286 - Revenue Rescue: Strategies for Web Design Businesses in Decline with Danielle Hayden

CEO of Kickstart Accounting DANIELLE Hayden is back on the podcast, this time to share tips and strategies on what to do if your business is in a bit of a decline.

In This Episode

00:00 - Solutions for Declining Business Revenue
07:11 - Money Mindset and Long-Term Profitability
15:07 - Understanding Spending Habits and Financial Mindset
26:33 - Measuring Success and Setting Intentions
34:26 - Set Realistic Revenue Goals Based on Expenses
46:36 - Owner Mindset's Importance in Business
54:29 - The Danger of Comfort in Business
1:02:38 - Tips for Overcoming a Business Decline 

Get all links, resources and show notes at:

https://joshhall.co/286

Transcript

Danielle: 0:00

whether it's a bad season in life, whether your business is having a slowdown, if you're losing money, if you're not taking on the paycheck that you wanted Like, you have the opportunity. If you're an accidental business owner or you consider yourself an official business owner, you have the option to really take control and do something about it. So get your bookkeeping done right. If you're not doing it, get help right, because take responsibility you need to. If you're accepting payments from customers, you're a business owner. You need to have bookkeeping in place. Look at your numbers on a regular basis and then take those clarity breaks. Welcome to the Web Design Business Podcast, with your host, josh Hall, helping you build a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love.

Josh: 0:53

Hey friends, great to have you here for another episode of the Web Design Business Podcast. I emphasize the word business because that is exactly what the goal of this show is. If you're a new listener, my goal with this podcast is to primarily, for the most part, help you with the business side of running your web design business. I rebranded the show back in episode 200 to specify that, and I mentioned that too right now because we're gonna dive into a topic in this episode that is really timely if your business is in any sort of decline. I'm so excited to bring back onto the podcast Danielle Hayden, who is the CEO of Kickstarter Accounting.

Josh: 1:33

Now. She works with a lot of online entrepreneurs, so she has a really, really unique perspective about what entrepreneurs go through with online businesses, including creatives and designers, and in this episode, we really dive into what you can do if you're having trouble with revenue, with profitability, with sales excuse me systems, anything that's going on in your business that is causing some stagnation or a decline. That's exactly what we're really diving into in this episode. Actually, such a wide-ranging conversation, I had a hard time figuring out what to call it, so I went out to my old friend, chatgpt and we came up with revenue rescue, which really puts a cap on what this conversation is about, because we're gonna load you up with some tips and some strategies to help if your business is in decline Again in any sort of way, if it's just a drop in numbers or whatever that looks like for you. So before we dive in, you can find out more about Danielle If you go to her website, kickstartaccountinginccom. She has a quiz over there that will help you determine what personality type you are as a business owner, so check that out. We'll have that linked in the show notes, of course. You can connect with her on Instagram at kickstartaccounting, and she is the host of the Entrepreneur Money Stories podcast.

Josh: 2:48

I'll be joining that show here soon. Really really cool podcast. I recommend checking it out Again. All those will be at the show notes at joshallco or, excuse me, two, eight, six man. I wish I could talk today. Anyway, my speech is in decline, but if your business is in decline, this episode is gonna help you out. All right, here's Danielle. Enjoy friends. Well, danielle, it's so good to see you again.

Danielle: 3:13

It's so good to be here.

Josh: 3:14

Thank you, it's been a few years, it's been since. I'm just looking right now Wow, 2020, april or August. Sorry, october 19th 2020 is the last time we chat.

Danielle: 3:25

Wow. Well, the world has changed. However, the world has changed, but here's what hasn't changed at all. It's like accounting knowing your numbers, the importance for businesses. You have some tax codes changed, but taxes, you still file your taxes. You know it's like it's changed, but it hasn't changed. Should we stay pretty consistent?

Josh: 3:45

What a segue. I can tell you've been podcasting for a few years, because that was gold. Yeah, you're right, there are some like timeless things and we were just saying like we can have a hundred topics we could dive into. So I'm really excited you reached out and we got reconnected. I did not realize it had been that long yeah, three years, I mean. So we chatted. Initially you were episode 65, so pretty early on in the podcast we were talking about profitability and that was in the wake of COVID being. I mean, I think we recorded that maybe late summer. It came out in the fall, so it was pretty early on with COVID, we didn't know quite what that was gonna look like. Now, three years later let's just start there, danielle like what is the landscape of online business? Not necessarily just web designers, but what does it look like now compared to maybe three years ago?

Danielle: 4:34

So I think that it's been a really interesting landscape for 2023. So in 2020, I think there was this on-easiness and some industries were hit really hard in 2020. I don't wanna undermine that, but there was a lot of people laid off, there was a lot of people who came into entrepreneurship. So for just as many industries that were hard hit, there were so many new business owners coming into the market and it was really exciting. And then we watched this huge boom in 2021 and 2022. I mean the economy was off the charts. We I mean we're sending financials to all of our clients every month, so we are just celebrating client after client after client and they were having this huge growth.

Danielle: 5:18

And then 2023 had this weird not I don't wanna call it a dip, because the numbers aren't calling it a dip there was this eerie, you know, like that moment in the movie where all of a sudden it's like the wind stops and it's quiet and you know something's about to go down, but you don't know what right. That's how 2023 felt. Like we just slammed in and it was quiet and eerie. But most of our clients, even though it felt that way when we looked at the numbers, we still were seeing growth. It just felt slower, and so I think that we're doing this return to normal in 2023. Now, who knows what's gonna come next? I you know political COVID back. I have no idea, but I know from the online business space. We're just seeing this feeling of eeriness. The numbers are still strong. It's just not that rapid hockey stick growth. But we still need to be profitable, we still need to run healthy businesses. We still have to be prepared to file our taxes at the end of the year.

Josh: 6:22

And it's funny because I have some students who have had their best years ever in 2023, but overall, across all of the colleagues I know, all of the people I know in online entrepreneurship in general it didn't even brick and mortar stores, but mostly online that seems to be the case. Like 90% have either had stagnant years or slight declines to where you're right. It's not like it's a detrimental decline, but numbers were where they were like leading up to 2020, whereas you mentioned 2021, 2022, any online business. It was especially in my industry of web design. It was like the boom years of people getting into it. But now that things have tapered off, it does beg the question like what do you do when this happens? So I'm really excited because I know you have some ideas and tips and tricks to kind of help. I mean, are we technically in a recession? What makes that term.

