42: Balancing Personal and Business Finances: A Holistic Approach with Christy Bowie

Discover the Secrets to Designing Your Business Finances for a Tailor-made Lifestyle

In this engaging episode, Sarah Noel Block and Christy Bowie delve into the art of creating personalized financial goals for business owners that align with their unique needs, desires, and ambitions. 

Learn how to break free from generic financial targets and design a goal-oriented financial framework that supports your vision for success.

Master the Balancing Act: Uncovering Your Personal Financial Needs.

Listen as our speakers walk you through a step-by-step process to break down your financial requirements into comprehensible categories. Discover the importance of determining your "break-even" point and how reverse engineering your business finances can propel you towards meeting your personal financial goals.

Get ready to unlock the doors to a fulfilling professional and personal life that's as unique as you are.

Find the show notes at: https://www.sarahnoelblock.com/tiny-marketing/ep-42

Follow Christy on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christybowie/

🎧Listen to her podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ceo-wingwoman/id1647619760

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Chapters

• 0:49 Typical framework for an episode
• 2:38 Introduction to the business
• 4:42 Financial, tax, and personal finance education
• 7:09 CPA and working with clients in different states
• 8:32 Reverse engineering for the lifestyle you want
• 10:48 Analyzing personal spending
• 12:02 Planning for taxes
• 12:44 Accounting for wish list items and savings
• 13:42 Cost of living calculation
• 16:04 Determining business expenses
• 17:47 Adding and subtracting costs to determine revenue needed
• 20:29 Setting clear client goals
• 21:01 Structuring business to achieve financial goals
• 21:42 Pricing and number of clients
• 22:23 Creating packages
• 22:47 Time management in projects
• 23:19 Evolving strategies
• 25:06 Teamwork and time tracking
• 25:47 Financial numbers and structure
• 26:45 Emotional decisions and money
• 28:14 Setting money rules
• 29:58 Spouse and money mindset
• 31:50 Business goals and process
• 32:14 Business stats and importance of money
• 33:09 Changing attitude towards finance
• 33:49 Where to find and work with the guest

Transcript

Sarah Noel Block: The actual show.

Christy Bowie: Love it.

Sarah Noel Block: So let me explain the typical framework for an episode.

Christy Bowie: Perfect.

Sarah Noel Block: So they're usually around, like, 2025 minutes, and it's pretty bantery. A lot of conversations, but it'll be guided. I have the three things that you want someone to learn pulled up so that guides the conversation. Conversation. And at the end, I'll ask you to share out what you want people to know about you, where they can find you, how they can work with you, and if you have any hot take or quotable thing that you want to say, start mulling that over.

Sarah Noel Block: And we'll get that at the end because that will be our hook clip at the beginning of the episode.

Christy Bowie: Perfect.

Sarah Noel Block: And then last thing, oh, we use the video, too. So we turn it into shorts and little clips.

Christy Bowie: Perfect. Love it.

Sarah Noel Block: That's everything that you'll need to know.

Christy Bowie: Amazing.

Sarah Noel Block: I'm glad Jordan created that little community because I would have never met you.

Christy Bowie: I know. It makes meeting people so much easier and qualified. Incredible people, too, if you're going to spend your time being in a group, because I feel like I've tried to do Facebook groups, and it's like, oh, I'll be on your podcast for fun, because I have a hobby. And it's like, hey, that's not what we're doing here. I got to make money.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah, completely agree with you. It's good having them in the same sphere. Okay, so let's get started. Can you just tell me a little bit about, like, introduce your business and you and we could just talk a little bit about the group too?

Christy Bowie: Yeah. So I am the owner and founder of Christy Bowie Financial Solutions, which is my accounting and financial consulting firm. This comes from the basis of well, rewind a little bit. So my educational background, I'm a CPA. I have a master's degree in tax and really had so much formal education around the business and numbers side, which I think is a very unique background to have going to owning a business.

