Hello everyone. Welcome to the Hourly Exit podcast. I am so excited to have Melissa Houston with me here today. Thank you for joining me, Melissa.
Hi, Erin. Thank you so much for having me.
Well, Melissa and I have known each other for a while. I've had the pleasure of being on her podcast as well, so I'm super excited to have her here to talk to you about all things financial health, but first I'm gonna let Melissa, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself to the audience.
Oh, great. Okay, so my name is Melissa Houston. I am a cpa, which means I'm a certified professional accountant. I have been working in this field for over 20 years, and essentially I help business owners maximize the profit in their business so that they can keep more money for themselves and increase their net worth. So I try to take the fear out of managing the money in your business and really help you to optimize that profit.
Yeah, so important and I wanna mention, Melissa did not mention that she's a columnist with Forbes,
Oh yeah, I'm a little humble
Yeah. You know, I had to go there cause very impressive. So, you know, Forbes is one of my favorite sources, uh, to find information about Mackenzie Scott, who's, you know, my, you know, spirit idol and, uh, and the love, the charitable giving that she's
Yeah, she's doing great.
Yeah. Just so amazing. But I know audience would love to hear about how you're able to land that gig.
Yeah, well, you know, ironically enough, people think that it's who you know, and, you know, it really wasn't that case for me. I cold pitched them and I got a call. Um, I mean, it really was as simple as that. And I wish there was like this big secret that I could offer people, but you know, it's, it's really about being the expert in your field and putting it out there.
Yeah, you gotta get out there and, uh, yeah, we, we are all experts and, uh, and there's information we have that would be very valuable to other people, and we need to share it.
Exactly.
That's fantastic. So you describe yourself as a business finance coach. Tell me what that means and how you help people.
Yeah, so a business finance coach is kind of like the intermediary person between, your tax accountant and if you're a small to medium size business who's not quite ready for a CFO in your business. Business finance coach is me, and what I do is I help create profitability in your business. So typically clients come to me with the frustration of not really understanding their numbers in their business and knowing that they wanna create wealth but not sure how to do it.
So what we do is essentially we figure out where they're at financially in their business and talk about their financial goals, where they wanna be 12 months from. Five years from now, 10 years from now, and we do a financial plan that's according to what their goals are.
And what essentially that financial plan is, is it maps out each and every month what your goals are and these are the goals that you need to meet each and every month or exceed, and 12 months later, you should be achieving your goals. But it's not like a a, you know, start and stop thing. You should always have this financial plan in place for your business. And then when you have that financial plan, you also monitor your results against that plan each and every month.
So you understand if you hit your profit targets for the month. Because often what happens is business owners, they may have an idea where they want to go, they may not have made a plan. So I always say a goal without a plan is just a wish. And if you don't get that goal down on paper or in Excel or you know, however the term is these days, It's likely not gonna happen.
You need to make yourself accountable to your goals, and while you're doing that, when you map out these goals, you are also finding ways to increase that profitability in your business, you have all the moving parts mapped out, and you just ensure that each and every month you're meeting your targets. So that you are optimizing profit in your business.
Now, I also teach how to manage cash flow and, you know, internal controls and all sorts of other things that small businesses are, are up against that, we don't know where to go to get this help, but it's so essential. And ultimately the goal is increase the profit so that it increases your net worth. Because as small business owners, chances are you own your business a hundred percent. So that is a financial asset.
Right. So two things. One is, so you are a cpa, but in this role, you're not acting as your cpa, they're using a separate tax accountant or, or is that?
Exactly, Yes. So because I am Canadian and in order to practice in Canada and the US, I would need to be licensed in each and every province and state. to do taxes and I just don't have that bandwidth.
Yeah, and there are other people who can do it, so...
Yeah, And I don't love taxes enough to specialize in it. So what I do is I help my clients by working with their cpa, their tax accountant, who is going to give those tax saving strategies to help optimize the profit as well. So they have their tax accountant in the state that they're in, or the province if they're Canadian and we work together. And ensure that they are taking advantage of the privileges that you have as a business owner when it comes to the income tax act.
Okay. Gotcha. And then the other is you use the term financial plan. You didn't use the term financial planner, which I associate with like the person who helps you get your retirement and that kind of stuff. And so couple of the difference between the financial plan versus what a financial planner does.
Yeah, so that's a really good question and I love how you picked up on that. So, financial plan is a combination of a budget and an operating forecast. So these are accounting terminologies, right? And I tend to stay away from them because it can sound a little scary to some people and they're like, I don't wanna get involved in that. But what it is, is it's looking at where you are at in your business and planning out where you wanna take your business to, right?