Danielle: 7:16

Technically, no, yeah, technically, we're not in a recession and depending on what news channel you listen to and whatnot, they will give you a different spin on the story. Technically speaking, we are not in a recession and, long term, my humble opinion is that we are not at risk as business owners and as individuals. So I'm in it for the long game and I believe that this time I heard somebody say this about six months ago and I'll give her a credit. So Brandi Gar, she's a client, she's a friend, she's specifically in the wedding industry and she said that this time is gonna weed out the people who are great business owners.

Danielle: 8:03

Right, there was so much business in 2021 and 2022 that you could be Okay, there was enough to go around, that you could be an average business owner and not paying attention to all the business components of running a business. Now, in 2023, it's going to separate the good to the great. That's why it's more important than ever that we have these pieces, that we have community, that we're part of group, that we know our numbers, we're making strong business decisions, because if you're listening to this podcast right now, you're doing the things that you need to do to set your business up for healthy, long-term, sustainable profits, and that's going to separate you.

Josh: 8:47

What are some of those things? I mean? You work with people across a lot of different industries, but primarily online entrepreneurs, right or?

Danielle: 8:53

is that a public point, primarily online business owners?

Josh: 8:56

yes, what are some of the intangibles that you've seen be timeless? Kind of a vague question but I'm curious. From what you've seen, I'm in an industry as a course creator, as a community builder, where I kind of teeter between launches and waves of income and then my big push now is my membership and that's recurring, it's more steady income. Now it takes a lot of work to reduce churn and to be able to serve people and to be able to have recurring income. I view that as probably a long game approach, a little more timeless approach, that continues to have a healthy balance, the way you don't live and die off of launches. Are you seeing any other or what are some other kind of long game, timeless approaches to profitability?

Danielle: 9:41

Yeah, I think some of the other things that we're seeing is not having all of your eggs in one basket, kind of similar to what you were just saying, between live launches and having that long-term group, not passive income, but the regular reoccurring sorry, not passive reoccurring.

Josh: 9:58

Yes, it's not passive For anyone who's under me, I promise you it's not passive income, not passive.

Danielle: 10:03

Reoccurring, having those different revenue streams, so having both of those in your business so that it's not so high and dry, you're not riding that roller coaster ride every month, every year. That's something that we're seeing more and more is how can we add reoccurring revenue streams into our business and then how do we regulate our spending. Part of this, I think, is around money mindset. It's interesting. What I wasn't talking a lot about three years ago was money mindset, because I didn't understand the importance as much then as I do now. Money mindset has a big piece of this because, as you're riding this roller coaster ride, we have to have a strong money mindset to know how to wave through those and how to get through those time periods, how to manage our money and have faith in our money mindset to be able to come through those periods. I think that's another timeless thing is that we have to improve our money mindset, know why we're making the decisions that we're making, so that we can course correct and make different business decisions.

Josh: 11:12

Okay, let's zoom in on this, because when I think of money mindset, typically that relates to web designers not charging enough and understanding our value. But in this case it sounds like that idea of money mindset for you might be different in the way of how we're managing our expenses, the decisions we're making. Can you dive into that a little bit and nail it? What makes a strong money mindset with business decisions?

Danielle: 11:37

That's really interesting that you made that correlation, because you're right, there is a piece of this that's pricing and needing to understand our money mindset for our pricing structure. But also, when we talk profits, it's not just about pricing. It's about how do we hire, when do we hire, how do we pay ourselves, how much do we invest in our business? How much free spending are we doing in our business? Because those are all the things that create the bottom line profits, not just our pricing structure. What we found? That there's primarily four money mindset personality types. We have our keeper.

Danielle: 12:16

These are people who love to save money. They call it reinvesting. They say I'll say, well, I'm just reinvesting every dollar that my business makes. I'm not paying myself right now because I'm reinvesting. I'm not hiring right now, I'm not doing that next project because I'm just reinvesting in the business. They're savers. They're scared to spend. They want to hold on to everything because they're scared to spend. Then we have our free spenders. Our free spenders love to spend money and they don't pay much attention. Are you a free spender?

Josh: 12:55

because you're smiling, don't call me out like that. They're on the podcast live here. Yes, I just got read because I'm like, uh-oh, I've been found out.

Danielle: 13:07

So our free spenders they don't pay much attention to the financial statements. When they want something, they want it now. Now I'm somewhere between the two. I am a keeper until I'm ready to spend and then I'm ready to spend. But our free spenders generally they're not paying much attention to the financial statements. So they are hiring quickly, they are reinvesting, they're purchasing new investments in their business. They're always joining the next mastermind, the next group, the next course. So they are free spenders. Does it make sense?

Josh: 13:42

Yeah, totally.

Danielle: 13:45

Then we have our perfectionists. Our perfectionists love to analyze everything, so they're the ones that are going into QuickBooks or maybe in a spreadsheet somewhere. They know where every penny is going when they make a decision. They've analyzed everything. They have really thought it through. And then, lastly, is our balance seekers. So our balance seeker is the one who they know in order to grow, they have to hire, they need support, they need professional development and they need to look at their numbers and make decisions strategically. So I'm just going to, if you couldn't pinpoint yourself, and even if you did pinpoint yourself, I still want you to go to kickstartaccountingcom slash quiz and you can take the personality quiz. So you can take it and then you can maybe post it on Instagram after this comes, live and share what your personality type is.

Josh: 14:42

Well, we'll definitely link that. I'm terribly curious because I can tell you right now I'm largely free, free spender. A little bit of balance, a little bit of last one. What was it, the balance seeker?

Danielle: 14:54

Balance seeker.

Josh: 14:55

Yeah, yeah, I'm like, I'm probably 75% free spender, 25% balance seeker, a little more I am 0% the saver or the uh the perfectionist. It's interesting. I think this is really what I found this to be is really common with creatives who are low risk tolerant, like I'm fine, or high risk tolerance, I said, jay, um, I'm cool, what's good? Entrepreneurs often are good risk takers and almost have to be, but at the same time, that's a problem when it comes to the books often, because I also maybe anyone listening or watching this has felt this too where if you are a high risk taker and you're fine with risk, that often pays off.