Christy Bowie: And I did that thing after school where you go work for the big name firms and working with Fortune 500 companies. And I learned so much about how these people run a business and how they look at their financial statements and really use that to leverage building wealth for themselves and how the financial journey through a business goes. And so I did that for a few years, was like, you know what? I really want to make a bigger difference in the lives of smaller business owners who maybe don't have the resources to get this education. Normally I was working for these firms, it was like they would bill you, like, $1,000 an hour to talk to somebody.

Christy Bowie: And so it was really a goal of mine to make this information a lot more accessible. So I then worked at some smaller firms, working with smaller companies, and one day I said, I'm ready to go out on my own. I am ready to make this information accessible, make it relatable. I think that's another thing most people find is a struggle in the financial field. They're like, I talked to somebody and they used Jargon.

Christy Bowie: I had no idea what that was. And so really, I just decided to form my business to really make a difference in the lives. I work specifically with women in creative fields, especially, who I think are notoriously underserved in the financial segment. So really broad way of saying, that's how I got here. And I really just focus on providing financial tax and personal finance education.

Sarah Noel Block: That is awesome. That's a whole other little twist on what you usually see with a financial consultant. It's someone who focuses on bookkeeping alone or taxes alone. So you look at it from a holistic perspective.

Christy Bowie: Yeah. And I think the biggest thing, even just this week, I've been talking to people on sales calls, and they always say, okay, well, I have my bookkeeper over here and my CPA over here, and I have my personal life over here. But nobody really understands how they connect with each other. And one of the things we do, we just actually launched a new service that is really focused on that integration between business and personal, is having a service where, yes, we do your books. Yes, we do your books.

Christy Bowie: Yes, we do your taxes, because you have to have the numbers to understand what is going on in your business. But we also say, okay, well, we made this much this month. How much can we afford to pull out? When we pull it out and take that money home, how do we spend it? What do we do with it?

Christy Bowie: And so really, that full picture where one person or one team has access and understanding to all of your information.

Sarah Noel Block: That is so freaking brilliant. The before picture that you just painted is me.

Christy Bowie: I have a book over here and here and here. You don't talk.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah, it's a disaster, too. I love that you're looking at because as you're typically working probably with solo entrepreneurs, small businesses where your business finances are very deeply rooted in your personal finances. So why wouldn't you connect it?

Christy Bowie: Exactly. And not only is it deeply rooted there, sometimes it's emotional to be there. Right?

Sarah Noel Block: Oh, my God. Yeah.

Christy Bowie: And just having if you are feeling emotional about your business and that also comes into your personal life and there's so much there to unpack for somebody who is solely reliant on this source of income, but also maybe have some financial stress.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah. So this is probably a newbie question, but you're a CPA. Does that mean that you have to work with people within certain states?

Christy Bowie: No. So actually, the cool thing about the CPA license is I believe the word is reciprocal. I think maybe I'm using the wrong word.

Sarah Noel Block: No, I think that's right. My husband works in education, and he also has a reciprocal license.

Christy Bowie: Yes. So the great thing about the CPA license is that we are licensed to work in any state. So I have clients. I'm based in Texas, so most of my clients are based in Texas. I am obviously most familiar with Texas law, but I have clients in California, New York, which are some really fun tax states.

Christy Bowie: I have clients in Ohio, Florida, so I do have clients all over the place, which is really fun.

Sarah Noel Block: Okay, not asking for me, but I am asking for me. Today we're talking about financial freedom and how to really integrate your business finances with your personal finances. Let me pull this up for reverse engineering, which is exactly what I do with marketing, is like, how much money do you need to bring in? These are the packages that you need to have, and this is the target revenue for the companies that you should be targeting that would feel comfortable paying that. These are the things I think about, and we're going to be talking about it in a so much more fun way when it comes to your finances.

Sarah Noel Block: So let's dig into that. How do you reverse engineer how much money you need to bring in to have the lifestyle you want?

