Aug 24, 2019
Following your passion is a grind, and that goes with running a
business too. But you just don't run a business based on gut
feeling alone. You need to have a sort of feedback dashboard for
your know if you're grinding it in the correct direction and doing
it properly.
In this interview, you'll hear from Parker Stevenson, a partner
from Evolved Finance, the usual problems an entrepreneur has, and
how having a specific niche and a specific target market can help
you solve those problems and grow your business more
efficiently.
Whether you're a longtime online businessman or someone that's just
starting, if you're having issues with bookkeeping, this is the
podcast for you.
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Automated Transcript Below:
Dean Soto 0:01
Hey, this is Dean Soto with FreedominFiveMinutes.com. And we're
here again with another freedom in five minutes episode. Today's
topic is this evolving your bookkeeping with evolved finance that
and more coming up. Alright, cool. So today's podcast, I'm going to
go nuts on this one just because this is something that I have
needed for a long time and bookkeeping is not the most sexy, not
the most exciting thing but but when you have an online business
where you're using PayPal, you're paying affiliates and refers
different types of commissions. I have a whole boatload of sales
coming in from stripe and PayPal and all these different places,
depending on where my customer wants to how they actually want to
pay. And the big problem that comes up is pretty much every
bookkeeper out there that I've ever met has no clue what to do with
PayPal, how to reconcile PayPal, how to what to do with affiliate
income, the revenue that's coming in, going out and all that other
stuff. And oh my gosh, I was I was so happy to find Parker
Stephenson from evolve finance because their platform their their
service, their agency actually solves this very, very specific
problem. So Parker, how's it going, man, I appreciate you coming
on.
Parker Stevenson 1:39
Dean. It's my pleasure, man. That might be like one of the best
intros we've ever had
some good bookkeeping.
Dean Soto 1:47
Well, it's crazy. It's crazy. You you solve a very specific niche
that that literally nobody else business wise, what has this pain
unless they already doing a couple of things. They're using PayPal?
They're they're selling a service on it or something online. And
they're trying they're having to pay pay affiliates. And it is it
is crazy, that there's nobody else doing what you guys are doing.
And and so, so I that intro is like I literally it's it's just me,
like happy as a clam, because you saw me my pain, man.
Parker Stevenson 2:28
Well, I think that that's something we talk to our clients a lot
about, because I think, especially with an agency business or a
service based business, the more you can hone and focus it in the
better. And I think with a lot of you know, I'd say financial, just
financial professionals, financial businesses, whether it's
accounting or bookkeeping, the business model has to be so broad,
right? Like the bookkeeper you're working with could be working at
on a dentist office could be working on a restaurant and they could
be working on your business. There's just more knowledge than any
one person could have and have expertise on. Yeah, that. I think
it's just such a strength that may seem like it limits your market.
And I would imagine for a lot of people in our industry, they go
oh, but then I'm not going to have enough clients to work with. But
the reality is, there's plenty of all I mean, the online business
space is booming. We don't need to do bookkeeping, for any other
types of businesses, because we're going to have more business than
we can handle for a really long time. Just in this niche alone. So
kudos to my business partner Corey for figuring this out back in
2010.
Dean Soto 3:33
Yeah, so cool event. it's it's a it's it's great, man. So you, you.
So I want to talk a little bit about you. You actually hopped on
this bandwagon with Corey, as you were working with a pretty pretty
well known company. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Parker Stevenson 3:54
Yeah. So before I started working with Korea, double finance. I was
working for Adidas golf here in San Diego. It's like the only part
of Adidas like their big headquarters for the US is in Portland.
