Stop Guessing: Cash Flow Strategy That Builds Confidence | Jennifer Fizer

Welcome to Wickedly Branded: Marketing, Magic, and The Messy Middle, the podcast where real conversations meet real strategies. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell, founder and fairy godmother of brand clarity at Wickedly Branded. With over 25 years of experience, I’ve helped hundreds of entrepreneurs awaken their brand magic, attract the right people, and build businesses that light them up.

What if your business looks successful on paper… but still feels like you’re constantly scrambling for cash?

In this episode of the Wickedly Branded Podcast, Beverly sits down with financial strategist Jennifer Fizer to unpack the real reason so many entrepreneurs stay stuck in survival mode and it’s not what you think. From unpredictable cash flow to emotional money patterns, this conversation dives deep into the hidden gaps that keep business owners overwhelmed, underpaid, and unsure of their next move.

Jen shares her unconventional journey from agriculture to CFO, including buying and scaling businesses through uncertain times, and what those experiences taught her about money, confidence, and decision-making. Together, they explore how financial awareness is not just about numbers, it is about clarity, confidence, and creating a business that actually supports your life.

 Three Key Marketing Topics

1. Cash Flow Awareness and Business Confidence
Many entrepreneurs focus on revenue but ignore cash flow, which creates constant stress and uncertainty. This episode breaks down how understanding your money changes the way you show up, make decisions, and grow your business.

2. The Emotional Side of Money in Business
Money is not just numbers, it carries shame, fear, and past experiences that impact how entrepreneurs operate. Jen shares how reframing money conversations helps business owners move from avoidance to empowered action.

3. Visibility, Trust, and Selling Financial Services
Selling financial support is challenging because clients often wait until they are desperate to invest. This conversation highlights how trust, storytelling, and testimonials can bridge the gap and help clients say yes sooner.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Did you know that nearly 82% of small business owners don't fully understand their cash flow? Even when their business looks super successful on paper, that specific lack of awareness is one of the biggest reasons entrepreneurs stay stuck in this ugly, messy middle of survival mode. Welcome to the Wickedly Brandon podcast. My name is Beverly Cornell. I'm your host. I'm also the founder here at Wickedly Brandon. And today I am joined by Jen Fowzer. She is the CEO of MKB and Company, a financial strategy firm helping service-based and blue-collar business owners step into real financial clarity. And Jen is not just a numbers person. She has a very interesting background. She's a former operational CFO who navigated chapter 11, bought and sold her own coffee business, and now helps entrepreneurs finally understand their money so it supports their life, not just their business. Jen, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be you. And too bad listeners, I just want you to know we actually have had this conversation for half an hour with our relatives. I did not press record. See, it happens, even to the best of us. So Jen has been gracious enough to spend the time with us and go through the interview again. Bear with us as we do that. I am so excited to talk to you, Jen, because you have such a varied background. Like I was looking at your LinkedIn profile and you have a bachelor's degree in agriculture. You are a certified arborist, like a tree person, right? And you have worked for a farm and you've owned a coffee shop, and now you're a CFO business. So that journey had to be really interesting. How did you get from agriculture degree to owning a money business?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

I really I don't know why you can't put that together.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Very straight line. Like it worked not at all like this.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Sadly. All right. So ag degree, I I said this before to you in the first time. But my mom, if I had listened to her, I would probably be years ahead in career. Kids, listen to your mom. But she suggested I go to school for accounting. I did not do that. I went to school for ag because I knew better than her. And then a couple of jobs. I also graduated, perfect timing. I graduated in December of 2007. And then 2008, we had a great recession. So my jobs right out of college were not the best. I've taken whatever I could get. So maybe too. If I hadn't graduated at that specific time, I would have enjoyed my degree a little bit better. But nevertheless, I had all kinds of just really random jobs. I was an assistant manager at Tractor Supply. I was an arborist for the electric company. So I decided which trees got trimmed along the power lines. That was a terrible job. I had a very well-rounded, that's how I like to describe myself, very well-rounded because I did not just get out of school and become an accountant. And not that there's anything wrong with that, but I was preparing myself for entrepreneurship without knowing it. So that is why I went through hell, I guess, for a couple of years.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Maybe that is when I did as well. I love that. Like that reframe, because I feel like kids need a lot of that experience so that they see where they want to go.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Exactly. I spent several years making no money, doing really crappy jobs, doing things, but it was like I learned all aspects of business in so many ways. And then at the arborist job, on literally like day one or two, I was training with somebody. So I was in a car with him all day. And he was like, I listen to Dave Ramsey every day. Then I started listening to it was Katie Heron moment, I guess. Like she wears camo pants and flip-flops. So I'm gonna wear camo.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

Dave Ramsey's not gonna listen to Dave Ramsey. So those who don't know who Dave Ramsey is, he's his money grew guru. Then most people I think know who he is. But how did his kind of perspective help?