Christy Bowie: Yeah. So I have a personal bone to pick with the online business industry because I think we are so focused on these shiny numbers as our goal numbers. Right. Like, how many times have you heard someone say, oh, my gosh, I have a six figure business, or I make $10,000 month all the time? Right.

Christy Bowie: We are basically fed. Like, this is your goal. Right. But who's to say that actually gives me the lifestyle I want to live? Who's to say that big shiny number that looks good on paper means anything for me?

Christy Bowie: I may live in a really high cost of living city, I may have lots of debt to pay off, and that big shiny number may not be enough, or I live in a really low cost of living city. I may not be solely reliant on this income, and I want to live a slower life, and pushing to that goal would actually make me miserable. Right. So I just think that these generic big shiny numbers we're given are truly mean nothing. So what you have to start by doing is sitting down and saying, okay, number one, from a financial standpoint, what financially do I need to live?

Christy Bowie: And I work with my clients to create something we call a break even. Basically, what is everything we have to pay for in our lives, and what does that add up to? So number one, that's going to start with looking into your personal life and seeing how much you spend. And I know for some people, this is going to be like, oh, my.

Sarah Noel Block: Gosh, I don't even want to know which uncomfortable embarrassing.

Christy Bowie: This month we are moving. We are going on a European vacation that literally has been the most expensive month of my life. And I am in the stage where I'm like, I don't even want to look at my credit card. So I could totally relate. But what you want to do is sit down and look at that.

Christy Bowie: And I really like to look at finances over an annual period. So sit down and say, what is everything you're going to spend in an average year? Because we all know, like I just said, this is a really expensive month for me. I'm taking a vacation to Europe. I am moving all of that.

Christy Bowie: But that's not going to happen every month. So if I looked at this month, my numbers would be a little off. But on average, we do have a very repeatable cycle year to year. You may have two trips or you may have one big event, whatever that looks like. So sit down and look at what you spend in the average year.

Christy Bowie: I like to use an app called Copilot to help me track that. There's also a lot there's mint, you could just look at bank statements, whatever that looks like for you, but really sit down and say, all right, in an average year, what is everything I have to pay for? And you could do it over a cocktail, over cup of coffee, whatever. You kind of need a cocktail, have a little money, date with yourself, right? Make it fun, make it exciting.

Christy Bowie: Don't make this daunting. Because I think sometimes when we put ourselves in that mindset, then it almost like manifests that way, right? If we decide it's going to be stressful, it is. So make it fun, make the date, have a cocktail, and have fun with it. So sit down, look at everything you need in your life.

Christy Bowie: And that is the first step of, okay, how much we spend personally. Then there's another layer to that, is how much not just do we spend on a day to day basis, how much do we owe other people. So then we'll layer in things like debt payments, if you student loans, if you have any of those, if you have a car payment, whatever that maybe you didn't consider in that first step, we're going to add in any loans that we have to pay to people. So those are really the first money going out the door. The next money going out the door that so many people forget to plan for is your taxes.

Christy Bowie: This is a very funny and circular equation to figure out because it's like, well, the more we need to make, then the more we owe in taxes. But we'll kind of look at, maybe just look at what you paid last year in taxes if you expect to make similar. And I don't mean when I say pay in taxes, I don't mean what you paid in April, because that's just like the additional part. I mean, throughout the whole year, sometimes people get a little confused on that. But what you owe to taxes the whole year, right?

Christy Bowie: So now we are at layer three. Number one is what we spend day to day. Number two is what we owe people, what our debts are. Number three is taxes. Then number four is, do we have any wish list items or savings?

Christy Bowie: Right? How many of you can say you are financially at the point you want to be in your life? And if you were saying that, applause to you. But I'm that kind of person that always wants more. I'm like, save.

Christy Bowie: I'm going to add this wish list thing. I'm going to add this. So start with where we're at currently. And then, okay, I want to start saving in my retirement account. I want to start saving.

