Facts Over Feelings: How I Learned to Forecast My Business

I am not a spreadsheet girly. I'm a salesperson, always have been, numbers were the thing I dealt with after the fun part was over. But my husband David built me a tool early on that changed how I ran my business, and it's the exact same one that took me from $800 a month to seven figures. I still use it every single day. Today I'm breaking down what forecasting actually is, why it's not just a VP with a finance team thing, and the three decisions it hands you the second you start doing it daily. When to hit the gas. When to cut costs. When it's actually time to hire. 

Grab the exact tool plus a quick Loom walkthrough free at suzieconsoli.com/tracker.

Transcript

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If I asked you today what you think your revenue is going to be next month, or what your total costs are going to be, do you think you could give me a real number? Not a ballpark, the exact number. And if you're sitting there with a blank stare right now, that doesn't make you a bad business owner. It actually puts you in the majority. Most business owners can't answer that question. But today, we're going to fix that because you are not going to stay in the majority. You're going to run this tighter, you're going to get cleaner, and this is why this matters. The majority of business owners don't make a lot of money. And that is not going to be your story. You're going to make a lot of money. And it starts here. Let me take you back to 2020 because sometimes the simplest fixes are the best. When I was first starting my business, my husband walked into my office one day and saw a post-it note stuck to my monitor. It said, March, $800. It was my first week in my business, and that was my only revenue. And he said, What is this? And I said, It's my revenue post-it note. He looked at it and said, This would be awesome if we were running a business in the 70s. And I said, Well, I don't know how else to track everything and I need to pick a fancy CRM and I need to do all this stuff. And he was like, No, you don't. He was like, I'm going to build you a spreadsheet and we're going to keep this really simple. That spreadsheet has evolved a lot since then, but it's the same thing that he built for me that first day. It looks a lot better. There's a lot more formulas, but it's actually the exact same tool that I still use today to track my revenue. And even more of a fun fact, the template that you're going to be able to download today was still built by my husband because your girl is not a spreadsheet girl still to this day. I've scaled a seven-figure business and somehow avoided ever learning how to build a spreadsheet. And now Claude tells me I don't have to. So even better news for all of us. This tool that I'm going to give you today is the same tool that I used from that very first $800 sale in March of 2020, all the way through scaling my agency to seven figures. In this podcast, I never ask you to do anything. I always say if you want more info, you can schedule a call. I'd love to give you advice on this. And I really mean that. I would love to just meet with you and chat with you about business. It is truly my love language to talk to people about small businesses. But today I have an ask. Go to susiecoli.com and download this tracker. It'll make so much more sense if you're able to follow along with me. You can go susieconsoli.com slash tracker, download this tool, and I want you to go ahead and start implementing it in your business. It's just a Google Sheet. You're going to make a copy of my template and you are going to have all of the resources you need to actually start forecasting. Now that you've downloaded this tool, we need to define what forecasting actually is. If I asked you what number, what revenue you think you could hit by the end of this quarter, by the end of this month, by the end of this year, even, whatever number you give me, that's a forecast. This isn't a goal. This isn't you saying, hey, Susie, well, I really hope that we do $50,000 next month. That's a goal. I really want you to think about what do you actually have out in contract? What verbal yeses do you have? What deals do you have in the pipeline right now? That is a forecast. And this is really crucial to your business. Now, at this point, a lot of people tell me, oh, Susie, don't worry about it. I've got a CFO who sends me a PL by the 9th or the 7th every month. And I look at all of these numbers. That's awesome. But that's ancient history by the time it gets to you. It's one of my biggest beefs with finance guys, is I'm like, yeah, but it won't tell me what decisions I need to make. It tells me what already happened and the bad decisions I already made. They're like, yeah, well, that's my job is to give you reporting. And that's exactly what a PL is. It's a report of what already happened, things that you can't control anymore. Now, all data is good data, right? We want to know as much about our business as possible. So a PL still gives you really good insight, but a forecast is going to allow you to look ahead. A PL's job is to look a month behind, a forecast's job is to look a month ahead. And so we always want to be looking at where we're going. I quoted this last time, but there's a quote that I love by Andy Stanley that is direction, not intention, determines destination. Forecasting gives you a really good direction. And there's three areas that we're going to look at to forecast together. And if you're looking at the spreadsheet, these are the three tabs at the bottom. These are revenue, this is what's coming in, cost, what's going out, profit. And this is just the simple math of revenue minus costs. That's all that is. Of course, there's other things to take into account, but we always want to be looking at what generally can we predict for the future. If you're looking at this spreadsheet and you're going, well, Susie, how do I know when to put something down? I was talking to somebody the other day and they said they're really excited to move forward. And I'm not sure how serious they are, but I think I feel pretty good about it. When do I put that down on my forecast? My rule of thumb is that if you have sent out a contract and invoice to this person and you feel good about it, it goes on the forecasting spreadsheet. The thing that is so important about the spreadsheet is that you need to be logging in every day. This is not a report. This is something that's going to be changing every single day. I want you looking at this going, huh, well, if they sign, then we could have our biggest month ever. But if they don't sign and they pay in August, that actually gives us a good safety net. You are able to play around with this tool and use it on a day-to-day basis to keep your finger on the pulse of what could happen in your business. And this is insanely valuable. There's something really sneaky in here, too, that if you're using this every day in your business, you're going to stop missing if people are actually