SPEAKER_01 3:59

This is an important thing. Cause so, first of all, like I knew about money, obviously, but I it was the in those early years, it also helped give me the foundation for how I think about money just in general. And like today, I wouldn't say that I think his method fits for every single person, but I think it can be very helpful for a lot of people. But one of the things that he talks about if you are in debt or if you're whatever the situation is, like you need to increase your income. That's just common sense, but not so common all the time. We just you need to figure out a way to make more money. And one of the ways he was always thinking about or talking about was by owning a business. And at that time, I was like an arborist. So I'm like, I don't, I have no desire to do this as a business. But but it just started, I guess what it probably did was make me start looking for opportunities in places that I wouldn't have normally. So, like literally in all of my free time, I was just always writing down any random business idea that I might have. And at that time, I also like if we talk about my journey, like we can go into all kinds of facets, but I also didn't really have the confidence to think that I could own a business or like I didn't want to do thought that I didn't want to do sales. That was definitely not my personality type at that time. And so, like the thought of opening a business was also scary to me because I'm like, I don't know that I could just reach out to people and start like offering whatever service I thought that I may or may not be able to do. That was also, and it was not pre-internet that makes me sound ancient, but it was definitely pre-social media. Anyway, I got my accounting degree and said that I worked at a farm. So I put those two degrees together. And while I was working at the farm, that's when I started working on those other skills to like sale the meeting unknowingly. I did a lot of things for my entrepreneurship journey without really realizing why or how I was doing them. I was just like, I need to start meeting people. I just started joining like Facebook groups and meeting people for no purpose really, just being like, I had been spending a lot of time alone. I worked in a vehicle by myself. I at the farm, it was like me in an office. That was it. Literally, I spent years by myself, which doesn't help with social skills all that well.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Any confidence anyway, on the morning in your office, right? With your desk, you're like, I am I've got this.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

I don't even remember where I was going with this. But it was just I started putting all of these things together to be able to one day open a business or run a business without even realizing it. And then one day, again, still working at the farm, that we went to meet our seed guy, and he was like, Do you know anybody that wants to buy a coffee shop? And I was just like random. It was just like light bulb. I do you didn't even know even like coffee at the time, right? Yeah, no. I had worked in a restaurant before and it was like a coffee shop and restaurant. They served breakfast and lunch. I was like, how hard could this be? I've always had, well, I've I had confidence issues, but not necessarily in my skills. But I was like, I could do that. I'd worked in restaurants in high school, college, so I wasn't totally out of nowhere as far as I'd like I'd never been in one, but it was it was also something that I'd been like building me skill little by little and developing that. And so that I was just like, I see where they're going wrong or what they could improve, and I'm just gonna go for it. I did.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

And what was the timing of that?

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Yeah, this lovely timing. We took over on October 1st, 2019. So we I had a full five months. No, not even full five months, four and a half months before COVID hit.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

Luckily, I did a couple things to set myself up for success again without knowing it, but I put app ordering in place, like literally week one, because that was one of those major things that I was like, they are not doing this and they're missing out on. Because I live in a small town. The Starbucks was in the grocery store, so you know I didn't get out. And I was like, there's a missed opportunity in this town by not having a drive-thru coffee shop, even though I didn't drink coffee. I don't know. But I was like, the next best thing, because there wasn't room for a drive-thru there.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Ordering online and food delivery really didn't become a thing on the precipice of that huge threat.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Thankfully, I had done that early on. So when COVID hit, first of all, I think there was like wait lists to get on DoorDash and the different ordering apps because they suddenly had such an influx of people that wanted on them. If I had waited, we wouldn't have been able to like day one be able to take orders that way.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

We talked about this diversification of profit or money opportunities is huge. And you have to always be thinking of how what how can I use tech or how can I use this to bring in additional income. And when we talked before, I had said one of my clients, they we had been planning for a year for this local delivery service for as a natural pet food store. So dog and cat food and supplies, things like that. And a year, because we had to get the van wrapped and they had to buy the van, they had to get insurance. There was just a lot of steps. We have finally launched like February 28th or something like that of COVID, like literally two weeks before the world ended. And she ended up doing far more money in local delivery than in the store in her. She ended up turning her store into a warehouse and just shipping everything out. And it like totally changed her business, but only it also like kept her business very successful during a time when many businesses were struggling. Yeah. So you doing this app probably did the same thing for you as well. What were the results of that?

