How to master your business finances with Erin Lyall

A lot of business owners don’t have a handle on their business finances, and this can lead to stress, overwhelm and bills popping up that they weren’t expecting. In today’s episode, I chat with Erin from Social Season about how her and her business partner have been able to master their finances and feel confident and calm with their money.

In this Episode:

04.46: How Erin took back the reigns of her business’ financials after a issue with her finance team

12.40: Why Erin took the time to learn about business financials in more detail

26.07: How Erin has grown her business by knowing her numbers; Erin’s experience with The Profit Academy Foundations

Links:

Guest Bio

Erin is co-founder, owner, and director of Social Season, a Melbourne and Ballarat-based social media marketing and consulting agency specialising in helping event promoters, venues, tourism operators, and experience creators build brands, sell tickets, fill venues, and book out calendars through savvy social media and digital marketing solutions.

With over 15 years of experience in communications and digital marketing, Erin, who also holds a bachelor degree in communication, is an expert at helping businesses in the events, tourism and lifestyle spaces to achieve their goals through digital communication and social media tactics.

Social Season specialises in driving online bookings and ticket sales for venues, event promoters and tourism operators using paid and organic social media, strategy development and implementation, and creative ideation and content production.

Social Season Website >
Social Season Instagram >
Social season LinkedIn > 
Social Season TikTok > 

Transcript

CLARE (00:00):

A lot of business owners don’t have a strong handle on their business finances, and this can lead to stress, overwhelm, and even bills popping up that they weren’t expecting. Today, on the podcast, I’m chatting to Erin, one of the founders of Social Season, about how her and her business partner have been able to master their finances and how it’s given them a lot more confidence and a sense of calm when it comes to their business finances. In this episode, we are talking about where they were to where they are now, and how you can do the same when it comes to mastering the money in your business. Make sure you stick around.

(00:47):

Hello, and welcome to the Clare Wood Podcast. This is your weekly dose of all things money to help you intentionally create a profitable business and a life you love. I have the difficult conversations about money so you can make more money with ease. Each week, I share how you can use mindset and the practical foundations of finance to elevate your earnings without sacrificing the things that are important to you because you can and should be making more money.

(01:25):

Doors are now open for my course, the Profit Academy Foundations. This is the course that Erin and I are chatting about inside today’s episode, and it’s my course where I teach you everything that you need to know about business financials, but in a fun and easy-to-understand way. Inside this course, I take you through the foundations of finance in a step-by-step framework, including the templates that you need to forecast your money looking forward so that you know exactly what is happening when it comes to your money inside your business. Doors are only open for a limited time to do this live round, which includes Q&A, live calls with me so you can ask any of your questions about the course. So if you want to jump in, make sure you click on the link in the show notes for today’s episode.

(02:21):

Welcome to the podcast, Erin. It’s so good to have you here.

ERIN (02:25):

Thanks, Clare. It’s great to be here.

CLARE (02:27):

So, before we dive into me asking you a ton of questions, would you mind introducing yourself and your business to the listeners?

ERIN (02:37):

Yeah, so my name’s Erin, obviously. I run a business called Social Season. We’ve been going for about five years and we specialize in social media marketing and advertising for venues, events, experiences. So we work with a lot of promoters, tourism operators, venue managers, that kind of thing to help sell tickets and book out their calendars with social media marketing strategies, but also online marketing strategies to compliment it.

CLARE (03:09):

I know at the moment, you’re working with the Australian Comedy Festival and you’ve got some really cool brands that you’re working with. Would you mind sharing who some of the people that you’re currently working with are?

ERIN (03:20):

Yeah. So we’re not working with the festival itself, but we are working on campaigns for comedians that will be appearing at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. So people like Tommy Little, Mel Buttle, Lano & Woodley, we’ve got some campaigns lined up for those artists. We also are working on some music venue clients, Northcote Theatre in Melbourne is one of those. We work with different touring promoters, so DRW Entertainment. We’re also working on Brunswick Music Festival, which is coming up. That campaign just launched this week. So we’ve got a fair bit happening.

CLARE (04:02):

You sure do. And you’ve got some amazing clients. So you guys obviously know your stuff in this space. I will be sharing your details at the end of the episode if anyone is in this sector and would like some help with their social media marketing and overall just getting their events out there, selling out tickets. So thank you so, so much for sharing a little bit about that. But the reason I invited you on the podcast today was to talk about, you guessed it, money. And I thought maybe what we might do, let’s start back at the beginning of how we came to be working together, and then we can talk a little bit about your journey when it comes to managing the finances in your business.