Josh: 15:35

But where that gets tricky is if you overspend and I'm speaking by experience that I've learned more recently is if you overspend or don't care enough attention to the numbers more carefully and then you do have, like you invest in yourself, you bet on yourself, basically, but you don't have the waves of income that follow after a launch or after a period of growth or whatever. That's where that gets tricky and I actually found that happened this year. I got a little probably overconfident in where I thought things were going and we did see a small decline. I've talked about it on the podcast, again. Not detrimental, but enough to where I'm like oh, I got to, like I got to reel in some things and I had to cut some hours on my team a little bit and do some things.

Danielle: 16:14

A 2023 vibes that we're talking about.

Josh: 16:17

Exactly, exactly, yeah, and it sounds very common with a lot of different industries. I've been told by my wife like we can't do the dining room this year, we can't buy a $4,000 kitchen table, we're going to have to hold off on that kind of thing. So I've experienced that as well. And one, as you identified those different categories, the reason I was smiling is because I just was not, I wasn't focused on the numbers really at all, like I just kind of made. I was, you know, checking the bank account and I wasn't.

Josh: 16:45

I was a spender, yeah, and then I kind of felt like that's fine. We got plenty of buffer, plenty of buffer, plenty of buffer. Oh, it's getting a little looser, getting a little lower, getting a little lower. Then all of a sudden, oh shoot, if we don't make a couple of changes here and we're not more careful on spending I'm a little more tactful in the business and saving a little more, preparing a little more and doing a little more on the business side for profit and adjusting what's going on, within three to six months Things could be in a precarious class. So that's my personal experience with this.

Danielle: 17:11

Yeah, I just want to say, as you were talking and I appreciate you sharing that because I think there could be some judgment and shame around it because that's the whole reason I even went down this rabbit hole of research that I've done over the last few years was because I was seeing our clients who they had bookkeeping right. So we were doing their bookkeeping for them, we were sending them their financial statements, everything was organized and set and ready, but they weren't answering our emails and they wouldn't actually book a call with us. And we're pretty darn friendly, like I think we're, I think I'm pretty friendly, my team's pretty awesome and they did not want to book calls. And we heard from them like it's because I'm scared of what you're going to tell me, like I am scared of my financials. I don't want to know, because then you might tell me I have to stop spending money.

Danielle: 18:02

So we went on this journey to figure out okay, well, why is that? And so that's where we've created these spending types and we've created our course Money Mindset Mastery, which helps people understand their mindset, because we want you to have a healthy, sustainable business right, like at the end of the day. That's what it is Like that's how we make a difference in entrepreneurship is by sticking it out and being here. So just know, whatever your spending type, is that it's like no judgment, like I'm not judging you.

Josh: 18:35

I don't want you to say there's not a right or wrong in that group, right, yeah, no.

Josh: 18:41

Yeah, and I would imagine businesses that are partnerships. If there's like two opposites, those probably make a pretty good team because you have one whose ideas and Spender and Vision and the other who's like hold on. We got to reel it in a little bit, keith. Let's keep it realistic. I know that's often the dynamic with a lot of businesses who have two owners, kind of the ying and yang. Well, you hope so. You hope so, of course. Yeah, because if you're both Spenders.

Danielle: 19:04

I've seen that's the other thing, josh. We've seen so many horror stories over the years where it's like our clients have these amazing ideas and they are so talented, like they are fantastic, creative, amazing practitioners of what they do, but because they don't they don't address their money mindset and because they don't address the financial statements, they don't look at the numbers they're not here anymore. They're alive, but they're not in business with us anymore, like they were not part of this entrepreneurship community. And there's nothing that breaks my heart more, because I want people to be able to succeed and we don't like thank God you were able to start to notice those pivots and say hold on, I have to get this together within the next three to six months, because some people don't see that and because they don't ever look. They just keep free spending and free spending and you can't sustain that long term.

Josh: 20:02

And you know it's like my spending isn't, like we're not exuberant spenders holding me and I'm like I don't have a limo out front like my Honda Odyssey. You know that's doing fine for us, but-.

Danielle: 20:13

I know my son is trying to get me to get a Lamborghini and I'm like there's under no circumstance, and I don't care how much money my business makes we will never spend that much money on a car.

Josh: 20:23

I was gonna say no account is gonna do that. Right, I would love it to be a county rose up in a Lamborghini I guess I'm sure there's some, but but it was interesting. My spending wasn't exuberant but it was just. It was a lot of little things that added up and I even sure you've probably never seen this with your clients, but I was. I ran, I finally ran my numbers and I was paying for like three subscriptions that I'd never even used One. I had a duplicate like, for example, the transcripts for this podcast before Riverside and before a couple of tools that were automated. I was paying for a transcript tool I didn't know my VA was using one that she had. So I was paying like 30 bucks a month for something that we weren't even using and I was paying that for like a year. So just one example of a few things.

Josh: 21:06

I didn't keep track of the nitty gritty of all my numbers and that it's so weird to say because I'm still kind of in it now. Things have definitely started to shift. The tides are turning a little bit, but in a weird way I can already tell, I can already say, that probably over the next couple of years I'll say I'm glad that experience happened Because it forced me to be a better business owner, of course, seeing the numbers shift a little bit from the last couple of years, where the last couple of years were so much growth, had plenty to spend. We bought a new house. We built a new house where I was able to increase the team and everything, but then, as soon as, yeah, the profitability and revenue changed a little bit. My expenses kept on going up and I luckily did like you said. I caught myself in a good time here, so I do think I'll look back on this. I appreciate it.

Danielle: 21:54

Subscriptions are a big one, right. It's not the horror story. Subscriptions aren't the horror story. That is like you're sailing in a boat and there's just a small leak. You know what I mean. The subscriptions are the small leak that is eventually going to drown everything. Can drown everything, right, If you have enough small leaks in different areas. So the subscriptions is definitely one, and I hear it as I signed up for these three subscriptions because, in total, they did what I needed to do. But now this subscription, this company actually does all three and I forgot to cancel the other two, and so I'm still using my workaround when the workaround was solved. That's my story is I create a workaround for everything and then I'm like do you know?

Josh: 22:40

they solved the problem Not easy to work around when you stop third person. That's not good yeah.

Danielle: 22:47

And then the one is contractors and employees. So I just want to mention that one, because we recently I was on a client call and she was having a cash problem and the you know, on paper she actually looked profitable, right. So we were sending her financial statements. She was profitable every month. However, she had a cash issue and we realized that the cash that was coming in had to go right back out the door to pay her employee her, she had two employees on salary and then several contractors who were submitting their invoices on the first of the month, and so all the sales that were coming in when she did the billing was going right back out to pay her team and herself, because she had to be unpayable for her family.

