82. Overcome Money Shame for More Success, with Profit Coach Sam Varner

Let’s talk about how to overcome money shame and boost your business profitability.

In this week’s episode on Ideal Practice, I spoke with Samantha (Sam) Varner, a straight talking profit coach and business strategist who’s changing the way we heart centered folks think about profit.

She’s got a message for us that I think we should listen to. :)

In this episode, you’ll hear…

• Five steps you can take to overcome that persistent shame that soooo many of us have around understanding the numbers in our private practice.
• How to understand the difference between various financial professionals, who you really DO need on your team, and who can wait. 
• Why money doesn’t buy happiness, but what it DOES buy instead - and why you need that. 
• The one financial book Sam says we all should read.

And perhaps more than anything else, you’ll understand how imperative it is that we make peace with profit - for everyone’s sake. 

This was a fun one, y’all. Give it a listen. 

~Wendy
Xoxo

P.S.  REGISTRATION is now OPEN for 2024 ON-PURPOSE, the new online mini-retreat that I’m offering in December for therapists and other healers in private practice. This is going to be about so much more than goal setting. :)  I’ll be closing the doors soon - so if you want to come, don’t wait to sign up! 

Click here to learn more and to grab your seat!  www.WendyPittsReeves.com/onpurpose

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TODAY’S GUEST:  SAMANTHA (Sam) VARNER

As a profit coach and money making business strategist, Sam Varner specializes in supporting six-figure service-based business owners to make profit a priority by implementing her proprietary CRUSH Formula.  A conversation with Sam is a straight talking chat about profit, business success and the drive women have inside that is ready to explode. She is open and honest about what it takes to achieve business growth well into 6 figures - and just how to tap into your hidden potential as a practice owner.

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MENTIONED:   

• Her podcast: She Needs Grit   
  • https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/pillars-of-profit-2-unveiling-the-revenue/id1592362862?i=1000615862591
• Her website: 
  • https://crushprofitcoaching.com/
• Her program: She Profit School
  • https://crushprofitcoaching.com/save-a-seat

_______________  
REGISTRATION for >>ON-PURPOSE 2024<< is OPEN THROUGH DEC. 5.
ONLINE RETREAT HAPPENS DEC. 8.

What would it be worth for you to know exactly what your intentions are, and the steps you’ll need to reach them - in order to grow your practice in 2024? 

What would it be like to start the new year with a road map in hand, so you’ll know exactly WHAT to work on, and WHEN, to make those intentions real? 

Join us at ON-PURPOSE 2024, a unique online planning retreat where I’m going to walk you through a process that, til now, I’ve only shared with my VIP coaching clients. 

You’ll love this experience. Click here to learn more. 👈👈👈

Transcript

Wendy: 0:01

You're listening to ideal practice, episode number 82. And today, guys, we're going to be talking with Samantha Varner. Sam is a character you are going to love this woman. She is a straight shooting, straight talking profit coach and business strategist out of Texas who has a message for us, especially those of us who are constantly dealing with you know all the shame and guilt we have around our money story. Gotta clean that up to get where we wanna go in our practice. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. So stay tuned.

Wendy: 0:40

Hi, I'm Wendy Pitts Reeves and, with over two decades of experience in the private practice world, I've built my six figure business while learning a lot of lessons the hard way. This is the first podcast that shows you how to apply the principles of energy alignment and strategy to build a practice that is profit centered but people forward. This is the ideal practice podcast. Hey guys, and welcome back. This is Wendy, your host here at Ideal Practice. How are you doing?

Wendy: 1:26

Did you make it through Thanksgiving? Did you make it through last week's holiday? Let's hope you don't have a holiday hangover. Let's just hope you had some kind of holiday happy, I have to tell you, at our house it was really great I had on Thanksgiving day.

Wendy: 1:43

There was a moment some point in the afternoon when we had not quite gotten the food on the table yet, but I had a house full of teenagers and toddlers and a variety of adults mixed up, and there was a point when the teenagers were playing charades in the living room while we were running around trying to get dishes on the table and I went over to see what they were doing for a moment and I can't remember how we did this or why we did this, but at some point the charades stopped and one of my grandsons and I, who was in high school, he and I hopped up and did what is becoming a bit of a tradition when we get the whole gang together, which is we led a round of line dancing to Ed Sheeran's shivers.

Wendy: 2:34

Do you know this dance, guys? It's been out for a long time, but I made a point to learn that line dance a few months ago and I showed it at one point to my grandkids, and now he and I, in particular, keep trying to do it. Nobody else has the courage to get up and look like a fool like we do but, I just can't tell you how delightful that was.

Wendy: 2:55

I had this moment in the middle of all that, when I had to step outside for just a minute to run some errand or something. It was just quiet for just a second and I thought I am so happy in this moment. And it doesn't mean that we don't have stress in our life we do. We have challenges. I've talked about a few of those here on this show but there was a moment there where it was just nothing but joy and I was so happy to be in a house where there was just a lot of silliness and no drama and lots of good food and lots of noise and lots of dirty dishes and it was fine. And I hope, whatever Thanksgiving looked like for you, I hope it was just right for you too, even if it was just you and a cup of coffee and maybe a piece of pie in front of a fireplace. Whatever it was for you, I hope it was exactly what you wanted it to be. And with that, let's talk about today. So today on the show, I am bringing to you a guest that I really enjoy talking with.

Wendy: 3:54

Sam Varner has quite an interesting background, which you'll hear a little bit about and she has a real heart for helping, especially service-based professionals. So she works with a lot of folks like me, like she works with therapists, healers. She also works with, like accountants and different kinds of medical professionals, many of whom, like you guys, love the work that they do but often are a bit conflicted about the numbers and about the role of money in their work, especially with women. She calls herself a business strategist and a profit coach and she has her own podcast. It's called she Needs Grit. You can find that all the places you normally find podcasts. She Needs Grit, which will tell you something about her. Sam, is all about the importance of our being comfortable with a concept of profit and making sure that our businesses are healthy and strong, because without profit they're not and they're not gonna last. So we had a really great conversation here about some of the ways that women in particular trip themselves up as business owners, and she had some suggestions for us about some good steps to take to try to clean some of that up and to shift our own practice into a much more profitable business, and I hope you enjoy this as much as I did, because I thought she was really fun to talk to you, and I think you will too.

Wendy: 5:18

And with that, let's get in to the interview. All right, hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Ideal Practice. I am so glad you're here because we are gonna have one heck of a conversation today. I've been looking forward to this one for months. Obviously I say obviously, it will be obvious to you by the time we get started I am thrilled to bring to you my guest today. You've already heard a little bit about her in the intro. I'm gonna just cut straight to the chase and bring her on. Sam, say hello to everybody.

Sam Varner: 5:52

Hello everybody, I'm really excited to be here too.