ERIN (04:47):

Yeah, sure. Our background, it’s myself and my business partner who started the business and we are creatives. And we met working in music venues way back in the day, the Corner Hotel, Northcote Social Club, those kind of venues. And I ran all the publicity and Ash was involved in the booking side of things and our brains are quite creative-minded. So financial literacy wasn’t really something that was at the forefront of our minds. Obviously, it’s a part of understanding the campaigns that we work with, understanding the maths involved in that. But when it came to figuring out how to set up a budget for the business or how to split out our income and expenses and read a balance sheet, all that sort of stuff, we had no idea and we were pretty much just figuring out our own way through it for a few years.

(05:39):

In 2021, we got onto Xero, but still had no idea what we were doing with it. And essentially, when we started working with you, we had some pretty big growth goals, but also just, I think, a complete, well, not complete, but a bit of a lack of understanding of our numbers and how to manage things and had maybe entrusted a little bit too much of the management of that to our accountant and bookkeeper and realized quite quickly that things weren’t being managed properly and we needed to take back the reins on some of that stuff. And it’s something we do want to have managed by a team, but I think it’s important for us to know the basics of that stuff so that we can interpret the data and know when things are going the right way and when things are going the wrong way and when we need to investigate further.

CLARE (06:31):

Yeah, 100%. It’s funny, money isn’t something that really gets taught about a lot, is it?

ERIN (06:37):

No, not at all.

CLARE (06:38):

It’s not. Both personal finance and business finance, it’s just not a skill that they teach you at school. And yet it’s so important. It’s such a crucial and integral part of our lives. And I tend to work mostly with creatives, and this is something that I see a lot is that people are excellent at what they do, like you and Ash are. You’re experts in your field, but finance isn’t something that people are taught. And to your point, what I see a lot is that people engage experts in this space and think, “Hopefully, that’s taken care of.” And unfortunately, a lot of times what I see is that the accountant either doesn’t explain things properly or you go, “I assume that they’re taking care of it all.”

ERIN (07:30):

Yeah, absolutely. So we would get sent our balance sheets and our BAS statements every quarter and say, “Can you review the numbers?” But I didn’t know what I was looking at and I was like, “I trust that it’s fine and that you’ve got it handled.” But yeah, I think I’ve realized in the last six months in particular, but definitely the last year as well, that I need to have a bit more of an understanding of the basics so that I can know what I’m looking at and can make better financial decisions for the business and also as we grow, feel really confident that we’re in a safe place financially.

CLARE (08:02):

Yeah, I love that. So what are some of the ways maybe that you started to recognize that this was a problem?

ERIN (08:16):

I came back from maternity leave last May, so I’d taken a big step back from the business, and when I came back, dove straight back into creative land and building the business land and getting really excited about that. We had a staff member at the time, she left a few months down the track, my business partner went on holiday. And I think around then there was just maybe a misunderstanding of who was managing what in the business because we had an accountant and a bookkeeper. I thought that they were handling the whole thing. It turned out some of it had been handled in-house, but it was just a little bit of a miscommunication of a situation and realized we were making investment decisions that weren’t actually based in reality. And we’ve never taken out loans or credit cards or anything like that to fund this business.

(09:05):

It’s been bootstrapped the whole way and grown month on month based on our… We’ve invested back from the growth that we’ve had. But I think what happened was we overcommitted a little bit because we didn’t understand the basics of our numbers and it was a little bit of a tumultuous readjustment time in the business. And then we ended up just being a bit behind on our tax bills, on our super bills without realizing that we’d gotten to that point. And we’ve pretty much caught up completely now and we’re getting back into that positive territory, but it’s just not somewhere we ever want to be. We are quite conservative when it comes to managing our numbers, but it helps to know what they are to be able to do that.

CLARE (09:50):

100%. And look, I need to write a book about of all of the horror stories that I’ve seen of clients of mine because I’ve worked with someone, she was turning over a million dollars a year in her business, which on the face of it you go, “Whoa, how could anyone not be comfortable with that?” But the reality too is that as your business grows, your business is scaling and you’re bringing on team members and things like that, this is more than ever when you need to stay in the detail of it. And exactly the same thing happened to her. She had entrusted her finance team and presumed that it was all being taken care of and she had a colossal tax debt that was just hanging around her neck and she’s like, “I can’t even see how I’m ever going to pay this off.”