Danielle: 23:33

And by making like these are because she's looking at the numbers we can make process tweaks. So now she's looking at the details. What are her contractors billing her for? What was the time period? When are they due? Right, like, how much time were they spending on each project?

Danielle: 23:53

It's a pain in the butt, right, like that's not fun for her to look at their invoices and actually review them, but she's found that by giving them some guidance, they're spending less time on each client project and so she's saving money by just controlling the expectations around each client project and then the time around the project and then having her employees time track because there was a lot of downtime and internal time that she was paying for. So just adjusting those few things within the numbers. So it's not always like accounting isn't about slash all your expenses so you could be profitable. It's about changing the way you do things so that you can look at the numbers and use them so that you can make it right. Like this client is gonna now stay in business because she solves her cash problem.

Josh: 24:45

And that's in a similar version. What I learned this year was, with my team members it was like, okay, what can basically like if we had a couple tiers of like? Here's the minimum that we need to do to keep the podcasts going, keep the socials going, keep the editing going what's like the minimum that we could do. And I hated to cut back on some hours for the team, but it did get to the point where I was like, yeah, I'm probably overspending a thousand to 2000 a month with stuff that we may not need to do, at least not right now. We could re-upload if it's working.

Josh: 25:15

But that's another measurement thing that I didn't really keep a close enough eye on is we did some things for a few months, including some social media stuff and elsewhere, where it literally just was not paying off. There were cool ideas and there were some things that were cool but it was not translating to filling the bank account. So is that probably another sign that you see too, where it's like it seemed like the gurus say it's a good idea, seems like a good idea, but if it is not actually paying you, maybe it's time to look at that. And then another note is like how often, or how long do you give a strategy, like a social media Strategy, you know, like do you? Because it's hard for something to catch on in two weeks, but yeah, my, my red magic is like two to three months if something isn't at least yielding some return.

Danielle: 26:00

Or I do like closer to six months, okay. So when we have clients who are and I do this for myself and then with clients when we are testing a new initiative, you know we will give it six months and and monitor it. So I'm looking at kickstarts financials every single month and we prefer for all of our clients to be on our monthly plan. They can choose quarterly, in which they would get their financials every three months, and maybe that's part of why I say Six months, because you need two sets of financial statements. So if you are lonely looking for financial statements quarterly, you need to look at your financials twice in order to make that decision. To say, oh, hold on, that's actually not bringing in in results. And if you act quick, you quick, right, you never you don't get that. You don't give that Opportunity, enough time to really click.

Danielle: 26:54

And so our clients who are looking at them their financials monthly, they need to practice a little patience, right? So there's not you something in between. Our monthly clients are practicing patients like, okay, I need to need to wait and see, I need to wait and see. And our quarterly clients are like kind of closing their eyes For three months and then coming up to say, wait, hold on, is it working? But but if it's causing major issues in your business? And six months, obviously, isn't that the answer. Right, like, if we're talking about a Significant chunk of change, do not wait six months.

Josh: 27:25

We, we need to act, act quickly and the example I was thinking of for anyone who's who tries something like this. I hope it's a good, good reminder. Like this was for YouTube shorts. That that I was thinking of it. We tried YouTube shorts for a few months and Was gonna see how that translated the growing my YouTube channel and everything else. But yeah, after a few months it was like, if we're not getting like any, I mean we're getting views, but it was not trailer. No one mentioned it. There's different metrics that you could probably use on anything you're doing to see if there's if people you know. Really, the biggest thing I've learned is talk to your customers and ask them where they found you and what's working when it comes to marketing. That's one of the things that I've reminded myself to do. So the podcast, by the way, is like the number one thing for me, so Definitely gonna keep doing.

Josh: 28:14

What's, what's the? I don't have an exact question, but what are some other ways to measure Success? Basically so that we're doing the right things?

Danielle: 28:23

Oh, it's my favorite question.

Josh: 28:25

I'm gonna have you talking, daniel, my golden retrievers knocking at the door. She's scratching, so I'm gonna let her in, but please I'm listening okay.

Danielle: 28:32

So I think part of it is Knowing what your intention is for the year. So I think a lot of us, as business owners, we don't, like you know, january, yes, set all those goals and most people forget about them. Right, like, yeah, we're talking fourth quarter, so do you? Are you really still tracking to the goal that you set last, last January? I like to set intentions for the year, and I talked a lot about this on my, my podcast, entrepreneur money stories, because Attensions allow us to be a little bit clearer about where we're going this year in our lives. So some of our clients are In a growth year, so they want hockey stick growth. And so, for those clients, they are going to be spending more money in advertising, marketing, contractors, employees, because they need to be able to service the their new, new customers, and so, for those clients, they're gonna have a lower profit year because they are investing in the high growth mode of their business. Right, and that is their intentionality is high growth mode.

Danielle: 29:39

Then we have some of our clients who are like I am in profit season, I want to sell my business in the next three to five years. I I want to be able to pay myself. I want to take the vacation. I want to start saving for my kids college. I want to be intentional about building wealth by a house, right Like? I have other goals in my world and so, since I've already gone through growth mode, I want to. I want to have a year where I'm really intentional about Creating profits and taking home money personally. Well, that makes making decisions a lot easier, right Like? Maybe I'm not signing up for as much. Maybe I'm Making a closer watch on my subscriptions. I'm watching my team members in the way they spend their time a little bit more closely. If I'm an escort, I'm making sure I pay myself a reasonable salary. If I'm an LLC, I am taking an owner's draw on a regular basis. So you're very, very intentional. And I can give one more example.

Josh: 30:35

Oh yeah, no, I love that. That's. That's a great. Yeah, it's a great way to put that.

Danielle: 30:39

One other example that I don't want to leave out is like what's our personal life?

Danielle: 30:44

Look like right. So I addressed the vacation, the house, you know. But sometimes it's like I need to take care of my aging parent, or I only have so many summers with my children, and so this might be a year or a season of your life and intention for this year where it's like I am not in high growth mode and I'm actually not in profitability mode either. I'm in the mode where I need to be home for dinner Three nights a week and I need to be able to pick up my kids two or three days a week, or I need to be able to visit my aging parent, I need to take Fridays off to spend with them, and so for that person, you actually might take home a lower Profitability because you are paying other people to work more in your business, and so you might again return to a lower profitability. But it's very intentional. So I know that I'm doing it for a reason and you don't have to stay there. It's a season and then you can change your season again.