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Yeah. We so, first of all, we did not have to shut down. And so luckily, I was in a county. So we were like shut down. We didn't have customers in the store for seven weeks. I want to say March 17th to May 5th. Thankfully, we had all of that in place. So, really, the only thing we had to change was instead of people coming in to pick up their stuff, we were just taking it out to the curb. We totally restructured everything, like how many people were working each day, our hours, like there was all these things that we put in place. We had to completely shift our marketing towards we were that then reaching out to anybody that was still working. So hospitals, offices still had what catering do you need? What can we bring you for lunch or breakfast? Like, and a lot of those businesses, probably being in a small town, were also wanting to support other local businesses. So they buying lunches for their staff and doing things like that they wouldn't normally in the rest of times. And so it that helped too, because it was like we were also in one business, and I was not in a part of the community yet. The coffee shop was because it had been open for a few years already, but I wasn't. I didn't really have these contacts or personal relationships with customers or the community to royalty that to start doing that. Literally, the apps had been, they were a savior to us, right? Because it was just like those people that were still regulars could still get their order and they didn't have to, for whatever reason, like calling a place. I like I have to call. We have two Mexican restaurants in our town. One has online ordering and one does not. I will always choose the online order if I'm like, I'm gonna play the online order, not gonna go call. There's just people like that. So I think definitely like the younger kids are text, that's their existence. They don't talk to people. Exactly. We could still take those phone orders if somebody wanted to call, but like people being able to just no pressure, no anything, like just being able to browse the menu and see what you have and clicking and ordering without talking to somebody, and suddenly everybody was door dashed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

So you've worked on some high pressure things. You've been a part of the chapter 11 with the farm, you've unsold the coffee store. How did those experiences shape the way you have opened and run this business?

SPEAKER_01 12:55

So, first of all, I do not consider myself, I don't start businesses. I buy them. There, I think there are some benefits to doing that. Or I did not start a and if I had started a coffee shop in October of 21st, 2019, I it would have probably failed immediately. But buying something that's already existing and has a client base is my skill set, is what I so the business that I own now about it in June. But I had been working for her. I was a directional CFO for the previous owner from a year or so before she decided to sell. But so that that's how I have shifted my personal. Like I am always looking for opportunities to buy existing businesses that I either know that I can improve in some way, shape, or form. Like I can see obvious holes that there's a need for that business marketing correctly. They're not there's something that they're not doing right, but the business idea itself is good, or they're already profitable. I have learned that I actually would be willing to spend more money on a business that's already cash for making money than trying to fix but you probably have more money to be able to do that now, whereas the beginning you don't always have that initial capital to do. Sometimes you have to put in your like labor and effort to turn something around. And then once you do that and you build it, then you can grow into buying actual profitable businesses, then like you don't have to go through all of that pain. But sometimes I feel like the pain is just it's necessary. Don't start off with it's hard to start off with success off the bat.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

I think that's like a falk narrative that we're taught in some way. Like you hear these incredible stories of Michael Jordan or Bill Gates or somebody who's just in in crazy top of their profession. You think it's somehow easy. Like they started in the garage and they just became famous, or he just started off on playing street ball and he became famous famous, uh, became the best at what they do. But no, they worked hard at hours and they failed probably multiple times. Like Michael Jordan talks about how many shots he missed, being the one that has the most shots ever kind of thing. This idea that you're just instantly successful, I think, is like crazy.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

And failure is such an important piece. Have to mean failure, my business closes, I'm bankrupt. That's not failure. It is failure, but it's not the failure that you need. Like some things, it's just I'm gonna try this, and if it doesn't work, and I like some people would look at selling a business or closing a business as failure, and it's not if you take what you learned, like what is it that made you want to sell, or what is it that made you need to close, and then you use that for good. I'm gonna win that the next time. Just close and you're like, Oh, I tried that, it didn't work. I'm never doing that again.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

