0:02
Welcome to design for the creative mind, a podcast for interior designers and creative entrepreneurs to run their business with purpose, efficiency and passion. Because, well, every design is different, the process should remain the same. Prepare yourself for some good conversations with amazing guests, a dash of Jesus and a touch of the woowoo and probably a swear word or two. If you're ready to stop trading your time for money and enjoy your interior design business. You are in the right place. I'm your host, Michelle Lynn.
0:49
Low everybody Hello. Hello. I'm Michelle Lynn. And welcome back to the design for the creative mind podcast. This is a podcast geared towards creative with the key audience being interior designers. And today I want to introduce to you Loriann coons. She is the owner and CEO of profit priority, which is a boutique accounting and fractional CFO firm, helping creatives go from unsure to unstoppable when they're thinking about their finances. Whether you are just starting out or you've been in business for years, her mission is to help creatives feel peace about their numbers while growing their profit and their confidence. Business aside. Laurieann is really just a Midwest gal obsessed with traveling, reading, iced coffees and spending time on the farm with her two little kiddos. Welcome Loriann so good to have you here.
1:42
Yeah, thanks for having me.
1:44
And let me ask you a very important question. Iced coffee sweetened or not?
1:49
It depends on the day. I like it pretty. I don't like a lot of sweetener. Yeah, maybe just a little bit, but I'm, yeah, I like my coffee tastes. Yes,
1:58
I can appreciate that. So my iced coffee is definitely sweeter than my regular coffee. Like my regular coffee. I like the spoon to stand up. It's just so strong. But iced coffee kind of reminds me of like, I don't know a treat.
2:11
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Same here. I like my hot coffee. I like it black. I don't like anything else. Yeah, straight black coffee. But definitely my iced coffee is just a little bit sweeter. But I do like a good cold brew with nothing. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
2:26
Yes. A great. I could use one right now. Yes. Okay, so now that we got the important stuff aside, let's let's talk about business and talk about finances. And girl. I gotta tell you sometimes finances gives me the heart palpitations anxiety conversations. I've outgrown most of that. Having been in business so long, you kind of have to suck it up and face it, because it's business and not Stobie. But how did you get involved in finance? Like, what's your background? And how did you land in small business? Yes. See a fractional CFO wing?
3:02
Yeah, yeah. So I mean, like, as far back as I can remember, like, so my parents have businesses had businesses all growing up multiple different ones. And I remember sitting around like the dinner table or on vacations, and we are talking about how a business investment investment will financially pay off, or it will see ROI or whatever. So like, from a very young age, I always saw the importance of prioritizing finances and business, from my parents, and I still do. And so it's been really fun to take that and kind of implement it now in my career, and a lot of what even just in running my own business, not just to finances, I credit it back to how I was like, brought up and raised and stuff. So I do give a lot of my parents a lot of credit. Love that. Yeah. And so anyways, loves finances, loved math in school, so obviously gonna go be a tax CPA and file taxes. Like that's just the typical accounting path. Fast forward. I started working in public accounting, and I was there for probably only like, a year and a half. And I was like, This is not for me. Yeah. Yeah, I did not like, I mean, the tax side of things was fine. But the issue that I saw was clients would come to us like at the end of the year, and we would take what they had, which was usually just a bunch of scribbles or just random stuff put together and we would just input the numbers, file the taxes, and send them out the door. And so one, their bookkeeping was not really accurate. We weren't doing like accountants on in general don't investigate every single transaction or purchase and so like they're looking at what the bookkeeper or what the business owner is giving them to file the taxes. So I'm like, one, this is not correct. And two, they're not seeing their numbers too. Throughout the year, and I'm like, these businesses could be so much better. And so much more farther along, if they were just looking at their numbers throughout the year and had someone to help explain it to them in like easy and simple terms like you don't, it doesn't have to be like this accounting lingo, which is what I saw a lot of people above me trying to like, talk to our clients. And I'm like, they're so confused. And then we're just like, see you next year.
5:22
Bye. And it's crap out.
