Unlocking business growth starts with understanding your numbers, and in this episode, Samantha Eck, dives deep into how financial insights can help you hit your growth goals faster.

Specifically, Samantha shares:

• Why knowing your numbers is the secret to business growth.
• Which three financial metrics matter most for growth.
• The role of strategic planning and financial projections.

Mentioned in This Episode:

• Connect with Samantha on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@firestormfinance
• Follow Samantha on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firestormfinance/
• Listen to Samantha's Podcast: Creative Minds, Smart Money: https://creativemindssmartmoney.buzzsprout.com/
• Learn more about Firestorm Finance: https://firestormfinance.com/

About Samantha:

Samantha Eck is a bookkeeper for creatives and a coach for bookkeepers looking to build their business. Using her corporate background and education in accounting she focuses on helping creatives read the story their numbers are trying to tell them so that they can utilize them to grow their business to unexpected heights.

When not crunching numbers Samantha can be found spending time with her husband Justin and dog Vivi usually reading, gaming or cross stitching while watching a good show.

Let’s Connect!

• Connect with Angela on LinkedIn

Work With Me: growthdirective.com

About Angela

Angela Frank is a fractional CMO with a decade-long track record of generating multimillion-dollar marketing revenue for clients. She is the founder of The Growth Directive, a marketing consultancy helping brands create sustainable marketing programs.

Her new book Your Marketing Ecosystem: How Brands Can Market Less and Sell More helps business owners, founders, and corporate leaders create straightforward and profitable marketing strategies.

Angela is the host of The Growth Pod podcast, where she shares actionable tips to help you build a profitable brand you love.

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Welcome to The Growth Pod. Today on the podcast, we have Samantha Eck, who is a bookkeeper for creatives and a coach for bookkeepers looking to build their business.

Using her corporate background in education and accounting, she focuses on helping creatives read the story their numbers are trying to tell them so they can utilize them to grow their business to unexpected heights. Samantha, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

I am very excited. Today we're going to chat all about how you can unlock business growth by knowing your numbers.

But before we get started, can you share a little bit more about how knowing your numbers leads to business growth? I understand it at a surface level.

We've had a lot of people on the podcast talking about, you know, the importance of cash flow, but I really want to take this conversation to the next level. And now that we have an understanding of our numbers, how can we use that to unlock growth?

Yeah, absolutely. So numbers always tell a story. There's something deeper beneath them than just what we see on the surface.

So when you start really analyzing them, you start using the trends, you start looking at them on a deeper level. That's really where you start to unlock that growth.

So instead of just looking at them on a month to month basis or looking at them as a year overall, comparing things year over year, comparing things month over month, and really seeing what changed every month is what's going to really give you that really good detail in order to understand what you need to do in order to grow.

So perhaps you made one pivot in the previous month, then you did this month, and now you're looking at your numbers and you're saying, wow, I made more money this month than I did last month. That's how you really know and understand, okay, what did I do last month that made me have more of an income?

I need to repeat that so that I can grow my business.

I love that you're saying not only month to month, but also year over year.

I know just from my marketing background, those year over year trends have been really important for understanding seasonality or any sort of trends in businesses that I've been leading growth for. And so I love that you're taking that also that same approach from finances as well.

When business owners are looking at their numbers, what are the general numbers that you think every business owner and founder should understand?

Yeah, absolutely. So I think definitely revenue.

And then the difference between revenue and income is such a huge one because there's such a disconnect with A lot of the times, you know, we see these coaches on Instagram or something like that saying, hey, I earned $30,000. Was that $30 in revenue or is that $30 in income?

Because if that's $30 in revenue, at the end of the day, they might only be bringing home $300 after their expenses are.

So definitely understanding that, that income, the revenue, as well as looking at your expenses and understanding what percentage of your expenses are being taken out from that revenue, because that's going to give you again, that deeper insight and really help you understand, okay, do I want to be spending 60% of my revenue on expenses or is that a little bit high for me? Does 60% sound like something that's going to harm my business in the long run?

