609 Practical Tips for Cash Flow Management

00:08 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business podcast, your show, if you're an IT professional, where we chat about business operations, customer support, network operations, all that good stuff to help you run your business better, smarter and faster. Welcome to the Wednesday live show presented by our good friends over at Net Ally, and we've got a bunch of great things that are going to be happening tonight. If you've seen the picture that I've posted, oh, it's going to be a doozy, it's going to be fantastic. So I invite you to hang on. We're going to have a great Florida man's story segment and we're going to have going to have some great stories. So that is going to be our show.

01:00

I do want to say again thank you to our presenting sponsor, net Ally. Are you tired of dealing with network performance issues? Well, look no further than that ally. Say goodbye to network downtime. Visit NetAlly.com today to visit all their range of products to help take your network performance to the next level. And our live stream is presented by computers done right. If you are looking for reliable IT solutions to streamline your business operation, don't let technology hold you back. Partner with ComputersDoneRright.com and experience the difference firsthand and I will be drinking from the ceremonial podcasting cup sponsored by a good friends over at super ops, your ultimate solution for streamlining operations and maximizing efficiency. Cheers, all right, folks. As I mentioned, this is the Wednesday live show. We are in the midst of March and I have been doing a focus on MSPs and their money, and we are going to continue that with my good friend Heather, a CPA and profit strategist specializing in providing virtual CFO services, and oh, so much more. Heather, how are you?

02:29 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

I'm doing great. I'm so excited to be here. We're going to get nerdy with our numbers.

02:37 - Uncle Marv (Host)

I should have had a pool on what color hair you were going to come in with today.

02:42 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Well, it's all multicolored, so I've got pink in the front, I've got the colorful dreads, and I've been actually doing it myself lately, so I actually attached these things myself. So not the greatest, greatest job, but hey, you know, you put it up and here I am.

03:00 - Uncle Marv (Host)

All right, so let's get right into it. Here. We're going to have a lot of opportunity to go off track, so I want to try to keep us on the rails as much as possible. So there's a lot of things that you can talk to when it comes to businesses and their money, but I decided to try to keep you on the straight narrow and focus on things like cash flow.

03:26 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Oh yeah, it's a good one.

03:27 - Uncle Marv (Host)

So why don't we start with what would be the first thing that you tell your clients or your friends or people that ask, hey, what do I need to know about my money?

03:38 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yeah, it's a. It's a good question and it's kind of a loaded question. There's a lot to that. So, cash flow yes, the whole idea of getting into business is to make money. That is the point. We have to have a profit. Profit means that it's not the revenue that comes through the door, it is the money that is left over after you've paid off all of your expenses. But cash flow is not the same as profit.

04:06

People get that confused. They think like, okay, well, I've got cash, wait a minute, I've got profit, but wait a minute, why don't I have any cash in the bank? What happened there? Well, yeah, profit is like what you've made over a certain amount of time, so maybe it's like in the last month, the last quarter last year, but the cash goes in and out. It flows. That's what we call it cash flow. It's like liquid. It just goes in and out of your business. So every time you purchase something, it goes out. When you get money coming in, or if you take a loan, you get money injected back into the business. So it goes in and out. So that's how that works.

04:46 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Kind of like a wave.

04:48 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

It's like a wave. And so, if you are, you would ask me, like, what is the one thing you know, all these sorts of things? First thing I would say is track what you're doing with your business. I don't just play the roulette wheel of, hey, I'm just going to go to the ATM machine and see how much money I got in the bank, like, okay, yeah, great, you check that. And then five minutes later there's some money pulled out for something that, like your payroll, you forgot you're paying you know what, something that's set up, that's automated, and now you're screwed because you think you got all this money in the bank and you don't. So always just track what's going on. So use some kind of bookkeeping software or something.

05:28 - Uncle Marv (Host)

All right. So one of the big things that we kind of tried to prep on is this whole idea of, you know, setting themselves up properly. But if you talk about tracking your money, tracking what comes in, tracking what goes out, so a lot of people in the tech industry, in the creative industry, where you spend a lot of your time some of us are not very good at tracking things. You know, we got into business ownership because we were good at the technical stuff or the creative stuff and we just felt, well, we can do it better than the people that are paying us pennies so we can go make money. And so, in terms of getting set up, you know, a lot of us will. You know, we pay the bills to get the materials, we do the sale and then we've got cash in hand and a lot of people think that's it, that's our profit, the money we get from the sale. And I think one of the things that I had sent over to you was understanding the difference between cash in hand and profit.

06:39 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yeah. So, as I was saying, with the profit, that's like you get revenue in the door. So people are always thinking about, like I don't have a six figure business, right? Well, they're talking about their top line revenue, the money that comes in. Well, then you have all of the costs associated with delivering those services. So, if you've got labor then you have to go out and do those things. If you have I don't know, you're an IT you probably have to like courage. You have to buy and plugs and hardware and all this stuff that maybe you have to purchase to do the job. All those are costs associated with doing that job. So, okay, now let's deduct that out of what you have for revenue. And now you got all your other bills to pay, so you pay those and that's what's left over is your net income. Okay, that's how much you've made after all of those things.