And then the corporate headquarters is in Germany. And so I was
actually musician back in the day thought I was gonna be a rock
star. When I was living in LA and that didn't work out. I went,
Okay, what's my other thing I really love and it's like, well, I
love golf. I was been a golf addict my whole life. So I'm like, I'm
from San Diego. I'm like, San Diego is essentially what Detroit was
for the auto industry, San Diego is for the golf industry. So I was
like, I'm going to go work for the best golf manufacturer I can
find or I can get a job. And sure enough, I got it at Taylor. It
was tailor made Adidas golf at the time, and had a really great
five year experience there. Like I was saying, before we got
started was kind of like my, I'd say like my master's degree and
business like I just learned so so much from working there. And
especially the position I was in as a merchandiser. And as kind of
like a product category manager, I learned so much about how a
business functions from all the different places with a lot of it
being around numbers to like, there was definitely a lot of
financial aspects to what I did that by the time I kind of realized
the corporate environment wasn't really my bag, and some doing
something more entrepreneurial, was more up my alley, that by the
time Corey and I started having serious discussions around how I
could get involved in the business, and we could start to become
partners, I felt really prepared to be able to not just jump in and
help him grow of all finance, but also be able to provide some
insights for the clients we serve, that maybe other people who have
only been in the online space wouldn't be able to provide.
Yeah,
Dean Soto 5:40
yeah. See, that's cool that what a what a, what a neat experience,
because you're you're literally getting a play with $50 million
worth of product and figure out one learn how how to even
merchandise and sell and position these things. And then, and it's
not like you you're not even, it's not your money. And you you're
you're essentially just just learning from literally the best. And
taking that from from there. And then going and working with Corey
over it evolved finance, how did that transition happen? Where,
where? How did you even like, with Corey doing what he was doing?
Like, have the aha moment of like, I really want to go and do
this
Parker Stevenson 6:28
instead? I know, that's a great question too. Because sometimes I'm
like, I don't even understand how I don't understand, like how we
got to this place. But Corey and his wife, Anna, are actually
really good friends with my wife like they grew up together. So
I've known Corey Nana for a long time now ever since I met my wife,
which was about 12 years ago. And so I knew they had this business.
But it was just like, cool. You guys have a business. It seems like
it's doing well. Good for you guys. But I was very much into my
career. But once I kind of got was getting close to that five year
mark at Adidas, I was starting to feel like there wasn't really a
next step for me like I was, for my personality. I'm a generalist,
I like to know about a lot of different things, which is why I like
the merchandising position. But it was so straight. It was a very
stressful, crazy job. Like a lot of people that had that role
before me didn't stay in it very long. Like there was a lot of
people I stayed in that position. And so I sort of realized, like,
getting into an entrepreneurial position would allow me to kind of
have my business add put to work, because, you know, obviously I'd
have to learn bookkeeping. And I started at very humble beginnings
with Corey. But the more Corey and I talked, the more we realized,
all right, he can teach me the book eat, like the specific
intricacies of the service we provide the client, but I'd be able
to bring in a new perspective, like being more of a future thinking
business development sort of mind, I think kind of felt like hey,
like, I just don't, I just can't help but think we'd be able to
like double, triple quadruple this business, just putting our
strengths together. Yeah. And that was the really good thing that I
think Corey, and I realized is that Korea is very different skills
than I have. And so that's what's made our partnership so strong,
and what's allowed us to work so well together. And so just kind of
realizing our personalities match well, him and his wife kind of
telling me like, hey, these are all the things we have going on. We
have all these clients we can't support right now, if you come on
and start supporting them, and then we'll start to hire a team. It
just started, I think we just saw, you know, three, four years down
the road, like we could build a real team. And I'm really like,
he's already had so much demand just happening that I'm like, I
don't have a business idea. I have no idea what kind of business I
want to start. And I think what I've realized is I'm really good at
taking so even being a creative person being a musician. Yeah. But
I think I was really good at taking the initial vision they had and
be able to add and build upon that because of my experience at
Adidas. So it seems crazy. I took a massive pay cut. And you know,
it took a couple years for us to really hit our stride. But it's
been like so worth it. And the business is really thriving. Now
that we have done a lot of the work to make the business more
successful. Yeah,
Dean Soto 9:19
that is awesome. It is. Yeah. See, I love that. I love that
story.