When we think of other numbers that we want to look at, we generally, generally want to think of some of the key metrics, like your client acquisition cost, analyzing your marketing versus what you're getting back from that, looking at your gross profit margin. So if you're someone who sells products, looking at what your cost of goods are versus what your actual, like, items are.

So just really looking at those, those three key ones, which, I mean, the revenue, the expense percentage, and then your net income is really what's going to help you get to where you need to be.

I think that's so important when you're looking at a business. Obviously, every business is different, but you mentioned some percentages.

Are there general percentages that you recommend people be in and how do those change over time?

Yeah, absolutely. So I myself used to practice profit first. I found it really chaotic when you have five different bank accounts that you're moving money to and from.

So instead of just having five different bank accounts, I have one. But I look at my expenses in the sense of, okay, I have 30% that I only want to spend on expenses. The rest of that, I want to go towards growth.

I want to go towards myself, like paying myself. Because paying yourself is also something that's very important.

So when I look at that, I say, okay, you know, generally I want my clients and people that I work with to have that 30% with expenses. Because I feel like that's a really good safe harbor. Now if you're someone who's like, okay, you know what, I don't need to pay myself as much.

I want to spend more on expenses. Cause I'm in this huge growth period, that's how we really differentiate that.

If you're someone who's like, I really want to just focus on growing My business. So my expenses are going to be really wild right now. Then we're going to shift that to focus on your expenses.

Whereas if you're someone who's like, you know what, Smith, I need to just pay myself more, then we really want to focus on dialing back those expenses and figuring out what's really draining your pockets.

Awesome. And when we're looking at our finances, how often do you recommend clients create a strategic plan?

I know that if you're in startup or growth mode, things can feel very uncertain. And so how do you marry that uncertainty with that strategic plan?

Yeah, absolutely. So with my clients, generally what we do is we set a plan every year, but there's.

Based on the package you get, we have strategic calls every quarter, every half year, or, like, once a year. But the thing is, we want to look at our books overall. Say, what's our budget? What do we have going on? Just figuring all of that out.

So really, you want to create that strategic plan at least once a year, but then you want to review it at least once every quarter and see where can you pivot? Like, what changes can you make and what impact will that have on your business overall?

And when you're working with clients, what are some common missteps or mistakes that you see founders make when they're looking at their numbers? And how do you help people, you know, through those mistakes and create a growth plan that works?

Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of the common mistakes I see is definitely, like I mentioned that revenue and income thing.

A lot of people are like, oh, my goodness, I brought in $10,000. And I'm like, you should definitely be proud of that. There's no doubt about that. You brought in $10,000.

But at the end of the day, what we want to look at is, are we profitable or are we not profitable?

So when we see that we brought in $10,000, but we have a negative net income, you know, that's something that I see where I'm like, yes, we brought in money, but we're overspending, we're overreaching. We want to dial that back. Another one, you know, is people who aren't paying themselves, period.

So they end up not paying themselves, and they're just spending all their money on their business. And that becomes something that.

Where I see, a lot of business owners end up getting burnt out because they're not earning any money for themselves out of this. So they end up saying, you know what? I'm just not gonna run my business anymore because it's not making any money.

So that's one of those things when we talk about, like, how do we kind of work on them with that? One of the things is we look at their expenses and say, hey, you know, is this something somewhere we really need to be spending?

A lot of things that my clients spend money on is like those coffee trips with their clients or, you know, networking and things like that.

And while I'm not someone who's going to say, no, you can't have that coffee trip at all, I'm also someone who's going to say, is this worth it to you? If it is, right on. Like, you know, that's what brings you happiness, go for it. But if you're like, you know what, Samantha? You're right.

Why am I spending $600 a month on coffee? Then we're going to dial that back and say, okay, so what do you actually want to be spending on coffee every month so that we can figure that out?

I think that's important.

One of the things that I just recognize, not only in myself, but founders that I work with, there's so much going on that sometimes you don't realize how much you're actually spending or what's actually going on until you sit down to look at the numbers.

