← Courage & Clarity
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- [00:00]
Steph Crowder
Foreign welcome to the Courage and Clarity podcast. I'm your host, Steph Crowder. I'm a former sales training director who's helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn a living doing something they love over the past 10 years. On your journey, you'll need the courage to be bold, to take risks, and to do what looks crazy on paper. You'll also need the clarity, the brass tacks, simple strategies that actually work. And on this podcast, we deliver both in equal measure. Oh, and by the way, we've got absolutely no time for bs, gross marketing tactics or get rich quick schemes. Just sustainable business strategies for good humans with big dreams. If that sounds like you, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hello CNC listeners. Welcome to the podcast. This is episode number 128. I am so excited to bring you today's episode. This was a really rare treat. I got to sit down in person with one of my dearest friends. We do not live near each other. It's of course, the one and only Claire Pels. If you've been listening to the podcast, you've heard her on the show before. I've been on her show. We have been friends for years now. Years and years. And we were both at an event together this weekend in the Washington D.C. area. So I'm getting back to Louisville. I just got home yesterday. I'm getting settled. I'm unpacking this amazing time that I got to have with my business coach and also with some peers and friends that I've made in my mastermind. It was amazing. Gosh, if I could just make a quick plug for in person events, I could do a whole podcast episode. One of the thoughts I had over the weekend was like, how do I do this once a quarter? How do I go to more events? I think that there were, you know, events and going to events is a little bit of a lost art. I think we do a lot less of it. At least I do probably since the pandemic. So if there's an event that you can get yourself to where you can surround yourself with like minded entrepreneurs, maybe, my goodness, it is just good for the, for the mind, the heart, the soul, all of the things. And while we were at it, Claire and I sat down together and we recorded this quick podcast episode and it was really inspired. You're gonna hear all about it in the episode. But we really dove into this very basic. And when I say basic, I don't mean to undervalue it. I just mean simple. This really simple financial projection spreadsheet. That Claire has been beating me upside the head to do in my business for long time. And I thought I was doing it. Let me just start by saying this. I thought I was doing okay with my finances as a business owner because I work with an amazing accountant. I look at my P and L. But as you're going to hear, what Claire taught me is beyond that. Okay? This is about looking into the future, and it's about learning how to project your revenue, your expenses, and your profit in a really simple way so that you can actually have a better understanding of your numbers, your real numbers, instead of kind of walking around with this, like, low key, simmering fear that it's never going to be enough. If you are someone who is familiar with that feeling of like, kind of regardless of what you have in the bank, you just kind of have this, like, low grade panic that it's not going to be enough, that it's eventually going to run out. Maybe when you do, even in moments when you do feel like you have more cash flow, you're concerned that it's going to be gone eventually. I think this is going to be incredibly helpful for you. We sat down together while we were in person and actually did my projections. And you're going to hear that my favorite part was getting to play with different numbers of how the rest of the year is actually going to play out. So if you're one of my clients or even if you've just been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that when we do sales windows, whether that's, you know, selling your services or doing a launch, I teach you, and I recommend that you should have good, better, and best goals. You can use this projection to actually forecast, like, what happens if I do just my good goal. Right. And what happens if I do my better goal and my best and you can really get a sense of what is the reality, what are the facts of the situation. And so I really, really hope you enjoy this conversation between myself and my wonderful friend, Claire Pels. Without further ado, let's go to the episode. All right. Stephanie Waterman Crowder, Claire Pelz, thanks for doing a podcast with me today.
- [04:35]
Claire Pels
Yeah, it's my pleasure.
- [04:36]
Steph Crowder
So Claire and I have been at an event this weekend and we've been talking for a long time about Claire's extreme desire for me to utilize this spreadsheet that she put together. Right. This spreadsheet we're going to get into why, what it is and what it's useful for. But, Claire, tell everybody your motivation for, like, you have been asking me to do this spreadsheet for like months. Right. Why?
- [05:06]
Claire Pels
Okay, well, little backstory about the spreadsheet. In 2023, I. I think I did 450,000 in revenue and I barely had any profit. I was spending like it was my job.