5:25
Yeah. So I'm just like that. No, no, I'm done. So, so I love there. And I ended up working for my dad part time on his businesses. And it like, just kind of started coming. Like I started, like my church. And one I needed someone to hire for a bookkeeper. And then other people found out and needed someone for their business. And then as it like, started continuing, I'm like, Okay, this is really like, I could really help people out and just the bookkeeping side, and like understanding just that cash flow and money management. And so then I just kind of like, started hopping in the online space, and then hopping in the creative space. And it just like, snowballed. And then once I got in the creative space, which is like I consider for all a lot of our clients is like photographers, brand web designers, interior designers, a lot of that creative service based industries, obviously, like a lot of creatives have a hard time understanding the finances. Like it's hard. And like you said, like it freaks you out. So that's kind of like backstory of what happened. And then it's been about four years since I've started my business. And we're now profit priority. There's a team of six of us now. And so it's been it's been really fun.
6:37
Oh, that sounds amazing. Congratulation, that's some great growth. And for years,
6:41
it's been wild. To see that it's been while I
6:45
think we can all appreciate that. Anybody who's listening small business is not for the faint of
6:50
heart. No, no, it is not.
6:52
You told me before we started recording, you've got two small children. Yeah, I
6:56
started my business when my daughter was one. And then I don't know if I can do my math, right. But like, five, four months after starting my business, I found out I was pregnant. And it was a surprise. And so I was like, Oh, but I feel like because of that it kind of forced me to figure out my business. And that compounded into a bunch of growth. So it was a good thing. Yeah,
7:17
it's funny. God always works those things for us. Yeah, for sure. That is fun. Okay, so let's dive into what are the numbers that every business owner should pay more attention to? Like, let's just, let's just dive right in and give some actionable details to the audience. Yeah,
7:36
yeah. So first and foremost, I mean, obviously, people are wanting to pay attention to your bank account. And a lot of people look at or checking their bank account and basing decisions off of the bank account. And that's
7:49
only back when I'm embarrassed to say, but throw myself under the bus guilty. Yeah.
7:55
And I don't feel like I've done that really any part of it, because I knew that you can't really run it that way. But I see a lot of my clients running their businesses that way, before they come to us. And so yeah, while you need to know what's in your bank account, and that looks at like what cash flow is going on, there's more to the puzzle. So obviously, wanting to keep an eye on your bank account, balance, how much cash you have. But more importantly, I want you to be looking at your sales numbers. So I'm just gonna kind of walk you through the key numbers on your profit and loss each month. So I want you to look at your income, I want you to look at your gross profit, which would be all of your sales minus any directly related cost. Let's say you, let's say you buy a piece of furniture for a client, and then you're reselling it. I don't know who all does that. So my interior designers do it, some don't. So if they're
8:46
not doing it, they're leaving a bucket of money on the table. So if you're listening, make sure that you are buying to the trade pricing and selling to your client at retail, IMAP, what, uh, you know, whatever that looks like, yeah, pocket money. Yeah.
9:02
So if you're doing that, if not do it, that would be the cost of what you buy, that piece of furniture is going to be like what it's called cost of goods sold, because it's what's costing you to buy it. And so you want to see how much of that is directly related to the sales and the income that you got. And so that's going to give you your gross profit. I also for my service based business, I like to put my wages of my team that when they work on client work, so I like to see it that way too. So that's another portion that you could do, but now it's just getting in the weeds of things. Yeah. So
9:35
you've got let's say you have payroll, and just for my lack of, you know, savvy math skills, let's say you pay somebody 1000 bucks a month. Okay? If you're saying that they're spending 75% of that time on clients, are you actually so you're putting that up under your, like cost of cost of labor, cost of goods sold cost of labor, for that Are you? Are you pulling those numbers based on their tracking them? Or is it on average? So it's real time.