I would not but I think even entrepreneurship is like the ultimate graduate program, right? Like you learn so much about yourself. Any doubts you have, any issues you have. It's like when you get married and you have kids. Like anything you have, all of a sudden it's like a mirror, you have to deal with some of that stuff, right? I firmly believe, and I have an another friend of mine who's uh he does a lot of work with retailers, like work and mortar retailers. He does a lot of coaching with them. And he he talks about how people who own a business are like 1% of the you're doing something that 1% of people aren't even able to do or scared to do or whatever. So even if you fail at that 1% thing, you're in a leap. There's people who don't even know how to do it. So you should never take it as a failure because it there's not a lot of people who do it, first of all, but it is a it is an on-the-job training program like the hundredth degree, and you literally have to figure everything out. And for you, you wanted to be a business owner. I never wanted to be a business owner. I was a VP of marketing for a tech company in Detroit, and I loved my job, and we grew from a million to 10 million in three years, and but I also saw how much work, how much sacrifice, how hard it was to get to there, that place, and how the team worked and what it took to build that. And I was under no false pretenses about how much work it took to make your own business. And so when I married my active duty army soldier and had to take my career on the road and be as mobile as him, all of a sudden I was a freelancee and I was like, I'm never going to have a team. I don't want to babysit people, I don't have time for that. I'm just gonna do this couple of clients. But what happens if you do stuff well, which I had to figure everything out, and if it is so you talk about COVID was like pre-door dash and all that, I started my business in 2011, which was pre-remote work, just the start of remote work. I had to figure out that, I had to figure out so many things, but you learned so much about the business leadership. Before I knew it, I had a team. I hired us my first hire was a bookkeeper and a CPA. You'll be proud of me, Jen. But you learned so much in that process. And the thing that I think that I see so much with our clients, there's a lot of mindset issues around being an entrepreneur and that we carry from our childhood, we carry from the world around us.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

In those early years, too. Business takes it's not if anybody tells you like day one, oh yeah, we opened the door and all the clients came and everything was fine, like they're probably lying to you.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

There can be a lot of disagreements around how to spend money. And I think even as I have my own business separate from my husband's career, whatever I do in my business affects my family. So it is part of my business tangentially to what I do. And I like I show him my plans and forecasts for the year, and he's the board of directors because I have to make sure that he's on board because I am working more hours, or I am gonna be traveling, or I'm he needs to know why. So, this idea of money mindset, I feel like is one of the largest kind of blockers to a lot of our clients. And that makes them specifically, I work with mostly women. So I my my consultants, coaches, and creatives. So my clientele has its own societal pressures of how women show up as far as pricing and all kinds of things, but raising prices can be challenging, being profitable can be challenging. You can make a lot of money, but you can be not profitable because all these things that can happen. And I just feel like this mindset issue is such a big deal for so many business owners. I know that I've come a long way. I've been in business for 15 years in the very beginning. I barely even looked at my books. Now I want to forecast my books because I want to grow or scale or whatever. So there's you become more sophisticated, I think, as you make the mistakes. And you're like, oh yeah, maybe I should pay attention to that. But I, for me, I'm a marketer. So numbers are not my forte. I like the story that it tells. I don't like doing the actual numbers. So I understand the power of the numbers more so now than I did in the beginning. And I think so many business owners think that it's just gonna be easy. Money in, money out, whatever. And it's far more complicated. And it comes with all these added layers of mindset from our families and society and the relationships we have with people that are in our business and all kinds of things. But I think the biggest pressure I feel from a business owner is to pay my people.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

And that's okay, so all of that is a lot. Like money is emotional. The more people that you have on your team, the more pressure it is on you. It's not their choice, whether they're coming to work for you, you need to pay them. Like priority number one. And so every time I talk to a potential client or a new client or an existing client that I've had for 50 years, it's like suddenly I want to grow. There's I always ask, do you want to be managing people? Do you want to be responsible for more people? They are putting their trust in you. You're going to pay them for the work that they are doing. So there's a lot of pressure that comes along with that, but it also changes your job. You own a marketing agency, you may be doing some marketing. I'm not saying that you're not completely, but your role is probably much different today than it was 15 years ago when you were the only person. You're probably doing less of the actual marketing for your clients than you ever thought that you might be, but you're suddenly managing all of these people doing the marketing. So literally, I've been trying to work myself out of the business completely.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Yeah. That's my goal, is to I get to choose where I step in and do what I want to do and what makes me happy and gets excited and is the thing that I think I do the best. And everything else, I'm either vendor, automating, team, process, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