Christy Bowie: I want to start my own 401K because I can do that as a business owner. So what we want to save and then what our wish list items are. So I want to be able to spend $500 more a month because I want a new car or whatever that looks like for you. So now we have layered on five components of basically when I set it up, it looks like an Excel spreadsheet, and we're adding in all the numbers. Then at the bottom, you're going to have a really big number that that's just going to be what it costs to live.

Christy Bowie: And it's really just as simple as that, right? How much does it cost for us to live the life we want to?

Sarah Noel Block: Well, you make it sound so simple.

Christy Bowie: But it's not easy.

Sarah Noel Block: No. That multiple cocktail sit down date with myself and my money would definitely not feel simple in the moment. But the way you think about it is simple. Like duh, of course. Just look at how much we spend.

Christy Bowie: And for some people, just to have it in a very organized format just feels a lot better because how crazy is it when you're like, oh, I need to go look at how much I owe this person and when sometimes just having all that documents, like in one place where you can easily find it. I can tell you if someone asked me to go dig through 30 piles of my mail to go look up something like that would automatically create stress for me, even if the money situation isn't stressful. So just making it a little bit more organized for yourself also is going to contribute to alleviating some of that stress.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah, that makes sense. Then, you know, you're going to this one spreadsheet that you have all the information that you need.

Christy Bowie: This is my entire life. Yes.

Sarah Noel Block: Right here. So how do you figure out now that you have this number, what's next? How do you figure out your business sitch?

Christy Bowie: Yeah, so the cool thing about that number is. If you're familiar with business financial statements, we have the revenue as the top line. Then we have the gross profit is after our cost of goods sold. And then we'll have the net income at the very bottom. That net income is in theory, distributable income to you, right, how much you could take home.

Christy Bowie: So what we are doing is we are working backwards. If we know that bottom number has to be the number we got from our break even of what it's going to cost us to live, okay, how do we work backwards? So step number one is we are going to add back all of the expenses from our business. And when I say expenses, there are things that are fixed expenses and there are variable expenses. So I'm going to give you an example of this.

Christy Bowie: A fixed expense is going to be something that is fixed. I'm just trying to think of a different word the same month to month. So for example, I have a software subscription that's maybe $100 a month. It doesn't change based on how many clients I have, it doesn't change whatever the other factors change, it is just fixed every single month. So we're going to layer on every single one of those.

Christy Bowie: Then we have to say, okay, once we have added all of that back and get to a number, we actually then have to divide by our gross profit margin. So it gets a little bit confusing when you're listening to me talk about it. But really what you have to just have to understand is, okay, I've added here's what I need. So we're going to use some hypothetical numbers to make it a little easier. I need to take home $5,000 at the end of the day.

Christy Bowie: Then I have $1,000 in expenses. So what that means is we have to have a gross profit or a gross profit of $6,000 to get there. Now what are all the expenses that change month to month based on how much revenue we make? The most common one I see here is payment processing fees, right? So we know if you bring in $6,000 in revenue, you're not taking home $6,000 even if you have no expenses, right?

Christy Bowie: Because there are things like payment processing fees, things like maybe you have a contractor who helps you with that certain project, but it's not fixed each month because it's only related to that project. So we actually look at those items as a percentage. So if we say that your payment processing fee, I know stripe is like 2.9%. So we actually have to make more than that, so that whenever we take out that 2.9%, we get 6000. So you're going to divide by the cost of your variable expenses to actually determine what that revenue needs to be.

Christy Bowie: And so I know it's a little bit confusing to hear it, especially if you're a visual person. So I'm just going to do a really basic walk through. So what your spreadsheet or whatever you're looking at should look like is, here's what I want the bottom line to be. Then I'm going to add back all expenses. That's what I need the middle line or the gross profit to be.

Christy Bowie: Then I'm going to subtract out the percentage of or the divide by the percentage of costs I have. Then I'm going to get my revenue number. The cool thing is you can actually check if you've done this right, because you can also run it the opposite way. So say, hypothetically, we get our number needs to be 6200 to take home $5,000. So then I will run that through my profit and loss statement.