paying you or not. The amount of times I have business owners come to me and they're like, shoot, I thought this person was paying me a retainer every month, but I realize their card has been declined and now they owe me all this money and I've got to go get it, and this is such a headache. We're going to get rid of that issue. One of the things that I ask people to do when they use the sheet or ask my clients to do is when the payment actually comes through, I want you to mark it as green. If no payment has come through yet, then it's just a prediction because the truth is a PL tells you here's exactly how much money actually came into your account. A forecast is just looking at, hey, this is what I've been told I will get paid. And so we want to make sure that we're kind of tracking both simultaneously. Now, I could nerd out on sales stuff like this all the time. You probably think this sounds like overkill, and you're sitting here going, that's nice, Susie. I think I just want to hire a salesperson and I actually don't want to look at any of this. Um, I just want to do what I'm really good at. That's why I started this business. I'm just gonna hire a finance guy and find somebody who can do this for me. I want you to stop. Running a business is an emotional roller coaster. Tell me if you have said any of these sentences this year already. I feel like we aren't making any money. I feel like we're doing really well. I feel like our business is growing. I feel like next month is going to be really big. That's awesome that you feel all of these things, all the positive ones anyway. Most of the time, I feel like the self-talk sounds like, I feel like I'm going to burn it all to the ground. This is the worst. That's normally the call that I get. But when you are feeling these things, most of the time, and I pick on my clients about this all the time, most of the time, those things are not backed by data. They are backed by, you guessed it, a feeling, some kind of emotional roller coaster that they're riding. And there's so many things that impact that. Whether or not you get a good night's sleep, whether or not your team is on their A game, if your client is just mean, there's so many different possibilities for things that can make you feel a certain way about your business. And this oftentimes leads to what I call panic moves. You feel like revenue is dipping significantly, so you panic and invest in a lead gen agency. And then when they don't solve the problem overnight, you get frustrated and you fire them. That's a panic move. And we're gonna stop doing that. This is actually going to allow you to make better decisions from a place of strength instead of a place of feeling. Now that I have convinced you the forecasting is going to be your new favorite hobby, you're going to get obsessed with this spreadsheet. Um, and I think I've said forecasting like 19,000 times already in this episode. I want to break down for you where you're practically going to see this impact your business and the better decisions that most business owners are making blind that you now are going to be able to make from that place of strength. The first is when it's time to put your foot on the gas. Maybe you've been working on building out a funnel. Maybe you've been really diving into some client stuff. Maybe you've been working on things behind the scenes and making it better operationally. When you can look at a sheet and say, actually, oh no, it's going to be lower next month, you know when to refocus your efforts on lead gen and sales and really dive into not working on the business, but getting more leads and making sure that the business is still growing and sustainable. The second is when to cut costs. If you're looking at your forecast and your costs are climbing while your revenue is flat or even dropping, this is telling you when it's time to pull back and get safer before it becomes a real problem, not after. This is also where forecasting costs matter just as much as forecasting revenue. For all the times that I hear I don't know what we've made this month, I also hear I don't know what we're spending. You can forecast, okay, if I hire a VA, here's what this does to my costs. If I hire a new employee, here's what this is going to do to my margin. We can look at all of those different things when we're looking ahead at what we're already spending, all of our softwares, everything. Anytime I sign up for a new subscription, I'm putting it on my sheet. I don't care if it's $7 a month. I have a subscription to Fig Jam that is $5 a month. And as soon as I signed up for it, it went on that sheet. Because every dollar matters and I want it to have a place that it lives so I can stop feeling overwhelmed by the feeling of I think I'm spending too much money. I feel like I'm spending too much money. The third is when to hire. Everybody asked me how I knew when it was time to bring somebody on. And the answer is that I could see my revenue about 90 days out. Jason, who's a fractional CFO and a friend, has said on this podcast before that the furthest a small business can look out is about 90 days. When we had a need for a new employee, I wasn't saying, oh my gosh, we've just got to hire someone. I'm drowning. And I also wasn't saying, oh my gosh, we can't hire anyone. We're never going to have another client again. I was looking at the numbers and saying, yes, we have room for this right now. Not a feeling, a factual decision. Now it's not to say that there's no risk with that. Absolutely, clients can leave, but I'm doing my best with the information that's in front of me to make an educated bet instead of a gut feeling based on nothing but how I slept that night and how I'm emotionally feeling about the business. If you are like, okay, okay, Susie, fine, I will forecast. I would love for you to go on to SusieConsoli.com/slash tracker. This is going to give you this tool. It also has a video of me walking through how to use the spreadsheet. Most of you are going to download the spreadsheet and be like, oh, I got it. But if you're somebody like me who struggles with spreadsheets, I walk you through how to customize this for yourself, how to really make this work for your business and why you should be using this on a day-to-day basis. I'm really excited for you to check it out. If you are looking at this and the numbers are making you feel a certain way, if you're feeling like, oh no, everything's falling apart, or oh no, everything's really good and I don't know how to keep it going, which I get that call a lot too. I would love to chat with you about this. Review your tracker with you, your forecasting tracker, and sit down and go through the numbers with you and make a game plan on how to make the last half of the year, because that's where we're at. We're in the second half of the year now. Game on. I want to help you make it count. Go ahead and download this tool, and I would love to chat with you about it soon. Thanks so much for listening to this episode. Until next time, friends, sell well.