(10:40):

It was a really, really, really stressful experience for her. And on the face of it, she’s got a million-dollar-a-year business and yet with this massive debt. And I think this is the thing why I’m so passionate about this work that I do is because I’ve seen this happen to so many business owners where you think that the team are going to let you know what needs to happen when it needs to happen, and unfortunately, they don’t. So I love that you acknowledge that’s something you’re like, “No, we want to really step into our CEO space about it and really learn how to master our money.” But you guys came to me for the reason of working in the space of private coaching. You had this thriving business and you just wanted to take it to that next level in terms of growth and how to expand and things like that. So I think that the finance thing was just part and parcel of that process.

ERIN (11:43):

Absolutely, yeah.

CLARE (11:45):

I’ve had clients over the years who are like, “I really don’t want to do the spreadsheet stuff, I just want to grow my business.” And I’m like, “I’m sorry, but the two have to happen in parallel because otherwise, like I said, you’ll end up in this position where you’re ticking those big numbers and you still feel broke because I’ve seen that so many times.” So I love that you’ve come on that journey and really got there. As part of private coaching with me, one of the things that my clients get is they get access to all of my programs. So I had the course, the Profit Academy Foundations, and I love that you jumped in and started working through it. So that’s really what I wanted to have a bit of a chat to you about today. So share with me why you said, “I’m going to go through and really tackle this course and really dive in and get across the numbers.”

ERIN (12:43):

Of course. Well, as you know, Ash and I are pretty keen on systems and it’s something that we’re always looking to improve in the business. I have never minded a spreadsheet, but I haven’t known where to start and I haven’t had systems for it. So, getting templates and understanding how to use them and best practice stuff, I was so keen for that, so that was a big motivator. Understanding Xero definitely was another motivator there and being able to interpret the numbers and do things smarter in the business. Something we had been asking of our finance team for quite a long time was we wanted to understand it more, we wanted to be more strategic, but we weren’t really getting much direction or support in that area.

(13:29):

And I think we didn’t really know where to turn until we came across you and your content and it just was so beautifully laid out in terms of understanding how the programs work, understanding what spreadsheets should look like for a business like this. We’ve hacked together our own spreadsheets of how to manage this stuff and it had been working but not in a very efficient way and not set up in a way that would help us grow. So it was really good to get that baseline and go, “Oh, this is what it should look like and this is what we should be doing.” Even from a regular touchpoint of view, checking every week with each other what the cash flow situation is, monthly, looking at the budget, all of that sort of stuff.

CLARE (14:08):

So had you ever done a budget before coming through the course?

ERIN (14:13):

No.

CLARE (14:14):

And you have a bit of a giggle, but this is my experience. I would say 90, 95% of small business owners don’t have a budget. And a lot of people cruise along and seem to get by. My background is working for massive big corporates and there is no way a listed company would not have a budget because the thing is, as you get bigger, like I said, the actual stakes get higher. People think, “I won’t need to worry about my money,” but actually, the stakes get higher because you’ve got more teams, more expenses, more overheads that come in. And having a budget is just such a great way to go, “Where are we heading and what are we investing to get there and how much money will we actually make?” So the other thing that you touched on there that I want to talk a little bit about is the term, cash flow. So what does cash flow mean to you now and where were you before and why do people need to understand what cash flow is and use cash flow forecasting?

ERIN (15:25):

Look, probably before I hadn’t thought about it in the sense that I think about it now, the way we had been looking at our bank account was just like we had the one account, all of the money, taxes, super, all of that was in the one account and we were just happy if we were at a certain buffer. And there were so many reasons why that was holding us back from a financial point of view, but also a mindset point of view. Because in our minds, this is a bit of a side note, but we had a number in mind and as long as we were around that we were happy, but it wasn’t supporting our growth. But from a management point of view, wasn’t looking day-to-day, week to week on what was coming in, what was going out, what our bills were, because we had this buffer in place, right?

