One size does not fit all. Okay, I just said it. I know that's going to be hard for some of you. But in our haste to get things done, to keep moving, to provide a service, often we're looking for that shortcut to success. We're looking to ride the elevator to the top instead of taking the stairs. Today, we will explore how to choose the right offer for our company and ultimately, for our customers. 

• Templates 

• Metrics 

• Problem Solving 

• Business Solutions 

• I've used templates. I have templates. I think they're awesome, but they're only as good as they know how to be used and how to be tweaked.  Michele Williams

   

• Simply purchasing a template without a complete understanding of the problem that it's solving is just going to create more busy work for your team, leave you lacking in the outcome desired, and it's honestly going to cause frustration.  Michele Williams

   

• Our goal here is to help you truly understand the challenge that you have and the problem that you're solving.  Michele Williams

   

• What we are dedicated to is empowering you to know how to read the signs, know how to determine what's needed, and knowing how to adjust your systems, whether they're purchased systems or created systems so that they can grow with your company.  Michele Williams

   

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Work with Me

• CFO2Go

• Metrique Solutions

With me on the podcast today is Jacqueline Green of Behind the Design company. Jacqueline is a coach, and she helps people move from a hobby into the business that they want that can be profitable. We're going to have a very robust conversation today on how to identify areas that we're passionate about and how to give ourselves the freedom to move from one direction to another, not to stay stuck. I hope you enjoy the podcast. 

• Passion

• Pivot,

• Growth

• Mindset 

• As you build wisdom, as you build your knowledge base, what was important to me in my 20s versus what's important to me in my 50s is completely different. That's what's so unique and fun, is really seeing what could this really be. And getting out of whatever mindset that we were kind of stuck in from our past. Jacqueline Green 

   

• Giving ourselves the freedom to even go through that discovery process, I think is really what you're inviting us to here, is to not feel that we have to be stuck, no matter how far we're in business, no matter where we are. Michele Williams 

   

• It's giving yourself permission to put yourself first on occasion to really look at what you really want in life and how you are going to get there. Jaqueline Green 

   

• I see one thousand opportunities within this industry to build a business, doing the parts that we always have, parts we don't love, but focusing on what you love. Michele Williams 

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Website: www.behindthedesignco.com 

• Facebook: behindthedesignco

• Instagram: @behindthedesignco/

• Email: [email protected] 

• LinkedIn: behind-the-design/

  LinkedIn: jacquelinereed/

• CFO2GO

• Work with Me

• Metrique Solutions

• Financial Courses with Michele Williams including “Understanding Your Financials”, “Master Your Profit”, and “Pricing Without Emotion”

• Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck

• Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud 

On the podcast today, we're going to consider the work of a CFO or a chief financial officer. Given that most of our businesses are too small to hire this as a full-time position, we've begun to see the rise of fractional offerings in this space. Today, we're going to talk about what a CFO does, and if you need one.

• Financial Planning

• Budgets

• CFO

• Metrics

• What does it mean to hire fractional? It means to share time. So that's really all that we're saying is you're sharing time with another company to have someone come in and perform those services. Michele Williams

   

• But as we know, all CFO services are not the same, just like all design services are not the same. Michele Williams

   

• Why would we name it CFO2GO? Because our goal is to help you understand how to do this work and then let you go do it, not to hold you tied into some long-term engagement. Michele Williams

   

• There's nothing worse than either not knowing how to pay yourself, having the money in the account, not knowing if you can take it out, not knowing what it's meant to do, and not having a plan. We can help you solve every bit of that. Michele Williams

   

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Work with Me

• CFO2Go

• Metrique Solutions

• Profit First by Mike Michalowicz

Joining me today is Jasmin Bryant with Fear No Video. Jasmin has had a very varied background. She has worked in television, as an actress, and in the news. She is going to share with us today how we can show up on video without fear. One of the things that Jasmin and I are going to focus on is how to remove some of the self-talk that we have before we ever do it, how to get ourselves ready to go on video, and how to make sure that the message is something that we want to share. So, I invite you to listen in.

• Fear

• Messaging

• Confidence

• Critique 

• One of my mentors said something that blew my mind, which was, perfectionism is a first cousin to procrastination. Trying to get everything perfect just leads us to putting it off and putting it off until we don't do it. Jasmin Bryant 

   

• I don't think it's possible for us to criticize other people at a really high level without turning that focus and criticism on ourselves in an extremely negative, hurtful, hold us back kind of way. I just don't see that being positive. Michele Williams 

   

• For anyone who's watching, anyone who's listening, you take those breaths, and you'll feel calmer. Your message will be clearer, and you'll be surprised at how much better your video is.  Jasmin Bryant 

   

• I memorize the points in order so that I know this is kind of the route that I'd like to take as I'm sharing and then you just speak from the heart. Michele Williams 

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Website: Rock That Video

• Facebook: Fear No Video

• Instagram: @fearnovideo

• Email: [email protected]  

• YouTube: Fear No Video

• LinkedIn: Jasmin Bryant

• “Five Keys to Beat Camera Shyness” free e-book

• CFO2GO

• Work with Me

• Metrique Solutions

• Financial Courses with Michele Williams including “Understanding Your Financials”, “Master Your Profit”, and “Pricing Without Emotion”

On the podcast today, we're going to be talking about the intersection of your financial plan and your strategic plan. It's not enough to have one or the other. We really need them in combination to make our business as healthy as possible. So, listen in as we talk about that overlap between the two.