07:32

But your cash, as we mentioned, goes in and out. So maybe you had to go buy all that equipment, buy that stuff. That money's gone out. So, yes, you may be saying that you've gotten this profit, but, okay, that money went out. When is your client going to bill? You Did you collect that, yet Are they paying you on like net 15, net 30? What is the timing of all this? So the profit is like, okay, you can kind of see like, oh, how much did I make over a period of time.

08:05

But the cash, as I said, flows in and out and it's all about timing.

08:09

So you could have a profit and not have any money in the bank. So cash, cash is king or cash is queen, or you always want to have cash. So it's so important to have reserves so that when things maybe you're hoping, oh, this big job's coming through, but you don't know when they're going to pay you or when, if the terms are, you get most of it once the job is done, then you've got all this cost associated with producing that for them. So it's all around timing, and so you want to be able to look at these things and know like, okay, I've got this coming in, I've got to pay these guys to do this job. Make sure that you've got a good contract with whoever it is that you're working with, so that you know that you're going to have some money up front so that you can pay these bills. And then again, what happens if this guy never pays? So and you've sunk all this money into this something, so it's so important to know what's going on with the cash.

09:05 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Now, is there a way for let's say, for instance, do business owners that they can kind of start to understand cash flow early? I mean, are there simple tricks to cash flow?

09:19 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yes, there can be simple tricks. So, if you are using some kind of software like QuickBooks, there is a little dashboard in there that shows cash coming in and cash going out, and it's just a bar chart and it's very simple but it's effective because you can see it. You can see like, oh okay, I got money coming in. Whoa, my money going out is way bigger than my money coming in, and that's just like a rude awakening. Now, the money coming in doesn't necessarily mean it's all sales. That revenue coming in could also mean that you took out a loan and you injected money into your business. It could mean that you are sinking money into your business. You personally are investing money into the business. So that money coming in is not necessarily all sales, but you can look at the flow of it through a bar chart. So if you're in IT, I think that you're probably pretty nerdy. It's not finance nerdy, but you guys like spreadsheets. So, yeah, you could do a spreadsheet.

10:21 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Some of us like spreadsheets. Yeah, some of us like spreadsheets. But you know, excel doesn't give you the template for cash flow. They may give you a template for a budget. Yeah, unless there's somebody out there that's created a cash flow spreadsheet. I didn't start with spreadsheets, so let me not speak for anybody else, so I started with. So I started back when there was quicken for business.

10:47 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Oh yeah, that's a while ago, yeah, yeah. Well, here's. Here's something for you, uncle Mark. This is the this when you're talking about people starting a business, you know a lot of us bootstrap. We start off our business. We're like, okay, we're just taking in wherever we can get people to pay us, and then what happens is now we start to collect money and we're not set up like a business. We don't have a person, we don't have a separate bank account for the business, separate from our personal account, and so what happens is it gets all commingled together.

11:18

There is no way you're going to be able to track your cash if you are commingling your funds with personal and business. So number one thing always have a separate bank account and then that way you can start to see the ins and the outs. You know bank statements are going to show you ins and outs, but you know. But if you've got a lot of big things that you're spending money on during the month, you probably want to be able to look at that on a daily basis. Even depending on you know the flow. It depends on you know how many transactions you've got going on. But always start with that. Have a business bank account and if you are going to pay your personal bills, take a draw and then you can see that it's a draw and then go pay your bills. Don't be paying your I don't know your dry cleaning with your business, you know so hey, people do that stuff all the time, right.

12:12

They do it all the time, and then what happens is it's a mess for the accountant or bookkeeper that's taking care of your books. Or if you're somebody who waits until tax time no shame, Lots of people do. They wait till tax time to get all the stuff together and they're compiling it. And if it's all commingled one, it's going to be a lot more work for the accountant to kind of unravel that. Or if you're trying to unravel it, guess what? You may actually be missing out on some deductions because you forget. Oh yeah, I put that on my prime card or wherever you put it, you know. So you want to keep track of this stuff.

12:48 - Uncle Marv (Host)

All right Now. We talked about cash flow, and then we also added the topic of profit and profit advising. So those are different things. Which one do you start with when you're talking with people?

13:05 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yeah, I mean it all is going to start with, let's look at what we have in the data. So it's all about the data. Right, we want to look at the data and then we can start to project the future. So it's hard to look into a crystal ball. We don't have accountants who are not magical people. So we have to work with what numbers that we have and then we can look towards the future.