This is an important thing too, because like I have a lot of clients that want that too. They want to work themselves out of their job. And I think that's a we should all want that at some point in our lives, right? We don't want to work until we're 90, more than likely. But what happens, and I especially know my assistant this morning about this, because what happened, and I saw this in the coffee shop, I would do this all the time because I owned the coffee shop, but I pretty much always had a full-time job or was doing something else. I was like, to pay my bills, I needed more than just coffee shop income. So what I would do is I would put all these people and processes and things in place so the coffee shop would run really well. Like I would put a lot of time and energy into it for a short period of time. I would get it running the way that it needed to run, and then I would pull myself back and I would put this layer not involved. And so I had set it on this path. Like we're going this way. And what would happen is every day or week that I was not involved, it would just like slightly before I know it. I'm like a month or two later, I come back in and I'm like, wait, why are things being done this way? And they're just like, oh, we've sided to do it this way, or whatever it might be. And I'm like, there's a reason that I wanted it done this way. And so it was like I'd have to come back, spend some time kind of now. It was not always that as much work each time that I would come in next, but it's like you can never really set it and forget it. Really. There's like checkpoints, right? Yeah, yeah. Every time I hear somebody talking about they're like, oh, I just want to have this business and I want to live in Costa Rica and never have to worry about it and just makes me money. I'm like, that's a really idealistic way to look at it. And I'm not saying you can't if you want your business to remain the way that you want, unless you have somebody identical. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

There are things you can put in place. There are some systems you can put, some process you can put in place, but you have to audit that and you have to, like, just like the app thing, you have to anticipate what's going to happen in your industry and adjust, and there's it's never one and done. And I that's the same thing with your brand too, John. You evolve as a business owner and a leader, and your brand evolves as that. And so you're never really done with your website. You're never really done with your marketing and branding. Like it's a it's all very organic. Yeah. It's not a just a check mark. On a list. No. People would love that if that was the case, but it's not the case.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

Yeah, you thought it was. What I need to me is that like when I was back in my days when I'm like dreaming of owning a business, but not really first of all, I didn't even have a like a true business that I was trying to start. But I always would get hung up on, oh, what am I gonna call this business or what's my logo gonna look like? And I people like will use that as me, include I'm turning the guilty here and beer, but I'm like, they will use it as procrastination tools when you're starting a business. Like, oh, I can't sell to a customer yet. I don't have a logo.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

And it's yeah, the branding is very important.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

Very important.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

But yeah, I'm a systems girl, so I need all the systems in place before I can do that thing. Yeah, we can get our own way a lot. That that is not just around marketing, it can be around anything that you can. I can get really good at cleaning my desk off when I'm supposed to be doing the hard face. So, yes, that is part of entrepreneurship and ownership.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

So, my CFO advice now would be like make sure you can actually make money at whatever it is that you're wanting to drop before you are designing log.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

I have evolved my business quite a bit and I've had to test some of that. And it's it is challenging when you're testing the model to see if it works, right? And is it replicatable and is it profitable and all those things? And there are like growth years where you have to invest more so that you can grow later. There is some of that happens in business, like we talked about, is never linear. Your process is not gonna be like, oh, from A to B, I'm gonna do this thing, it's gonna be perfect. And yeah, it usually is like A and a half, back to A, then to B. Like it's not ever perfect, but you hope that the highs get you through some of the lows and you're prepared for some of that. You have a little bit of runaway for some of that. One thing that kind of struck me as interesting, I love service-based businesses, specifically professionals like accountants and people like you, operational people, HR people, but you have really focused on the blue-collar businesses. Why is that audience especially important to you and your work? Why is that important?