(16:10):

But that buffer, the number might be the right number, but a month or two into the quarter, that number might be the same, the total, but a third of that could be tax owings and we were still spending as if the total amount in that account was what we had to spend. I just felt everything was foggy. I didn’t know what was going on, but I was oblivious to it as well. I was a little bit investment happy. Happy to just sign up for things without really having consciousness around what the quarterly owings from tax and super point of view might be. But the cash flow now, especially since working with your spreadsheets, and I’ve used this in my personal budgeting now as well with my partner getting through Christmas, it was like, “We’ve got some big expenses coming up, let’s make sure that we’ve got enough money in the bank and that we’re going to be able to cover the mortgage and all the bills and all of that sort of stuff.”

(17:05):

And it’s been such a relief and a weight off the shoulders to be like, “No, it’s handled and we’ve got it covered.” So just looking at it week on week, and at the moment, I probably actually jump in there a lot more than once a week. I jump in it every other day and just seeing what income’s coming in, what bills are going out, if we’re adding a new expense to the list, adding that to the spreadsheet and seeing how that’s going to play out over the next month or two or three months at the most. And just knowing what’s coming up, I feel having that visibility over it, I feel so much more confident and calm, even if it’s like, “Oh, well, that week is looking like it’s going to be a little bit under. What are we going to do to bring in some more income?” So it’s motivating as well.

CLARE (17:54):

There is so much gold in here that I want to pull apart. The first thing I wanted to touch on that you’d mentioned was about your buffer. And I know that when we first got into these numbers, and this sort of happens a lot when I do this work with people, is they’re like, “This is so depressing.” And I was saying to you guys, “You are in such a stronger position than a lot of other businesses that I’ve worked with.” And hopefully, that sometimes gives you a bit of a confidence boost as well. I’m like, “A lot of businesses don’t have a buffer like you did.” A lot of businesses have a lot of debt hanging over their head, like various debt in various places. And I think regardless of what’s going on from a financial position, this is what I say to people all the time, it’s better to know than to pretend it’s not going on until it’s too late. It’s better to go, “Okay, cool, this is the situation.” And then you go, “Okay, we can plan for that.” That’s the first thing.

(18:52):

The second thing that you mentioned that I wanted to touch on is, and this is diving a little bit into the area of money mindset, but it’s important, it’s relevant, which is that I find that people tend to have one of three blocks. They have a fear of investing in their businesses. They love to have this big cash buffer and they’re like, “I can’t spend a cent on anything.” This was actually me in the early stages of my business. I spent no money on anything, the accountant in me. I did all my design work myself, I built my website myself, it was disgusting. And I just refused because my accounting brain was like, “Don’t spend any money.” And it took a couple of years for me to see all of my peers leaping ahead and I’m like, “Why the hell am I still here? What are they doing?”

(19:40):

And they were working with coaches, they had beautiful websites, they were running a podcast, they were doing all these things that involved investing into the business. And I realized I can either stay stuck here or I’ve got to start to lean in a bit. So that’s the first block. The second block, the opposite is the fear of saving. And then this is where we see people who are so optimistic about it all that they don’t have a buffer like you did. They don’t have a buffer at all. Usually, they’ve got a ton of debt and anytime they get money, they just spend it straight away. And sometimes I see this happen with businesses that experience really rapid growth.

(20:20):

If someone’s used to making $30,000 a month and suddenly they’re making a hundred, a whole bunch of stuff comes up and then suddenly they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got so much money in the account, it feels weird to me.” So they go and just spend it on crap just to get rid of it because they feel uncomfortable. So that’s a block in holding. And the third block is a block in receiving is the other one. So again, you might hear snippets of each of these things, but sometimes a block in receiving. And I think that maybe you guys might have been a little bit guilty of this.

ERIN (20:59):

Oh yeah, absolutely.

CLARE (21:02):

Erin and Ash are the nicest two people, which is great, but in business sometimes, you have to have boundaries around how much you’re willing to give. And one of the things that sometimes can hold us back from growth is giving, giving, giving, and doing all this work for free and not charging appropriately for that. And this can be another block because what happens is you’re busy, busy, busy, and people just start to, when you do things for them, do bonuses for them all the time, they come to expect it, right?

ERIN (21:36):

Totally, yeah. We literally had a conversation about this, this morning. It came up again with the client.