- [05:23]
Steph Crowder
And $450,000 in revenue and barely any profit. That's. That will boggle some people's minds.
- [05:29]
Claire Pels
Well, okay, I also pay myself a hefty amount and I don't change that.
- [05:35]
Steph Crowder
Right, right.
- [05:36]
Claire Pels
So, like, I. Yeah, maybe I could have had. And also the way you think about profit, like, you know what, maybe there was profit if we. Before you take out my owner's pay. But I always look at profit after I take out my owner's pay.
- [05:49]
Steph Crowder
I think it is important to point out this is also like running undercurrent of this is paying yourself consistently is a huge piece of this. You have to be paying yourself consistently to even have this conversation. Or it makes it easier.
- [06:04]
Claire Pels
It makes it easier. Yeah. But I mean, you can still do this, the spreadsheet, even if you aren't paying yourself consistently. But like, the goal of this spreadsheet for me was to start to project my expenses. Because what I was doing in 2023, feeling extremely abundant, was I started spending from this place of abundance. And I've talked about this on my podcast before.
- [06:30]
Steph Crowder
Yeah.
- [06:32]
Claire Pels
And what I would do is, oh, it's a first class ticket to my mastermind, which is in like, Mexico. Yeah. All I need is, you know, one sale of my signature course to pay for that. Cool. No problem. Oh, I want to hire so and so to do this. Great. Oh, I want to take my clients out on a yacht. It's just two sales. It is not a problem. The thing is, what I wasn't really accounting for was that all of that, all of those sales were already covering other expenses.
- [07:00]
Steph Crowder
Right.
- [07:01]
Claire Pels
And so I remember having an $86,000 month and looking back, and I had $76,000 of investment. And that was mostly these coaching programs that I was in. But not just that, you know, ads, team, all those things. But I really, like, I was just dropping the money.
- [07:21]
Steph Crowder
Yep.
- [07:22]
Claire Pels
So what I did the following year is I started projecting my expenses, adding cushion, like saying every month there's something that I don't account for. So I'm going to include like a miscellaneous amount every month. And then I'm gonna see what is my real expenses at the, at the beginning of the next month, what were my real expenses and what did I project. And then how do I need to adjust moving forward. And my profit really went up when I started doing it.
- [07:57]
Steph Crowder
You hear a lot of conversation in our industry about how, like, there's so much focus on revenue, and as the. It can look really flashy. Like, those are really fun numbers to throw around, but you really. Not enough people are focusing on the profit side of things.
- [08:11]
Claire Pels
Yeah.
- [08:11]
Steph Crowder
And so I think, you know, the fact that you were able to use this tool to intentionally focus on increasing your profit makes a profound difference in not only the viability of your business, but I think a big part of the conversation we're going to have here right now is about creating financial safety for ourselves.
- [08:28]
Claire Pels
Yes.
- [08:28]
Steph Crowder
That's really where this came from for me. So you will, you know, for those of you that are as far along in business as Claire and I, or maybe even further. But then for those of you who are newer in business, you will get to a point where you want to make investments. We will need. Let me rephrase that. You will need to make investments. You know, I've shared very openly on my podcast that I will never go without coaching support again in my business. The last time I did, I convinced myself that quitting was a good idea. So I will always have coaching support. Yep. And that there's business coaching. I'm also investing in life coaching for myself as well. And you have to be prepared to invest in that. Right. And so one thing that we've been laughing about this weekend is so far, in my business, I've been kind of investing on vibes. Right. And what I mean by that is exactly what Claire said, where I might make a sale and be like, okay, great, I have money in the bank. Like, I'm good to make this investment.
- [09:22]
Claire Pels
Or not just a sale.
- [09:23]
Steph Crowder
A great launch, great launch. And you think to yourself, you look at the numbers, and for me, like, I want to be clear. I look at P and L statements. I look at monthly P and L, which is retroactive. That's like, what have I been doing? And you look at it, and even for me, my accountant will say, you're doing pretty good. And I'll go, all right, it should be okay to make this investment. Kind of cross my fingers. And honestly, my thought in that moment is like, oh, I better. I better make sure my next launch is really great to make to be sure that I'm good. Right. So while a lot of us, I think, are looking at retroactive, what you really lovingly nudged me to do kind of kicked my ass, to be honest, but it was great. Is to project is to look into the future.