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Okay. This is, I feel like every time I answer a question, I'm like, there's layers to this that are more than what is what it is. So going back to 2020, so I was married to my husband Jared for nine years, and he passed away in 20. And he was a truck driver, but his dream had always been working construction. He liked to drive things. So he wanted to be like a heavy equipment operator. So after he died, his friends and family and we started a scholarship organization called Jared Pfizer Foundation. And so we scholarships to kids that are going to into the trades, but we do a barbecue competition every year. Like I said, really random, all-encompassing answer here. But if you're near Kansas City, May 2nd is our barbecue this year. I love it, it's so much fun. We usually help 20 or 30 teams come, which results in a lot of food. So I bet. Yeah. But to answer your question, I have a degree in at like a boot collar is just like never fit in any way. But then to go along with he just have gotten even closer to the trades, and I'm very invested in their success, especially over the last five, six years. There's that weaving in. So the business before I bought it was no called Mills Nose Bills. That's also why it's called MKB now. But she was all leaning towards blue collar. That was her company. She worked well anyway. A natural synergy there, what we liked to work in. That's how I just kept that going. So I really enjoy the traits. I understand them. I know, like I speak their language and all of that. So that's how I ended up there.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

I feel like discernment matter so much because you're literally giving them your books, like, and people are really private about their financials and probably a little embarrassed and all the things. What's been one of the biggest marketing challenges for you related to that?

SPEAKER_01 27:06

I get that a lot too. Like a lot of people, like they there's shame. Like we talked about the emotional that's around business. And so they don't a lot of times in that first call, when people are talking to me, they're like, I am afraid to show you my books because I don't want you to see how bad they are. And first of all, I am like, I promise you I have seen worse. Absolutely promise you. There is nothing really that can surprise me at any point.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

If I'll bring my priest, I've heard everything. You're nothing to go on me, I don't already hear.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

And it's possible that even I have been the one that's been like it. I am not even like the going back to like I've owned businesses, I know what it like to be a position where you're like, I have so many builds and I don't even know which one to take.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

It's like the cobbler's kids don't have the shoes for a long time. I didn't have a website or a business card.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

And that's what I do for a living. It took me three years to build my first website for myself. Because at the end of the day, I don't want to do that crap for me. I wanted to do it all for everybody else. That's what made me excited. Myself was just, I was too close to it. It was too emotional, too per too personal. I think it's so common for solopreneurs to do that to themselves. For whatever reason, we work so hard for everyone else, we don't spend that time for ourselves. And then one day I figured that I was going to have the Louis Vuitton's of marketing. Like I was not gonna be a cobbler with no shoes anymore. I was gonna have the best shoes. It looks expensive shoes to be the best case study for my clients. Because I'm like, I do this all a day. I know that I'm really good at this. I need to do this thing for myself. And then what I realized in the process is I don't want Louis Vuitton because that's not me. Like I have a hip injury, I can't walk in Louis Vuitton so save my life. I probably break an ankle. What I found though, in all of this, and you probably have too in your rhythm and the way you come to your own work, is I found my favorite is a pair of ballet flats that are in iridescent and super, super comfortable. So the iridescent matches everything that you wear with anything and it still works. But that's how I feel at home in marketing for myself and how I want other people to feel in their marketing and to feel comfortable, not not something that's not them. If you literally put yourself in a shoebox, your receipts in a shoebox, which still happens, I'm assuming, right? Well yeah, got mailed some receipts to the other two. Right. And there's always things that can scan it now and whatever. But if that's what's comfortable for you, you have to help them be comfortable in that, I'm assuming, so that they don't have as much shame and embarrassment. Or I feel like money is a thing that we're supposed to all know about, but we don't always learn about it. I took accounting classes, I have an associate's degree in business administration. I did accounting before there was computers, so it was a literally a ledger you had to write in. And if you made one mistake, guess what you had to do? And that's something why I don't like accounting because I literally have PSD, PTSD from the letter sheet. But the thing is that you have to, I know what I do. I meet them where they are. I feel like you have to meet them exactly where they are, and it's okay. But the thing that I'm really proud of my clients for is that you realize you you don't you're not meant to build this alone. There's people who live and breathe the stuff that could help you and save you so much stress and anxiety around these decisions that you have to make.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