Christy Bowie: I'm going to say if I start with $6,200 and I and Stripe takes out their processing fee, what happens after that? Okay, great. Then I have $1,000 of expenses. What happens after that? Did that get me the 5000 I needed?

Christy Bowie: Right? So we work backwards and then forwards again to see, is this what I actually needed? And what's so cool about this is this is really how you get that revenue number that is going to be a meaningful goal for you instead of just that shiny number that the online business world has told you about.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah. And it makes it a lot easier because then you know exactly how many like, let's say you have retainer clients. You know exactly how many retainer clients you're going to need to meet that number. So it gives you a really clear goal. This is what I need to close.

Christy Bowie: Yes, exactly.

Sarah Noel Block: All right. I can get behind that. I keep losing track of where my questions are. Hold on. There it is.

Sarah Noel Block: Okay, let's talk about how to structure your business to achieve those goals. So, Krista, edit out that awkward middle right there.

Christy Bowie: Perfect. Yeah. So just like you said, this process actually allows us to understand what we need in our business, which just the knowledge is so much power to say, if this is what I need in my revenue goal, how many retainer clients do I need, and how long is it going to take me to serve those retainer clients?

Sarah Noel Block: Okay, great.

Christy Bowie: Do I have that many hours in a week? Right. Sometimes it'll come out to at my current pricing, I would have to serve, like, 500 clients to make that amount of money. That doesn't work. Right?

Christy Bowie: No amount of math is going to make pricing and number of clients that don't add up, add up. So we will look at that number of revenue and say, okay, here's exactly what I need to make in revenue. Here's how many clients I have to serve. If that's not doable, okay, go back and look at my pricing. Do I need to change my pricing, or do I need to somehow decrease the level of service?

Christy Bowie: Because what I had to do was 500 hours a week in order to fulfill this. Right. How do you create your packages around this? And that's something that I am a huge fan of, is creating packages so that you have very distinct processes. You learn to know exactly how much time this will make me, exactly what my profit margin is from this.

Christy Bowie: And then I can be really predictable about how many clients I need to bring in in order to actually reach that goal.

Sarah Noel Block: That is brilliant. And I'm just going to tag on a tip that I have been doing for the three years I've had tiny marketing is I time everything. Every project I do, I time each task. So I can really budget that to perfection. I know exactly how long it will take and oftentimes when I'm creating.

Sarah Noel Block: For example, I have been doing messaging and content strategy for my clients for years and it has evolved over time where I'm like, well, they also need to know what events they can speak at and a strategy to be able to capture that audience and all of that. So it's evolved. But I have been tracking my time so I know exactly how long it is and I can repackage it and reprice it knowing that and knowing what number I need to make in order for it to be worthwhile.

Christy Bowie: Exactly. I'm a huge I don't know if you use Clockify. I'm a big Clockify girl. You can put like I have different clients and then actually different subtasks of each client. So I know like, oh, I didn't budget this portion of this client's project.

Christy Bowie: Right. And I also have a reminder in my project management system for I have clients generally on a six to twelve month contract at their renewal time to reevaluate their pricing. Because if I don't tell myself to do that, I forget or I just won't do it.

Sarah Noel Block: Reevaluate their pricing or your pricing?

Christy Bowie: Well, reevaluate my pricing for that client.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah, that's a good idea because a lot of my clients have been they stick around for years and my pricing is still the same as it was.

Christy Bowie: Exactly. And sometimes you just have to tell yourself to do that. Right. We all know it. But if it's not actually put into your project management system for me, I'm a very list checker.

Christy Bowie: So if I put it on my list, I might be like, okay, well, I have to do it now. Here's the deadline, so I got to do it. So it's just really the action of putting it on your to do list to say, I need to sit down and see how much I actually profit on this client. Did I budget their project properly?

Sarah Noel Block: That's really smart. So you talked about your app. I use teamwork. It is a project management tool, but it also has all of your time tracking in there. Love it.