- [10:06]
Claire Pels
Can I share a little bit about you and, like, sort of a personal thing.
- [10:10]
Steph Crowder
Yeah.
- [10:11]
Claire Pels
When you started investing more in your business, then you would start freaking out about not having enough.
- [10:21]
Steph Crowder
Yeah.
- [10:22]
Claire Pels
And this was the reason that I needed you to do the spreadsheet because you were kind of acting like you weren't gonna have money coming in later.
- [10:37]
Steph Crowder
Yeah.
- [10:37]
Claire Pels
Or like the next launch. It like, look, I've just started working with this design team or, you know.
- [10:44]
Steph Crowder
Like, having a support coach.
- [10:47]
Claire Pels
Having a support coach. Having help at home. Oh, my God. The economy. Like, oh, my God. And not really actually looking at, hey, if your launches do half of what you expect them to do, look how okay you are because your expenses are low. Even with the ones that you want to add, you're still low compared to your revenue because you have this big amount in savings. Because you're a bit of a hoarder with money.
- [11:20]
Steph Crowder
Yeah.
- [11:22]
Claire Pels
So it was just like your nervous system was not regulated. And I did keep saying, like, if you just do this exercise, you will see how safe you are even if your next launch bombs.
- [11:38]
Steph Crowder
Yeah, yeah. It's creating safety in the future because I'll just share for me personally, what I have had in business is, like, you mentioned building a business savings. And I encourage my clients to do. To do this too, is to make sure you have three to six months of your expenses and, you know, a Runway essentially for the next three to six months. So if you are doing a launch or you're doing any kind of active selling, you're not feeling that desperation of, like, oh, my God, this has to work. And if it doesn't work right now, I'm in so much trouble. I can't pay my bills. Right. So I had that piece. But even that alone, I'm finding, does not create the same safety as looking at your projections, because you can still be looking at that number in the bank account, no matter how much is in there. You can have the thought, but I'm going to run through it, but it's going to run out. And I think that's what my brain was trying to do was looking at my business savings as almost, like, fixed. Right. And it's like instead of reminding myself and seeing, like, oh, hold on a second. I'm going to be having, you know, two to three more launches for the rest of this year. What does that do to my cash flow? That piece of the puzzle is missing when you're not projecting out into the future.
- [12:43]
Claire Pels
Yeah, totally.
- [12:45]
Steph Crowder
So let's talk about what exactly is in this spreadsheet or how people can start. Because listen, even if you're newer in business and you're not doing. I wish I had done this much sooner. Let me be clear. You don't have to be, you know, having $400,000 of revenue as Claire shared or more. You don't need to be having tons and tons of investments to still really be able to create financial safety by being able to project what you have coming in the first. So let's kind of talk about what the steps would be for this. I think.
- [13:14]
Claire Pels
Yeah, so it's gonna look different for every, every business owner. But at the top, like the first few rows are dedicated to revenue. What I end up doing is like basically let's say you're a launch based business. You have, and you have three offers. So each of your offers gets a, a row. And you like look at your launches and say, okay, worst case scenario, this is what each launch, you know, so like let's say a May 2025, September 2025 launch. This is what, this is how much revenue it's going to bring in. And I don't even worry about like, well, how much am I going to get paid in full and how much am I going to get payment plans, like, it's just. That's how you complicate it and you. Then it becomes very.
- [14:03]
Steph Crowder
Hold on, I have to say. So we did this together. Claire was very kind and sat down with me. We had this event but yesterday with our coach, our business coach and we. It was a mastermind day. And I sat down, I got my computer out and said, I am going to actually take the time to do this. And Claire sat with me and did it right. And I just want to share that as I was doing it, I was getting myself all twisted up. I'm in the back end of my SAM cart. I'm looking at every individual payment plan. I'm trying to get it absolutely perfect, precise, of like, here's who bought and when. Here's when the payment plan comes in. And it wasn't until Claire sat down with me was like, screw that, like.
- [14:36]
Claire Pels
What we're going to do seven or eight times I said, it doesn't matter.