10:06
So I will go in and pull how much time they work on clients, and how much time they've worked on my business, like internally, and then I will split out their wage cost. So I can see directly. Okay, this is what I'm paying my team. This is the profit margin I have on this service. But yeah, that gets a little bit more into the depth. But if somebody wanted good
10:26
data, I mean, yeah, as as much as numbers used to give me help heart palpitations, like and love the data. So once I get that information, the analysis of it I totally geek out on so that I love. That's cool. Yeah,
10:41
and I it's, it takes a little bit of setup on like the timekeeping, like if you're using toggle or something, but it's really quick to pull those numbers and then just whenever you see the payroll pull through, you just split it out based off of the percentage of time worked. So it's really information like informative. Yeah. So okay, so that gives you your gross profit after any directly related expenses. And then obviously, you want to be looking at your total operating expense. So all of the rest of your expenses, I like to kind of see what's my highest, my lowest etc. And then obviously, you want to be paying attention to what's called your net profit, which is basically what you have, at the end of the day, almost the most important thing number to pay attention to because I've worked with companies that are bringing in four or $5 million of income in a year. And they're only profiting like $25,000 at the end. Like at the end.
11:30
I'm so glad to say that we just had. So I think this is going to air probably it'll be sometime probably in May, or early summer. But we just wrapped up in April, when we're recording this, our interior design business success summit. And I was talking to our audience, I'm not sure if it was a VIP day or the general audience there. But you can't believe what you see on on social media. Or if somebody's saying they're running a multimillion dollar business, that doesn't mean they're successful. Because if they're not making any money, it's just churning.
12:01
Yeah, it's like red flag for me, when people say that I'm like, Okay, you're gone. There is a time and place to celebrate those things. And so like for us, like we're getting really close to hitting like a million in revenue from the start of our business. And so that's really fun to celebrate. But it doesn't mean it does not mean anything. Yeah, so And even with that, like there's so many different ways that you're filing, if you're an S corp, you have payroll go through, and that's going to change your net profit anyways. So don't take what anyone's saying, you have to be able to see everything on the
12:38
bottom line, not just the top. Yep,
12:41
exactly. And then another thing that I like to do is to incorporate what I call a true profit of the business. And so things like owners draw credit card payments for maybe you have a credit card debt, maybe you have a line of credit that you're paying off, those things don't get listed on the profit and loss. So I like to keep track of, let's see what our profit is for the business. But then okay, I have to pay off a little bit on this credit card, I have to, I'm gonna pay myself and additional owners draw. And this is what I have leftover. And that's what I call your true profit of the business. And so that's something that you're just not going to see on any other report because it is split between like the balance sheet and the profit and loss. So we kind of combined them together to give you a good solid number.
13:28
Love that. For those of you who are listening, if your eyes are starting to glaze over, just hit pause and come back because this is important stuff. And so let's also talk about where those reports come from. So, in a nutshell, your bookkeeper can can what she'll do and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just jumping in here is your bookkeeper should tie up every month, at the end of every month, when she gets all the reconciliations done and gone through those details. So each month, like within a week or so of the following month, you should be getting a report from your bookkeeper that gives you this information, or in addition to that, you should be able to jump into your software and be able to pull this information yourself. Yes. So is that is that
14:15
accurate? Yet? That's correct. Like yeah, if you're working with a bookkeeper, they will wrap things up, give you these two reports. And I do want to like stay on top of that, because we've had a lot of clients come to us lately about delayed reports. They haven't gotten reports from the bookkeeper for like four months. Their bookkeeper is not answering any questions they asked based off those reports. It's very important that you get these reports every single month and that it would if you have any questions on any of the numbers on the reports that your bookkeeper is able to clearly give you an answer on those.
14:49
It's very important in that respect, because this is your money and this is not a hobby anymore if you're in business. So Laurieann let me ask you this. What's the story? Oh, in my previous world, I was not an interior design. Okay. And I was very familiar with the bookkeeping aspect of those other businesses. Interior Design. I mean, girl, there's so many freaking moving parts in this in this business like, how does it differ? Do you need a bookkeeper who specializes in interior design? Like, what's your opinion on that? Like, why have you niched into the creatives?