Wendy: 5:56

Y'all, this is Sam Varner. She is, sam. Are you still down in Houston? Am I remembering that?

Sam Varner: 6:00

right, I am you are.

Wendy: 6:02

You are Way down. So we did a kind of get together, get to know each other, call back when it was hot. It's not hot where I am anymore in East Tennessee.

Sam Varner: 6:16

Yeah, bad.

Wendy: 6:18

We had such a good conversation and even now just y'all before we even got on this call there are so many things that Sam and I are clicking about. It's gonna be fun. I just love this. So, sam, start us off by telling us a little bit about who you help and how you help them.

Sam Varner: 6:35

Okay, perfect. So I am a profit coach and I help women business owners primarily service-based industry kind of people Figure out how to make more money in their business. So I have a CRUSH formula where I help them walk through that process of what I feel like are the five pillars to business success. But at the end of the day, it's about creating a business that is the supporting cast for your life. So you are creating your life and the business is making enough money and doing it in a way that services you, so that you can have the life that you want, and that's what I help clients with all the time.

Wendy: 7:16

Yeah, I think I saw on some of your information you called yourself what was it? A money-making business strategist, mm-hmm yeah.

Sam Varner: 7:25

Yeah, cause it's a little bit more not more than coaching, but I don't coach from the perspective of I'm just gonna ask a bunch of questions and I'm gonna wait for you to kind of like stumble and bumble around. That can get really hard sometimes when people are looking for know but how. But how do I do this? So I think of myself as a tactical coach, where I'm gonna coach you and this is gonna be your business, that you grow but I'm going to help point out the directions that you can take to create your business. And then, of course, you're still an autonomous human being. You get to make whatever decisions you'd like. But really I'm gonna help with some of the practicality pieces too.

Wendy: 8:08

So how did you get in to this. Tell me a little bit about your background, like what, how did you get into doing this and why? What drove you to start doing this, in particular for your own business? I don't know that story.

Sam Varner: 8:21

Yeah, it's actually a funny story a little bit. So I went to university in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in case you're not familiar with all of that and I took communication. So I was taking a communications degree and focusing on a public relations kind of standpoint. I did that. I went out, I worked at an agency. It was great, I was interacting with clients. I was the low woman on the totem pole just trying to figure it out, and the agency I worked for collapsed and I tripped into a job in personal finance. So I had a cousin who worked in personal finance at the time and he said to me like hey, first off, you need a job and secondly, you're pretty good at selling and talking to people. I think you could probably manage to do this.

Sam Varner: 9:07

Which, matthew was not wrong. I definitely was able to do that, and so I ended up talking to people about finances and business Well, finances personally, but then it very quickly became I was interacting with people, with businesses, and I did that for a long time. I worked for a couple of different companies and when I was in Calgary at the very end of my tenure in Calgary, I was working for the Canadian Medical Association, so I was working with doctors as one of the offerings that they got as part of their membership to that group. And then, lo and behold, my husband got a job offer in Australia.

Sam Varner: 9:46

So you know as you do, you pick up your two kids and you move yourself across the world. And I worked in Australia to get my designations and qualifications. To go back to personal finances, and then Mike came home and said to me hey, what do you think about Houston? And I'm like.

Sam Varner: 10:08

I'm sorry, what Houston? Where Houston, texas, like United States tech, okay, cool At this point we had. Well, that conversation probably happened when we had three babies and one on the way, and so we ended up in Houston and my qualifications from Canada were of no point and my Australian qualifications, which were so shiny and not even used or scuffed, were pointless, and so when I got here I decided, okay, well, I'm not doing that again. That feels really, really unfun. I'm going to create a business.

Sam Varner: 10:48

I always knew I wanted to be a business owner, and so this felt like the time, and then I just picked the pieces of each of those things, so marketing and PR and sales and finances all came together and I was like I will be a money coach for people, an individual money coach, and did that for like half an hour and everybody that showed up was a business owner and I was like, oh, this is even more fun. I can help you make more money as a business owner instead of stressing about your grocery budget as an individual. That will solve kind of both of those problems.

Wendy: 11:24

Not just personal finances, but business funding.

Sam Varner: 11:26

Yeah, yeah, everybody that showed up. Whatever I was saying out there in the world was resonating with business owners, and so I decided to focus as a profit coach and work on the business finances, which would, of course, trickle down to everybody's personal finances, ideally looking healthier than they were. So, that's what we got here.

Wendy: 11:47

The word profit is a dirty word in my world, right? Okay?

Sam Varner: 11:51

It definitely is.

Wendy: 11:52

Not to me, but it is to my audience, and I'm always telling people. It is not a four letter word. Y'all quit acting like that. So I love that. So who? And you work with service professionals, so practice Well, yeah.

Sam Varner: 12:06

So doctors, lawyers, accountants, people who own agencies themselves I deal with a lot of people in the real estate space, so, whether they're mortgage lenders or those kind of individuals, and then private practice owners are one of the areas that I continue to just have people wander over, right, whether it's med spas or therapists or chiropractors or anybody in that space that is realizing okay, I opened my own shop, I have a shingle out there and I'm good at what I do from a. I know what my job is, but my business is running me. I'm not running my business.

Wendy: 12:50

It kills me. I see that all the time. People who are working really long hours for very little return on those hours, Absolutely. So I may have mentioned in the promo, but you have your own podcast that's called she Needs Grit right, I want to make sure. I put a plug in for that, yeah.

Sam Varner: 13:08

It's a two year birthday is today Actually. I was scrolling through Facebook and saw my announcement. So yeah, it was today, so two years ago doing that podcast.

Wendy: 13:17

On the day that we're recording this. So happy birthday to she.

Sam Varner: 13:20

Needs Grit. That's awesome. That's awesome.

Wendy: 13:23

What are you learning through your podcast itself and through the clients that you're working with, now that you've been doing this for a while on your own? What are some of the things that you're noticing about the conflicts that people have and I say people, in my experience it tends to be women, but not always women. What are some of the experiences, the things that you're noticing about the trouble that we all have with this whole money stuff?

Sam Varner: 13:49

Yeah, it boils down to a couple of things. I think it boils down maybe to just one thing. Right Is the shame around money, around the thought that we should already know how to do this and what to do with our money and how to make money and how to grow money and how to pay ourselves or whatever all those money pieces around business or really around life? Everybody thinks I should already know this and yet if we take a little bit of a deviation, say like, has anybody taught you this? The answer is no. The answer is I've learned maybe a little from my parents or watching them. I was observing things, but we're internalizing every piece of our story about money from what we learned, what we saw in, whether it's movies or books or our family of origin or wherever that is. Our spouse comes with all their set of money baggage and it ends up being something where we think we should be better at something without any training, as if it's an intrinsic skill, like learning how to walk.