- [14:39]
Steph Crowder
It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. And so you will, if you're anything like me, you will get mired down on the perfectionism of trying to. It does not have to be perfect. And I didn't believe her at first. I think I said so many times, like, this isn't Going to be accurate. This isn't going to be right. And she was like, we're just ballparking it. We're just, we're just kind of rounding.
- [14:55]
Claire Pels
Yeah. Because you actually want the revenue part of it to be an a, like an underestimate.
- [15:01]
Steph Crowder
Yeah.
- [15:02]
Claire Pels
You want your revenue to be like on the low side of what is real and your expenses to be on the high side of what is real in this spreadsheet.
- [15:12]
Steph Crowder
Right.
- [15:13]
Claire Pels
So then I have a row which is like total projected revenue each month. And then it goes to the end of the year and it, you know, adds that up.
- [15:22]
Steph Crowder
So, okay, just to review, it's taking your. If you have like three launches planned, you're ballparking those, those chunks. Doesn't matter if it's a payment plan. Doesn't matter if it's paying full. You might put 30k or 10k or whatever for each individual launch. And if you're one of my clients, you can use the good, better, best framework. I would say go with your good number. Right. So that was one thing that we did is like, let's kind of go on the, on the lower side. The Lace Claire said the worst case scenario and you can play with the numbers. We'll talk about how we played with different ranges. So you, you are putting your individual. What you expect the launches to do. And then it's summing that row, right. And saying, like, this is the total projected revenue for the year.
- [16:00]
Claire Pels
And so then what I do, there's the total projected. And then what I would do is just like throughout the year, I also had a row, which is real, real revenue per month. And that's just so you can kind of see. But it doesn't actually. I mean, no, it does update over the year. The real versus projected. But the most important thing we realized, because we were trying to do some funny calculations, the most important thing is projected, to be honest.
- [16:29]
Steph Crowder
Yep.
- [16:29]
Claire Pels
Yep. Then below that is where you start putting the expenses. So every contractor, every. Like I have a row that says tech stack.
- [16:40]
Steph Crowder
Yeah.
- [16:40]
Claire Pels
So I don't. I mean, and you could put every individual subscription that you pay for, you know, payment processor, Convertkit or whatever.
- [16:50]
Steph Crowder
This is another place I wanted to be. Perfect.
- [16:52]
Claire Pels
Yeah. And you really wanted.
- [16:53]
Steph Crowder
What I did instead is I just went back to my most recent month. I actually looked at. So we're in April right now. I looked at January, February, March, and I just looked at what were my total expenses in those months.
- [17:03]
Claire Pels
Yep.
- [17:03]
Steph Crowder
And they were all around the same number.
- [17:05]
Claire Pels
Yep.
- [17:05]
Steph Crowder
So we just put that. We just Assumed that that is going to be my expenses.
- [17:08]
Claire Pels
Yes, exactly. And what I do for when I'm doing this spreadsheet in the middle of a year is I actually don't worry about projected for those months that have already passed.
- [17:20]
Steph Crowder
I just put real what happened.
- [17:21]
Claire Pels
Yeah, yeah, but so it'll give you an idea. Like, I know that, you know, there's somebody on my team who makes the same amount every single month. That's not going to change. So I just could drag that number across the spreadsheet so I could see, okay, this contractor at the end of the year makes this much. I know that I need to have that much in order to pay them. Right. Same with other contractors. And then there are some times where a contractor, it's like, oh, my podcast editor gets paid a certain amount depending on if we're launching or whatnot. Because of episodes. I just put the most. Just put the highest amount. So I do that with, like, all the expenses. Then I include things. And this is very. You need a budget, if you're familiar with that software, like travel. This is an area where I would get into trouble in the past. In the past, because I would not like, really account for the three or four days at a hotel for my mastermind. So what I would do is, like, every single month, I have a thousand dollars just. This is going towards travel, and I'm only going to use it a few times a year. But that means at the end of the year, I have $12,000 earmarked for travel. That's more than I need. And that's great because then there's no surprises. There's no, oh, fuck, I'm behind.