The so with. So once once, like, I want to talk. Okay, so there's two things we're going to kind of colliding in my head right now. One is I'm like, you know, what were some of the things that you guys had to do to actually start scaling this business. But before that, I kind of I think, I think I want to give the audience really, they hear why I'm so excited. But I kind of want you to give the description of that. What you guys the big problem you guys solve? Because I know my problems. And I'm sure you mean I'm I'm sure you have kind of a better way of putting out that that that message but yeah, so like, what makes you guys so different from every other bookkeeper that's out there?
Parker Stevenson 10:19
Well, that's what got me interested in the business to begin with
is exactly what I'm about to explain. We were talking a little bit
about it before. I I never thought I'd get involved in a
bookkeeping business man, like I that just wasn't my Mo. Like, I've
told our clients, I don't try to talk a whole lot about it. But I
told her clients like I'm not a fine, I needed to get get a degree
in finance. And the reality is bookkeeping isn't rocket science.
Yeah, it's not. But just for me, having been a musician, like a guy
that was going after my passions, I want to work in the golf
industry, I want to work in the music industry, like I wanted to do
this stuff that I thought was cool, but keeping the Nazi. But as I
got older and more mature, I realized that stuff, you know,
following your passion becomes a grind no matter what it is. And so
what matters is working with people you like feeling fulfilled from
the work, I know, for me feeling of service to other people,
feeling like I can make an impact wherever I'm at, like that
becomes really important. And so when Corey was kind of telling me
about what they were doing it of all fit finance, even though I
wasn't like a bookkeeping expert at that point. I was like, Is
there anyone else doing what you're doing? And he's like, not
really, like we were talking about, like, our niche is so specific,
that we are solving a problem that we've seen repeatedly Now, over
the years, because we've talked with I mean, I've been on so many
calls since I started the business, hundreds of entrepreneurs. And
that has taught us so much about what the struggles our clients
have had before they start working with us. So over the years,
we've just honed down our service more and more like when Corey got
started, we kind of did all of the bookkeeping things. And now
we're only focusing on the bookkeeping, things that we can be
really, really, really good at and make the most impact on and
we've built all our systems and processes around that. But this is
kind of like if any, if the listeners can kind of take away
something from this is that from working with such a specific
niche, again, I hear the same problems over and over again, and we
understand what our clients are going through number one, because
we run an online business, as well. So that helps. But secondly,
because we built a service that does fit in niche. So specifically
in solves such a specific problem, it's easier to relate to your
clients, and it's easier to wow them, and to reduce the stress and
create excitement around solving that problem for them, especially
because they haven't been able to find a solution anywhere else. So
that alone is such a competitive advantage over the experience our
clients have had working with other bookkeepers because it just
it's it's nothing sexy, just understanding their problem having a
service that addresses that problem, like dead on we don't, you
know, I think sometimes some small businesses kind of skirt around
with their messaging or don't get focused enough on what they're
really trying to accomplish with their service or with their
product. And that's just one thing that we're very lucky to have
figured out a long time ago is this like, taking care of the books
for an online business properly, and then helping our clients to
understand what those numbers mean? It's simple when I say it like
that. But the reality is, if you've worked with an accountant
worked with the bookkeeper work with any financial professional, a
lot of them just don't get that they don't understand that customer
service is important. They don't understand that the relationship
with their client is super important. And I'm not trying to like
crap on anyone who has a accounting business or bookkeeping
business, like, I'm sure there's other ones out there that have
good customer service experiences. But our clients, when they come
to us, they haven't. And so all those pieces of just no one else
serving this niche, us being able to really hone in our service,
because we know this niche so well. Like, that was the opportunity.
And it's not it's not like we have a new app like this crazy new
app, or like it's something super revolutionary. It's just
innovating, what's been a very old, sort of unchanged service and
catching it up to modern times, essentially. And that, for me was
the reason why I was excited to jump in. Because it's like, we
essentially have no competition. And we have a super specific
target market. Like it doesn't get any better than that.