15:28
Yeah, so I mean, obviously, like I said, before, we do a lot of like photographers, brain and web designers, we have interior designers. So we're not specifically like only interior designers. But I do think it's very important that you find someone that's familiar with your industry, especially interior designers, because like you said, there is a lot of moving parts, and you want to make sure that everything is getting documented correctly, your sales tax situations you're getting taken care of properly, and that everything is running smoothly. So I would say if you're hiring a bookkeeper one, if you're an interior designer, I would highly recommend from the start to hire a bookkeeper to is that you find someone that is very familiar with your industry, so they can make sure that everything's getting done, right. Yeah,
16:14
it's more complicated than just a pass through type of business. I mean, just so for an example, and I'm sure this rings true to you as well, Loran, like if if you have a custom pillow that you're creating for a client, you have multiple components, you have the insert, you have the fabric, you have the trim, and you have the labor and the freight, just to keep it a simple pillow. Some of those items are taxable, some of them are not. And then you also have to be able to, to compile all of those as one item for your client. But they're all accounted for separately, because they're very possibly coming from multiple vendors. Yeah. So an accountant needs a bookkeeper needs to be able to come to understand that. And then in addition, you want to know, and maybe we can dive into this, you want to know your job costs, like how much does this particular job cost? And there are some, some accounting platforms that can give you that information easily, and others that might be challenged, because they don't have all of the I don't know the entry spaces for the details in it. So can you talk a little bit on that? Yeah. What are we looking for when we're talking to bookkeepers? Or when we're looking for? If you're just starting your business, you're thinking, Oh, I probably don't need that. I can just go really simple with my bookkeeping. Let's kind of start there. And yeah,
17:41
I would say I mean, like you were saying, like, it's more than just one income, one expense, we're call it a day type of thing. And especially whenever you're just starting your business, you want to know what your profit margins are on each service. And because that's really what's going to allow you to be like, okay, in my pricing, right? Do I need to increase my pricing? Do I need to find different vendors for my supplies? Are my supplies too much? And how much time am I spending on a product or creating this product or whatever, or even a service based like I know for I keep coming back to me, because that's what we do is I look and see, well, how much time am I spending on someone's books, how much time is my team spending on someone's books, then that allows me to know if my pricing is aligned. And so without that information broken out, and without having a really good clear outline, you're not able to make good decisions, you're not going to be able to to like really move forward, knowing that your profitability is where it needs to be.
18:44
Imagine trying to bake a cake without a recipe. You kind of know what the ingredients are, but you don't know how to put it all together. After lots of hard work and trying different combinations, all you are left with is a sticky situation and a stomachache behave. Running an interior design business can feel exactly that same way. That is why I created the interior design business bakery. This is a program that teaches you how to bake your interior design business cake and eat it too. If you don't want to figure out the hard way and you want guidance to follow a recipe that has already been vetted. Someone that has already been there and done it and will help you do it too. Then check out the year long mentorship and coaching program. The interior design business bakery. If your interior design business revenue is below 300,000. Or if you're struggling to make a profit and keep your sanity. This is the only program for you. You can find that information at designed for the creative mind.com forward slash business dash bakery. Check it out. You won't regret it
20:09
another thing too, with having a bookkeeper on is that you're able to kind of ask them those questions and get their insight based off of like what they've seen in other companies and stuff like that. So that's really cool, too. Absolutely.
20:21
And I cannot stress how important it is to have a bookkeeper who understands our industry. And if you
20:30
take anything from the Podcast Take like that phrase. Yes,
20:33
yes. Because I'm sprouting gray hairs thinking about how when I started and trying to explain things to my bookkeeper, and she just it didn't, it never clicked. And I actually got audited for my sales tax because she wasn't fully versed. Yeah.
20:47
And that's another thing too. And I'll be honest, I don't love sales tax, because there's so much involved to it. Nuance. Yeah, yeah. So we actually stayed away from sales tax for like probably the first two years of our business, because I'm like, I don't want to touch that. I don't want to do it. I don't want to handle it. But as the business has grown, it's kind of something that like our clients have, and new clients will come to us. And just because they have sales tax, I don't want to be like, sorry, we're not going to take you on. So we're like, Okay, actually, we're going to do sales tax. I know sales tax. I know what to do. I know what I need to be doing for all my clients for sales tax reasons. But yeah, I did stay away from it for a little bit, because it was just so nuanced. So from an accountant to you guys, even some accountants want to stay away from it.