13:30

So, when it comes to doing profit strategy and all of that, it all has to do with what do you want in your business, what are your goals for your business and how are we going to get you there? So we have to look to the past and learn from the past, but then take that information and project it into the future. So if you've got no goals around your business, well, that's going to be difficult. If you're just like doing things by the seat of your pants, hopefully you've got goals around how much revenue you want to bring in. It could be more of an. If we're talking about assets, I would imagine that you guys probably have to buy big, big pieces of hardware and things like that. That maybe you've got like some sunk costs and that I don't know, do you have to buy a lot of equipment for you? I?

14:18

mean some for your clients.

14:20 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Yeah, most people so. Well, that's. That's a topic I'll ask you about right after I say this. So most texts, when they start, if they're just starting the business, don't have to invest in a ton of tools up front.

14:32 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Oh, that's good.

14:33 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Because I mean, you, can you know? You've got your screwdriver, you got your drill, you got some other stuff.

14:40 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yeah.

14:40 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Yeah, some of the more established type businesses, managed service providers, you know, obviously you know you may have to, you know, rent an office space, you may have to get some computers, I mean that type of stuff yes, but you can kind of start relatively cheap. I'm not going to say you know zero, but you do have to start with something, but that goes into a question. It wasn't a question. I had put something in terms of some of the issues that people run into buying too much stuff too early.

15:13 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Oh yeah, and especially when you guys are in technology, right, because things can become completely outdated before you've put it through its full use. So, yeah, if you're going to buy a big purchase, you want to think about what is this thing going to do for me, like, what's the return on investment? Because assets are supposed to help you make more money. And if you are strapped with, like, having to pay this thing off over time and you're not actually generating enough income from this thing, you're probably going to have, like you'll probably have to take out either a loan or put it on credit card, and now you're paying interest. There's a lot of factors to it and then by the time you got it paid off, it's outdated, like what are you going to do with that? So good luck trying to sell it.

16:02

So then it becomes something what they call like a sunk cost, like you've bought this thing and now it's like you've invested in this thing and you can't do anything with it. So same thing happens with, like inventory. You know, if you spend a lot of money on trying to have a little huge inventory of stuff and I don't know in your case if you have inventory that you can sell to people, but it's just something that you know if you got too much of it. It's really hard to sell through if you are starting out and you don't really know what the demand is.

16:30 - Uncle Marv (Host)

So I'm probably one of the few people, if you talk to others in our industry. I do keep inventory. I do keep some computers in stock. I keep monitors in stock. I keep, you know, the keyboards, mice and stuff like that. Some techs don't want to keep anything. I do it because one I can afford to. I'm not strapped for cash, so I can afford to do that, and I don't keep a ton. It's not like I'm going to keep something on the shelf for, you know, two, three, four years. So I do that. But a lot of people don't. Just because computers, like you said, they, you know drop in value quick. So that's the case.

17:11

Now here's something I was going to ask you and I did not. In folks I didn't have a full conversation with Heather. We've known each other for a while, but she doesn't know the business that much. So we have a lot of things that we do where we will have to Do subscriptions with some of our tools. We've got remote software tools that we use to connect to people remotely to install stuff, Manage their antivirus, their web protection, cybersecurity protection, and we have a lot of vendors where we have to commit to one, two or three years of a contract.

17:50

So that was one of the things that I know that I've talked with people about just starting out and there, you know, well, I know I've got to go and get this contract. I'm like, do you have a customer yet, or do you have a customer big enough to cover the contract that you're doing? And that's a big thing for us committing to. You know, committing to a three year contract is tough in this industry because, you know, even though you can try to commit your customer to three years, customers try to break agreements all the time and get away with it, and get away with it a lot of time.

18:25 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yeah. So with these, these contracts that you have, do you factor that in with all of your pricing to kind of cover yourself, so that way you can at least break even, like, say, if you bring on like two clients, you know that you're going to at least break even for those costs every year, or is it like by each, or is it more like a cost of goods sold where it's like attached to each client? You have to do another three year contract. How does that work?

18:55 - Uncle Marv (Host)

No, no, no, the contract is between us and the vendor, and okay.

18:59 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

And what they call a certain number of endpoints.

19:02 - Uncle Marv (Host)

So you might have to guarantee you know, in some cases a hundred computers that are going to be part of the deal, or 500 as part of the deal.

19:12

Now, the larger the business, the easier it is to commit to that. If you've got, you know, if you've got 1500 endpoints, then you can live with a $500 minimum for three years, because even if you lose a customer or two, you're still going to be above that 500 minimum. It's the people that are either on the border or underneath, or if they lose a big customer and that takes away half of their endpoints, that's where it comes in handy. Now I I'll be honest. To this date, I have never signed more than a one year agreement, and I've only done that in the last year. I did my first one about few, a few, let's see four or five months ago. I'm going to be doing my second one here in the next couple of weeks. All of the agreements that I had done up until that time were month to month, so that they didn't have to worry.

20:06 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Okay, so, those are out there in your industry.

20:08 - Uncle Marv (Host)

So they're out there, but there, but they're going away.