So I'm imagining it's similar for you, but it's like you said, there's just there's a lot of shame. So I come into calls and people are like, I just don't even want, I don't even want to tell you what's going on. Just so much, or they think they want to trickle it. And it's I have been there, right? Like I I have went, I've worked for companies that have no money. I have generally, if somebody is coming to me and they're like, I just have so much money, I don't know what to do with it. I'm like, what are you talking to me for? Like, why do you need help? It seems like they did fly. I work with clients that are routinely, and it's not so much that they're not profitable necessarily, but it's like there's cash flow timing issues, and it's like they're making money, but they don't know there's no money in the bank. On paper, they're making money, but it's like the timing of it, right? Like they're having to do work before they get paid, and they're constantly having to front the money. And so it's they feel dumb, like they have made some mistakes, and I'm like, it's not your fault, right? It's not your fault. You're you're set up in a system if you're working for like commercial clients, they're gonna pay you on net 30, net 60, but you have to buy all the stuff and people. So it's set up in a way that you as the service provider are not set up to win. And so it's just like reframing some things, working on knowing like projecting out so you know what's coming down the pipe, so you know how much money you need in the bank. Yeah, because that's the other thing too. Like on a general, I would say most business owners or people in general, they're like check their bank account and they're like, Oh, I have the money for it, I'm gonna buy it. But they haven't projected out to know what expenses are. Things like 13-week cash flow projections are not something that's ever even crossed their mind. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's where I come in. I can give you some more tools and I can give you advice on who you should be paying or who you should not be, who you can push, like how can you get receivables paid faster? All of these things that are just like, I know it because I've been around it so much. And it's just second nature to me. But it's I wouldn't expect anybody that's not been in finance to know any of these things.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

I feel the same way that there's not things they're gonna know from a marketing perspective. Like you shouldn't. Your passion, your energy, that a skill set you have is what you should be spending. Uh it's not the best use of your time learning those things or having the PTFD around those ledgers. So yeah. Okay, so I alluded to it, but I'm curious. I have a wand, and I'm curious if I could wave my magic wand today, the marketing magic wand today, and solve one marketing challenge for you, what would that be? What's the thing you're struggling with right now?

SPEAKER_01 32:41

From my perspective, it is a it's not an introduction problem. It's not like an inflow problem, but getting people to want to spend the money on spending money. Rango, ironic. I can help you, but it's also like they're generally in a position where they're they're so tight on brands because they feel like they can't afford it. And you think that some like most people come to you when they're desperate?

SPEAKER_00 33:05

Are they like I'm generally like, I don't know how I'm gonna make payroll tomorrow. That's it. Yeah. I feel like the and this is interesting, but I feel like the testimonials from your clients are huge. When you use your testimonials, like the results that you've gotten and them saying to you out loud, I wish I would come to her a year ago. Those kinds of statements of having somebody else talk about the value of what you offer could be very powerful. Social proof is just powerful anyway. But in this case, I feel like because there is such discernment and like almost fear around money partners like you, that having that social proof is just incredibly powerful to help knock down some objections. I know you're redoing your website. I don't know if you've got so like strong social proof, if you've got videos or things like that, but the more it can be like a video and like human, the better it could be. That's good. I hadn't thought about videos. Yeah. We would meet with our clients, we do Zoom meetings and stuff. Is at the end of every Zoom meeting of every service that we offer, I don't know what your path is because you're I couldn't see your website, so I can't give you a little bit more specifics. But like for us, we have three levels of service. And at the end of every level of that service, we have a wrap-up call, whatever it looks like. And at the end of that call, I just say, like, how was this experience for you? And I just ask them questions. I don't tell them it's a testimonial until after they've answered the questions. And then I say, May I use this video on my website as a testimonial? They're like, Yeah. And so they're not like weird about it because they've just been having a conversation with me and it's super natural. And I'm asking them exactly the things I want them to say to help with those objections. So, what made you come to us? What would have happened if you'd come to us like a year before that? Those kinds of questions to get exactly what you want to have with the objection or the challenge you're having with the when people come to you. ROI obviously is huge. So, somehow equating it to what it's done for their books, what it's done for their financial freedom. So, yeah, if you can somehow get it recorded on Zoom, do a little bit of light editing, put it into a video, put it on your website, put it on YouTube channel, use that in your marketing, put it in your email newsletters, put it in social. Like those sell for you far more than anything you could possibly ever do. For a service like yours, I feel like it needs to be the people talking about what you do and why you're awesome. I love that. Thank you. Awesome. I love it too. Okay, so when you do it, I want to see it. But I'm not like curious, I want to see it. But if you go to our website, like if you go to our website at wickedlybranded.com, you'll see video testimonials throughout the entire website. And just it's way better than one other thing with the video. I will say this. There's two other ways you can use testimonials. I have a whole podcast episode about this, but I feel like really beneficial for you. Once I have the video, I actually take the transcript from the video, I write it through AI and have it like create a Google review type thing. And then I will email them as well and say, hey, Google reviews are how we get found. And I took our conversation, wrote it down. Would you be willing to share this on Google Review? And I give the link to the review directly. Feel free to change it, tweak it, however you want, or just copy and paste it. And 99.5% of the time they copy paste it and they just do it. And it's super easy because they literally read it, click the link, copy, paste. It takes them two seconds. I've done all the heavy lifting to get them delete that review. And then take those reviews, put them in a document all together, run those through AI, and get some talking points about your business. Uh as your hooks, use those as your like you can. Testimonials are freaking gold, you guys. There's so much you can do with a testimonial that don't not do that. It's like the thing that I think everybody should be doing. There's just so much you can do. And there is a whole episode on my podcast about testimonials and how you can reuse them and repurpose them and all the ways. On top of that, they're great confidence boosters when you're feeling crappy about yourself. Read those testimonials to help boost you. We all need a cheerleading squad, and that can be your cheerleading squad when you're all alone in your office by yourself and feeling, oh no, they can really help you in those moments as well. So let me know. We always need those. Yes, we always need those to just remind us that our magic and our gifts are being used and people are really being changed by the work that we do. I think specifically for women, we want to know we're making an impact on people. That's super important. Okay. So my last question, because it is three o'clock, what does it mean to you to be wickedly branded? How do you personally show up as wickedly branded? And what tips would you give our listeners to be more wickedly branded?