Dean Soto 14:29
Yeah, no, for sure. I love I love it. I still
remember, the first time I had so I went from from it was what was it called outright. And then it turned into GoDaddy bookkeeping. And then that was like when that was that was like when I was just starting out in my business. And it was I didn't need QuickBooks as soon as I went to QuickBooks because I had to do when I became a Subchapter S. LLC, and, and I was doing a lot more comments. It's stuff that that online entrepreneurs face. I was like, holy crap, I literally can, I don't even understand how to reconcile, at the end of the month, this doesn't make sense to me, and everything like that, I've hired a bookkeeper to just explain to me how to do all of this stuff for my for my thing, and she, she was literally like, Oh my gosh, like, you're all messed up like this, I'm not used to this. And I'm like, that doesn't help. Like, it doesn't help me at all. And so, so like, and that have almost happened pretty much over and over with people going, just not understanding a lot of the stuff like the affiliate commissions and, and, and PayPal reconciling and things like that. And so even just in your messaging, it's like, bam, like, that's, that's my problem, like, and it's cool how you guys have done that. And, and even though it might be a little scary to do that, you're really speaking to a lot of people just with that messaging and pitching down like that.
Parker Stevenson 16:10
Yeah, and that's a key to I think any really successful online
business, I mean, there's more competition online than there's ever
been. So the more you can find your specific people, like even if
it seems like a really small audience, speak to them directly and
clearly have the confidence to have your messaging, speak directly
there because it's taken us a long, a long time to really build our
copy on our website and our messaging, through our content and all
that to just be so focused and direct to talk just to the people
that need to hear it, right like not the people that are like and
maybe take it or leave it, we're talking to people like your team
that are like, oh, I've struggled with this, I'm not getting the
support we need. And I think that's the one thing I want to explain
because like your your situation, I'd like for you to be doing your
books in the early stage of your business fine. Like it's an extra
expense that if you're just getting started and just trying to make
some money, manage it in a spreadsheet, like but we never recommend
any like entrepreneur, try to learn how to use bookkeeping
software, like you gotta go make money like make, you need to be
spending all of your time and energy around finding clients,
building your leads, like figuring out how to drive revenue, that
keep your finances simple in the early stages. And once money
starts coming in. That's when you hire someone else to do the books
because that's, that's a skill set that for you, as a business
owner to take the time to learn how to do properly, which again,
even to find the resources to teach you the way we would want to do
it for an online business, it's just the chances are slim, you're
going to get the right tutorials. Anyways, it's a skill set that
took me it took me a year to get really good at really doing the
books for our clients. And that was after the support of you know,
Corey and an employee, Susan, that we've had that who's been with
the business for a really long time. And now I live and breathe
this stuff, I can do it in my sleep. But no one running a business
that's on a bookkeeping business should know how to do this stuff
in their sleep, they should be outsourcing that to someone like us
who actually knows how to do it, right. And the thing is, with
bookkeeping, there's so much room for interpretation, like that's
kind of the frustrating part is that every bookkeeper is going to
do it differently, they're going to set up your chart of accounts
differently and your profit and loss statements differently. Some
of them are going to do cheats to kind of like sneak around having
to do a lot of manual labor to do it raw, you know, like so that
aspect of this industry to is difficult because it's hard to find
someone that's going to, again, have the understanding of your
business well enough to know what needs to be done right? And where
can you be a little more efficient. And again, I it obviously works
for our business, but anyone else who's listening, especially if
you have an agency, a service or anything like that, like, Just
don't be afraid to hone that service down to a specific specific
problem, like you don't have all of the problems for every
business, just have one target market, get in that niche and solve
that problem really well. And, you know, we've had nothing but
referrals, like we just started marketing, in the last six months
really like really trying to push there. And we could still like we
don't need it, we just want to grow faster. But when you do such a
good job, and you are so good at solving that one problem, people
are going to talk about it, people are going to want to share it
and especially in the early stages of a new business. It's a damn
great way to make sure you start getting you know, more clients
down the road.
Unknown Speaker 19:36
Yeah, that is cool, man. I
Dean Soto 19:37
love it. I love the I love the fact that you went from being a
musician, to working at Adidas and wanting to be wanting wanting to
be like this. You know, rub shoulders with these really, you know,
awesome celebrities and everything like that. And even through just
from nicking down and doing what you're doing with the bookkeeping.