21:31
Yeah, it's a thing. It's a big, but that should not stop you from buying at trade cost and selling to your client. So make sure that you're doing that because Laurieann, set it up and did it right. So you all up and make sure that you are buying to the trade and selling at
21:50
I would Yeah, 100% makes a huge difference.
21:54
So is there a way that you have found to familiarize, say, your, your clients, your creative clients, with the finances that they need to be paying attention to? Like, do you hold their hand and walk them through it? So it takes the skip that I think part of the reason why it's so scary? Well, for me, I can speak for myself. One is because I didn't fully understand the ins and outs of the design aspect of it. And then two is because it's my money. And it just it feels so personal. I had to take the personal out of out of it. It's like, so how do you walk your clients through that? Or how do you explain to them, here's, here's the numbers you should be focusing on and paying attention to you had mentioned those early, just a little bit ago. But here's also kind of how you can do it without being overstimulated or overwhelmed. Yeah,
22:45
so it's kind of a big portion of what we do, just because I don't want to just be a typical bookkeeper deliver reports and send an email, and then we'll just rinse and repeat every single month, because a lot of like a big pillar of our business is education, and educating our clients. And so when someone comes on, we do hold their hand through the onboarding process, we make it very smooth and seamless for them. Because a lot of times, that's just a whole overwhelming experience. And then once we get the first reports, we do like in depth call with them, to make sure they're understanding what we're giving them, like, what is a profit and loss? What is a balance sheet? What are these accounts that we broke out for you? Do you want to see them in a little bit different ways this what's going to be helping your business, we kind of have that communication with the client. Once that's done, what we do is we do monthly reports like normal, but we walk through the reports with a loom video for all of our clients. So we're going through screen recording, talking through the reports with them, really outlining anything that we noticed for them, making sure that they understand it, send out the reports. And then if there's any thing special for if they want to see their numbers broken out a little bit different way. We'll put that in the email. That's just a basic recap email. And we'll send that out. And then we also hop on quarterly calls with all of our clients to just like, go over everything, list out anything we need to talk about, answer any questions, they might have anything that might be coming up for all of our clients. And then on top of that we do have a private Slack channel for all of our clients to where they can ask questions throughout the month if they're wanting to add on a new service or product. They're wanting to hire an employee. What does that look like? How can you give me a breakdown of this of my software and expenses like software line right now or whatever it might be? We're always there for support in that area.
24:38
Oh, that's fantastic. Now, is that your standard bookkeeping services and then you get more hand holding if you do fractional CFO?
24:45
Oh, yes, I love CFO work. Yeah.
24:48
So y'all if you're listening fractional CFO is basically a service where you get a CFO, but obviously like even in my business or multiples I do don't need one full time. Yeah. So fractional is you get what you need. It's like a fractional jet. Right. But that's my aspiration a fractional jet.
25:09
Yeah. Yeah. So
25:11
what you do, please?
25:13
Yeah, so a lot of times our CFO services will include bookkeeping, we like to have it in house just because for us to really build upon that, we will need to make sure that numbers are accurate. So a lot of times it is they are in the monthly bookkeeping package, which is our main product or main service. And then they will add on the CFO services, we have done it to where we'll hop in and do fractional CFO work if they have like their own in house bookkeeper and stuff. But for the most part, we're doing the bookkeeping in house as well.
25:44
Because you can literally just email your colleague and ask a question instead of having to go in 17. Circles.