Josh: 31:38

That is such a great reminder. I personally needed to hear that because I don't know if you knew this, but last year in the fall we had a really scary situation with Brea, my oldest daughter, and the. It was like a perfect storm, as this whole conversation Really illustrates, like the perfect storm of what I've went through the past year and a half, which is we moved into a new house last year. Anyone who has moved with toddlers knows that is a wild couple months.

Danielle: 32:04

I did it when my kids were three and five, so I get it not not easy to just hop back right into the saddle.

Josh: 32:11

So summer last year and quite frankly, I'd never really taken extended time off. So I even told my financial advisor like I'm gonna take it slow this, like intentionally gonna take it slow this summer. So last year 2022 took a little slower, so little job in the books, understandable. But then we had a serious situation with my daughter having a prolonged seizure and she was in the hospital and we're still in recovery and therapy from that. It was a very, very scary season. My third son, or my third kid my son, was born the same week. So as a oh my god.

Josh: 32:40

So two kids, different hospitals, my wife had a serious bout of preclamps and almost like literally almost died the week after that. So it's like two weeks of absolute lifetime script movie chaos and that threw me for a complete loop. And I bring that story up again because last fall was when I was gonna start to hit it hard again. But life threw me a curveball and I was just I mean, in the last year was hard to do anything. I just basically kept up with the podcast and my community and the time I wasn't doing that I'm like my daughter needed me and, like you said, life happened, and then fast forward to this year. Then the 2023 thing kind of happened.

Josh: 33:17

So it's kind of the perfect storm of like Take a break. Life happened and a bit of the shift in market and spending. So that's kind of where I'm at now. I'm just being honest about this too, because I hope anyone who hasn't gone through this or might go through this I hope to say that you're not alone. Like every business owner I know has gone through really good seasons and bad seasons. I don't know if you want to speak to that, but I'm sure you've seen it. The the role was to ride of entrepreneurship.

Danielle: 33:44

Yeah, I'm thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate you being so vulnerable and and sharing that. I just We've seen so many versions of that with with our clients and here's kind of how I handle it with with my kids, and we haven't had anything as as dramatic in our lives. But my kids have gotten a little bit older and I Kind of really struggled with this Re-identifying who I am as a person, because Anybody who's not a parent of teenagers, they don't want anything to do with you.

Josh: 34:19

So it's time to work, but I'm sure it was weird, sir, it's sad.

Danielle: 34:23

Yeah, it's sad, it is, it's actually really sad. So my, my daughter started driving. She's 18 now, so this is two years ago. She started driving all of a sudden. She was taking my son to school with her in the morning. Then you know the Football, basketball. Like they weren't here, they didn't need me. I don't have to sit at sports and watch them play anymore, I just go to the game once a week. When they are around, I'm like begging them to hang out. I mean like, if I want them to hang out with me, I got a con my six-year-old nephew into spending the day with me. Oh, I can get Lincoln to spend the day with me, then my kids will come you just need to get a pool right.

Danielle: 35:04

No, I have one. I Mean I was like you know, so that. So that's what I've really been struggling, right, so it's gonna look different for it for everybody. So for me, it has been a little bit more comfortable to work more, and so we've actually Eliminated a few positions and I have taken on a little bit more than I had previously, and so we're in a season of focusing on profitability. We won't stay here forever, because my time, you know, will change again. Maybe they'll need me again one day, or maybe I'll find something else to do with my free time. But but so for for us, that's the season we're in, and I know it doesn't feel directly correlated to the business, but that's why I should wanted to share that story with you, because that's the intention for me. It's re-identifying who I am. I had my daughter when I was very young, so you know it is for me what. You know, who am I and how am I gonna fill that time, and I love what I do for a living.

Josh: 36:05

Like I Am so passionate about what I do at Kickstarter, counting that I'm, like, more than happy to work a little bit more and be here to serve my, my community well, I love that idea of attention and tensionality Based off of life, like where you are in that season of life, because that does make such a big difference and I, I do. I do think a lot of people in the entrepreneurial world, especially online if they feel pressured to hit numbers or pressured to hit goals, it's like a revenue goal, no matter what. But if you are in a season of life where you can work a little more than that's probably really feasible, but if you're in a situation where, yeah, I guess you have to weigh the sacrifices you have to, you know, like if it's gonna mean you're gonna miss out a lot on you know somebody, a little baby, who was just born you're gonna miss their first year Largely because you're just so driven to hit a revenue goal. That's that's where I love that idea of intentionality based off of your season of life. And I think most everybody in my audience are lifestyle entrepreneurs, so time and freedom is a biggie, so that's not as much of a problem as like realistic goals.

Josh: 37:09

And this is kind of where it gets tricky because, like I, I know what I Need to take home, bare minimum for my family I also need. I know what I ideally want to take home and that's kind of hard, I feel. I mean, what are the metrics for, like revenue goal setting, no matter what this season, because that's Goal settings fascinating to me. I know everyone has a different mindset on it, but, yeah, it comes to set numbers. I mean, obviously, expenses, contractors, everything is at play. But, yeah, what are your, some of your tips for setting a goal that's reasonable with your season of life?

Danielle: 37:42

so, um, most people don't have a business budget or a personal budget, and we recently, in the last 18 months, really started focusing on personal finances just as much as business finances, because guess what they're related. We're not bots just running businesses, we are running a life, and so we need to understand, as business owners, what does our family, what does our personal life need to survive? Like, what's the bare minimum, and then what do we need to thrive? So, setting a personal budget and then having personal bookkeeping or a way of tracking your personal spending. And so we offer personal bookkeeping with our business bookkeeping, because when clients only see one side, it's like hold on, I still have a whole life over here that you didn't give me an update on right.

Danielle: 38:43

So now our clients get two snapshots. They get one for their business and one for their personal, so they can see what do I have going on. Like, maybe do I really need to be taking that much in draws If I just stop spending money? Like, does Amazon need to come every day with a new whatever for your home or for me? I love to buy groceries, so I know it sounds ridiculous. I swear to God, my mom did not starve us, greg, but my love language is that's a nice expensive habit now, by the way, oh, it's great.