You actually have literally, seriously like one of my don't tell my
wife one of my crushes from from the 90s with the matrix, you as
one of your customers, Carrie, boss. I know I as soon as I saw I
saw her they're like, Oh my god, this is crazy. What? And so that's
pretty. That's a cool little story. Yeah.
Parker Stevenson 20:24
Well, and that's the thing is like, I think the world is changing
so much with technology and what the internet's allowing people to
do and entertain me think about entertainment changing. I mean,
she's obviously been extremely successful. But think about goop.
You know, and what, what's her name? Who has a group, I'm terrible
at names, but Gwyneth Paltrow, you know, she makes a great living
as an actress and as a celebrity. And she starts this eat calm
lifestyle website that's blown up. Like I think even people who are
already in the spot, are looking for ways to connect with their
audiences more looking for ways to share maybe knowledge I can
carry Anne's situation. She's like this super highly trained
meditation perfect professional, she's a badass yoga instructor
like she she has this whole other aspect of her life that she's
sort of kept out of the limelight that now she's like, starting a
business around, right like and bringing in bringing interest in.
And in all of our and and what's interesting is like in this
industry, a lot of our clients are like little celebrities within
their own right, right. Like they all, they all have their
audiences that follow them and are looking to them for advice and
guidance and buy their products. And that's like, I kind of look at
the way our clients run their businesses now, kind of like back in
the days of my space when I was in the band, where it's like,
everyone's trying to, like, get as many people to like their
MySpace page, and, you know, click, click on the page and listen to
the songs and see the song count. And in a lot of ways, that's kind
of what everyone's doing with the small businesses, because I think
Adidas has the power of brand awareness, right, like everyone knows
the three stripes and knows what a Adidas logo looks like, or knows
what a coke logo is, right? They don't, they don't have to worry,
those kinds of huge brands don't have to worry about awareness. But
when you're running a small business, you might only have someone's
attention for a short period of time. And so during that short
period, you need to make sure you're making an impact with whatever
content you have, whatever your website same. And inevitably, a lot
of especially these business owners we have that have more
personality type branded businesses, if they do a good job of that
they kind of build fans, they build followers that start to trust
them and want to follow them either for entertainment purposes, or
educational purposes. So it's definitely been super interesting to
see like these people we get to, we get to work with and all that.
And it's definitely a huge it's one of the things that's super
interesting about what we do and takes what's like, a normally
boring subject and bookkeeping, and makes it like so intriguing and
engaging, because we're really just looking at like, the core
aspects of all these people's businesses and making sure they're
running properly. So it's, I'm glad you appreciate it, because I
think in some ways we get used to it. I think it's definitely not
the way I thought I'd be making an impact on, you know, people's
lives and people's businesses, let alone these really amazing
entrepreneurs that, you know, in their own rights have amazing
stories, amazing experiences, like I love talking with their
clients, because they're truly fascinating and accomplished
people
Unknown Speaker 23:30
now, I love that man.
Dean Soto 23:32
It's that is Yeah, it's it just cool. It's, it's just neat how,
how, because of solving that that one problem ever. Anyone who is
going to be the go from from, you know, being a celebrity or, or
from anywhere. Soon as they get into the online space, where
they're having these, you know, they're taking things from PayPal,
they're doing these very specific things. Boom, now night, you
solve that problem. And now you're literally being able to talk to
people that are in it and and help them to grow new new things.
These and these are people who are almost unreachable in other
ways. And it just cool how, through having that very specific
niche, you've been able to do that. Yeah, really amazing. The so I
always ask this five minute mindset shifts question this five
minute strategy, that if someone were to take it and use it, it
would change the game for them, because it's changed the game for
you. So what's you mentioned? That, that you like to have, like a
feedback, like a feedback dashboard type thing? Can you explain
that, in regards to how it's helped you to massively change the way
your business and other people's businesses?
Parker Stevenson 24:59
Yeah, so that's, like, the reality of everyone's business here.