- [18:42]
Steph Crowder
Right, right. You know, so another thing that we did in the expense category for me in particular is if we knew my number was going to be the same, my base number is going to be the same for the rest of the year. We also added.
- [18:54]
Claire Pels
You mean base number of expenses.
- [18:55]
Steph Crowder
Yes, thank you. Of expenses. We also added, like, okay, you know, you're going to want to be. I'm going to be working with a new life coach this year. So we know that I need to put 10k in for this life coach I'm going to be working with for the next year. I also need to make sure I'm saving for taxes. Be caught up on taxes. So we put that number aside.
- [19:12]
Claire Pels
I have my, like, SEP account, my retirement. That's just like a certain amount that comes out of the business. It doesn't come out of my personal.
- [19:20]
Steph Crowder
Right.
- [19:20]
Claire Pels
So, like, that is a certain amount. And at one point, if I want to change that, if, like, I know, ooh, I'm behind on savings for retirement, then I'm going to increase that at some point in the spreadsheet, maybe month, September. And then it goes like that. Right.
- [19:34]
Steph Crowder
I think this is so great for everyone to think about doing this for themselves. I have so many conversations with people who are thinking about working with me, who really want to do it, but they are just feeling terrified about the investment. And you don't have to feel terrified when you take this kind of intentional approach. You put the numbers in and see what comes out on the other side. There's just no, like, feelings about that. It's like, this is what it's going to take. This is what it looks like. Here's where I'm at. We'll get to what happened at the end. But I would really encourage anybody thinking of doing any kind of investment to make sure that it's actually accounted for. And because I think I see this on my sales calls is all of us are, myself included, are kind of checking in with ourselves, feeling like, do I feel okay doing this? And it's based off of just your. How you're feeling in your body in the moment versus really having the data to look at.
- [20:19]
Claire Pels
Yeah.
- [20:20]
Steph Crowder
And what it's going to require. Okay, so that's expenses.
- [20:23]
Claire Pels
That's expenses. Then we have a row. And like, I have to say, this changes, like, every time I do it because it's. It's just. It doesn't quite matter. But there's expenses. So projected expenses. And then I do love going back. And remember, I have also a line, a miscellaneous row. It's 1000 dol in that miscellaneous every single month. What am I not seeing? Because this is just telling me. What this is all telling me is how much am I going to need to spend in this business and how much am I going to need to make in order to cover that? And am I actually already covering it?
- [20:59]
Steph Crowder
Yeah.
- [20:59]
Claire Pels
You know, or am I really behind?
- [21:01]
Steph Crowder
Yeah.
- [21:01]
Claire Pels
And all of those investments, all those courses or masterminds or whatever. Like, I'm sorry, but some of it has to go.
- [21:08]
Steph Crowder
Let me back up for one second. I just was thinking of some clients, and I'm sure you have some clients like this too. When we were talking about the revenue piece, if you have other income, that should go in there as well. So if you have a job still that should go, like, any income that you have coming in, I would go ahead and make sure you're counting that towards that. That revenue.
- [21:26]
Claire Pels
Yep. Yep.
- [21:27]
Steph Crowder
Yeah.
- [21:27]
Claire Pels
So then I always put like, what is my payment?
- [21:29]
Steph Crowder
What.
- [21:30]
Claire Pels
What am I paying myself every month? And what am I setting aside for taxes every month? Right. And then this, you know, like, I'm not a spreadsheet expert, so I can't tell you that sum, this divide that blah did he block. But at the end, really, what we're looking at is what is your projected revenue for the year? What is your projected total expenses, and what, like, after you pay yourself, and what is the difference?
- [21:58]
Steph Crowder
Yeah.
- [21:59]
Claire Pels
And you might see. Would you like to share what you saw?
- [22:01]
Steph Crowder
I would love to share what I saw. I mean, this is just wild. So, first of all, a few things. One thing that Claire did was immediately start to plug in me paying myself better.
- [22:11]
Claire Pels
Yes.
- [22:12]
Steph Crowder
So I do recommend for those of you that are. I would say, I don't know what you think. I'm not an accountant, so, you know, talk to yours. But as soon as possible, start working with a program like Gusto. Right. So I use Gusto for payroll. Even if it's just you, like, everything changed, I think when I became an S corp is when I went to Gusto.