25:50
Exactly. So it's all of basically what I just said. Plus, what we do is we hop on a call every single month, and on that call, we will have a good outline of what we want to touch based off of what's happened in the past month, what your goals are, what we're working towards, we'll kind of go through, we walk through our custom CFO dashboard that we build out for all of our clients. It's ever changing. It's a very active spreadsheet, I say spreadsheet, but we make it as simple as we can make it pretty color code. There's colors in there. We also on top of that we give like a PDF of like KPIs key numbers you need to pay attention to in branded color coded snaps and all of our clients. So working with creatives for a while, yes, yep. And they love them. So it's super great. Anyways, so that gets added on with the monthly reports. But this dashboard will have projected out for the rest of the year. So whole entire year, income expenses add in, if you're hiring a new team member, if you're investing in something, if whatever it might be, we build that out plan for it. So we have like a good outline to go off of from there, we have a good sales tracker that is obviously going rolling, that you're updating, we're updating, and that's really going to help us with cash flow, we'll have another tab for Team cost. So whether you have contractors or employees, we have a very well breaking out there to where it let's say you're planning on giving your employee a raise in a couple months, are you planning on bringing in another employee or another contractor, we can play around with those number on that spreadsheet, and it will tie over to the projection area. And then from there, we have a cash flow projection. And that cash flow projection is a lot of clients will be either weekly sum or monthly cash flow. But essentially this is so where you can estimate out in four weeks, you'll have X amount of money in your bank account. And we have it down to a science to where like six weeks ago, we estimated that our client was going to have X amount of money in their bank account. And it was down to like $6. And so it we have it down to a science to where we'll be like, Okay, you need money, or you can invest money on this week. So it's really fun to be able to see that. And then we just are in constant communication with our clients, help them onboard new team members expand all the
28:15
things. That's fantastic. That is absolutely fantastic. And what a relief for the small business owner to know that they have that expert in their corner.
28:25
Yeah. And it's really it's truly like a it's a financial partner. It's not really like me coming in and being like, Oh, you do this and this and this. No, it's like a, I'm partnering with you to help grow your business. And I'm giving you the insight that I have to really help you learn how to analyze the numbers, and we're going to do it together.
28:45
I'd love that and as the CEO, so if you're the small business owner, you are the CEO. And as the CEO of a small business, we wear so many hats, like oftentimes, we are the marketing department. We are the sales department, we are the fulfillment department. But in that respect, as we grow in our business, those are the things to outsource, you know, it's the things that we're not good at. We experts hire experts. That's why our clients hire us. You know, that's why you hire a dentist or a hair. You know, like, this isn't my natural hair color. I hire an expert to do that.
29:22
You don't want to do a box to box color. And
29:26
it was not pretty. Not really at all. But yeah, I love the fact that when you know your numbers, you can make better decisions. Yeah,
29:35
yeah. And it's like you're just leaving out so much information when you're not doing that. Like all that information you can use and really grow your business and without it like you're really just holding yourself back.
29:47
Yeah. So will you recap. I just want to I've got a few more questions for you. But I kind of want to tie this in a pretty bow. And what numbers do we actually need to be paying attention to? In our finances, okay?
30:01
Yes, I want you to pay paying attention to like your sales, obviously looking at what your sales are, how they're growing, what they're at, I want you to be paying attention to your gross profit, which is all of your sales minus any directly related expenses, I want you to be paying attention to your net profit. So basically what you have at the end of the day after you've paid everybody out, and then I want you to be paying attention to what's called your true profit, which is essentially, all of your net profit minus any like owner's drawers or credit card, like payments or line of credit payments, or whatever that might be that wouldn't necessarily show up on your profit and loss.
30:40
Perfect, perfect, perfect. I think. If you guys don't, you don't remember those, just write them down. Go ask your bookkeeper today, you know, or your current bookkeeper to walk you through some of those. And then of course, you have Laurieann here as taking on new clients. Yeah, we are. Even with sales tax. Yes, we say
31:01
we're very well versed in sales tax. So we have a whole systems and stuff in place. Yep. That's
31:06
too funny. So changing directions Loriann. If you were not doing this as your as your business, yeah. What do you think you would be doing?
31:15
Okay, so it might be something that I'm getting ready to start. So I'm really into operations. And I love systems and internal operations. So I would probably be some sort of like ops specialist for like accounting firms and bookkeeping firms.
31:33
Oh, interesting. Yeah. So we share that, that I'm not a fan of math. So we're not completely. But I love the operations. Yeah, processes and procedures. That's what I teach in my mentorship program, the interior design business bakery, it's every project is different, but the process should be the same.