Sam Varner: 14:57

Humans can figure that out on their own. They probably don't even need a lot of instruction. But when it comes to money, that is not the same thing. But we feel very bad about the fact that we are doing it wrong, or we assume we're doing it wrong and we don't want to talk about it.

Wendy: 15:11

Yeah, are you finding so? Do you work with people who have? Do you often work with people who have established practices, established firms, like they're up and at it. They've been at this for a while. They're not brand spanking new, yeah.

Sam Varner: 15:24

Yeah, most of my clients these days. When I first started, I think, like so many of us, businesses gravitate to who is similar to them in business, right. So I still get businesses that come to me that are very, very new and they want to get it right out of the gate, which is very cool. It's nice to you don't have to unlearn so many bad behaviors if we start at the beginning.

Sam Varner: 15:47

But for the most part my clients are established in their businesses. They've got clear client base, they are making money, they are figuring out how to grow. Oftentimes they're like, okay, I've done this, and now what's the next piece of it? For me?

Wendy: 16:04

What I'm curious about is if you have found that even people who have well-established businesses, whether it's a solo, like they're a solopreneur, or whether they have a firm, a team, staff, whatever, a group of some sort and I'm thinking accountants, attorneys in my world it would be a group practice would be an example of that. A medical practice, a dental practice, right, a chiropractic, all of those kinds of things. What I'm curious about is if you find that, even when people they look really successful on the outside there's lots of cars in the parking lot, the building is nice, they're full that behind the scenes there is still struggle and I'm thinking I really am tuned into the shame that people have been around this.

Wendy: 16:50

Is that something that you've come across a lot?

Sam Varner: 16:52

Yeah, all the time.

Wendy: 16:53

Tell me about that. Yeah, I'm really.

Sam Varner: 16:56

I think it's a lot of people that come to me that feel confident about where they are with their financial situation, with their business or what they know. There's a fear of relying on people like external people to help them. There's a fear of asking the questions. There's a fear of not even just knowing what to start. They don't even know. They're like I think I'm doing okay, what is okay? What is the industry standard? What should I be doing, as opposed to looking at what they're trying to create? So it's everybody. Anybody who's listening right now that's shrinking down in their seat or feeling a little called out. The reality is that's everybody. So you're in great company and it is a problem that can be solved. It is a problem that can be tackled and you can feel a lot better about it than you do right now.

Wendy: 17:51

I know that this is true. I also know how deep-seated this stuff goes, because in my own coaching work, even with clinicians who've been in the field for 20 years will tell me I don't want anybody to know this, but right, and it kills me sometimes. Some of the stories that I hear from people and I think people are often surprised when we start digging into where those money stories come from. But I'd love to know, I'm thinking about how this actually impacts their practice or their business.

Wendy: 18:19

So what do they actually do? What are the mistakes or what are the problems that you see in the real world in 3D? What does this look like when the money shame is really strong? I love what you just said about they're afraid to trust people outside. They don't even know how to understand what your numbers are. What's normal, what to expect. Tell me a little bit more about what this looks like behind the scenes in a business.

Sam Varner: 18:45

Yeah, so it often will look. The number one thing I see is that people won't raise their rates. They are extremely fearful of the repercussions of raising their rates from a couple of different perspectives. One what are people going to think about me? I'm greedy, I'm just out here to make a buck. I don't care about them, I'm not actually trying to help people, I'm just trying to make money.

Sam Varner: 19:08

So that piece of it, like that's some of the background thoughts that are going on. But then, as a result, they are not in a position to be able to pay somebody to help them. So they're not in a position to be able to pay for additional staff. So people are doing too much work and they're overwhelmed and they're burnt out, or they can't keep staff because they're not willing to pay a good amount of money to staff. They don't understand the value of paying for somebody. To take some of the weight off of them will allow for greater productivity and greater profitability. So they're very cautious about that. Feels overwhelming to contemplate hiring somebody or having a payroll that then becomes a responsibility. Those pieces come in and then the other pieces. I see that a lot, but then also it's the business owner themselves just doesn't pay themselves.

Wendy: 20:03

Yes, like they're basically working for free? Yes, makes me crazy, oh my Lord, yeah, when I ask people so how often do you pay yourself? Do you pay yourself a regular amount on a regular basis? No, why don't you? So when you said that one of the biggest problems, you see, is people won't raise their rates, I know that that is also often the first place to look in terms of how to increase somebody's profitability. I'm wondering if you find that I can chase so many rabbits here. I have to be careful.

Wendy: 20:36

I'm wondering if that they also tend to put too much money back into the business, like their expenses are too high, or they're just throwing money at the problem rather than figuring it out.

Sam Varner: 20:49

Absolutely, and they try and and business owners in general do this where they try to outsource the problem solving. What you're actually needing to outsource is the solution. So you have determined what your problem is, you've come up with how you're going to fix it and then you're paying for somebody to do the work to fix it. You're not paying for them to be the person who determines the problem and the solution. You're the business owner. That's your job and we do that all the time. Like, our phone system is totally in disarray and so we hire a receptionist and we don't train them and we don't set standards and we don't outline what we want them to do, because we haven't thought through any of those pieces. We just know that the phones are a disaster, and then that person doesn't do a great job and we're faulting them for doing a poor job, as if they're supposed to have come in, assess the problem, figured out their role, written their own job description, trained themselves into this role and then solved your problem.

Wendy: 21:47

Well, that's insane.

Sam Varner: 21:48

Nobody is doing that. So, yeah, there is a lot of that. There's like I just need more marketing money, I just need more advertising. I just need a fancier office. I need a bigger space If I had another person in here. So I need a bigger space so I get a bigger lease. It like is just a. At no point are they actually knee deep in their numbers in a way that they can see what would it look like if I do this? Okay, let's financially play that out and see. And is that comfortable when business is great? Is it comfortable in the slow season? Is it comfortable if you're not in the office? Is it only going to work if all of these things are? You know you need to assess each one of those pieces and people spend money to solve problems. It's like you pay for the gym membership on the assumption that that's going to make you healthier.

Sam Varner: 22:39

The reality is you have to go to the gym and do the things.

Wendy: 22:45

That's a great analogy, right?

Sam Varner: 22:46

It's not that dopamine hit of like I paid for the gym and therefore I'm healthier than I was yesterday and it's like that's a hard no.

Wendy: 22:53

So it's interesting. So there's a bit of a contrast here. Like some people barely are barely making ends meet anyway, they're working their tail off and there's lots of problems on the income side, the revenue side. We can talk about that, and some people they're bringing in the revenue but what they're doing with it is it's canceling out whatever good it's doing right. So one extreme or the other, I see that all the time.

