much money. Then at the end of the year, Shanna, like what you said, where did all that money go? So I finally started tracking it and I’m just gonna throw out a random number. Let’s just say I’m trying not to be dramatic, like let’s say $400 one month, went to eating out between sessions, or I had a session in the morning so I got lunch somewhere and then I had a session that afternoon so I took myself out twice but then I was doing that like 10 times a month and I was like wow, I could just pack something for myself. I could just do something to go I don’t have to go to I don’t know Chicken Salad Chick every time I don’t know this is just an example but it really was eye-opening for me and I could have been using that money to like either put into savings for or overhead or save up for a computer or save up for something else.

Shanna Skidmore
So yeah, I mean, it’s the same experience, Dolly. I’ve I have done this myself, I always want people to know like, and when I worked in finance, and I think a lot of business quote unquote gurus or the old school business would say, like, you have the whole, you have to spend money to make money, or we were taught, if you take people to lunch, they’re more likely to buy from you. Then the whole idea of like, oh, it’s okay, it’s a business write-off. That gets people in so much trouble and it’s not just business. It’s personal as well, we oftentimes sacrifice long-term goals for immediate conveniences and when you become more aware, and that’s the whole goal of the money date, is just to stay on top of your finances. So you’re more aware of where your money is going. So you can like, hey, you know what, I don’t want to spend $400 a month on Chicken Salad Chick, I’m going to pack my lunch and I’m going to instead put that $400 towards saving for a computer, whatever. Like, how empowering is that? So I have one story I want to tell if we’re okay with time. Okay, so it was a student of mine in the blueprint model, and she owned an event planning business. So event planning and she took the program and she had $30,000 in debt on a business credit card. She said in a chat that this is the last year, and if I don’t pay this off, I’m not sure my family is going to want me to keep going. If it was a pretty dire situation for her. So $30,000 on this business credit card. So she went through the blueprint model and the program I have everybody look at, okay, where’s your money going? Is that where you get to go? And she said I realized she was spending over $1,000 a month on Chipotle. She said the biggest line item in my business was my taco bowl consumption. Because it was a very similar thing. She would have her whole team there. They were working on these events, and they were prepping, so she was buying lunch for the whole team all the time and it wasn’t factored into her pricing. So just coming out of her budget, her profitability. So she made a simple tweak and within nine months, she was able to pay off that $30,000 credit card. Nine months. We call this her Chipotle moment, so we’re always like, what’s your Chipotle moment gonna be? What is that simple tweak of? We have so much more. Oftentimes, not always. But oftentimes, we have so much more money than we realize. Just go into simple conveniences because we’re busy, we’re tired. I mean, I don’t want to cook again, personally and in the business. That it’s as if we could just make a simple tweak, awareness is the key to change is what I always say.

Dolly Delong
Oh, Chipotle moment. I love it. To follow my husband and I love Chipotle. We love it so much. We had it catered at our wedding like the night before our wedding. We catered it to all of our guests, so Chipotle is big in the DeLong household for sure.