Sarah Noel Block: Yes, it's great. And you can do it by task and subtask, but all of my contractors are also in there, so then I can just take their time and move it over to Gusto, which is my payroll app.

Christy Bowie: Big gusto girl as well.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah. My CPA turned me on to Gusto. I'm like, this is so easy. I can't believe I wasn't doing this before.

Christy Bowie: Yes. Literally the best.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah, I was a mess before. I was paying people through Zell upwork PayPal. It was all over the place however they wanted, and now it's all through Gusto.

Christy Bowie: And I can only imagine that was so hard to keep up with. And you get to a place where you're just like, money is flying out the door. I don't know who I'm paying when, I don't know what's going where. And that makes it really hard to understand your actual financial numbers.

Sarah Noel Block: Yes. It was chaos. And if you know anything about me, I hate that I'm such a systems person, too. I need structure.

Christy Bowie: Yes. And structure tends to be really hard to do when you let other people kind of govern your processes. And one of the things that I'm huge on with my clients as well, is, like, there are very much financial systems to put in place. So, for example, Gusto just having a certain designated payday that you can know, hey, today is the day I'm going into my payroll. I'm going to pay this.

Christy Bowie: It's so structured and predictable. And something that I found to be really interesting about financial mindsets is the more we can systemize it, the less we expose ourselves to the emotional side of human error.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah. There is so much emotion tied to money because it's tied to Maslov's hierarchy of needs. If I don't have this money, I'm not meeting my security net the things that will mean that I'm okay in life. So, yeah, it's an emotional topic.

Christy Bowie: Right? Exactly. And the more that we allow ourselves to be emotional about it, unfortunately, humans aren't wired to make the best financial decisions. We are wired for instant gratification right. Which isn't always the best financial decision.

Christy Bowie: And so the more that we can systemize that to reduce the emotion component of it, the better off. That's why I really love a lot of people aren't big spreadsheet people, but that's why I love, even if you're not a spreadsheet person, put all this information in a spreadsheet because there's no fighting the numbers. You look at the numbers and you're like, okay, I can't put emotion behind. Oh, well, I really feel like my profit margin is it like you can't fight that. Right.

Sarah Noel Block: There's no feeling math.

Christy Bowie: There's no feelings. So the more that you can actually see concrete numbers, the less that's going to expose you to making emotional decisions.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah. So do you have any advice around stopping yourself from making those emotional decisions?

Christy Bowie: Yeah, so I would say when you are in a good place, have another money date with yourself. When you are feeling in a good place and not stressed about money, write some rules and principles for yourself. So principles are kind of like the idea you have around money and what your broad principles? So maybe I believe that I should give back a certain amount of my money to charity or I believe whatever that looks like for you. And if you do have a significant other, I would really invite you to bring them in on this too, because I think it's important that we share these with just the people in our lives.

Christy Bowie: The second thing is rules. And so these rules are going to be following the principles because I believe this. This is what I'm going to do in XYZ situation. So for me, an example, if I want to make a purchase over a certain price, I'm going to wait 24 hours before doing it. Okay, great.

Christy Bowie: That's my rule. If I see something I want that is that much, I don't get to make that emotional decision. I have already made a rule for myself, but if in 24 hours I still want it, great. I know I'm not making an emotional decision. Another rule is if I get like a bonus or something, an unexpected amount of money, I'm going to save X percent of it.

Christy Bowie: Right? So now when I get extra money, there's no me saying, oh my gosh, I really feel like I need this new handbag. It's okay. Look at the rule that I set for myself. I'm going to set aside this much to savings, but I'm also going to allow myself to spend this much.

Christy Bowie: And so by setting these rules for yourself, when you are in a good place and not feeling emotional about it, you give yourself the structure of exactly what to do in certain situations so that, you know, there's no questioning exactly how you're going to act to it.

Sarah Noel Block: That's smart. That's smart. And then you're only disappointing yourself when you don't follow your own rules.

Christy Bowie: Right.