Wendy: 23:16

One of the just this week, just this week, I was talking with someone and this split second as I'm saying this to you, I cannot remember who- it was but there was somebody I talked to this week who said to me oh, I remember who it was a therapist who had a private, has a private practice but is also doing a little bit of work on the side in a clinic. You know doing both. And she and I was asking her about the clinic work and she said I don't know. I said what do you, you know, what are you averaging from those clients? And she's like I don't really know, I don't know how much I'm making from those people. I talk to people all the time who I don't know how much I've made this year. I don't have any sense of what I'm going to owe in taxes because I don't really know what I've done or means we haven't said anything, aside those when right.

Sam Varner: 24:02

And then you know that looming stress. It's so hard where, as a business owner, you're like I don't know what my tax bill is going to look like. I've done nothing preemptively about it. I'm incredibly stressed all the time about it. It's a hard way to continue, right, it adds so much stress to what is business ownership is already stressful. It is. It just is right. We've chosen a stressy path. It's fine, we'll all survive. But you're making it harder on yourself by ignoring what you know to be problems. Right, or foreseeable expenditures like taxes. It's a guarantee it's coming.

Wendy: 24:39

Yeah, right. Yeah, I like what you said earlier about they, just like they don't give themselves permission to learn this, that you're not like they assume they're supposed to know this. You know how to be a therapist. You know how to be. You know how to deal with the law. You know how to treat pneumonia. That doesn't mean you know how to run a business. It's a completely different skill set and most of us don't learn that in graduate school.

Sam Varner: 25:01

Yeah, no, there's almost no, even the, even the programs that do. I know that there's some. Specifically, I've talked to a couple of chiropractors right where they'll get a business class or two occasionally, and they're not the only ones. Physicians sometimes do too, but it's it's at such a level of like good luck. Yeah, check this box for you. It's not, it's not enough.

Wendy: 25:25

Now, do you so in my world, with my people? Not only do they, no one teaches us how to do this, but we are also shamed for thinking about it, right? So there's like there's not only this. I don't know how to think. What is profit, I don't even know what that means and I don't know how much. How much should I be making? And how do I even think about this? Right, I don't know. I have no idea what normal is. Not only do we not know that stuff, but if we say I do want to make a profit, I want to make money, I want to be able to take a vacation or put my kids in a good school or, I don't know, buy the Z4.

Sam Varner: 26:00

You know, yeah, whatever you want to do.

Wendy: 26:02

I'm a bad person in some way. Do is that? Do you see that as well? I'm thinking, is this yeah?

Sam Varner: 26:09

I do. I see it primarily with the occupations of like helping people, right when the definition of either your occupation itself, or what people are considering to be their big wife, right, the reason that they're doing this business, the reason that they're getting up in the morning and doing it and that can be from any standpoint. Any industry is.

Sam Varner: 26:30

I want to help people as if somehow a person should help people out of the kindness of their heart at all times and be a starving human for it, like that somehow there's a requirement to do without and that by making money you're not helping people there, like, and there's a massive disconnect there, because the more money you make in your business, the more money you have the ability to put back in the community.

Sam Varner: 26:59

So obviously, the more money you make, the bigger your practices, which means the more people you're helping in your actual job. But it also means the more people you have the capacity to employ, the more people that you have the ability to pay advertising for or engaging for in their services, which means you're helping them in that way as well. Your ability to participate in charitable living. All of those things happen when you have extra money to do it and the only way as a self-employed human is to make more money. So you have, over and above, your needs met right and people forget that and they think it makes them a terrible human to actually not want to just survive.

Wendy: 27:47

Yeah, I would say, it makes you a healthy human, a healthy, financially sound human who can take care of your family and still contribute to the world.

Sam Varner: 27:54

Yeah, yeah you're a much happier person if you're not struggling to make ends meet right, like money doesn't buy happiness, but it certainly buys choices, it buys opportunity, it buys flexibility, right, all of the things that all of these professions that you know if you have somebody who is in healthcare or somebody who's in that sort of their goal is to help people be the healthiest they can possibly be, be the most mobile they can possibly be, the most mentally healthy that they can possibly be. We're not telling them to just be adequately mobile or adequately mentally healthy. You're not saying to them like well, you're not totally terrible, therefore that's good enough. Right, that's nobody's message, is that? So why would we do that with the success and the health of our businesses? That's silly.

Wendy: 28:48

For real and we're not running a nonprofit.

Sam Varner: 28:51

No, we are not here.

Wendy: 28:53

Yeah, this isn't fun, so I always say that you're to me. We are taught in the healing arts in the mental health industry. I'm a social worker, like my background is social work, so we are taught that everything is about the client, client centered. Our clients come first and in a very real emotional way. That is absolutely true. I get that.

Sam Varner: 29:14

Yes.

Wendy: 29:15

So if you're a nonprofit, if your business isn't healthy, you're not going to be serving them very well for very long, right? So yeah, you'll be out of business, you'll be out of business and then what are you going to do, Right? So I say profit centered people forward, because I think that's the key.

Sam Varner: 29:27

Like yes you actually have to make money.

Wendy: 29:29

The bottom line does matter, right? Yeah, it doesn't mean that people don't, but the bottom line. So tell me so when. What are some of the things that you think need? So where do people start?

Sam Varner: 29:41

Where do?

Wendy: 29:42

we start as business owners. I've been running my practice for a while. The truth is, I am barely keeping up. I have no idea where the money comes from or where it goes. I am constantly embarrassed about this. I don't really want anybody to know. I don't really understand it. Honestly, I'm just following claim here and there and people pay me every now and then and I'm grateful. How do I fix it? Where do I even start? Because it's just a great thing.

Sam Varner: 30:07

Okay, oh, I just help for every single person that's sitting there in that circumstance. Right? You start by like what is the easiest, lowest barrier to entry situation you can do. You start by looking at your bank accounts. Okay, okay, we open the bank accounts, we open the credit card statements, we look at all of that. We at the very least get an idea of every dollar you've earned for the last month. So figure out wherever that's coming. You have to sort out where all those things are coming in. And then you look at everything you've paid for the business for the last month. At the very least, start there, okay.

Sam Varner: 30:49

And then, when you've gotten over that stress of doing it right and the procrastination and all the things that you're doing, then, honestly, you find somebody like me that you can start listening to and maybe it's not. You hire me as a coach right away. Right? Maybe that's 10 steps too far. Maybe it's you listen to a podcast about financial management. You listen to a podcast about growth of business.

Sam Varner: 31:18

You start to just get yourself comfortable with the idea that you could be a business owner that has the capacity to do this, and each one of you is going to have a tolerance for a different level of immersion. Like we're talking earlier about what kind of personalities we are and I'm a big quick start. So, like I'll get an idea, I will get. I'm like a dog with a bone. You guys and I just will start to like listen to podcasts and I will start to look for books about it and I'll start to talk to people about it. So have those conversations with the people that you do trust, or reach out to somebody you don't know, like me, that you're like. Well, sam sounds like she knows a little bit about this. Maybe she has an idea of what I could read and I will direct you Right. Yeah, I love that. I want to put a pin in this. Be brave, right.