Shanna Skidmore
So well, hey, you had your own Chipotle moment. With Chicken Salad Chick, it sounds like. Okay, I’m fine. All right, so we have 10 Total steps, and we’re about to hit step number eight. So we’re almost there, guys. For everyone listening, we’re almost there. Number eight, this is one of my favorite steps. I feel like a lot of the previous steps are about data entry, kind of the duty of finance, like the half to dues. This is when we flip over to what my role is. When I teach all my students that their new role is as the CFO of your business, get into into the strategy side. So I love that little switch, number eight is to create and prep a cash flow plan for the upcoming month. I do this in my business and personally. A cash flow plan is a really simple way to get a snapshot of your money and your cash and if you can pay yourself in the upcoming month. So as I mentioned, I have all my students create this big master plan for the year your blueprint like what are your goals, what are your budgets, all of that. But each month cash flow fluctuates. As you said, Dolly, you might be in high season and low seasons and what I often see in personal finances and in business, it’s that when you’re in your high season, you have so much money coming in. But what happens when your expenses ramp up? So when people get in low seasons or lean times and don’t have any cash reserves. Cash flow is a big part of our business, so a cash flow plan is a simple way to look at you just input what’s the starting balance in your bank account. What are all of the expenses I anticipate coming? So if I have a credit card bill to or if I need to pay my virtual assistant, you can track what is your overhead every month. So we know, every single month kind of what our overhead is and what am I going to pay myself? Or what do I hope to pay myself? All those are deductions. So we start with our beginning balance all of our anticipated expenses and then do you have any money coming in? Do you have any final payments from clients, if that’s how your contracts are set up? For me, we have a monthly subscription. So we know how many people are on payment plans or monthly subscriptions. So we kind of know and can anticipate how much income is coming in and then you’re just a simple math problem. Addition and subtraction. How much money do we have leftover? And if it’s positive, really great. If it’s negative, that’s where you get into a situation where okay, how many clients do I need to book this month? Can I run a sale? If I have a product shop, what do I need to do to make sure I’m cashflow positive every single month? So it’s just a simple way for anybody who has struggled to pay themselves in the past or is afraid of taking that consistent paycheck, this cash flow plan I think gives a lot of security and comfort and knowing like, okay, I can pay my bills. I know what’s going on and what’s great is once you do this for a while, we know we need $15,000, or whatever the number is, in our bank account at the beginning of every single month to pay our bills and pay ourselves, we know “our number”. It gives a lot of peace of mind, in an ideal world, you would have three months of expenses. I mean, again, that’s an ideal world. In the real world, I just want to make sure I can make it through the next month. We used to run our business when we launched the blueprint model back in 2016, it has been ever since the number one revenue stream in our business and we would run it once a year for a long time. So we knew that when we launched the Blueprint model we had to basically live off that money in the business and personally for a year. So if you know your offers, they might not be structured where you’re receiving steady income every single month, I’m sure Dolly with photography, you have high seasons and low seasons. So when you can start seeing those patterns of like I’m about to get a bunch of cash, I need to save it for six months, it needs to last me for a year however long, it’s just really helpful to plan out the cash flow. So that’s step number eight planar cash flow for the month. I do this personally, and for the business. Okay, just two more steps. All right, number nine, my favorite step ever is reviewing progress toward your goals. So as I mentioned, we create this big money plan for the year we call your blueprints like a master plan for your money. But we have to track how we’re going towards that. So how are you doing toward your goals? If you want to book 20 clients for the year? How many do you have booked? Just sit down and look at how you’re doing same with expenses, look at where your spending is going. Is there anything that’s too high, or too low? Hey, let’s take a trip. It’s just really helpful to check in on a monthly basis about how you’re doing and not get to the end of the year and realize, wow, I made a lot but I spent too much, or if I just pushed a little bit harder or ran a different cell or came up with mini sessions or something I could have hit my goal. So again, awareness is the key to change, sit down every single month and just review your progress towards your goal. Are you tracking toward the numbers you created at the beginning of the year when I create this money plan? And so I teach all my students, do I create it once for the year and I don’t change it? Will the year look exactly as planned? No, absolutely not. But it’s this really cool picture of okay, what did I want to achieve? And did that change throughout the year? Sometimes, I’ve set a lofty sales goal and was like, You know what? I have my daughter and I want to take more time off or you know, and so I think in business so often success is tied to revenue. How much did you make personally or how much did the business make this year actually sat down like last week, and thought and I’ve said this for years, you know, revenue should not be your determinant of success. If revenues going up every year should not be your determinative success. Because sometimes like you, Dolly, you take a significant time off and maybe your revenue won’t go up this year. Maybe your revenue won’t go up this year. But how much are you making per hour is kind of what I look at how much they pay myself. How many hours did I work? Right now I’m working part-time and so if I’m making more per hour, I think that’s really cool. I’m like Wow, good job. You know, I worked half the amount of time and made the same amount of money, that’s a pretty good success story. So that was just a side note for anybody who cares. Okay, so review your progress toward your goal. Step number 10, last but not least, is to scan files and shred any paperwork, just almost like money day over, pat yourself on the back. So let’s clean it up and move on. So first scan the file, so technically, with the IRS here in the United States, we need copies of receipts. So there are a ton of apps that do this now but if you have any physical receipts, you can scan those in, in a system, you can just keep them all in a folder on your hard drive. In QuickBooks, you can actually attach it as a file, I don’t do that it’s an extra step. I don’t always do that if I receive an invoice or a bill from somebody I usually do. But that’s an extra step you can take I’m sure Wave does the same thing. But you can just keep all this in a file. So if you just scan them all at once, and I have a quick scanner I got off Amazon just scans them all. And then you just file them it’s really helpful and then shred. So I know people are always scared to shred but shred any financial documents, or personal information, just go ahead, file them, or shred them if you don’t need to keep them. So it just feels good to clean slate and start the next month and those are my 10 steps to complete and effective monthly money dates.