• Cost to everything 

• Ability to evaluate and prioritize 

• Budgets and financial systems support 

• Strategy first 

• I would always start with strategy first, especially in a planning phase, and then look to what it's going to cost and then back up.  Michele

   

• A company could have goals that are even bigger than what the current strategic plan is.  Michele

   

• This intersection of the finances and the strategy is once you have the financials set to your strategy, it gives you something to measure. It allows you to set KPIs, or key performance indicators, the things that you want to measure.  Michele.

   

• Metrique Solutions allows us to pull in that financial data from our financial accounting software, and then it allows us to do things like manage the data, analyze the data, model the data where we don't have other tools to do that.  Michele

   

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Work with Me

• CFO2Go

• Metrique Solutions

Joining me on the podcast today is Ceil DiGuglielmo. You probably recognize Ceil as she has been with me multiple times since 2018. She is the owner of the Curtains and Soft Furnishings Library and the host of the Sew Much More podcast. Every year, Ceil and I get together to talk about what has happened over the last year. We share our business and life experiences, our highs, our lows, what we're most proud of, and what we're looking forward to the next year. We hope that this authentic conversation that you can listen in on between the two of us will spark an interest in you to have that special someone that you can share some of your business highs, lows, and what's happening with as well. Enjoy the podcast.

• Work life balance

• Definition of success

• For Now

• When life has struggles in it, you do need a little decompression from that, too. As high performers, I think we just keep going. We just keep going. Ceil DiGuglielmo 

   

• It's been a year of recognizing the exhaustion from those things and learning how to set those things down. Michele Williams 

   

• I love that the mindset has changed, and I love that people are dropping statements like, yeah, cash flow is a big problem for me and that's because I just did this or just did that. Ceil DiGuglielmo

   

• When we are in business and the impostor syndrome kind of rears up, we need to stop and say to ourselves, wait a minute, I was never tasked with knowing everything. I was tasked with having a company that would do research and development to find the answer. Michele Williams 

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Website: The Sew Much More Podcast

• Website: The Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library

• Facebook: The Sew Much More Podcast

• Facebook: The Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library

• Instagram: @ceildi

• Instagram: @csf_resource_library

• Email: [email protected] 

• “The Gap and the Gain” by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan

• “How to Grow Your Small Business” by Donald Miller

• “Unreasonable Hospitality” by Will Guidara

• “Getting Things Done” by David Allan

• “Buy Back Your Time” by Dan Martell

• “Strong Like Water” by Aundi Kobler

• “Try Softer” by Aundi Kobler

• CFO2GO

• Work with Me

• Metrique Solutions

• Financial Courses with Michele Williams including “Understanding Your Financials”, “Master Your Profit”, and “Pricing Without Emotion”

Joining me on the podcast today is Val Duvick. She is the owner of Val Marlene Creative. She is a Profit First coach and a business coach for those in creative industries. We're going to have so many awesome things to talk about today including Profit First, what it is like to be a creative, how to balance the energy between our left logical side and right creative side, as well as how to get to a happy, medium place where our financials are easy to look at and simple to maintain. I invite you to listen in.  

• Work life balance

• Definition of success

• For Now

• I tell people I'm allergic to numbers because it feels so intense that my brain just does not want to understand them, but I realized I had to if I wanted to have the type of business and work-life balance that I wanted. Val Duvick

   

• The power of the numbers is what gives us the freedom to build the fence and to build the boundaries around our lives and our business. Michele Williams

   

• We need to know the minimum, and we also need to know where you're headed. Once we have that in mind, we can fill in the rest, and it makes it more attainable. Val Duvick

   

• I think part of success is recognizing those blessings so that we're not so always caught up on how much more we have to do and build and grow, but being thankful for how much more we already have. Michele Williams

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Website: www.valmarlene.com

• Email: [email protected]

• Instagram: @val_marlene_creative

• The Gain and the Gap by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan

• CFO2Go

• Work with Me

• Metrique Solutions

• Financial Courses with Michele Williams including “Understanding Your Financials”, “Master Your Profit”, and “Pricing Without Emotion”

 On the podcast today, we're going to be talking about the five mistakes that business owners make at the end of the year. I want you to listen in and see if you are finding yourself falling into any of these traps so that you still have time to do something different.