Danielle: 39:17

Yeah, yes, but my love language is food, and so that's how I I always want the pantry to be fully stocked with snacks and I want the fridge to be robust and drinks coming. I turned my wine fridge into a body armor drink fridge. I want the kids to be able to have this space so I know what my personal spending habits are and so it can help me understand how much I need to take home from my business to support my personal life. Now I can use that number to decide what my revenue goal is, because how guilty are all of us of like not celebrating? Oh, totally, absolutely Right. Like, oh, you hit six figures finally. Like cool, great way to go, and I'm on to the next one. Now I need to hit seven.

Danielle: 40:16

You know, like we don't celebrate as business owners, so it always feels like never enough, like I hit the goal, now I'm on to the next one. Never enough, never enough. So if we know what our family needs now, we can back into the number of what we want our revenue to be, because then we know what should our revenue be? How much do we need to charge? Then, obviously, we're gonna have operating expenses on our business. So we need to understand how much does it cost to operate our business? You know Riverside Zoom, you know like all the other operating expenses, contractors, and add all that together with our owner's draws. But I think too many people set the revenue goal without ever thinking about, like what does my family need?

Josh: 41:01

Yeah, that's such a good point there's. It's what I teach in my business course, so I'm glad you kind of reaffirmed what I teach, which is you gotta start with what you need, like what is your, what do you ideally wanna take on, what's realistic and, yeah, what is like what's the bare minimum, what's the need? And then comes the other expenses, with the business expenses Cause, yeah, that dictates everything from there. And honestly, I've found and I don't know how you I don't know if you measure profit and revenue month to month or quarterly, but I kind of like to look at things quarterly as a cause I might have in my business. I might have a month that's lower and a month that's really good if there's a launch or something.

Josh: 41:37

So I try not to go week to week, month to month, but three months is usually a good indication of how things are Like. Are we on track to hit an annual goal? Are we gonna need to push more at the next quarter and have something new come out or more launches or a couple of membership drives or whatever it is, versus if it's really good? Well, I will have. Maybe I will have more time to go to the zoo like we did yesterday, on a Wednesday or whatever it looks like. So I say all that to say I'm glad you said that, because I think it's a really important message that people think about when it cause that dictates everything. Cause some people I have a lot of students who will start out and like your pricing literally is not set up for success, like you cannot sustain paying yourself, having expenses and running a business, paying your taxes, having a CPA. Like you you're not with that price point it's not gonna work. But if you know your expenses, both personal and business, that's how you dictate everything else from there.

Danielle: 42:35

And then it helps the money mindset because, bethta, what we were talking about earlier money mindset and pricing you're not just saying I need to raise my prices because well, I am not worth it right, Because my son wants to lay a.

Danielle: 42:49

McGeany, right right, it's very specific. Now you've done it thoughtfully. I know how much I need to live, I know how much I need to run my business, so I require this pricing, not because you think you're I mean, you're worth it, but you're doing it with much more intentionality. And then I just wanna touch on I love your quarterly approach, but I'm gonna challenge you.

Josh: 43:15

Here we go. A little bit of a challenge, here we go.

Danielle: 43:18

I want you to do it monthly, but you can still look at it for the past three months.

Danielle: 43:24

So, if you wait till the end of the quarter, three months have gone by and so that means you only have three times before tax season to look at your financials and some big things can happen Like you could miss out and end up overpaying in taxes. If we're only looking at it quarterly, so look at it monthly. But I hear you Like you don't wanna look at the lumpiness month to month. So in QuickBooks there's a report that you can run where it will just run it for like the last three months and show you quarter over quarter for the last four quarters no matter what month they're in.

Danielle: 44:01

All right, so it could be August 31st and you're looking at the last year in a quarterly format or year to date and it shows you where you're at year to date.

Josh: 44:09

That's a different way to frame it, yeah, as opposed to just like Q, cause I typically just do like Q, which I'm not saying, I don't look at my numbers, but I just I tend not to like goal set and plan too much based off of just month to month, whereas, yeah, I tend to do like Q1 planning Q2, q3, q4. But I do like that idea of month to month, but then just look at the last three months, because no matter what season you're in the business to let you write the last few months, so give you a good dictation of where things are at and where things are headed.

Danielle: 44:39

Yeah, I just have watched too many people, especially around fourth quarter. They forget that you only have so much time to make decisions before tax season, and so we want to be able to look at them and act in October, November and December instead of being like, hey, guess what, it's tax time.

Josh: 45:02

Yeah, you're right I did. Something I don't want to forget is when you were talking about the money mindset type of stuff. When it comes to knowing your expenses, I found that that actually breeds confidence with pricing, because I remember so vividly the first time I charged $3,000 for a website I was like, damn, I'm making three grand building websites. And what I realized is, oh, I'm not making three grand building websites because I have expenses and taxes and everything else. And then all web designers and business owners find out pretty quickly the invoice amount is not what you take home. So that helped me so much with the confidence of pricing. And it was a mindset thing because I wasn't a business owner. When I started out I was a freelancer and every dollar I made I just kind of felt like went into me. And when I really became a business owner I realized I'm looking at numbers very, very different. Now I don't see a monthly gross revenue statement and say, wow, I made $30,000. And I was like, well, I might have made like $15,000 with expenses and everything else.

Danielle: 46:07

You are famous. You are famous what we call accidental entrepreneur.

Josh: 46:13

Because yeah, for sure.

Danielle: 46:14

Right, it's like I'm a freelancer and then all of a sudden, wait, no, this is called owning a business, yep.

Josh: 46:22

We see it a lot.

Danielle: 46:23

Right, that's how a lot of our clients come to us. So they were like I was just freelancing for a long time and then, all of a sudden, I realized one day I woke up and I'm actually a business owner.

Josh: 46:33

Yeah.

Danielle: 46:35

And I'm doing taxes.

Josh: 46:36

The core of why I'm so passionate with the recent shift now with what I do. I mean, I renamed this podcast through the Web Design Business podcast to focus primarily on the business side of my industry of web design. Because, yeah, I see that happen all the time Freelancers, designers, really great creatives and everything else but if they don't have any sort of owner mindset, even as an owner, freelance or owner, solifernar, they're out of business Because they put themselves out of business or they're burning out. They're working 90 hours a week. So, yeah, it's a really important shift, if anyone's not there already, to start thinking like an owner. I mean, everything we've talked about to this point will definitely help that. But do you have any tip that comes to mind when it comes to becoming a business owner?