CLARE (21:43):

And that could be another block. And sometimes it’s not even that the client’s not willing to pay you. I’ve seen examples. When I say to someone, “Oh, is that any extra?” And people go, “Oh no, that’s fine, I’ll just do it for you.” And I’m like, “Cool.” And I’m like, “I would’ve been happy to pay, but if they’re going to do it for free, well.” And then what happens the next time you come to expect, “Well, they just do that for free.” So learning to say, “Actually, I deserve to be paid for the work that we do,” you literally transform businesses. You help people sell at their events that are making a ton of money. You deserve to be compensated appropriately for that.

ERIN (22:24):

Yeah, absolutely. It came up again today because we had a client’s show selling so well that they wanted to add extra dates and there was, “Can you edit this ad and can you run this?” And it’s just automatic in us and it’s an unlearning of how we’ve behaved in these situations like, “Yeah, sure. It’s not really in the package, but this time, we’ll do it for you.”

(22:48):

But then that happens again and again and again, and our boundaries are not good. So we’re definitely practicing holding each other accountable to that, even if one of us needs to play bad cop in the situation, not even bad cop, but just hold the boundary so the other one can still provide the service and feel okay about that.

(23:10):

We’re just trying to find the best way to do that. And we do find, even talking with new leads, a lot of event clients don’t necessarily have a huge budget starting out. There’s a lot of creatives in the industry and we just find ourselves really liking people and wanting to help them and seeing so much potential, but we need to be really careful to not undersell ourselves because it just puts our own business at risk as well.

CLARE (23:37):

Oh, 100%. And it’s really hard when you do have a big heart and you want to help people. It can be really, really hard to draw these boundaries. But the reality is, when it comes to money, if people are happy to pay you and you’re not charging them appropriately, then it’s going to have an effect on your cash flow. And I know that something that I see is this is where business owners approach burnout, is they’re working, working, working, not charging what they should be. Yeah, it’s not helpful for anyone if your business doesn’t succeed. And this is something that I’ve had to learn myself as well, is the value of putting on your own life jacket first, like they say on a plane, “Put your own…” You can help more people-

ERIN (24:20):

Your oxygen.

CLARE (24:21):

… When your business is successful. Exactly. That’s the one, that’s the analogy that I was thinking of. But really making sure that your business is financially healthy, actually means that you can help more people.

ERIN (24:34):

Yeah, absolutely.

CLARE (24:35):

Something that we can see a lot is that these stories come into how we are with money. And it’s something that I love to talk to people about is like, “Are you holding onto too much money that it’s limiting your growth? Or conversely, are you spending too much money and not making sure that you’re protecting yourself and keeping your business safe as well?” I love these conversations because the more and more that we have these uncomfortable conversations, the more that we can identify our own blocks, “I’ve got blocks that I’m continually working on to this day,” then we can start to shift the trajectory of our business and inspire other business owners to do the same as well.

ERIN (25:19):

Yeah, for sure. I feel knowledge is empowerment, really.

CLARE (25:24):

Yeah, for sure. Well, I’m really glad that you and Ash have been doing the work, and it’s really cool to see the difference in your confidence and your clarity because that then translates into the bottom line, ultimately.

ERIN (25:38):

Yeah, totally.

CLARE (25:39):

So let’s just talk a little bit about the Profit Academy Foundations. I talk about mastering your money, but actually, inside the course, how did you find it? People tend to, “I don’t want to bloody learn about accounting, it’s a bit boring.” Share with me your experience of coming inside. Was it overwhelming? How did you find the course of the program itself?

ERIN (26:10):

Yeah. I loved it. I binged it. And I know in some of those videos you’re like, “Take your time, go through it slowly.” But I’m a bit of a binger, so I just smashed through it. I actually started it last year and then came back to it and started again because I found myself forgetting some of the terminology. But it was like a light going on, financial terminology that I had heard but didn’t really grasp and the explanation of those things and what we should be looking at and how you should be thinking about things, even down to the basics of how to use the Xero app to upload a receipt and start the reconciliation process. I’d never done that before and had just been taking a photo of the receipt, sending it to the bookkeeper, expecting it to get uploaded, and it wouldn’t always necessarily happen.