20:12

Or they're. They're making it incentivized to do the multiyear Meaning, for instance. So the one I'm going to be signing here in the next couple of weeks the only reason I'm signing it is to not have a price increase, Now that that price increase is only protected for the year. If I had signed two years, then it would be capped at X number of percent for the two years, and then a three year would be capped at X percent for three years, and then you'd get a whole bunch of other courts in there. So that's how they're incentivizing and what they're saying is you can stay month to month, but we're going to raise your price whenever we freaking want to, To whatever we want to.

21:02 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yeah, well, you know, until you've got a proven business, you may want to do the month to month, just till you figure that out, because if you've sunk yourself into a three year contract and that's a lot of time, yeah, if you decide to pull out. So again, this is all goes back to the forecasting. So you want to look at, okay, if you know that you have to commit to these types of big expenses for a long period of time, how are you going to? How are you going to cover this stuff? How many clients do you need? Is this feasible? Do you have capacity to serve these people? Do you have, you know, enough runway to get the leads that you need to bring in more sales? I mean there's. Can you sign people with longer contracts yourself if you have to commit to long contracts? So there's a lot of things to think about there with that.

21:55

So I mean, as far as the, you mentioned that some people are able to get like less than a year. It's going away. So when you are starting out, I mean I would talk to other people in the industry and just see who they work with. I mean vendors. Is such a like an important part of how we structure our pricing, to look at what are all the costs associated with what we do, because if we can't find the right vendors, we're going to like just find ourselves as being like, like we have to do, like be like the cheapest provider we got it. You know it's like it's just kind of a race to the bottom at that point, if you're you know. So, finding the right vendors is always, always key.

22:36 - Uncle Marv (Host)

It is. It is Heather. Let's do this. Let's. Let's do a quick shift, because I want to go back and do more of an introduction of you, because I only introduced you as Heather, because I hate saying your last name. It's fine, Swipes Wolf.

22:54 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yep, so my yeah, so my last name is Zeitzwolfe, so my last name originally was Zeitz. My husband's name was Wolfe like, and so we did a mashup. It's Zeitzwolfe.

23:07 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Are you kidding? How do I not know that by now?

23:10 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

I don't know, you maybe didn't ask, I don't know, I probably didn't. So people think like zeitgeist and they leave off the extra Z, but there's a Z in there because it was Zeitz.

23:19 - Uncle Marv (Host)

So it's like Okay, all right, you're right, I don't ask a lot of personal questions, so that's what I didn't know. So you have an accounting firm, Zeitzwolfe accounting. You also have podcasts and you have all these other things that I mentioned as a focus on your business and not the typical accounting CPA, as was mentioned in the description. Let me ask, I'm sorry, just by just by looking at you, looking at your background, most people are not going to see accountants, right?

24:06 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yeah, well, even my mom thought the same thing. She was like what you want to do? What? My first degree is in fashion and I used to be do theater and my mom and I were clowns when I was a kid. So I've got this kind of kooky background and not just my green screen, but just my professional background. And I went back to school to study business and really loved that and I loved my accounting classes. But at the time I was studying advertising and then I worked in market research and I was a project manager Love the nerdy stuff. And then I decided to go back to school and study accounting and my accounting teachers were always like, hey, you should study finance or accounting, blah, blah, blah.

24:57

And I'm just one of those people that I love being creative and I love data and analytics and all that kind of stuff. I mean I get excited when I look at a graph and a flow chart. I'm like woo, we're making a spreadsheet. But I get equally excited about using AI tools and making fun graphics and that sort of thing. So it's just a kind of a balance. So it makes sense to me.

25:22

But as far as what I look like, yeah, I mean I could make myself look normal. I could make myself look normal. I've done that. I've done that, you know. But I love costumes, but I always feel like that's a costume to me, because this is kind of like the real me. You're probably going to find me like in a hoodie or something sparkly. I love the bling and the fun. And I found that people you know, yes, an accountant usually looks pretty buttoned down, but it's actually kind of like it lets people like, put their guard down a little bit with, I think, with me, because they're like oh, she's a real person, she's not like a I don't know. And I don't want to put accountants down because but there is a stereotype that they're, you know, they're the button downy kind of boring types and the funny duties and some of them golf you know some of them golf, and that you know I don't picture you on the golf course, though, Do you golf?

26:22

I do not play golf. No, no, no, no, no, I'm. I'm more of a city person. Well, I guess you can live in the city and play golf, but to me it's just like it seems too boring. Bowling, I do that.

26:35 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Midnight bowling? I don't know.

26:37 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

I don't know, I don't want to have the glow in the dark pins. They always have the glow in the dark Right.

26:46 - Uncle Marv (Host)

That's what I was thinking with you and you're glowing the dark hair and the glow in the dark pins.