And so I love this example of maybe somebody who's networking a lot and doesn't realize that they're spending $600 a month on coff and instead maybe that's better spent elsewhere or better spent paying yourself. With that in mind, I want to take what we've been talking about, which is a lot of theory, and I want to put it into practice.

So can you share a success story of a client that you've worked with who maybe didn't know their numbers, took the time to learn it and create that growth plan, and then saw the success that they were looking for with their business?

Yeah, absolutely. So there's actually one I'm working with right now. She's been in business for three years, and she's one of my top tier clients.

So we're doing a lot of deep CFO work. We're looking at KPIs, we're looking at her cash flow, we're doing all of that stuff.

But what we're really looking at is that year over year, balance and understanding, you know, what happened last year versus what's going to happen this year. So when we look at our books and we're saying, okay, you had a dip in income, you know, in September, how are we going to MITIGATE that this year?

Like, yes. Do we expect to dip in income this year? Yes.

But how do we make sure that we have a positive net income month this year so that we still see that consistent growth instead of seeing a negative net income month?

So what we did was we looked at, you know, the pre, the month before that and the month after, and we said, okay, so we see that we have some pretty heavy expenses in September. How do we split that over the next three months? So that instead of having this huge expense, you know, amount in September, we just level it out.

Then you'll still have that net positive net income and you'll be able to kind of plan ahead.

So she really looked at her numbers and she said, you know what, why don't we split up our cost of goods that we're purchasing for September across all three months, and then we can just have like a small bite every month and it won't be so big. So we just actually looked at her financials, and this is someone that I've worked with recently.

We just actually looked at her financials last month.

And because she split it up, not only did she have that positive net income, but her net income was like significantly higher than it was last year because she managed to understand, we had managed to understand what was going on and then mitigate that risk of having that negative net income in that month.

So really putting that to the example, when you look at your numbers year over year and you understand the trends and you see, okay, I had a negative net income month last year at the same point in time. How do I stop that from happening again this year?

You're going to see that huge impact when you understand where you went wrong last year versus how you can fix that this year.

Yeah, I think that's such a crystal clear example of, you know, leaning into the fact that you might have a seasonality in your business where you have a lower income month, but there's things that you can do to make sure that you in the negative for that month. And so I think that that's so smart where you're taking a look.

You're making sure that she's set up for success and making sure that just her finances are taken care of.

And when you have that positive income, then you can go ahead and continue to focus on growth instead of worrying about, you know, what's going to happen in this example in the month of September.

Absolutely.

Samantha, you are somebody who really dives deep with their clients and making sure that they are set up for. And I'M sure that that keeps you really busy, but I'm curious to know what's next for you.

Yeah, absolutely. So I have a bunch of speaker opportunities coming up, which is really exciting.

I've been working on a couple of different, like, communities and things like that that I'm looking to talk in. So that's amazing.

I'm also looking at, you know, developing some programs where people who might not have the ability to hire a bookkeeper yet can, you know, lean on my expertise to kind of get some insight without having to pay the fee for a monthly bookkeeper, which I think is so important because I just think that financial education needs to be accessible to so many business owners.

And then as well as working on a course that will help others to do bookkeeping on their own until they are ready for someone to take that over for them.

That is really exciting. Where can we follow up with you if we're interested in the course when it launches or any of your services? Where's the best place for us to find you?

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm really active on both threads and Instagram threads is where you'll find me just having unfiltered thoughts.

And Instagram is really more of that, like, professionality. So both of those places are really great for me.

I also have my own podcast where, you know, I speak specifically to creatives, just about finances as well as we bring in experts to talk about different topics. So if you're. Look, if you're a creative and you really want to just find out more information, that's a great place for you as well.

Otherwise, you can find me at my website. Website, firestorm finance.com and yeah, that's. That's where you can connect with me.

Amazing. And all of those links will be in the show notes. So if any of that sounded good to you, you are covered. It's right there for you.

Samantha, thank you so much for joining us today. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Growth Pod. I look forward to seeing you in the next one.