(27:02):

So I think that knowledge of the basics of getting that stuff right was really empowering and I think it just flowed really nicely. It laid some foundations in understanding the terminology, understanding the basics of what spreadsheets and systems to use, and then how to then take that knowledge and take those systems to then grow the business and even right to what meetings to set up on the regular so that you can be constantly coming back to this stuff. And just to keep some notes because I was like, “This information is sitting with me right now, but I’m going to get distracted and get back into creative mind and I don’t want to forget it.” So I’ve set up these meetings in our calendar and they’re so detailed with every step that we need to do, and I’m sure we’ll get faster at doing it, but I feel really confident that we’re on the right track now because this was something that we were asking for support from our account and bookkeeper for so long and they just weren’t forthcoming with it.

(28:01):

And we’re in the process of transitioning. I’ve actually signed a new bookkeeper as of yesterday, which is really exciting, and it felt she got what the approach was. And going into that meeting with her to see if she was the right fit with all of this knowledge behind me really helped in knowing that.

CLARE (28:21):

Oh, 100%, yeah. And something I think I’ve shared on the podcast before, but maybe not, at school, I was a straight-A student and then when I went to uni, I failed Introduction to Accounting. Now, I got an A-plus in advanced math at school and I failed Intro to Accounting and I thought, “I’m terrible at accounting.” But the reality is, obviously, I’ve now gone on, I’ve completed an undergrad, I’ve completed a post-grad with distinctions in some subjects, and I’m like, “I wasn’t bad at accounting. It’s just that people don’t explain it in an easy-to-understand way.” And this is why I’m so passionate about this work because what I see again and again is that people are like, “I don’t understand. It’s really confusing.” And I’m like, “But it’s actually not. I failed Intro to Accounting because I thought it’s all too weird and crazy and I don’t understand it.”

(29:15):

So for me, I’m like, “Why not just choose simple terms and just break it down into basic blocks?” And that’s what I’ve tried to do inside the course is rather than using all this really confusing terminology, use really simple terms that people can understand and connect to so that they can go, “Oh, that makes sense now,” rather than using all of the confusing terms. And the other thing that I’ve tried to do in the course, I spent six years at university studying accounting, and I tried to cut out all of the stuff that’s not really relevant and just really focus in on, “If you just know these things, this is what you need to know to be able to run your business effectively, to make sure that you’re maximizing your profit and to make sure that you’re right across your cash flow.” So I’d love to hear that feedback and hopefully, that means that I nailed it inside the course.

ERIN (30:11):

Oh, totally. And even just to be able to communicate with the team that are managing it and understand when you need to jump in and be more involved. I did communications at university and it was such a big thing when you’re talking with anyone in a slightly different industry to you. Being able to bridge that gap and understand each other is so important. And you just need the basics for that, so hugely helpful.

CLARE (30:35):

And I think what I’ve seen with you and with a lot of my students who’ve come through is that, unfortunately, they’ve realized that their finance team isn’t quite the right fit. They’re like, “Oh, they don’t even do that.” When people learn the basics, they start to realize, “Oh my gosh, there’s mistakes being made here.” Or they’re not explaining this. One of my big things that I teach inside the course is about money meetings and I teach about you should meet internally and meet with your finance team. And a lot of times, people are like, “My accountant won’t meet with me.” [inaudible 00:31:12]. You’re here actively wanting to get right across your finances and a lot of accountants say, “No, that’s not something that we offer.”

ERIN (31:21):

Yeah. Well, they charge through the nose for it when [inaudible 00:31:28]. I asked our old bookkeeper the week before last, or whenever super was due that last quarter, I was like, “It’s due tomorrow. I want to get this sorted because if we’re late with this, then it’s a whole headache.” And we were paying him to assist us with managing super, and he was like, “Oh no, I’ve got other urgent stuff. I’ll do it next week.” And I was like, “Well, it’s due tomorrow, so that’s not helpful. Isn’t this part of your job to assist with this?” So yeah, it’s amazing how it’s like pulling teeth sometimes.

CLARE (31:58):

Yeah. Well, there’s something my last accountant said to me because I said to him, “Do all your clients meet with you?” And he said, “Only the successful ones.” I love that saying. And I said, “How many is that?” And he’s like, “Oh, there’s only three people who’ve requested meetings.” Out of his whole client base. But people are like, “I don’t even know what to talk to with my accountant.” And again, this is something inside Foundations, I’m like, “Here’s the things that you need to cover. Make sure that you know exactly how much of this you need to have put aside. Ask them this question. Run through these reports.” And I actually gave an agenda of what to do so that you’re not just sitting there like, “Hi.” You actually really understand-

ERIN (32:40):

Hoping they know what to do.