- [22:30]
Claire Pels
Yeah, you have to.
- [22:31]
Steph Crowder
I guess you have to. But what I love about that is I am basically giving myself a paycheck. Just like I work at a company, right. So I have a certain amount of money that's going in every month. Some of it's getting pulled aside to pay my state and pay federal taxes, and so some of that's already being set aside. So that was happening consistently every month, and that is absolutely huge. But what Claire went ahead and did is she was like, what if we add, you know, a certain amount of money? Because what has. Maybe some people relate to this as well when we are underpaying ourselves. What's been happening in my family life is we're running up our credit cards, and I'm using my business to bail out my personal life, like, every quarter. And that's also going to give you the sensation that you don't have enough. If you keep feeling like the dysregulation in your nervous system of, like, oh, my God, the credit card's gone really high. And now I feel like I'm borrowing from my business versus being really intentional that this is the amount of money, like, I think I have literally just gotten the cost of living for my family's life. Incorrect. Yeah. And so it's like, Claire immediately was like, what happens if we add a few more thousand per month to your take home? And as soon as she did that, I was like, I can't afford that. There's no way that's not going to work. Right. And so when we started to look at the numbers, this is the crazy part, what ended up happening was a. I think my favorite part was I have shared with my podcast listeners that I, I'm shooting for 500k this year. Right. Like that is my goal. That's my. I've never done that before. It's definitely a reach goal for me immediately. That was the number that was projected.
- [23:55]
Claire Pels
Yeah. Without meaning to. Yeah. It was just like, this is what I think is going to come in, in this launch. This is what I think in that launch. In this one it was 500, like 3,000 or something.
- [24:05]
Steph Crowder
Right. And I've shared on this podcast, on my podcast that you know, I have a client goal this year. I know I have 144 client goal. I know exactly how many I need I want in same day sales and how many I want my mastermind. So I guess it does make sense that that's the way the numbers came out. So that would be a good podcast episode to go listen to, to figure out, like, what are you even doing from a client goal perspective. So when we looked at that and then looked at my expenses, there was so much safety in my profit. And that was a. I know that that's going to sound surprising for some people that this surprised me, but I really had this story that it was going to be, I don't know that, that I, I just had no idea that that there was that much financial security, that my business was going to be fine, that I could make the investments that I want to make. There really was no reason to have stress. The, my favorite part though was when we started going in and cutting my launch numbers in half, we said, let's say that you do 50% of what you think you're going to do. Right. And I immediately was like, oh my God. Right. Like I have a summer launch, I'm going to do probably three more launches this year. We're like, let's slash every single one of these. And in the worst case scenario, I was eating into my business savings by 20k. Yep, that was it. That was it for the rest of the year. Like, like worst case scenario across the board. And this is why we have a business savings before looking at.
- [25:26]
Claire Pels
And that was not touching this new high take home pay.
- [25:30]
Steph Crowder
Yeah. Yeah.
- [25:32]
Claire Pels
So like there are this, this spreadsheet also shows you if you need to start cutting, it's going to show you, you know, like, what are your biggest expenses if you need, like, I, I have a high take home pay. Part of it goes to my family and part of it just goes to me. Part of it goes to my personal investing. This is how we have it set up in my family. If I have ever needed to cut expenses, I basically know how much I can take out. Not from my family, from what I am paying myself. That, that, like, extra. But it's also not the first place I'm going to go.
- [26:08]
Steph Crowder
Yeah.
- [26:08]
Claire Pels
You know, like, when you have it all laid out in front of you, it is much easier to be like, well, where can I save $5,000 a month?
- [26:16]
Steph Crowder
Yeah.
- [26:16]
Claire Pels
Oh, it's just in a couple of these things.
- [26:18]
Steph Crowder
Yes. Yeah. And I think we can really make empowered decisions from a place of facts, not feelings. Right. Feelings are important. We need to be processing our emotions. But you don't want to be making business decisions and running around dysregulated just because you're scared you're going somewhere that you've never been before in your business.
- [26:35]
Claire Pels
Yeah. And because of the way, like, we have this projected revenue, real revenue, when you see that you're not hitting your goals.