26:49 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

It's okay, but you know it's harder to hit it, so more okay. This is the thing. Though I am not the best bowler, I'm one of those people that I don't use the holes in the fingers, I use, like, my hands around the bowling ball and then I kind of step forward and it goes very, very slow down the thing, very slow, and then then the pins start to fall a little bit and then they'll fall a little bit more and then you're like they're waving, you're like is it ever going to fall? Yeah, that's me.

27:16 - Uncle Marv (Host)

All right. Well, you've got some fans out there and in the chat. Heather breaks the mold and is unapologetically her amazing, colorful, artistic, intelligent self.

27:29 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Oh well, that's very nice. I know this person, so that makes sense. But they were not plants. Thank you, Jennifer, all right.

27:37 - Uncle Marv (Host)

So now, getting back to you, the accountant, let's ask the simple question first who are your tips? Who are your typical clients?

27:47 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Oh, my typical clients. So you know, just like I was talking about, when we first start our business, you know we kind of gravitate towards taking business from people we know and that sort of thing. And so I've got a lot of people that are in the comedy worlds, creative worlds like photography, videography, podcasting. But then I also have other people that are like a therapist woo-woo crowd, you know very open-minded Woo-woo, woo-woo, woo-woo. You know like people that do like Reiki and um uh, feelings and stuff. You don't know about that.

28:28 - Uncle Marv (Host)

No, do I get it Like you're going to make me Google?

28:35 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Um, I was going to call it medical, medical, medical, metaphysical I don't know Metaphysical.

28:41 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Woo-woo Reiki therapy.

28:44 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

There you go. Yeah, I mean, you know tarot cards and that sort of thing, but that's, that's just kind of generalizing people like witches and no, no witches. And how many witches? But I wouldn't. You know, I'm not nothing against witches, but um, Reiki Interesting.

29:02 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Yeah Well, all right, that's another show.

29:04 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

You know people that, yeah, so people that you know can see into your soul and do all the you know the woo-woo crowd.

29:10 - Uncle Marv (Host)

I just want them to see into the money. They don't need to see into my soul. Oh my, all right. So, um, so a big, a big range of clients. When you say comedy, I got to go back and ask if Are you talking like true comedians or like the improv troops?

29:29 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Oh, both, both, Okay, they all kind of run in the same circles. Yep, Uh, in theater people, uh, I got some of them. I've got uh, sound people, you know, I mean the creative people. I mean that's a kind of a general, general term. Creatives, it can come in all different flavors, uh, illustrators, book writers, Uh yeah, they're all kind of in that same kind of thing. A lot of them are, you know, dip their toe in podcasting as well, Right so? Or a lot of like content creators. Let's just put it that. That's a good, I guess, a good way to kind of sum them up Content creators.

30:06 - Uncle Marv (Host)

All right. So the uh website. It's interesting because it's a year at get rad biz. But your website getradbiz.com, but then it like expands out to https://getradicalprofitgrowthaccelerator.com.  Is that right.

30:27 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Well, that's, that's one of my programs. So you know, I bought the URL so, and then it was seemed kind of long. So I was like you know what? I'm going to get another URL for this, get rad biz. Okay, so it's got to. It's got to two URLs All right you know how that works.

30:41 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Yeah, I do.

30:43 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

So it's well. And then also my other website is Zeitzwolfe accounting and nobody can spell that. So I was like I better get something that's a nice and short and snappy that people can spell.

30:55 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Oh, they are separate websites. I forgot about that.

30:58 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yep. Yeah, it's where one has more like. One of them has more, uh like group programs and one on one coaching, and the other one is more for tax, bookkeeping and CFO type.

31:09 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Okay.

31:10 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

It's kind of separate yeah.

31:12 - Uncle Marv (Host)

So how do you blend your nerdy, geeky side with your creative side to provide these accounting and CFO services to your clients?

31:24 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yeah. So part of is uh, okay, I know how to look at the numbers and read the story behind the numbers. So the numbers tell a story and then interpreting that story for the client and then the creative part comes in is how are we going to take what this story tells and how are we going to tell the story of the future? What's in between and how? What do we need to put in place? So this is where the creative part really comes in, because a lot of it is not just okay, you need to cut this expense or do this or that.

31:58

Like a lot of it is a creative side, like, um, maybe you need to train your employees. Like, maybe efficiency is not just around, um, the fact that maybe they don't know how to do their job, maybe you've never taught them how to do their job, maybe there's you know, there's so many different components in in there, so there's all of that that goes into it. Like thinking more strategically and creatively. That's where my brain is like okay, but that I love to go to town in that area. That's productivity, and I was a project manager. So like my brain thinks about like all of those things like how can we make this better?

32:33 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Right, but I was going to say that's. That's more than accounting stuff, that's more than CPA stuff. If you're trying to help almost in a sense coach businesses on how to be efficient, um, how did you bleed over into that?