Sarah Noel Block: Now, you talked about your spouse. What do you do if you have two different mindsets, like money mindsets? One's a spender, one's a saver.

Christy Bowie: Yeah. So I think it really depends on what works for you. So personally, my husband and I really just kind of combine our stuff and if somebody is not doing well, we sit down and have a conversation. But that's also our personalities. And I think we are very geared towards the same we have the same long term goals.

Christy Bowie: But I would say just like you had a money date with yourself, have a money date with your spouse, sit down and set those expectations of, here are my financial goals. I want to save X amount, I want to do X amount and making sure that they are on the same page about that. Because we all know that if somebody is making significant amount of money or somebody is spending a significant amount. Of money. My biggest thing is just get on the same page, right?

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah.

Christy Bowie: There's never going to be a perfect result because we know that is a very there's a lot of tension behind that. Insignificant others, but making sure that you guys are on the same page about what your goals are and what steps you are going to take to get to your goals and then throughout the year or throughout whatever time period you have set for yourself, sit down to evaluate. Are you making progress towards those steps? So if you say one of the really common ones I see is I want to save for a down payment on a house, great. What steps are we going to do to get there?

Christy Bowie: Okay, I'm going to contribute X amount into this account every single month. Perfect. Now we can't set it and forget it. We have to check in and say, is this actually happening in a few months? If it's not, why not?

Christy Bowie: What can we do to fix it? If it is great, can we accelerate our path? Can we change some things? So making sure that you guys are on the same page about the goals, about the process to get there and then checking in over time.

Sarah Noel Block: Well, brilliant tips. Thank you. Thank you for joining me today. I am so excited to bring on this topic. I think it's going to resonate with so many people who listen to this show.

Sarah Noel Block: I was looking at the stats and I think 50% are business owners. So this is going to be a topic that they really care about and they're probably tired of hearing about marketing from me.

Christy Bowie: Money is always so important as a business owner and just to really understand everything going on yeah.

Sarah Noel Block: And that just spins my brain wheels and makes me want to talk more about packaging and how to make sure that you're getting those revenue numbers that you really need. So is there anything that you wanted to talk about that we didn't get a chance to yet?

Christy Bowie: I mean, I feel like we covered so much without diving into a whole separate topic, but I would just say the one thing that I probably emphasized a lot throughout the episode is make this a fun and not intimidating process for yourself. The more that you set yourself up with saying things to yourself like, I'm just bad with money, I can't management I don't understand. This is going to be miserable. It's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy, right? So whatever your attitude is towards your finances, if that's a negative, find a way to flip that for yourself and make it at least tolerable so that you will have that self fulfilling prophecy of like, all right, I am capable of handling it.

Christy Bowie: I am good with my money. And you kind of have those beliefs that are going to steer you towards that.

Sarah Noel Block: I can do hard things.

Christy Bowie: Exactly.

Sarah Noel Block: And how can people find you and work with you?

Christy Bowie: Yeah, so I am on social media, mostly Instagram and LinkedIn. My instagram is at it's Christy Bowie. And then my LinkedIn is Christy Bowie CPA, so you can find me there. I do also have a free master class that's called can my business Afford this? Really helping you understand the cash inflows and outflows in your business and how to analyze that.

Christy Bowie: So I do have a link to catch that recording on my website as well, if you want to see that.

Sarah Noel Block: Yes, I think. Let's see. Yes, you did send it to me, so I will have that in the show notes as well. All right, thank you. We'll stop right here.

Sarah Noel Block: I'm doing the intro and the outro separate. But did you have anything that you wanted to add as your quote or your hot take that we could have at the beginning?

Christy Bowie: I mean, I feel like we can grab a clip of talking about the shiny numbers. I think that would be a really good one to talk about.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah. All right, so, Christy, let's grab the clip on the shiny numbers, the six figure ten, k months, all of that. All right. Trying to think if I missed anything. I don't think so.

Sarah Noel Block: Thank you so much for being on the show. I'm going to end the recording. That was a really good.