Danielle: 47:25

Yeah, I call it putting on your big boy pants, because the day that you accept money from somebody and the day that you sign up for anything like a website, a business card, you start accumulating anything. You're probably a business owner. You now have the responsibility to know your numbers, to pay taxes and even a freelancer, you're still a 1099 and so therefore, you can still deduct expenses. We work with a lot of people who just they're a 1099 and they know that they have to keep track of their expenses to be able to deduct them at the end of the year. That minute that you start accepting customers in your business, you're a business owner and that's the moment you need to have an accounting system. Separate your business and personal. Start saving for taxes, get a bookkeeper. I think we put it off and we call ourselves a freelancer to put it off just so we don't have to take responsibility.

Josh: 48:30

It's a great point. You're an owner, whether you like it or not. Everyone listening you're an owner.

Danielle: 48:34

You're a business owner.

Josh: 48:35

Sorry, we just let the cow out of the bag here on this episode. You're an owner. It's funny too. This is really dangerous when it comes to having friends and family members who are salary and they don't understand the business world or being an entrepreneur. Because what I found is I remember we had a friend just a family friend my wife and I who I think she got family photos done. It was like a half an hour session for $100.

Josh: 49:01

She was appalled. She was like I can't believe it's like $100. I could take pictures for a half an hour. But what she didn't grasp was, well, that photographer's driving there, spending gas money and then leaving and then editing the photos and the client delivery and paying taxes and paying for any subscriptions. That she's using A very simple model and understanding that most salary people don't get, because they're not business owners, that $100. She was not making $100 for a half an hour. That is not how that works. I just wanted to make that analogy just because I think a lot of people family members and friends who aren't in this world. This is why you're right, it's so important to have community around this, like-minded people, Because it's easy to get derailed by that and it's easy to doubt yourself or lower your rates or feel like you're not worthy or valuable enough. So I don't know.

Danielle: 49:51

I didn't have anyone to go with that, I just wanted to bring that up. No, my mom told me a long time ago I think she's passed it now but she was like you might as well go back to working for somebody. You were more available then. You didn't work as hard. Is this really worth it all? I think she's overcome it by this point, but she's not wrong. I am obsessed with my business. Now I think about it and I want to care for it and I want to care for my team. I want to care for all my clients and the businesses that we support. But that not understanding why I was working so hard I think that's part two to that. It's not understanding somebody's time and the worth and what goes into it, but then also understanding how hard that photographer and your example they're probably so passionate and they want to work so hard and they love what they do and so supporting them in that as well.

Josh: 50:53

So I'm terribly curious about this because you brought that up, because it is an interesting trade-off. I was actually just talking to a friend of mine who wonders. She basically said I wonder if a lot of people throughout the past few years, now that so many people are working remotely, almost feel like, well, I could get a job and work for somebody and work from home, whereas before really before COVID it was like you could to work from home. You're usually a freelancer or you're in your own business. What's interesting, though, is there's still a big, big difference between having ownership and control of something and being at the mercy of somebody else. So, yeah, you might work less and just work nine to five, even if you're working from home and only going in the office once a week or every couple of weeks, which is really common right now with hybrid working but it's the ownership and the control I mean. That's really the sacrifice For me personally, whether I'm a control freak or not, I don't know, but I like running the show.

Josh: 51:52

I want to be in control of my life. That's really what it's all about. Now it's time to rebrand this podcast to control your life. I don't know, but maybe that's a hard pie. Yeah, and to me it's the headspace.

Danielle: 52:04

So I think that's the big difference for me is the headspace afterwards. I talk a lot about my podcast, clarity Breaks. So if you follow me on Instagram, I am constantly posting pictures of I think I shared this with you last time we recorded. I have a Golden Retriever and we since have a second puppy now it's a hound and so we take Clarity Breaks on a regular basis, and so that's really an important piece, because I can't just look at the numbers and like, all right, cool, done, got it. Yeah. Next, you know, I have to look at my numbers, like when I get kickstarts numbers and we review them.

Danielle: 52:47

I got to now go take a Clarity Break. I got to think about it. I need to digest it and ask myself questions like what do I need to keep doing? What do I need to stop doing? Why did I lose money this month? Like, oh, I'm profitable, awesome. Why am I profitable Right? Like, what did I do this month? Do I want to create it again? Do I want to those behaviors that I had last month? Do I want to do them again this month because maybe it wasn't a non-healthy month? So I am constantly taking those Clarity Breaks and so for me, being a business owner occupies a lot of headspace, because it's not just about doing the work and checking out Like I'm doing the work and then be like, ok, what worked about that project.

Josh: 53:30

Yeah.

Danielle: 53:31

What didn't work? Ok, am I profitable enough on it? Did I? Did I pay my you know employee contractor too much to work on that? Ok, should I do that again? You know, do I feel OK with, like, not not seeing my family or not going to the gym? Right, Like am I? Am I finding that balance enough? So it's all the Clarity Breaks that happen after you look at your numbers.

Josh: 53:52

I really like that term Clarity Break. Unintentionally. I've done that with walks and everything and a lot of my audience. We were really into like deep work, segments and segmenting days and having like a CEO day to find Clarity running your business versus just being in the business all day. But it is a, it's a hidden trap that a lot of entrepreneurs early on don't realize is you do you might leave your nine to five, but it's it's true. It's like welcome to the 24, seven, because it's very hard to turn things off. However, my personal opinion is that nothing beats the freedom and the control and ownership you can have when you do your own thing.

Josh: 54:29

Case in point one of my students right now. He's a friend of mine from high school. He's learning web design on the side. He has a nice cushy six figure plus corporate job. But his company they're not laying off people right now but they're not hiring. And that's the next step before layoffs is they're not growing. And then, over the not growing, that's like unprecedented for this company. They've never just stopped, they never stayed stagnant like that. So he's kind of looking at like OK, it's out of his control, he can do as good as he can and move up one prong on the ladder, but he doesn't have any control truly over his job. It could be gone at some point. That is the danger of being cushy, and if you're, you know, if you're an entrepreneur at heart, but you would rather have security. My question is how much you know? Is it truly security if you're not in control of it?

Danielle: 55:22

Well, it's like never find comfort right.

Danielle: 55:25

I was at an EO it's a national organization, it's a group I belong to and somebody was saying that they were just skating the last few years, that they had a good team in place, they were profitable, like things, it was working, it was in well, oil and machine, and so they started getting comfortable and they started skating and something jerked them out and they had an employee who quit and gave some some feedback, and so it's like this is exactly what I needed to get me back on my game.