CLARE (32:41):

… what you want to do. Exactly.

ERIN (32:45):

I’ve been in the camp of asking for the meeting and having that question ignored.

CLARE (32:53):

And look, as someone who comes from an accounting background, a lot of people were excellent in spreadsheets and with numbers, perhaps not as great at communication as someone in the digital marketing space. But that’s okay, everyone’s got their skillset, right? Fabulous. Is there anything more that you wanted to share about coming through the course? If someone’s listening to this episode and wondering if now’s the right time if they should jump in, anything else that you wanted to share with them?

ERIN (33:27):

I think if you’re wanting to get better at understanding the numbers at even just a high level so that you can talk with your accountant and your bookkeeper, or you’re wanting systems for managing cash flow and budgets so that you feel more confident. I used to be the type of person when I was younger that was afraid to look at my bank account. I was quite avoidant with money. My money story in general was like that. And I’ve done a lot of work to change it. And what I’ve found has helped the most is understanding it and being really plugged into it. And that has just played out again in the last year with just some things in the business. And getting a hold of it and feeling on top of it has just made a world of difference.

(34:10):

I found out last week about the super situation and that we were a little bit late. It was just super that we owed ourselves because me and Ash were on payroll and we hadn’t paid our own super and that we were going to have late fees and stuff as a result of that. So it wasn’t a big deal, but I didn’t know about this for seven months. And if I’d been more on top of it, it wouldn’t have been a problem. We might have made different decisions in the business at the time. We’ve gotten on top of it now and it’s fine. And I’m glad to have learned that lesson at this stage in our business before we grow to that million-dollar level and have the huge bill around the neck. So it was a really good lesson to have and picking that up was literally a result of learning how to read balance sheets in your course.

(34:55):

It made me realize that was even the case. The accountant and the bookkeeper weren’t going to tell me and still haven’t taken any accountability in their part in that. So learning how to read balance sheets and how to pull reports and what those numbers mean and how to spot things that maybe should be looked at was invaluable.

CLARE (35:17):

Oh, well that’s wonderful to hear. And I’m so glad that you’ve done this work. And maybe this course isn’t the right fit for you, but I just urge the listeners, please make sure that you go and learn how to understand your finances properly because I hear this story so many times where unfortunately, your accountant or whoever hasn’t shared. So I really encourage you to do this work to learn to get right across your finances because it’ll change your confidence. And the other thing, of course, is that it changes your bottom line. One of the modules actually inside the course is that I’m like, “If things aren’t where you want it to be, here’s some things that you can go and do instead because sometimes I find people learn and then they’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is not great.”

(35:59):

So I did a whole module which is like, “Okay, if things aren’t where you want it to be, here’s what you can do. Here’s how you turn it around.” And that is the confidence and power that you’ve got. You go, “Oh, okay, cool. I know that I need to do some things differently. What are some levers that we can pull?” Wonderful. Well, thank you so, so much for coming on and having this chat today. It’s been wonderful working with you and witnessing your growth in this space. And I know that your business is just going to go on to bigger and bigger and bigger things. If people are listening and they do want help in the event ticketing space with selling out their events, what’s the best way that they can get in touch with you and Ash?

ERIN (36:42):

Yeah. So we have a form on our website that they can go to. So that’s socialseason.com.au or our Instagram handle is socialseasonau, and they can just DM us there and we can have a chat.

CLARE (36:55):

Amazing. Well, I’m going to pop the links for Social Season in the show notes for today’s episode if you want to reach out and connect. And the girls share heaps of amazing info on their social media, and make sure you go and give them a follow over there as well. Erin, thanks so much for joining today. It’s been lovely chatting to you again.

ERIN (37:12):

Thanks for having me, Clare.

CLARE (37:15):

I’m sure we’ll be chatting again soon.

ERIN (37:17):

Definitely.

CLARE (37:20):

I hope you are feeling inspired and excited about what is possible for you when it comes to money. It takes a lot of time and energy to create a podcast, so I’d be very grateful if you could take the time to hit subscribe, write me a review, and share any of your favorite episodes with your audience on social media. The more people that we can reach, the more people we can empower to earn more in their business because you can and should be earning more money.

 

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