32:53 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

If I'm bleeding, I'm bleeding hot pink. That's all I can think of. Well, actually, that's why I got interested in the whole CFO services, because it does kind of bleed into it. So it is more of looking beyond, the like cut this and that and your expenses and do it. It is more of that high level, like let's look at the future and figure out how we're going to get there. So to me that is really the exciting part. You know, there's the compliance part, which is like following the rules and doing the taxes and getting the books straight and all that and that's fine. But then it's like okay, let's, you've got a business, let's do something exciting about it.

33:30 - Uncle Marv (Host)

All right, so going back to the next level. Yeah, let's go back to a basic question. So we've talked about the cash flow, the profit planning and all that stuff. What are, what are some of the pitfalls or the common mistakes that you see people making?

33:49 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yeah, pitfalls. Okay. So we did talk about buying assets too soon. That's definitely one like. You don't want to do that.

33:59

People always think like they have to have everything in place before they can actually start making money. But the reality is you need to see if you can even make any money. So, before you start investing in this business, go out there and try to sell your services first and see if you can sell them. If nobody wants them and you're stuck with a bunch of equipment, a fancy website, you know all this stuff and again, insurance there's, I mean, so many costs that are involved. Maybe you've had a rent, a place, so make sure that you can actually make money from what you're doing. See if there's going to be enough leads, where you're going to find leads, who's going to be your target audience?

34:40

All these things that we got to like think about ahead of time and then like, okay, you got to keep the lights on. Like, how much do you need to make? How much do you need to make to not only keep the lights on for your business but for you personally? Like you got to still pay your own bills? So you know, a lot of people get into entrepreneurship because they have a passion about things but they're not thinking about long term how they're going to replace maybe that those wages that they used to get. So in the beginning it might be keeping your job and then doing something as a side hustle and just experiment and see how that's going to work, because experimenting is another part of just being an entrepreneur. You're going to fail there's you're going to make some wrong decisions but try to do it when there's not so much money on the line to do that early Right.

35:30 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Now, part of what we mentioned is you also help people create actionable steps to get to their goals. How do you go about doing that for somebody?

35:43 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yeah, so actionable steps. So first we have to look at what your goals are. So again, I always start to look at like okay, what are your personal goals? How can we put a budget around that? If somebody has a lot of like credit card debt, we also consider that as well. So how are we going to pay that off? Then I want to see what kind of emergency fund that they have, but they don't have that. We also have to put that in our steps, so kind of starting from like the future and then bringing it back to the now. So the actionable steps come from breaking it down in chunks.

36:16

So we look at our big, hairy, audacious goals a regular, just monthly goals of what we have to pay for ourselves credit card debt, mortgages, keep your kid in college, whatever it is that your expenses are. Maybe you want to go travel, put money aside for that. So think about all those things, put some numbers behind it and then we can start coming Okay, so that's in the future. Let's bring it back to like okay, this now, this year. Then quarter by quarter, month by month, and then we get to the now, and now we got to break it into weeks.

36:49

So putting like look at how can we just trunk each thing down and then start to put strategies in place for each like milestone so it could be each month or week or year, whatever and then put smart goals into place. So we want to make sure that we're doing things that we can measure, obviously, make sure that they're realistic and all the things that go into smart goals. So it's just a matter of breaking things down and then seeing okay, what are the steps involved in achieving that and making it smaller chunks. So it seems easier, because if we just look at the big Harry Audacious goal, we may give up or we may not know what to do and we just end up just scrolling on the internet all day. Yeah, so it's, it's all. Just so you're breaking it down and then seeing what are the realistic things that you can do to get yourself there.

37:40 - Uncle Marv (Host)

All right. So I've got a, I've got a question that may throw you a little bit.

37:44 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Okay.

37:45 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Why did you put vegan CPA on your website?

37:51 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

It does not throw me off at all Because I am a vegan and I like to work with vegan. So I give a vegan discount. So if you are vegan and you want to work with me, I will give you a discount. I work with different vegan clients, but I only work with people that are in business to make a profit. So I don't work with nonprofits. Okay, you have to be, yeah, for profit business, but, yes, I love me some vegans and I love to support them in making more money and taking over the world, so that's why that's there. So I do work with non-vegans, but if you've got a business that's doing something that I find unethical, then I won't work with you.

38:36

So oh, I had somebody that came to me that was a caterer. I looked at her website and she had pieces of beef on the homepage and I'm like sorry, I can't work with you.

38:55 - Uncle Marv (Host)

So wait a minute. What? That's a whole other discussion.

38:59 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

It is Okay.

39:00 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Yeah, so she had pictures of beef on her website.

39:06 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Mm-hmm. So she was a caterer, so she was obviously selling meat dishes like that. So I just I you know, I said no, I work with a lot of service providers.

39:17 - Uncle Marv (Host)

But that's not unethical, is it?

39:20 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Well, if you're vegan, then we don't like to see the meat pictures.

39:26 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Okay, I understand, okay, I get that, but that's not. That's not an ethics discussion. I mean, I eat meat. Are we no longer friends?