31:51
Exactly. Yeah. And so like, I came from a firm that was like the most disorganized firm ever, my two full time employees came from other firms. And they were just like, they were a complete mess. Which is so funny, because a cow, as you would think would have a very clear like system and process, but they just don't, because operations and accounting, they are two different things. And I really do credit, a lot of our growth. I mean, we have doubled year over year, for the past four years. And so all of our growth is really due to all of our processes and all of our systems that we have in place. Like we couldn't handle that growth if we didn't have this
32:31
in place, because you don't have to recreate the wheel every single time you get a new client. Exactly.
32:36
Yeah, it's so that's what I would be doing. If I was doing this. That's what I'd be doing.
32:41
I'll tell you, that's been, I love my interior design business. But I love teaching other designers like there's an easier way to do this. It's just rinse and repeat. It's not a franchise, like so you can tailor it to meet your own particular needs. But this is what's worked. Yeah, like, let's keep doing what works and dump and what doesn't. Exactly
33:01
100% agree. Yeah,
33:03
that's it makes my heart go pitter patter. So Well, who do you need to be? Like, as the business owner? Like? What are some habits that you've taken on to be the person that leads this rapidly growing business?
33:22
So that's a good question. So there's been a lot of personal growth in the past four years, because you have to like, for one, I started my business and it was just me. And then I started bringing on little team members here and there. And so you have, you really do have to step in a very good leadership position. And so really, that's something that I honestly, I never thought I would be in a leadership position like this, and just kind of overseeing everything. And it really, truly in a CEO position. Like I don't really touch the categorization of transactions anymore. Because I'm so involved in the business and the overseeing of everything. So I think part of that is I had to learn to let go, and I still do on my team and trust my team. And also, like, be fine. If they're doing things just a little bit different, as long as the outcomes the same. Most of the time, they'll do things different and the outcomes gonna be better than what I could have done. So
34:19
I love that it's so true once you just let go and let them fly.
34:24
Yeah, yeah. And so like, for example, I hired on, I've had a team of a lot of part time employees, but I had on my first time employee, she's like my account manager, but she also does a lot of CFO work to in October, and I have released a lot of stuff to her and let her kind of create a lot of new fun things that we do with our CFO clients. And it has just like, completely blown me away on the type of things that she's able to provide to our clients. And obviously our clients love it. They're like flipping out and we've gained so many more CFL clients just since she's been on and so that's been really be fun to allow me to kind of release that to her and let her do it. To not carry the load for everything. Oh my word. It's so nice. And I was telling I was telling you before we started recording, but like my kids were sick, like so much at the beginning of the year. And so I did, I had to kind of like, really scale back what I was doing. And it was so nice to have, like, my team there that could just like pick it up. They're like, yeah, no problem. We got it. We got it taken care of. So we just shifted around priorities and everything got done. And I could be home with my kids.
35:29
Yeah. And that's in a perfect world. That's what being a business owner, in my opinion should be. You don't need to be a business operator. Yeah, you get a point, then you can't completely walk away and go to sleep. But still, yeah,
35:43
and it takes a lot of work to get to this point. I've burned myself into the ground for the past three or so
35:50
I can appreciate that. That's why I go see Shona colors my hair on a regular basis, because of all the grades that I've given myself. Yeah. Of course, kids and husbands that that that also does, adds to it. The fact that the gray? So there's a lot of books behind you. What book? Yes. What book would you recommend to our audience? And it could be business, it could be fiction, like, what are some of your favorites? Okay,
36:16
um, business books, I would say my favorite is who not how, and that is that book is literally life changing? Who not? How come up for air is really good. It's like a modern operations book. Your like, how to manage things like Slack? How should you get it set up? How to do things like how do you organize your email inbox? How do you organize like team meetings? Literally, so cool. And it's like modern to like, it's not like a book written like 10 years ago. So it's like all our modern software's. Let's see, not or fiction books. I'm a big like, fantasy person. I like Avatar and which is like A Court of Thorns and Roses and Throne of Glass. And I don't know a lot of those books. So they're random. Gotcha. Yep, just random. They have like dragons. And I'm like, I don't even know why I like them. But they're so intriguing. Okay,
37:09
so give me a name of one that I could start with. Okay, to start with,
37:14
I would say, Okay, so my latest ones that are really good, is fourth wing and iron, flame it there to back to back
37:22
with wing and iron flame. Thank you very much. I love so that's one of my favorite questions, because I gave a list going
37:29
oh, yeah, that's a nice for you. You just like Mega lit, ongoing like landing page with it. So like, I can go look at all your listing and
37:38
the same thing. Yeah, I might, I might do that. I just haven't been good for SEO. Oh, yeah. Actually, it really would be a note to self. Business owners show the world that wheels are turning in our head. Oh, love it. Is there any this will be the last question. Maybe not? Is there any piece of wisdom or advice that you would want to leave our audience with?