So you're looking at the financial plan in the sense of how much money you wanna earn, how much profitability, if you can increase your profit margins, all sorts of stuff like that. And a financial planner is the designated person who helps you invest your money.
So if you were at the stage in your business where you've hit your growth target, you're at your sweet spot and you've got all this extra money that you need to invest, this is where you would consult not only a CPA, but a financial planner to start investing, and the CPA's there to help you with the tax saving strategies for personal investing as well, and business.
And your financial planner, probably if you pick a good one, we'll probably know all the tax rules and such, and basically, you work together as a team to ensure that you are protecting your financial assets and growing them and getting your money working for you.
Got it. Okay. Very good. So you mentioned that, uh, small business owners, they, they need this help, but they don't know where to find it. I assume when you kind of entered this, well, first of all, are you a corporate refugee
Yes, absolutely
Okay.
And that's why I went into business for myself, because I knew this was lacking.
I've worked in corporate, I've worked in public accounting firms, and whether I'm working with business owners or project managers, I see the same thing where people don't understand their business numbers, and when you understand your business numbers, that helps make you the best business owner that you can be, because what you're doing is you're making profitable business decisions every single day instead of relying on your accountant who you probably see once a year, and really isn't all
that invested in your business. I always say nobody's gonna care about your business as much as you do, so you need to get familiar with your numbers.
Yeah. Well, well let's, let's jump into that then. So, in a lot of service providers, you know, we think in terms of income, which is, you know, many of us are corporate refugees. We think in terms of income, we have that kind of post corporate mentality. And if we're going to think about ourselves as CEOs of our business business owners, we need to kind of think beyond income.
So there are a couple of terms that are related, but different that I think people sometimes use interchangeably cuz they don't understand the different nuances of them. But those are revenue, profit, and income. And can you just kind of tell us the differences and
I love this question. This is such an important question because often what we hear as business owners is if we're having cash flow problems, what do people usually tell us? Go make more money, right? So that's the revenue. And the thing is, revenue is important. You absolutely need revenue in your business, but if you're not generating profit, which is what you get to keep as a business owner at the end of the day, then it's a red flag for your business.
So revenue, yes, it's important, but you don't need to generate more revenue if you've got money leaks. You have to go in and fix your money leaks. You have to go in, know your numbers, know where you can increase profit, check your pricing structure. There's all sorts of things that you need to do before you just go out and make more money, right? Because if you're making more money, it's just like being on a hamster wheel. The problem is still gonna be there.
You're still gonna be cash poor at the end of the month and wondering where all your money went. So profit is revenue, less expenses. So all your expenses would be your, all your costs, all your overhead, and that includes paying yourself. So, so many times I see business owners who are not paying themself a regular salary. So that is definitely one thing we do in the financial plan where we include that.
So you ensure that you're paying yourself what you need to pay yourself in order to meet your personal financial responsibilities. So then the essentially income, net income and profit, that's the same line in an income statement, right? So whether you're, you can use them interchangeably and profit income is what you get to keep as a business owner. So you can either reinvest into your business as you're growing your business, or you can invest in another ways to get your money working for you.
Okay. Got it. And so when we think about the service based business, you know, I. Probably the lay person thinks of profit in product based business is, you know, the revenue minus cost of good sold. And we're trying to figure out what that expense is or cost of good sold is in the expertise based business.
Do you start with what do you need to live or do you start with what the market rate is for what you do like, Like what is the right way to think about like what your cost of good sold is in an expertise based business?
Yeah, so your cost of good sold is actually a little different from your overhead expenses, right? So for product based businesses, the cost of good sold is going to be all the direct costs going into creating that product. And then the overhead costs are your salaries and um, you know, advertising and dos and subscriptions and all that stuff, right? So when I first meet with clients, one of the steps that we take. Establishing what they need to earn at a minimum to pay their personal expenses.
So we factor that into the financial plan. And then we work backwards in a way, cuz like what we do is we calculate all the monthly expenses that are coming in and then examine their pricing strategy, look at how their pricing, their products and services, seeing if we need to make any adjustments there. See if we need to reduce costs or increase rates or increase sales levels.
And then we start planning out how much revenue they need to bring in in order to break even, and then in order to get to the net profit margins of their business that they want to achieve. So usually we base the net profit margins on what is happening in their industry. So for service based businesses, typically, 50% is a standard net profit margin, where in the restaurant bakery business, it would be eight to 10%. So it really varies from industry to industry.