Wendy: 32:10

Your first thing is look at your bank Like. First of all, quit avoiding your accounts which is you're not an ostrich Right Quit bare minimum.

Wendy: 32:19

My bookkeeper said that to me one day in a really powerful message where I was just like moaning and groaning about some mistakes I had made and I said you know, I don't even look at that, just trust it's going to be fine. You know, I believe in abundance, it's all fine. And she said, having an intention for your money is not the same thing as paying attention to your money you know, and so I set an alarm on my phone to make myself check my accounts every day and I have done that ever since.

Wendy: 32:48

That's the first thing I did, not the first. It's one of the first things I do every morning, so I love that. Just actually go look and I like what you said about look at the last month. Just take one month, the month of October. Look at October and go how much money did I bring in and how much money did I spend and on what? And just see what you learned from that. Just see what you noticed from it. But the second thing I hear you saying it is educate yourself. Educate yourself, start to learn and understand that. This is something you can learn, and this is this was really great, sam you said I want you to listen to things that help you begin to realize that you could be a business owner who has the capacity to do this. You are not just a clinician, you are not just a provider. You are a business owner who has the capacity to do this. I love that.

Wendy: 33:35

I don't know this yet, but I have the capacity to learn.

Sam Varner: 33:39

I love that Educate yourself yeah.

Wendy: 33:41

Awesome Podcast books. Reach out to people who are experts. And then what, okay.

Sam Varner: 33:48

So now you've done that, now you've decided okay, I looked at the numbers and, a they gave me a heart attack. Or B they weren't as bad as I thought and surprisingly, it's often that way. What will happen and you'll probably have noticed this, even by starting to check your bank account is you start to make different choices because you are aware of what's going on. So somebody's going to say to you like hey, do you want to invest in these Facebook ads? And you are now going to have a much better idea of whether or not that answer should be yes or no, even if all you're doing is just keeping an eyeball on those dollars, right, you're going to know how many of them are sitting there, you're going to know whether you think that that actually would make sense and you're going to start the thinking about investment process. Naturally, because that's just how your brain works, right? It's the same as going to a cash wallet system in your personal life.

Sam Varner: 34:42

If you go to the grocery store right now and you just buy whatever you want, you don't think about it, and then you swipe a credit card because it doesn't feel like real money anyway, then you don't think about it.

Sam Varner: 34:52

But if you have to think I only have $40 in my budget or I have $140, it doesn't matter what your budget is. You're not going to just be throwing things in the cart without some consideration of like, yeah, that's about five things for 10 bucks, where am I at right? So the same thing happens with your business money. You have your eyeballs on it. You're going to start paying attention, but then, honestly, I find a person whether it's a financial advisor or an accountant or a bookkeeper or a profit coach just saying right, find somebody that you can do a consult with, somebody that you feel like you could say anything to and they're not going to judge you. That is what you need to look for, because if you feel judged games over, you're back in the hole. You're not going to look at things for a long time. So find somebody that will let you just be who you are and where you are and help you to the next step.

Sam Varner: 35:52

And you have to do that piece.

Wendy: 35:54

I love that. I think that's how I remember telling you this. When we met before that, the coach I used to work with said that she hired a big bookkeeper or someone and said I need you to know that I do not understand this stuff and I'm going to ask you stupid questions. You have to make me not feel stupid. Yes, like if you don't, you have to or I cannot work with you. You have to make me not feel stupid. Can you say a little bit about the difference between those first three a financial advisor, a CPA and a bookkeeper? What's the difference in them and how do they in terms of the role they would play in a business?

Sam Varner: 36:26

Well, at this stage, with this piece of device in particular, it's just talk to somebody about the money, right. But in general, your bookkeeper, you need somebody doing your books. The books is just every incoming and outgoing piece of money that's happening in your business. They're going to track that for you so they have an ability to pull it from all the different bank statements or all the different credit cards amalgamated all together and have it be in something where you're going to see your ins and outs of your cash flow. That's what a bookkeeper does. It's also what a human being in their own business can do.

Sam Varner: 37:03

You don't need to hire this person necessarily, depending on what your income level is and what your capacity is. Your CPA is then going to file your taxes, so they're potentially doing the bookkeeping too. A lot of CPAs will do that piece. They will bring everything together. At the end of the year they're going to give you a P&L statement, which is just profits and loss, which again is just kind of your cash flow in its most simplest form, and then they're going to file your taxes or prepare your tax return, right, so they're a little bit more robust.

Sam Varner: 37:36

Again, you don't need a CPA. This isn't me saying you have to have go out and get a bookkeeper and a CPA. We can all do these things ourselves, but eventually there comes a point where outsourcing makes sense. But they are also willing to educate, and most of them are willing to educate and give you some information as to at what point would I need a bookkeeper. Is it an income level? Is it a number of transactions? What are you looking at? And they can help you in your industry do that. Financial advisors are going to be more looking at your overall personal financial picture or the overall investable assets in a business. So they're going to look at you have an accumulation of cash in some area of your life and you're going to want to do something productive with it. Right, not the software, we're going to put it somewhere else, and so that's their job is going to be looking at financial strategies with money that does not need to be in the everyday incoming outgoing cash flow.

Wendy: 38:39

Yeah, that's you know. I asked you that because we I think that that's obvious to people, but I don't think it actually is.

Sam Varner: 38:45

I don't know. I knew a lot of people don't know yeah.

Wendy: 38:48

Yeah, I didn't know the difference between a bookkeeper and a CPA for a long time and I had for a very long time. I had a tax preparer. There's a guy who would. I would take all the stuff to him and he would do my taxes for me. He just inserts the numbers in the spread in the program, right Right, spit it back to me. He was not a CPA and that was just fine. And then as my business grew, it became a little more complicated. I decided I need a little bit more, so I moved up from that.

Sam Varner: 39:12

And a CPA will give you more advice too. So a tax preparer is just taking the content that you've given them and putting it in the right boxes.

Wendy: 39:20

A.

Sam Varner: 39:21

CPA should be and will get to the point where they're helping you with decisions, with the money that is going to have tax advantaged growth or tax advantaged choices. They're going to start saying to you hey, I noticed this is happening all the time. We could tweak this or change this or structure it slightly differently and it's going to have a different impact on your tax burden, or whatever that might look like. Yeah, yeah.

Wendy: 39:47

Yeah, I like that. So you're just to. So far we've got look at your bank accounts. No, you know, just just look at your money, Don't be afraid of it. I also have found that when people do that, often it's better than they think. That is true.

Sam Varner: 39:59

It is almost always.