38:02
Yeah, I would say that in terms of finances, you can understand finances. A lot of times people have this mental block that they're like, Okay, well, I'm creative, or I just don't know what this is, or what this means. And they just like shove it into the closet and just forget about it. But you can learn to be educated, you can learn to like yourself, you can learn to love the data, love the numbers, learn to really know how to use them. It's just all about having the right people in your corner and knowing where to look and where to impurity lean on for that. But I want you to know you are 100% capable of understanding your finances in your business and being able to operate based on looking at those. I love
38:44
that. Yeah. So for those of you who might not have the comfort level, or the confidence digging into this, it's when you hire somebody to teach you. Yes. So more of the burden. So it's not like you're going to be cranking the numbers out, babe, you know, let Laurieann and her team do it or whomever you hire, just make sure you do hire the professional. And make sure you vet them for interior design. Details.
39:12
Yes, please do. Please do. You don't have to work with me. But please make sure you're looking at everything.
39:18
Well, for those of you who do want to stay in touch with you or track you down and talk to you. How can I get in touch with you?
39:24
Yeah, okay, so you can go to my Instagram. It's Lorien Kuhn stock CO, and then our website is profit priority.co. And from there, you can kind of find out all about our services. I have some digital products on there some templates for you. And then I'm also going to leave you guys with a free cash flow projection template. So you can put in your stuff, I'll email it over to you, and you guys can kind of utilize that to really look and be able to pay attention to your cash flow, because cash flow is really important and a lot of people don't pay attention to it.
39:55
Ash is king. Yes, yep. Yes, yes. If you don't have it, you can't you can't even Grow?
40:00
Yep, for sure. So I will draw up, see if she can drop the link in the description, but it's profit priority.co/cashflow.
40:08
Perfect. I'll make sure that that gets in the show notes. We can do that. Yeah. All right, y'all. If you want a business bestie, who is going to send you business tips, encouraging words, event updates, all sorts of fun things directly to your fingertips. Go ahead and text the word bestie, B E S T i e 2855784 8299. I'm going to repeat that. But it's also in the show notes. And I sprinkle it around my social media sometimes as well. But that number is 855-784-8299. And you'll hear from me on the regular maybe, I don't know, three times a week. And I promise I don't spam, but just annoys me. You know, you sign up for text messages from somebody, and then they start trying to sell you shit. So yeah, I will try to sell you shit on occasion. But I'm not going to spam you that I'm not going to spam me that. So Laurieann thank you so much for being here. It's it's been such a pleasure. And I love the numbers. And I just love the confidence that you turn around and provide to your clients. It's like interior designers. We create rooms that feel like a hug. I think that in your industry, you create a feeling that allows us to swagger a little bit like to walk into the room knowing that we've we've got shit under control. So thank you, you guys. Thanks
41:26
for having me. All right. So
41:28
thanks for listening in. Y'all choose to be great today. And every day, I'll catch you on the next episode. Hey, y'all, if you love the show and find it useful, I would really appreciate it if you would share with your friends and followers. And if you like what you're hearing, want to put a face with the name and get even more business advice. Then join me in my Facebook group, the interior designers business launch pack. Yeah, I know it's Facebook, but just come on in for the training and then leave without scrolling your feet. It's fine. I promise you'll enjoy it. And finally, I hear it's good for business to get ratings on your podcast. So please drop yours on whatever platform you use to listen to this. We're all about community over competition. So let's work on elevating our industry, one designer at a time. See you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