Dolly Delong
Wow. These are amazing. This was a masterclass like seriously, thank you so much for pouring so much wisdom into this episode. I firmly believe these are extremely actionable and doable for anyone listening and I think I’m gonna reassess my own money date plans for myself, I will be honest with everyone listening, I have gone a little behind on my finances, like the steps for myself just with maternity leave. So I am a few months behind. So I need to restart it. As soon as I get my brain back from this.

Shanna Skidmore
I’m sure so many people listening are Hey, I’ve been there too. But it’s hard in December. What was that for in January? So as soon as you’re able, and that’s why in our community, we do this monthly together, because it’s like, we need that accountability. So find someone you can stay accountable to you. Because inevitably, and I know Dolly you know this with any kind of systems or workflow, it’s easy to put off these somewhat tedious tasks.

Dolly Delong
Oh, I am going to let you do a little plug. Now that you shared these 10 steps with us, can you unashamedly just do a big plug for the blueprint model? I really want you to talk about it because it’s changed so many creative business owner’s life and I really want people to be pointed in that direction, do you mind talking a little bit about your online membership as well, because that’s been very beneficial for me as well.

Shanna Skidmore
Okay, I’m excited. So the blueprint model is my signature program. It is a business finance course for entrepreneurs. It is a foundational, essential program that teaches what I believe every business owner needs to know to understand the finances of their business. My goal isn’t to make anyone a CPA or a CFO, my goal is to teach you what numbers to look at in your business so you can make strategic decisions moving forward. I don’t think there is any education out there that is solely back to the basics, there’s a ton of great content on scaling or no matter what business you have. That’s the biggest question I get well, this work from a business no matter what business you have, or where you live in the world. You have to know how to price for profit as an entrepreneur, you’re not getting unless you bought a franchise, you’re not getting a set standard of here’s your offer. Here’s the price. So that’s what we do very early on, what are your offers? What is your price? And any business owner we’ve had people 15 years in business go through this because these foundational pieces, oftentimes you’re running, you’re getting out there, you’re kind of throwing spaghetti on the wall doing all the things. So you got to go back to the basics and understand the fundamentals of your business. So the blueprint model is a fully written program. It’s self-paced, you can do it in your own time, and understand the Business Essentials to grow a business not only for profit but aligns with your life value. That is a big part of the blueprint model is identifying what type of business you want. I always joke I can teach anybody to make a million dollars and I truly believe that but what is more important is that you’re happy when you get there. So we talk a lot about what sees and apply for you in what are your big goals financially, you might not want to have a six-figure, seven-figure, or eight-figure business, you get to decide your level of success. So the blueprint model is like my business child. I love it. I’m so honored anytime someone joins the blueprint model because I truly want to empower every business owner to understand your business at a fundamental level. What’s great about that is then you then know how to outsource, okay, I’m ready to outsource a bookkeeper, I’m ready to outsource these other things, I feel empowered to pay myself or to hire a team because you know your numbers, you know what numbers to look at what they mean, and if you’re profitable. So, that is the blueprint model. It is an amazing program. We have six core building blocks, that all build upon each other. If, if you’re here in the south you may, it’s kind of like Dave Ramsey’s baby steps for personal finance. I’ve never done Dave Ramsey’s program, but most people are very familiar with like the 12 baby steps of personal finance. So for us, it’s the six building blocks of business, it’s the key pieces that every business needs to have to have a firm foundation. And so you’ll walk away with your one-year money plan, you’ll now have a pricing formula to understand if all of your offers are profitable. And I think Dolly for you like you said, you’ll just feel empowered to understand what you can and can’t do. Can I take a paycheck? Can I take maternity leave? I want to have a month-long trip to where was it, Montana. I want to take a month in my 10 days. I remember when you emailed me about that. I was like, yes, it was so wonderful. How awesome that you got to do that and you felt comfortable doing it. So everybody takes it. I believe in this program so much and we want to get it into the hands of anybody who wants to start a business has a business. Because once you have these key fundamentals, truly you can start any business, and you can run any business. That’s what I love. This isn’t a topical program. It’s not like how to have an online course, or how to be a photographer, all those are incredible programs. But what I’ve seen is most entrepreneurs have multiple types of businesses, even Dolly with you, you started with photography, now you’re doing systems education, and with dubsado, and all kinds of systems and workflows, education, like that’s most entrepreneurs, it’s not going to be one business forever. I want to teach you these skills that will go through any business. So with that, we’ve done that since 2016. I wanted to create a space for this amazing community of like-minded entrepreneurs because I think that’s the thing that’s really special about the blueprint model. It’s not just how can you make more money and climb the ladder of your own success, it very much is how can your business align with the life you want. So we’ve created this community of very kindred spirits. I think it’s one of a kind of entrepreneurs really seeking the same goal in their own way. So it’s like, how can we keep this together? Because money isn’t something you learn once and you’re done. Yeah, it is the money date, you have to stay consistent with it, you’re looking at your numbers every single year, and you create a plan. So we’re beta testing right now this program called the money club and it’s been incredible, we launched it about eight months ago, and we’re still beta testing it with our students only. But it’s a community, really a mastermind designed to keep us on track number one with our money accountable. Number two, to stay on track with your money to almost have a financial advisor on call and this amazing group of entrepreneurs to bounce feedback on because we now have hundreds of students in it. I don’t know everything I know enough about a lot of things to be dangerous. But there are other photographers in there. There are other digital entrepreneurs in there, so it’s just become this really beautiful place where we can talk about money openly and freely and ask questions, and just grow our businesses together. So that’s being beta-tested right now but if you join the movement model, you get to be a part of the money club and test it out for a set amount of time and see if you want to join it. So it’s kind of like a backdoor entrance into the money club. So my goal truly is just to help more people understand their money at a deep level. And whether it’s personal finance or business finance, because truly that gives our family so much freedom and knowing what we need to make and it’s allowed us to take road trips or work part-time right now with my daughter, and if I can help more people do that, that’s absolutely my goal.