Wendy: 40:01

Listen to teachers, educate yourself in all different kinds of ways, Start making different choices you like. Now you're being more intentional and conscious and aware, rather than just blindly and gosh, I can do that. I can do that with the best of them I can be. Ah, it'll be fine.

Sam Varner: 40:20

Glass half full mentality Totally, Except for when it's like oops.

Wendy: 40:25

Yeah, that happens and then and then. Then you said get a consult, just reach out for some, just talk to somebody in these various roles, right, yeah, yeah, Okay, can you do that? Were those people, would they do consult like a free consult? Would that be a paid thing? I had what's the typical, usually it would be free.

Sam Varner: 40:45

Usually, you'd be able to have a conversation with somebody free, with me, for sure, you can sit down and have a conversation with me for free, which I will. It's not going to be as detailed, specifically about your money only, because I don't know what it looks like yet, but in terms of overall, what's the health of your business and what are you, where is the gap? Right, we can help prioritize the gap of what you need to work on first. Usually that's what somebody's coming out of a call with me for free is like where are you and what's the next thing you need to do? But most professionals will sit down and have a conversation your potential client and a potential source of referrals to them. So if they do a good job of educating you, a they're helping you, which is their intention as well, and B you're a potential client, whether it's today or six years from now.

Wendy: 41:38

What if you're busy? Do you have to have a business? That's I'm asking the kind of questions that I'm thinking I used to wonder do you have to have a business that is at a certain size, like if you know if you're making 50,000 a year or 70,000 a year, and you know you're a small one, one person shop do people quote like that unquote want to talk to somebody as small as me if I'm that?

Sam Varner: 42:03

person. There's definitely people out there that are servicing that group, right, that size of business. And, realistically, if you're not going to do the bookkeeping for your business, even if you're at $50,000 of income and you're not tracking it at all, hire somebody to do it. Yeah, yeah, right, because you can't afford to just let it slide until tax time every year, where then you're scrambling, you're not getting the deductions you can be doing, you're not taking advantage of tax benefits, you're not probably making as much money take home as you could Like all of these things. You're leaving it on the table and when you're sitting at a $50,000 or a $70,000 or $100,000 income, there is wiggle room there that it makes a difference if you can take $200 a month back into the practice.

Wendy: 42:54

Yeah, right.

Sam Varner: 42:54

Yeah, so don't leave money on the table, because we don't want to have the conversations Right.

Wendy: 43:00

Don't be afraid.

Sam Varner: 43:00

Yeah, yeah, and sometimes the outsourcing of that skill that you just maybe don't have or don't want to learn will allow you to make a little bit more money, which will allow you to grow your business. Yeah, it's okay to hire the pieces of our business that we're not good at.

Wendy: 43:18

Yeah, so I was thinking about how do you know when to hire and how do you make that decision. I love that you said earlier you don't have to hire the stuff out, you can do it yourself. And I actually have some coaching clients who are therapists, who are really good with spreadsheets and kind of get into that More power to them.

Sam Varner: 43:36

I am not that person, I did my own for a long time, and I like a long, long time, and not because I loved it necessarily, but because I could do it and I knew what I was doing. And then eventually it was like there's only so many hours in my day. Do I have time to do my accounting on top of the other things that I want to do in my business? I don't anymore.

Wendy: 43:57

Yeah.

Sam Varner: 43:58

So it became an outsourceable thing.

Wendy: 44:00

Yeah.

Sam Varner: 44:01

But that's just a nature of like. It's not, you don't know how, it's not, you can't, but it is. I want to spend time with my kids when they get home from school.

Wendy: 44:08

Right.

Sam Varner: 44:09

So I choose to have somebody else do that piece rather than me trying to do my accounting in the wee hours.

Wendy: 44:14

I do love also that you said making money doesn't buy happiness. But having more money does give you more choices, more options, and that's one of them. I love that I used to use Quicken my dad used to teach Quicken classes. I totally understand that stuff and I could do it, but I would be in tears often before I was done because I would just I'm like why can't, why can't I make this work?

Wendy: 44:34

I know how this works. I'm not stupid, I have it. I know I can do this. I can read. I'm an educated person.

Sam Varner: 44:40

I know Basic math. I'm not good at math, yet this is not working. I can keep a checkbook. This isn't hard yeah.

Wendy: 44:47

And it was after one of those moments when I have a friend who's a bookkeeper that was in a mastermind with and I said I think it's time for me to talk to you because I I hate feeling stupid. And I felt stupid. I will say and I bet you, I think you're, I'm, I'm sure I know what you're going to say about this Just because you, even if you do decide to hand this off because of time, because it's just a choice, is the best use of your time, or because it's just not in your skill set and you don't really want to learn it, that's fine. It doesn't let you off the hook from knowing what's going on. You still have to percent, all right. So speak to that a little bit. Tell me about that.

Sam Varner: 45:19

It's funny you bring that up, because I remember being a student, like I was, in university. At some point I was watching the Oprah show after school and I remember her saying something to the lines of no matter how big she got, she was always the one signing the checks, because you need to have your finger on the pulse of your business, and I mean I was. I was light years away from having a business myself, but I just thought like huh.

Wendy: 45:45

Yeah.

Sam Varner: 45:45

Yeah, oprah's making a lot of money, yeah, and that was probably in you know 1998 or something, but, and she just knew she needed to keep an eye on it, no matter what, regardless. So, yeah, you don't get to abdicate your responsibility altogether. This is just somebody answering the phone, so pretend this is like your receptionist.

Sam Varner: 46:06

You're answering the phones and scheduling the appointments, but it doesn't get you out of providing the actual work, right? You still need to be eyes on your money. What's coming in, what's coming out? What decisions am I making? All of that sort of thing and your accountant can just make it. So instead of crying at the spreadsheet, you can just have them be like hey, here's your spreadsheet, do you have any questions? Let's take a little peek at it. Yeah Right, instead of the weeping evening thing, don't go the other way.

Wendy: 46:35

Well, I was thinking back in the day I used, when I had an insurance based practice. I hired billing companies to help me with the clients because I was terrible at that too. Y'all, I teach this stuff for a reason. I've been really bad at it. That's why I talk about it so much. I'm not so bad at it anymore, but it's been a. It's been a while, but I at some point I would probably do an episode on this I went through it in the end.

Wendy: 46:57

before I gave up on this, I went through seven different billing services or companies seven different ones over several years and I have seen plenty of clinicians who are like yeah, I don't even look at that stuff. I just I just I pay somebody to do that. They keep it presented. Someone else handles my claims. I learned from the heart, through mistakes, that I had to be paying attention, because even just this week I talked to someone who's paying someone to file claims for them and when the claims are rejected, that billing service is expecting them to do the follow up. And I'm like you need to know about the follow up, but you shouldn't be the one doing it. That's what you're paying them to do, right, they will drop the balls. Good people make mistakes, Things happen, right. So and I what I started saying to people was nobody cares about your money like you care about your money.