• Cash flow

• Budgets

• Debt 

• I would say nine times out of ten, we're more likely to overspend a budget than to underspend a budget if we're not watching it and being accountable to that budget. Michele

   

• If you find yourself in a cash flow negative situation, remember, that you always have to get cash flow neutral before you can go cash flow positive. Michele

   

• Lifestyle creep is where every time you make a little more money, your lifestyle raises, and then you need more money, and then your lifestyle raises versus keeping your lifestyle where it is and letting the money be made and then letting it be saved. Michele

   

• Businesses that get themselves in trouble don't manage that money properly, which means that they don't have a strong cash reserve. Michele

   

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Work with Me

• CFO2Go

• Metrique Solutions

• Episode 179: Setting and Revising Your Financial Goals

• Episode 189: Reviewing Your Profit First Strategy

• Episode 209: Metrique Solutions is Your Financial Partner in Business

• Episode 234: How to Manage My Money in My Firm

• Episode 243: Managing to a Budget in Your Design Firm

• Episode 247: Using Debt Strategically in Your Business

Today, I am excited to offer you a replay of an episode that I did back in 2018 with Mike Michaelowicz. You may know Mike, he is the author of a large number of books from Profit First to Clockwork to Surge, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur , and The Pumpkin Plan. Mike and I had a really awesome conversation about how all roads can lead to profit if you set the correct coordinates. I really thought that as we're wrapping up this year, things have been shifting, they're a little bit different, we've been through a pandemic, and we've watched buying patterns change over the years and I think this is a great time to be reminded of the fact that we have agency and choice in our business and that those choices that we're making either lead us closer towards profit or further away from profit. With that being said, I want to introduce to you Mike Michaelowicz.

• Profit 

• Real revenue 

• Sustainability and Responsibility 

• Ideal Clients and Target Markets 

• Profit means that I continue to deliver what I intend to for my community.  

• Clients want to know that your business is sustainable and sustainability is profitability.  

• It is important to have a realignment of pride in profits.  

• In The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur we learn that lack is our biggest advantage. Lack brings about innovative thinking and challenges us.  

• In Pumpkin Plan we learn how to grow organically and healthily and to identify our best clients.  

• Once we have clarity on a purpose, the journey becomes very rewarding.  

• Surge teaches how to know your industry and to see what the next big thing is.  

• Clockwork teaches that our business can be sustainable and not reliant just on us. 

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Website: https://mikemichalowicz.com/

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MikeMichalowicz

• Facebook: https://MikeMichalowiczFanPage/

• The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur by Mike Michaelowicz

• The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michaelowicz

• Profit First by Mike Michaelowicz

• Surge by Mike Michaelowicz

• Clockwork by Mike Michaelowicz

• E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

• CFO2Go

• Work with Me

• Metrique Solutions

• Financial Courses with Michele Williams including “Understanding Your Financials”, “Master Your Profit”, and “Pricing Without Emotion”

Joining me on the podcast today is Danielle Hendon. She is the owner of Four Corners CFO. Danielle loves to take big business ideas and break them down to support small businesses to reach that next goal, to grow and scale, or to just wrap their arms around their business. We're going to have a really great conversation today focusing on debt, such as good debt versus bad debt.

• Debt

• Intentionality

• Understanding your financials 

• Honestly, the difference between good and bad debt is the intention behind it. If you're going into debt, because you didn't do something, and it's a last resort, it's generally not the best type of debt to have. Danielle 11:37 

   

• It's the fixing of the process because that's part of that intentionality, I teach an aim with intent methodology. It starts off by having a solid foundation and then creating intention, intentional budgets, intentional KPIs, and intentional spending patterns. Michele 15:28 

   

• Every business, we've all got to start somewhere, and I tell people all the time that debt is such a loaded word, and it carries such a burden to us mentally, and money in general. Cash makes or breaks a business. Danielle 20:06 

   

• It's really being aware of what's happening. Otherwise, everything is reactionary as opposed to being proactive with our money. Michele 34:53 

• Email: [email protected]

• Facebook: Scarlet Thread Consulting

• Instagram: @ScarletThreadATL

• Website: ScarletThreadConsulting.com

• LinkedIn: Michele Williams

• Email: [email protected]

• Website: https://4cornerscfo.com

• LinkedIn: @Danielle Hendon

• Instagram: @4cornerscfo

• Facebook: @4CornersCFO

• CFO2Go

• Work with Me

• Metrique Solutions

• Episode 194 Understanding Your Financials with Melanie Lockert

• Financial Courses with Michele Williams including “Understanding Your Financials”, “Master Your Profit”, and “Pricing Without Emotion”