39:34 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

No, no, you're fine. Yes, but if I was to, I have to think about it from the perspective also that if I am saying that I'm vegan and I'm not taking on clients that are like you're an IT person, it's not like you're going out and slaughtering animals to be able to install IT services, you know. So there's, you know so to me it's fine, that's fine All right. So those are different from what your business is making money, how your business is doing yeah, but that's supporting the meat industry.

40:13

Because you mean you eat meat. Yes, if I was to work with you, yeah, yes, you've got a point there, okay. But here's the thing, Marvin I like to work with non-vegans because I'm all about converting them to some sort of veganism. So I also. I cook very delicious food and I love to introduce people to delicious vegan meals, and a lot of times they don't even know it's vegan, and I want to encourage people to at least try going vegan, even if it's one day a week. So I know people that are part-time vegans and hey, you don't get the discount if you're a part-time vegan, only a full-time vegan.

40:52 - Uncle Marv (Host)

All right, but don't ask me to come visit you. I want to know what I'm eating. I want to be surprised.

41:01 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Nothing with a face or a mother put it that way.

41:07 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Oh my goodness, get radical with your business hosted by Heather Zeitzwolfe. Are you still doing the podcast?

41:14 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

The podcast is sort of on hold. So, Marvin, you know this is very funny. I've been thinking about actually revamping it for guess what vegans. So that's interesting that you asked me about that Okay, well, maybe. I'll uh things in the.

41:31 - Uncle Marv (Host)

I'll prod you a little bit All right folks, if you are stuck on the cash flow roller coaster and you are a creative or you just want to find somebody that is real to help you with your money, heather is your gal. She is cool to the core. Was that okay to say?

41:53 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yeah, I'm cool, I'm cool with that. Yeah, sure you know. I said uh, Coolio, once I was like Coolio and someone said nobody says that anymore.

42:02 - Uncle Marv (Host)

No, nobody, no, nobody ever says that Okay.

42:08 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

You know what I love? I love Jive Turkey. Nobody says that either, but I love Jive Turkey.

42:14 - Uncle Marv (Host)

All right, so that noise you heard.

42:17 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yeah, what is that Was? That a oh, was that the Gator?

42:20 - Uncle Marv (Host)

The Gator is time for our Florida man or random question segment, and that too is sponsored by our friends over at super ops. Ah, so, super ops, empowering your operations, super charging your business. Now, I did send you the information to prep you. This is the time where you have the opportunity to pick your own Florida man story to challenge mine or answer a random question.

42:52 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Oh, okay.

42:53 - Uncle Marv (Host)

What did you choose?

42:55 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

I'm going to pick my own Florida man.

42:59 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Okay, and I imagine that you're going to get away with that, because normally I would say you have to pick it from the state that you're in, but you grew up down here in Florida, right?

43:09 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

I did as a tween and a teen. But I live in Portland, Oregon, and our motto is keep Portland weird, so I've got some stories.

43:21 - Uncle Marv (Host)

All right, so before we get to the stories, I want to do an update. I did a story I think it was three weeks ago about the Florida man that was having migraine headaches and went to the doctor and they discovered tapeworm eggs in his brain. I have an update because it is now been discovered why he had the tapeworm eggs in his brain. The man admitted to making a habit of regularly consuming under cooked bacon, which experts believe is what made him particularly vulnerable to the infestation, and apparently this thing has a name called neurocysticercosis or something like that. I'll have a link in the show notes and that is your Florida man update under cooked bacon. Maybe that's your argument, for you know, if you were vegan you wouldn't be even under cooked bacon, right?

44:21 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Exactly, exactly. But you know, we do get exposed to salmonella because of the whole meat industry getting on the vegetables. Okay, I'll get off my high.

44:30 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Okay, all right, so keep.

44:31 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Portland. Weird, I've got a lot, of, a lot of examples, but you said one only one, only one. All right, so this happened a little while ago, so this is not something recent. So hopefully this is okay. Okay, so there was an elf, a man that I've met.

44:49 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Wait a minute, you called him an elf.

44:52 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

He's an elf, yeah.

44:54 - Uncle Marv (Host)

A real elf, like as in a mini person.

44:57 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

No, no, he's not many, he just he calls himself an elf, okay, and he was high on LSD and he was attacking a car with a sword because he thought he was the evil mogote. So and I got to meet that guy and he read me my tarot cards and he was very nice person.

45:18 - Uncle Marv (Host)

So this is like a one-time thing. This is what he does every day. He calls himself.

45:25 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

He's an elf, yes, but the but the LSD and the car with the sword. That's not an everyday occurrence. No, that happened once. All right.

45:34 - Uncle Marv (Host)

What does he call himself again?

45:37 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

It's a. It's an elf. I'll send you a link about it. Okay, I'll send you another kind of elf thing. But okay, Can I just give you one more.

45:47 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Okay, all right Okay.