- [26:46]
Steph Crowder
Yeah, yeah. You can adjust.
- [26:47]
Claire Pels
You can adjust. And you might need to adjust. Maybe you change what offer you decide to launch. Like, I have a client who was launching her membership and it was because, like, okay, the membership numbers were starting to dwindle, but she knows that's also not the offer that's really bringing in enough to like, you know, make her profitable. So maybe now she'll like, put that on pause and move forward. I just taught this in my mastermind, so I think. Helpful.
- [27:19]
Steph Crowder
Yeah, for sure. It's so helpful. I think too, one of the, the fears that I've been feeling and what this resolves, like what you just said about, like, you can kind of be tracking of how it's going throughout the year and adjust accordingly. I was almost acting like we're only in April. And I was almost acting like I don't have the rest of the year to respond to my business.
- [27:37]
Claire Pels
And your coach said that to you. And yet, like, you couldn't really see it.
- [27:44]
Steph Crowder
You couldn't really see it. Right. You're like, I know you're saying that, but like, what if nothing, what if nothing gets better the rest of the year is the thought I think I was tempted to have. And so we did that. We did. Like, what if it doesn't get better? You know, what if, what if the hard parts stay Hard for the rest of the year. And it was such. It's just. It's wild to me the way that we convince ourselves. I don't know what I thought was going to be happening that was going to be on the street. I don't really know. But to really see the worst case scenario in front of me was actually totally manageable. And listen, if you're listening to this and you do this exercise and your worst case scenario is actually worse than you thought. I mean, that's a possibility. You want to know that. You need to know that. You need to know that so that you aren't caught by surprise and you can just adjust. Right? There's. I'm always telling my clients, there's so many different things you can do from, you know, thinking about what other kind of work you can take on different kind of contracts you could do, different kinds of offers, you know, but what you don't want to do is end up in that position and have it take you by surprise. So even though it might feel scary to look at, you're so much better off. And I think a lot of people will be pleasantly surprised.
- [28:45]
Claire Pels
Yeah, Definitely.
- [28:47]
Steph Crowder
Yeah. All right. Anything else? Final words?
- [28:50]
Claire Pels
No, I'm just. I'm proud of you. She was real uncomfortable the entire time.
- [28:56]
Steph Crowder
Well, I do want to say straight up, like, I. I don't like spreadsheets. I. I wanted to say that Claire has pushed me as a friend to do so many things that are uncomfortable with. I don't love doing ads. It all feels the same to me in my body. When I look at spreadsheets, when I look at the ads manager, it feels very outside of my comfort zone. I just want to sit here on this couch and talk. I want to coach. I want to do what I'm good at. Words. Okay? I'm good with words. And so I super struggle with spreadsheets. Numbers formulas. In business. One of the things I've shared with my clients, my word of the year, is ownership and taking radical ownership and being the CEO that my business needs me to be. Y'all, we are grown and saying that you don't like spreadsheets. It's just not going to cut it anymore. We have to get in there and do what needs to be done. And you will be so glad that you did. So if you struggle with this, like me, and you're just, like, dreading it, you will be so proud of yourself.
- [29:49]
Claire Pels
You know what I said to you this morning that I used to get to the 20th of every single month and look at what I had spent and look at what I had brought in and panic every single month.
- [30:05]
Steph Crowder
Because you were spending more than you were earning.
- [30:06]
Claire Pels
Because I was spending more than I was earning and I was not paying myself consistently. We were having fights about it with, you know, me and my husband and. Sure. Like the. I call it a slush fund. Right. The savings. That is very helpful. But I save. I spent down that slush fund like crazy when I started making more money, so.
- [30:32]
Steph Crowder
And there's shame about that. There's shame and wanting.
- [30:34]
Claire Pels
I carried it for so long.
- [30:36]
Steph Crowder
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [30:38]
Claire Pels
Totally.
- [30:39]
Steph Crowder
Claire Pelz, thanks for hanging out with me.
- [30:41]
Claire Pels
Oh, my gosh, of course.
- [30:42]
Steph Crowder
All right, y'all, we'll catch you later.