Dolly Delong
Well, thank you so much, again, for sharing so much of your wisdom like more about the money club, and more about the blueprint model. For those who are listening, I want you all to know that I’ve inserted all of these links in the show notes so if you are wanting to get on the blueprint model waitlist get on it because I know it’s opening up really soon when this podcast episode releases, and check out Shanna’s website as well, then Shanna has an amazing freebie. Do you want to talk about your profitability playbook with the audience?

Shanna Skidmore
Okay, yeah. Yeah. So it’s a 35-page ebook. I’ve been feedback that it’s better than a paid offer. So go get it. It’s called the Profitability Playbook. It’s a really neat resource. I worked really hard on it to help you identify where you are in your business, and what your next steps should be. So if you’re starting out, kind of what should I start with? Let’s license the business. Let’s get a business bank account, in just 10 simple steps. Even if you’re five years in business, it’s helpful to be like, Oh, wait, I didn’t do those original steps. So is this playbook that walks you through what you should be doing to set your business up for success financially, kind of at that fundamental level? It’s called the Profitability Playbook and it’s 35 pages. It’s totally free and I hope it’s really helpful.

Dolly Delong
This is in the show notes everyone so go check it out. And then finally, Shanna has an amazing podcast called Consider the Wildflowers, so if you are, well, obviously, you’re listening to this podcast, so you are a podcast listener, I would say subscribe to that podcast as well and listen in on conversations that Shanna has with other very successful business owners who like are peeling back the curtain and showing you behind the scenes that nobody really talks about in business, and it’s quite amazing and eye-opening for me. Anyways, yeah, check out Consider the Wildflowers and subscribe to it after this episode ends go and find it, please. And again, it’s show notes. Well, we’ve literally hit the hour mark, and this has been a great masterclass. I just want to say thank you so much again for coming on. I know you have a lot you’re working on this week. So thank you so much for coming

Shanna Skidmore
I’ve loved spending time with you. This truly has brightened my day and has just been so good. I’m grateful for you and honored ticket to call your friend and a student. It is such a privilege to get to do what I do I get teary-eyed about it. Just knowing with you and little babies at home. That truly is why I do what I do. So thank you for asking me to come on. It’s been such an honor.