Sam Varner: 47:48

Yeah, 100% yeah.

Wendy: 47:51

So you have to pay attention, no matter what. Yes, get it off your plate if it's not your thing, but make so. My bookkeeper and I have a monthly call. We once a month we sit on the phone and she makes me look at my numbers. Yeah, you have a little money.

Sam Varner: 48:05

Date right, like I have a podcast episode about book yourself a money date and sit down like once a month. You need to be reviewing your finances in your business really well and with a strategic look to it of what am I spending my money on? Is it getting a return on my investment? I can't tell you how many people just pay for things and hope that they'll work. And even that comes down to like those claims, those insurance claims. You're paying for something and you're just assuming they're doing a great job, assuming that they're getting what percentage of it. Are they actually getting closed? What percentage is actually coming into the practice? What percentage is getting rejected? Is it because the coding is wrong? Is it because the descriptions are like what are they doing? You have to be on top of that stuff to be able to direct them and say, okay, if this one's gotten denied every single time.

Wendy: 48:57

There's a reason.

Sam Varner: 48:58

It should be code blah, blah, blah. Yes, you can catch that and then get that money. Otherwise, it's just like you're just handing that money out into the ethers. Yeah, you're doing free work. You're doing free work, yeah.

Wendy: 49:09

Don't do free work, absolutely.

Sam Varner: 49:10

Don't do free work.

Wendy: 49:11

Oh, lee Sam, that's so good. Yeah, don't do free work. There's a, there's a hard, no, there's a hard no. If you'll give me the link or tell me the episode that you talked about money day on.

Sam Varner: 49:24

Yes, I will find that and put it.

Wendy: 49:25

I'll put that in the show notes. We'll link to that, because that sounds like a really good one for people to hear. That's really good, awesome. Let's say you're like okay, sam, you've got my attention Fine.

Sam Varner: 49:36

Fine.

Wendy: 49:37

I hear you.

Sam Varner: 49:38

Where do I even start?

Wendy: 49:40

Who do I look at first, if I can only bring on one person or if I can only talk to one of these different roles, where should I start and how do I find these people?

Sam Varner: 49:51

Okay, this is going to sound like a really shameless plug, and it's not, but you need to find somebody who's going to coach you on more than just one piece of it. We're going to be able to direct you on what is. Is it accounting or is it just figure out your spreadsheet? One of the things that I do with my clients is I have created Okay, now, that was a lie. My idea is that I wanted a financial dashboard for my clients so that they could see what was going on, what was happening and track their stuff. So many people. The excuse is I don't even know how. I'm not sure what I would do. I don't know how to set up a spreadsheet, to look at it properly. So I being great at the vision of that and terrible at the how do I make the spreadsheet formulas talk to each other and look cool. I hired a woman to build that out for my clients. So that's now very new, but part of what my clients get. That will help.

Sam Varner: 50:49

That kind of a tool, yeah, that allows you to manage your bookkeeping. If that's what you're struggling with yourself. It allows you to better see your stuff all front and center. It allows your business coach to be able to say hey, what's going on over here? We're having discussions about what is our big goal that then all of our financial decisions are going towards making. I think definitely from my side of the river here. I think it's hire a coach. Hire a coach that's going to hold you accountable to doing the financial beginnings. Then maybe you're going to come to the conclusion in six months no, I do need a bookkeeper. No, I do need an accountant, whatever that looks like. I don't think that's where you necessarily need to start, because you won't yet understand what you're trying to achieve with that person. There's a spreadsheet and somebody to advise you is what you need to start with.

Wendy: 51:51

It's great that you're saying it that way. I wouldn't have thought of it that way. But, as you're saying, I've been hiring coaches a long time before I hired a bookkeeper.

Wendy: 51:57

It wasn't until I had been working with a coach for a while that I understood, number one, why I needed a bookkeeper, and number two, what to ask her, what to look at when we did work together. That is true. I learned that from the coaching that I got. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that's really good. I would also add to that, when we talk about putting money back into your business and some of the mistakes that I think people make, this isn't for everybody. I know this is a big deal, but I see people who are afraid to invest in their personal growth and they're afraid to invest in your business growth.

Wendy: 52:32

Yes, all things in moderation, y'all. There's a reasonable way to do this, of course. Yeah, but don't underestimate the power of spending money on a course, on a coach, on a mastermind. I'm totally going to back you up on that, because it has changed my life working with coaches Me too.

Sam Varner: 52:50

Me too, I do believe that my business would have gotten to where it's gotten to eventually, but the speed at which you can get somewhere if somebody is helping you see the path, versus you bumbling around DIYing it with spit and duct tape, which I still and you're right in that there's always that financial restraint of okay, I'd love to hire everything out. I'd love to say to somebody make this, do this, do that, do that. I'm not financially at that position either. I'm not a billionaire. It doesn't work like that. But there is a time and a place to go.

Sam Varner: 53:30

I am here and I want to be here. And do I want to be here in 18 months or do I want to be here in five years? You can do it either way, right? There's nothing that I teach clients that they can't come to on their own, that they can't learn through free or almost free resources Absolutely nothing. I'm not magical, but I can get you there faster because I'm going to see where you're going and then I'm going to say nope, take a left, take a right, take a left, go straight for a little bit. Accelerate, break done.

Wendy: 54:03

What I learned is that I could hear the same message over and over again and it wasn't until I was ready that it actually landed. So, like the coach that I worked with the longest would often say you need it, she would often say you need a bookkeeper and a fund and a CPA. And I'm like, yeah, no, I can do it.

Sam Varner: 54:17

I can do it, I can do it until the day that I like crying. It's fine. Yeah, it's fine.

Wendy: 54:22

And then I was like I can't do it. I don't want to do it. I don't care if I can't do it, I don't want to do it anymore. Yeah, do you have just for the heck of it? Do you have a? I'm going to come on, I'm going to talk about your program here in just a minute. Okay, do you have a particular book or a couple of books, or are any resources that you have found really helpful for people who are trying to learn?

Sam Varner: 54:42

Yeah, I love Profit First. So Mike McCallowits and there is a number of like permutations of it now. So when it first came out it was just Profit First straight up. Now there's like Profit First for contractors, profit First for private practices, profit First for. So a little bit more minutia, detail, specifically for whatever industry you might be in. But he talks about the number one thing I took away from that book and I've read it countless times now. But is you have your revenue? So your dollars coming in minus your expenses equals profit? That's always been the calculation and he absolutely said no, it is absolutely. Revenue in minus profit equals what you get to spend on expenses. And if you took that and that alone and went, how can I implement that in my business? How much money do I want to be in the profit camp and then I will run my business on what's remaining and I'll make do. It will change the dynamics of your business.

Wendy: 55:50

Yeah, I agree with that 100%. Yeah, it's a completely different way of thinking.