Danielle: 56:00

Like, even as a business owner, as you grow you can still get into that trap of comfort. And so for him you know he's having to spend a lot of time looking at his team. Like, even though he's profitable, even though he has a healthy business, like he has to shake things up and actually hire more team members and change his, his entire company structure, which is going to have a huge impact on what he can take home this year. It was like I needed to come out of my comfort zone. So I think it's a comfort zone, like let's not any of us get trapped there.

Josh: 56:33

Yeah, I mean, there's so many messages about that. I couldn't agree more. Yeah, comfort is death. I've heard it said in the sports world, the entrepreneur world, everywhere. It's true and even like from a relationship standpoint, we've all been there where, like, you just eat the same places, you watch the same shows. It gets boring and then. But if you do shake things up and whether it's externally and you're forced to like this year for business wise, I was a little bit shooken up this year from external factors it is really a good reminder, that comfort, because I did feel a little comfortable and a little overconfident through last year, so it was a good reminder for me. So, gosh, that's good message. Yeah, danielle, again, this has been awesome.

Josh: 57:15

I know we didn't have an exact thing to dive into on this one, but this was really helpful for me. I hope it is for a lot of other people too, who who are in a position where, like, maybe the numbers are down, and I mean a lot of the stuff we've covered tactfully. Tactfully, look at your numbers, look at really, look at the books, check your subscriptions. A lot of it is knowing the numbers that you need to personally take home versus the business. Like we've talked about.

Josh: 57:40

Season of life is so important when it comes to goal setting and your growth trajectory and everything else. A lot of stuff we covered in here really helpful for me with kind of what I've gone through. And the cool thing is is and I had this realization more recently because it was it was been a really challenging year and trying time with everything went through personally on top of the business stuff. But one thing I'm excited about is kind of going back to the control and ownership is that I'm not relying on someone else to make things better for me or change things. It is up to me, which I. It's really exciting. It can be daunting sometimes, but I don't know. Do you have a final thought on that?

Danielle: 58:17

Yeah, like you have the power to do something. That's why we did a whole series on our podcast on what to do when you're losing money, because it doesn't matter, Like, whether it's a bad season in life, whether your business is having a slowdown, if you're losing money, if you're not taking on the paycheck that you wanted. Like you have the opportunity. If you're an accidental business owner or you consider yourself an official business owner, you have the option to really take to take control and do something about it. So, do you get your bookkeeping done Right? If you don't, if you're not doing it, get help right, Because take responsibility, you need to.

Danielle: 58:58

You know if you're accepting payments from customers, you're a business owner. You need to have bookkeeping in place, Look at your numbers on a regular basis and then take those clarity breaks, because I think that's the. You know we're all waiting for this movie star moment, the Hollywood moment where the sky's part and you know it's not coming. It doesn't come in business, in business. So you need to take the clarity breaks and create that for yourself, Ask the questions and make changes.

Josh: 59:24

I love that. Such a good message, Danielle. Thank you so much for your time today. We'll have all the links that we talked about in the show notes the quiz and then your podcast. Did you have that podcast when we talked a few years back?

Danielle: 59:36

No, no, I think we're on maybe close to 125 episodes now. Entrepreneur money stories is the podcast and we do have a YouTube channel and when you were talking about the YouTube shorts and stuff, we got, like you know, 20, 30 views on them. I yelled at my parents last week. I was like are you a subscriber? Are my parents really not subscriber? So yeah, entrepreneur money stories we do have the video component and on Spotify.

Josh: 1:00:07

Well, I'm excited I'll be on there here soon, sounds like, so I'm pumped to come on and talk money mindset. We, you know, hit a lot of that on this one, but yeah.

Danielle: 1:00:15

I love what you're up to.

Josh: 1:00:18

You obviously have a true passion for helping business owners, particularly online business owners, with the money side of things, which is often the you know it's the hardest thing for us we fall into it. It's the hardest thing Most everyone, most every web designer is not accidental entrepreneur. So, Danielle, thank you for round two. Already excited for round three. Let's do it before three years.

Danielle: 1:00:37

Okay. Yeah, we'll make this an annual Okay Deal, all right, thank you. Thanks, danielle.

Josh: 1:00:43

There we are friends. Such, such, such a good conversation with Danielle. I learned a lot on this one. It was actually a lot of. It was challenging for me. It was half therapy session, half good learning on my perspective. So I hope it was for you too. I mean, again, we talked about this while we were alive.

Josh: 1:01:00

But you are not alone. If your business is in decline in any manner, or if you get to a position where your business starts to decline and sales go dry a little bit or your client pipeline dries up, it happens. Business is true to the option of online entrepreneurship as a whole is such a roller coaster sometimes and when you're on the upward swing, like I found out and like Danielle mentioned, you can tend to get comfortable. But hopefully it doesn't take a disastrous reminder for you to look at your numbers and do the things we talked about. But hopefully this episode is a good reminder to do some of these things to make sure your business is profitable. You check your subscriptions, you make sure you're looking at what's working well in your business. You're measuring your numbers. You know what you need to take home for you and your family so you can plan accordingly and plan around your lifestyle. So I hope all these tips helped you. I'd actually love to know what was your favorite takeaway.

Josh: 1:01:55

I've been reading all the podcast episode comments, so if you'd like leave me a takeaway that really helped you with this episode, Go to joshallco 286 to leave a comment. If you would leave a podcast review, it means a lot to me. It really helps grow the show. Would love to get some more podcast reviews coming in. So, please, if you would go to joshallco podcast review, all one word and that'll zip you over to the links where you can leave a review, where you listen and again check out Danielle at kickstartaccountinginccom. You can sign up for the free quiz that we mentioned about helping you identify what type of owner you are. She's on Instagram and the podcast that she hosts, entrepreneur Money Stories podcast. Check that out as well, all linked over at joshallco 286.

Josh: 1:02:38

All right, friends, thanks for joining. If you are in a business decline, hang strong. Hang in there, friend. Hopefully a lot of these tips help. But I'm telling you brighter I was going to say brighter pastures are ahead. I don't think that's the right expression. You know what I mean. Good times are ahead. Stick with it, be smart, be strategic and relist in this episode if you need to. All right friends, see you on the next one.