45:49 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

This is this. Okay, In Portland there is a guy called the UniPiper. He plays bagpipes on a unicycle with a Darth Vader mask and he plays the Star Wars theme song. He's got a kilt on and fire comes out of his bagpipes. So the UniPiper is a Portland legend, Interesting, and that's guy you will see all the time. You may not see the L.

46:15 - Uncle Marv (Host)

All right, maybe we can invite them to come down to next year's Florida man games. They can. They could be an attraction, I think UniPiper would be great.

46:23

Yeah, all right. Here is my Florida man story that is close to my hometown, which is in Melbourne, Florida. So this man was arrested after allegedly extorting over $80,000 from his wife to fuel his cocaine habit by falsely claiming he was involved with a drug cartel. So Eric Paul Johnson, age 29, was arrested with grand theft of $100,000 or more, organized fraud to obtain property over $50,000 or more, extortion and unlawful use of a two way communications device. So apparently his wife was away and she returned home and saw several messages from an unknown phone number. In the messages the person demanded various sums of money. He allegedly told his wife that they were being blackmailed by a man named Troy, that Troy was involved with a drug cartel and he would send messages like 500 now for my family, or things will happen. 500 now or Buenos Noches.

47:58 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Oh my God, wow, that sounds like something out of that yellow jacket show or something. Yeah, wow.

48:06 - Uncle Marv (Host)

So there's a whole story. Apparently, he was missing when the messages were sent. He had been missing with his wife's car and they found him the day after he was reported missing. And although he said he never sold drugs, he admitted he was a personal user and when investigators searched his phone, they allegedly found sexting messages to a woman. That he was that ridiculous. Wow, he'd only met his wife in May of 2020. So, right in the middle of COVID and he disclosed to her then that he used cocaine and marijuana and worked for a drug cartel, he told her he was running a large quantity of cocaine, which was ultimately intercepted and resulted in a loss of $60,000. And she helped him pay off the alleged debt.

49:08 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Wow, was she a stripper? What's the story behind her? I wouldn't say that.

49:13 - Uncle Marv (Host)

But wow. So she helped him pay off the debt he had, then stole another 9,000 by pulling money out of ATMs and $18,000. With all of that, the debt, the extra money, blah, blah, blah, the total came to $124,000 from her and other sources. Wow. So I'm going to have to have a chat with some of my peeps from the hometown and see if anybody knows who this kid is. Wow.

49:49 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

But a lot of these Florida stories. They always have something that's like some kind of drug use. It always seems like there's some drugs in there Florida drugs. I lived in Fort Pierce and so my dad I remember. Every morning he'd open up the paper and say who got shot today. It's like there was always something weird going on.

50:12 - Uncle Marv (Host)

That is, that's my state. That is my state, all right. So, heather, thank you very much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me chatting with us about cash flow.

50:28 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Cash flow. Yeah, I got to make sure that it flows.

50:33 - Uncle Marv (Host)

All right, folks, her information will be on the website. She's got her guest page all set up with links to her website. You can find her on all the socials LinkedIn thread, the Facebook yeah, a bunch of stuff.

50:49 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Oh yeah, I guess I even went on thread. I forgot, yeah. But you know what? I just saw a thing come across LinkedIn saying that TikTok is like they're taking it down or something.

50:57 - Uncle Marv (Host)

I don't know Whatever, I'm not on it.

51:01 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Were you on it? Okay, there you go. I tried it. I think it's for the kids. Yeah, it's not my thing.

51:08 - Uncle Marv (Host)

I'm just getting hip to the gram, to the IG.

51:13 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Cool, you're done.

51:18 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Oh man, all right folks. Thank you very much for hanging out. Thank you for all of Heather's friends that joined us and watched and put comments in the chat, and let's see here. I've got a couple of audio podcasts up, so of course, folks always head over to the website https://www.itbusinesspodcast.com/ . Find your favorite pod catcher so that you will be notified when those come out, as well as these live shows here. Next week I'm going to be back with my good friend Paco, and maybe Rick from TechCon Unplugged and MSP Unplugged, and I have no idea where we're going to chat about, but we're going to have those guys come on and hang out and we are going to continue with March as the MSP Money Month. Rayan Buchianico is going to be on for a couple of shows next week as well. It is going to be fantastic. Heather, we'll have to be seeing you around soon, right?

52:18 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me on the show. It's been fun. And hit me up, Contact me. You can find me on LinkedIn or whatever. I've got all kinds of free downloads and we didn't talk about taxes, but I got stuff for that too.

52:33 - Uncle Marv (Host)

Oh, you had a PDF that you were going to make available to my listeners, right? Did we have that?

52:40 - Heather Zeitzwolfe (Guest)

I have a tax one right now and, yeah, I'll come up with something All right, I will have that in the show notes, folks.

52:47 - Uncle Marv (Host)

We'll get that. If you want to download and get a little freebie from Heather and get a little preview of what you can get when using her services, all right, that's going to do it. Folks. Thank you for coming on the show hanging out all that good stuff. We'll see you next time and until then, Holla!