Like if you're listening, and you have an online business or small
business, the reality is, like, even if you have the most heart
centered business, and you're naive, it's not about the money, it's
about helping people or whatever your mindset around your
businesses, you your business is still a cash machine is this this
machine that sucking money in and spitting money out, hopefully
keeping some for you, that's the reality of your business. Like
that's what truly is going to make it successful or not successful.
No matter how happy your clients are, no matter how good you are at
whatever it is you do, how many how much volume you sell of your
products, if the money side of things doesn't work, then you're not
playing the game, right, you don't have your business model setup,
and you're not properly you're not focusing on the right things. So
the example I use a lot is that everyone needs to know, they need
to get feedback on the decisions they're making in their business.
And that feedback comes in the form of your financial data. And
unfortunately, unless you have someone organizing that financial
data for you, a lot of people just ignore it, they don't look at
their financial data. And especially even if they're a newer,
younger business, and they could be doing it in a spreadsheet
themselves. They just I don't think people see enough value in
that. And so what I like to kind of use as an analogy is, you know,
if you were driving a car without a dashboard, like you just had no
idea about the speedometer, you have check engine light, your oil
gauge, all of that stuff is just not there, you can't see it, you
can still drive the car without it. But you're guessing when you
need to fill up on gas, you're guessing when you need to kind of
you know, do your oil, change your guessing if like, there's an
entity, you have to, you no longer have this direct input to see if
your car's running properly. You know, and you know, the check
engine light could be on and blinking. Yeah, and it's just you have
it covered up and you can't see you have no idea there's this
catastrophic problem that could be coming your way. And until your
car just breaks down. And that car is symbolic of a lot of our
clients, businesses in our own business. If you don't have this
financial tracking, and some sort of feedback happening every month
to see, hey, am I spending my money on the right things? Am I doing
enough to drive revenue to cover the expenses? I have? Is my
business profitable enough? Am I saving enough for taxes, there's
all these aspects of running a business that I think you a lot of
entrepreneurs don't realize they need to pay more attention to
until the pain becomes so bad that they have no choice but to
figure it out. Which is a lot of times we when we find them, or
they just ignore it until they get a huge tax bill, or literally
their business breaks down and then it's no longer profitable. And
they can't and they have to shut the business down. Yeah. And so
that's the power we've seen with our clients with what we do is
that as soon as they start getting these hard numbers in front of
them, and they're like, oh, like, I didn't realize I could
understand this, I didn't realize how important this was, I didn't
realize how important feedback was for me to get, they instantly
changed the way they think about their business. Because in some
ways it does become a game. How do I make sure these numbers stay
healthy, and I make these numbers the way I want through the daily
activity of myself and my team in the business. And that's
something Corey and I have seen tremendously in our own business,
we have our own, you know, financial tracking we do for ourselves,
that allows us to plan for the future that allows us to make sure
that what we're doing on a monthly basis is supporting our team
supporting our clients, we're hitting our financial goals. And all
of that is just getting comfortable with your financial data,
getting that feedback on a monthly basis. So you can just actually
know, is this business running well, or is it not? And you can't,
you can only go off of a gut feeling for so long. So that's what I
would challenge everyone here to do, whether it's going out and
hiring a bookkeeper, or just taking managing your finances
yourself, like in your spreadsheet, or wherever it is, yourself
taking that really seriously and using that financial data to start
shaping the future of your business.
Unknown Speaker 29:01
That's cool. And I, I
Dean Soto 29:05
I can totally so I, I've had situations where, where if I didn't
know the numbers, I would have been in a world of hurt.
Parker Stevenson 29:13
Yeah, for sure. And
Dean Soto 29:15
in any way even like little things too, because if they, you know,
I can imagine since I mean, depending on depending on the the tears
and stuff that you guys offer. I know some of them, you actually
talk with your clients on a regular basis. Once you get the report,
sometimes it could be something like, you know, just me seeing Why
am I spending so much on this type of software this or are in
software in general? And do I have like things that are just that
I'm not even using? Or why Why? You know, I don't have anything,
like you said for taxes for payroll taxes for estimated taxes,
things like that, if I don't have it, if I don't have awareness of
how much am I going to actually have to pay? You know, there's a
there's a lot of things that that have happened just from seeing
the numbers. I mean, just recently I cut, cut a lot of software
that I was like, for whatever reason, I was like, I'm going to use
that someday we're going to use it someday. And it was like $400 or
$500, or the software just sitting there doing it not doing
anything for my business at all. And so I'm like, oh, cancel,
cancel, cancel, cancel, cancel.