SPEAKER_01 37:42

So one of the things that I've included in my marketing is my lovely buffalo back here by bison. And part of it ties back to when my husband passed away. Like the bison symbolized like strength to me. And so it was like I needed that reminder a lot. And nowadays when people ask it, depending on how deep you put it out into this conversation, I'm like, oh, I just like them. They're great entrepreneurial like representation. Yeah. Or I can tell them the whole story. But so part of it is like tying you into your branding. I have a boat ring. Yeah, like the wickedly branding part.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

Yeah. Don't be afraid to fully step into yours, whatever that is. Use those things. Those are powerful symbols for you. And it makes you feel really connected to your brand when you use stuff like that. Like I can only imagine how that symbol represents underneath. That's so much more powerful, right? I used to ask a question on the podcast. Well, if you were your business was an animal, what would it be? That would have been a great question for you. But yes, that is exactly one aspect of being a lecturer brand. And I love that so much. What advice would you give? Although I guess it's just use Yeah, like beer.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

Yeah. People want doesn't you can't be anybody else. So be yourself. And that will attract the people that you want to work with and take it or leave it. Like just be you.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

Yes, that's beautiful. Okay. So how can listeners find you? I know your website's under construction, so have to be. But it's coming back very soon.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

So but it probably must err is a problem. That's not going to be an issue. I'll be like, why bcfo.com is our website, or it's going to be our website. We're moving from millsmose bills.com. But email Jen at mkbcfo.com. We're on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, all of the different places. We connected through LinkedIn. So all of the marketing chain. Probably not all of them. I'm sure we're missing a few, but all the major ones covered. So find us wherever it is that you scroll.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

Yeah, for sure. I love that. Thank you so much, Jen, for spending your time with me today. Thank you for your patience as we had to re-record, not part of it. I really appreciate your time and your story. It's always good to hear like the things that I experience are not alone. Like the way I've had to come to terms with my money's inspiration is not like you're not alone. There's so many people who have experienced the same kind of evolution along the way. So I hoped my listeners that today's episode lit a little bit of a fire under you, gave you some new ideas, and most of all inspired you to take some small action around your money or your marketing. Because here's what I know your message matters, your work matters, and the role is to hear more of what you have to say. And being in a good financial position will give you more power to have more impact. So I know that marketing isn't just about visibility, it's about the impact that you create. It's about connecting with the right people in a way that feels completely true to you. And in the way that you can show up, Jen said, like, only do you. Like, there's nobody else. So do you. So keep showing up, keep sharing your brilliance and keep making magic in the world. And if you ever feel stuck, no, you don't have to do it alone. There's people like Jen who can help you, and we're here to help you turn your spark into a wildfire. But until next time, I dare you to be wickedly branded.