Sam Varner: 55:54

It is.

Wendy: 55:55

And the traditional way of thinking you live with what's left.

Sam Varner: 55:59

Yeah, you just get whatever's left, and there's never anything left and they're in right right.

Wendy: 56:04

But in this way of thinking, you decide how you take care of yourself first and the business has to work within the parameters that you set up for it. It's a very different way of looking. Yeah, so profit first is a good one. Yeah.

Sam Varner: 56:14

Yeah, that's number one, I would say. And then I think, honestly, just getting, I would say I'm just going to give one. I'm just going to say that one only because I think if you get too many then you end up all over the place. But whether you're a podcast person or whether you're a book person or whether you're an audible person, there's a version of that or somebody's interpretation of that out there in the world. You don't necessarily have to just read the book. If you're like I went a mic and I have time to do that, there is enough blog posts and whatever out there in the world that you can look for. That will summarize and give you the information in whatever way you consume the best.

Wendy: 56:56

So go learn something, y'all, and then look for ways where you can dive a little deeper. So I know that you've got something, a new project that you've been working on that you were just telling me about literally right before we got on the air. So tell me about this. This sounds exciting to me. Yeah, so I am cooking, sam. What's up?

Sam Varner: 57:12

What do I got cooking? I've got she profit school. So she profit school is a six month group coaching experience. So there's a base of curriculum in there, so videos and workbooks and that sort of thing. There's group calls every week and at the end of the day, what we're aiming to do is create five figure paychecks. So that's the name of the game, that's. The guarantee of the program is that you will create a five figure paycheck If you come on into profit school and let me help you do it.

Sam Varner: 57:45

And it is. It's just all of the best of everything I've learned over all of these years combined in a way that you can take and implement and get support while you're doing it and be in a community of other people that are also like this is hard. I don't know how I'm really nervous, but I'm going to stop making that excuse and I'm going to do it anyway. That's, that's what I'm building. And so profit school is going to start November, but it's going to be something where you can absolutely enter profit school at any point, because you're going to choose your own adventure in terms of what part of the curriculum do you need to hop into today, and then I'll help you. If you don't know which where to start, then I'll help. But you can start on week five, or you can start on week 12, or you can start at week one, okay awesome.

Wendy: 58:36

That's very flexible. Love that, so you can learn what you need to learn. Love that, so how do people learn more about you? How do they learn about she? She profit school. How do?

Sam Varner: 58:44

you profit school. How do they learn about?

Wendy: 58:46

that and how they find you.

Sam Varner: 58:48

I think the best way right now to absolutely find me is come to my website. So come to crushprofitcoachingcom, and there is everything's on there. You can book a consult and talk to me about profit school or just talk to me about hey, I have questions in my business and I heard you on this podcast and I really want to figure it out. I have a quiz that is launched on are you working for free? How much can you pay yourself? So it seems like it's in line with our conversation today, but put some information in there and find out hey, are you on track? Are you way off track? What does that look like? Everybody always wants to know, like, how much could I pay myself? So I created a quiz to figure out what does that look like?

Wendy: 59:40

Are you working for free, but that doesn't make you want to break out in halves I don't know what.

Sam Varner: 59:45

I mean.

Wendy: 59:46

Gosh, tell me that's not true. I love it. Just because you're making money doesn't mean you're making money right.

Sam Varner: 59:53

Yeah, exactly, somebody's making money, but sometimes it's your staff and it's not you, and that breeds resentment and then gets employer or gets entrepreneurs to quit.

Wendy: 1:00:03

Yeah, I think if there was one thing I kind of want to summarize that all of this is about is you're running a business which is about making money. You have to do that. That's the sign of a healthy, longstanding, sustainable, enjoyable business is one that is financially sound and that's one that pays you well, that also enables you to pay others when you need to, whether it's your staff, whether it's hiring a team, whether it's paying for you know somebody to do your website, whatever. All of that's important. There is no shame in doing well. You want your clients to do well. Why can't we want you to do well too? That's where I want to go with that.

Wendy: 1:00:42

This has been great, sam. It's so much fun. I love how clear you are. I love that you are just boom. I told you the first time I met you you have real badass energy and I totally see that today you definitely do. I love that you're very unapologetic and clearer and I just think I have a feeling you're a really good teacher. So, is there anything? And we will put the show notes. In the show notes we'll put your website, for sure. I want to find that podcast episode you mentioned.

Sam Varner: 1:01:10

Yes, I will track that down.

Wendy: 1:01:11

We'll do that. I'll link to profit first as well. What is there anything I haven't asked you, anything that we haven't covered? Is there anything that you just feel called to say that would make this conversation complete?

Sam Varner: 1:01:25

I think just to like really reemphasize the fact that you can have done a terrible job of all of this stuff up until now and it's fixable, it's learnable and it's solvable, and at some point you have to hold yourself accountable to actually making the choice, so you can kind of continue to sit and simmer in this like this just isn't working. I'm very frustrated. I can't. How am I going to pay everybody whatever that looks like for you? Or you can make that decision right now and say, no, I am going to do something about it and then do something about it. Too often I don't want people to lean so heavily on the idea that like, yes, it's hard, yes, it is Right, but it's okay to do hard things. It's okay to do hard things really badly for a long time until they get easier. That's how everybody does it and don't let yourself dwell there, because it feels terrible and it doesn't get better on its own.

Wendy: 1:02:27

It doesn't have to be hard, it doesn't have to stay terrible, and it feels really great when you actually understand what your numbers are and you're rolling like things are happening Right. It's really great, yeah, so that's what's only other side of this. I love that. So that's a story. This has to be hard. That's a story, and I'm guilty of that myself. So let's rewrite that story. It's just something I haven't learned yet, okay.

Sam Varner: 1:02:50

Yeah, it's just something I don't know yet, but I'm learning.

Wendy: 1:02:53

But I'm learning Cool, love it. Thank you so much, sam, for being here. This has been delightful. I know my people are going to get a lot out of it and I can't wait to see if we've pushed any buttons out there.

Sam Varner: 1:03:04

Oh, I figure we might have, I'm sure, somebody's driving along right now going like.

Wendy: 1:03:09

Well, I'm going to ask you guys is if you find yourself reacting to anything that we talk about in this kind of conversation. All I want you to do is just be curious about that, like what?

Sam Varner: 1:03:18

is that.

Wendy: 1:03:18

Why does that strike me that way? What's that about? Don't judge it. Don't judge us either, but don't judge yourself, just go. Interesting that I'm having that reaction. I don't know what that means. Yeah, all right, with that, I will pull this episode to a close. I thank you all so much for being here, and I will. I hope you've enjoyed this as much as I have and I hope you take some action on what you have learned here today. Have a great week, everybody, and I will see you next week right here, same time, same place, on the ideal practice.