Parker Stevenson 30:33
But, but those audits are important that's important to keeping the
business is profitable as possible, right?
Dean Soto 30:38
Yeah. And I would imagine to it has there ever been any situation
where where a client was, say even giving too much like affiliate
income or something like that, to where it was actually hurting
their business or something like where it was actually hurting
their business because they didn't realize too much is going out.
And you're not even keeping any for your Have you ever had any.
Parker Stevenson 31:01
I mean, we've seen it all man, it's crazy Dean, we're just recently
this year, we have this client, a newer client, who I just
absolutely adore. He's such an amazing, amazing person, but he had
a whole revenue stream that we were looking at going, you need to
cut this revenue stream out, it's taking up all of your time. It's
called stress and making your business less profitable. And we're
not really making any money off of it. So why why do we have this,
these two other offers you have are the ones that are easier to
manage, provide more value, and we can grow, they still have
tremendous potential for growth. So we get in a situation like
that, especially on the revenue side, or sometimes clients are
trying to sell too many offers, they have too many offers. And a
small business just can't afford they know there's not enough time
or enough marketing dollars to try to talk about and promote a ton
of different things on a regular basis, we've seen quite realize
oh, like because there's, there's all these balances, right? Like
you're trying to find the balance of keeping the business healthy,
while also making sure you're getting paid as an owner and making
the money you need to make to support your family and your
lifestyle. And then also, and and there's a lot of intricacies
between the balance of those two things like building up savings
within your business so that if you have a down month, we have cash
to get us through that. And it's not a stressful situation. Or
sometimes where someone is taking out too much money from the
business, they don't realize how much they're taking out. Because
they're looking at their business as still their own personal bank
account. And then realize that even though the business is would be
successful in the eyes of almost anyone probably listening right
now, you'd be like, Oh, I'd love to have a business like this. But
they're still in financial turmoil, because they're just not aware
of how much they're paying themselves how much they're spending on
different things. So the bottom line might look good on the
p&l, but the reality is, they're still kind of cash poor,
there's just not enough cash in the business that if they wanted to
hire another person, if you wanted to start running Facebook ads,
they have no flexibility to adapt or jump on opportunities in the
future. So there's just it's such a delicate balance between being
able to invest in the businesses future be able to protect the
business in the long run, while also keeping the business super
profitable. So you as a business owner can build your own wealth.
And the only way you can figure out what that balance feels how
that balance works best for you and for your situation is to have
that monthly scorecard to have that monthly feedback. So you can
make those decisions to give your business the best chance of
sticking around for a really long time. And to give you the best
chance as a business owner to have a business that will actually
create personal wealth for you as well.
Dean Soto 33:44
Yeah, dude, I've never been so excited about bookkeeping.
It's crazy, man.
It's It's awesome. Like it's it's, it's, it's cool. They get you know, my wife is really good with numbers. And she that's all like, for me, I'm like I do it for me to be like, idealist. I can I can just go do my thing. Come back, see what the numbers are. Okay, things are good. Okay, go go do go do my thing. Come back, oh, things are not so good. Let me fix this. And to just like you said, be fully out there. And doing what I do best, rather than,
you know, crap. Now I have to spend six hours at the end of this month doing my bookkeeping, and I don't even know if I'm doing it right. And
I don't even you know, like it. It's a it's a very painful process in a one that I avoid if I have to do it myself, you know. And which then gives me no feedback,
Parker Stevenson 34:42
you know, it. And we don't expect any of our clients to be
financial pros. We're not asking them to be a CFO. All we're asking
them to do is to, like you just said, take a look at the numbers.
See where you're at, realize where you need to make some
adjustments, realize where you see your opportunities, or even just
pat yourself on the back things are going well. Everything's going
as planned. Great. And then you go back into business, we're
talking about 30 minutes to an hour and a half a month. Yep, of
looking at your numbers and taking that part of your business
seriously. We're not running multinational corporations here. No
one needs CFO, we don't need controllers or like full time
financial reporting, we just need this part of our businesses
organized cleanly like Marie Kondo. This stuff right here, you
know, Marie Kondo your business and get the financial stuff
organized. And so that way, you have a clean, well organized
machine, that is giving you the feedback, you need to see, am I
doing a good job as a business owner or not. And again, just those
reports on their own, most people want to be able to just read a
report and know and that's where the second part of our service
comes in, which is the education part around understanding what
those numbers are. And again, it's not rocket science here. But at
the end of the day, if you've never worked in the financial
situation, you know, so many of our clients never even worked in a
big company before, right? Like they've only been entrepreneurs, or
they were more creatives or doing something else that wasn't really
business oriented. And now all of a sudden, they're in these
businesses. And they're like, what, like, they don't know what they
don't know, totally, totally. But they're still fully capable of
learning this stuff. Because if you can add and subtract man,
defined as a business owner, we just need to step up and get the right information in front of you. I love it. I love it.
Dean Soto 36:30
So how can people reach you? How can people if they if they want to
schedule a time with you, or just be to work with you? How can
people actually get in contact with you and Corey?
Parker Stevenson 36:42
Yeah, so the best way is just go to our website of all finance
calm, there's scheduled call buttons all over the website to have
you set up a time. But I recommend taking a look at the website,
because we definitely make it very clear what type of businesses we
work with, and sort of where you need to be at to be a good fit for
us. But I think I'd spend you a link for really great download as
well. So we have a sales forecasting tool that I think is a much
longer link than probably makes sense to say over. So look in the
podcast details I imagine are on the on the blog page for this
podcast upload. But it's the free Sales Forecast Tool that if
you're like, new to the numbers side of things, and you want to see
the power of taking some time to think about the financial side of
your business and the power of using your numbers to shape what the
future of your business can look like. And make sure that you're
building a business that's going to be profitable, and healthy.
Then the sales forecasting tools, just a spreadsheet that we've
done all the work for you just plug some numbers in. And it also
comes with a free to tour, a tutorial video tutorial that'll walk
you through exactly how to use it. I honestly think it's like one
of the best free things any business educator gives away, because I
just, I would never start a business or get involved in a business.
If I didn't have a budget and a forecast in place to see what's the
the potential of this business and this tool will get you get you
on your way to feeling like your numbers aren't so scary.
Awesome.
Dean Soto 38:07
Yeah, I love that. I love that.
So yeah, we'll put those in that will put that in the show notes. But definitely go head over to evolved finance.com evolved finance, calm, ev OLVD finance.com just in case, just in case you didn't know how to spell that. Or if I'm slurring or whatever. But go check it out. I mean, they're, they're really awesome. If you're, if you're doing anything online, and you're you have affiliates or PayPal or anything like that, you know, do you have to definitely check them out because it is painful, especially as you start being getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and you're getting a lot more things that you're managing and a lot more different revenue streams, it becomes harder and harder and harder. So so all that being said, thanks so much for being on man. I appreciate you,
Parker Stevenson 39:02
Dean. I appreciate you having me. It was really fun talking with
you.
Dean Soto 39:06
Yeah, it's is is awesome. Like I said, this is didn't expect to be
so excited about bookkeeping man. So thanks, Parker. Yeah, thank
you. So Alright, cool. So that is the end of this podcast episode.
But of course, it's not the end of the podcast. If you want to get
a virtual systems architect, go head over to freedom in five
minutes calm. What they can do for you is you show them a video,
five minutes a day, they're documented. They'll do it for you and
you never have to do that thing ever again. So go check out freedom
in five minutes calm, go check out evolved finance.com as well. And
until next time, I will see you on the next freedom in five minutes
podcast episode.