Okay. Gotcha. And so that makes you, I mean, you're talking to them about their pricing, about their business model, about everything,
Exactly, and it can get very overwhelming. So that's why it's, it's very hands on. We're there to do it together and we create that plan. And, um, what happens after that is you monitor the plan. So then usually they check in with me every month to look at it together and compare what they actually did in that month versus what they had planned. And then we examine the variances and see if there's any problems that are surfacing that need to be fixed in order to, you know, plug money leaks.
Do you work mostly with service based businesses or do you have different industries?
I have a gamut of different industries. I love working with product based businesses, I love working with service based. Product based tends to be a little bit more detailed and complicated, so I love challenges, right?
right. Right. And all different. That's great. Now, the name of your business is,
she means profit I work with men and women. I love working with women because women tend to have a lot of money mindset issues where we have been told that we don't need to be wealthy or you know, we just, you know, need as much as we need to get by, or that making money is greedy and there's all sorts of baggage that we can carry about becoming wealthy. And I really try to change that narrative in their head and just show women how.
We have the space, we have the capability, we have the brains, we have the ambition. We have everything we need. So it's okay to claim that wealth.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and at the end of the day, in the United States of America, wealth means impact, right? And so if we wanna have a voice, if we wanna make a difference, like it's fairly difficult to do that wealth free. And so the more wealth we have in the hands of women, You know, the more that they are generous, like as we know from McKenzie versus, uh, her ex, uh, and, uh, and that you can help your community, help your childrens sharing that wealth.
I mean, it's to look at it as the ways you can use it for good instead of
There's so many great ways you can use wealth, right? And I love what you said, like, you know, Yes. Women definitely donate. We build charities, we build not for profits. Um, we. Set our kids up for education and set them up for a good future. There's generational wealth that can be passed down from generation to generation. There's so much we can be doing with wealth and there's so many good things. And you know, a, a lot of women fear that money will change them.
Dig into that for me. Where does that come from?
I'm not sure where it comes from. Maybe it's a lot of the childhood stories we're told and you know, we just play them back in our heads. But the thing is, I always say to them, Are you a good person now? And usually the answer is yes. So with money that can just. Have you be a not a better person, but like a bigger, more impactful person.
On a bigger scale, you're still gonna be that good person if you're a jerk, it's just going to amplify the fact that you're a jerk if you got a whole bunch of money, right? So money doesn't change who we are, it just changes the opportunities that were given.
Right. Yeah. I wonder if it also, I mean if a woman is partnered with a man, if it seems too competitive or that it's just, it will change the dynamic within that relationship as well.
Yeah, and that's a really good question because a lot of women fear that they fear making more than their partner. They fear making more than their parents. There's a lot of fear that comes with money. Money is a very emotional topic, right? But the reality is there's more and more women who are out earning their male spouses now, and it's just becoming a little bit more normalized and you know, hopefully 5, 10, 15 years down the road, it could be the.
Or, you know, I, I don't know if equality will ever, a hundred percent be achieved, right? Cause there's always gonna be that balance, that scale. But I mean the equality in the sense that women can absolutely out earn their men and totally be okay. I mean, I'm in a relationship like that and I know my husband doesn't feel threatened by it.
Right.
He feels grateful,
Exactly. Like what? Where's the downside
Yeah, and a lot of women have the, the dream of retiring their spouses too. You know, if their spouse is not, an entrepreneur themselves and they're in their jobs and they're miserable, you know, they want to help them get out of that. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. That's a gift.
Right, Exactly. Yeah. And for some of us, and certainly I started mine when I, uh, went out on my own, it was definitely lifestyle oriented and I was not remotely thinking about building an asset or it was very income oriented, kind of based on, you know, what was I making when I was in house versus what I'm making now. And my primary motivator was flexibility and making enough to cover what I needed to cover. Like that was a hundred percent of what I was doing.
You know, for me, the mindset issues weren't kind of those negative ones. It was more of a understanding what it could be, like instead of just being an income generator. And so in that, until someone kind of tells you that you just stay in that income mindset. Like as I'm talking to women now and we talk about, you know, using our expertise to create assets, it is very surprising to easily 90% of them, they never thought about that as an asset builder.
so what are you seeing when you're talking, I mean, your, your podcast, your, your columns, you're writing like, what are women thinking about? Like what were they thinking? Was it all news to them or,
No, I would completely agree with you. Most of them are not thinking that it's an asset builder, but what I talk about all the time is how being a business owner is the fastest way to create wealth for yourself because your business is a financial asset. You have the, control to a certain extent how much money that you're bringing in each and every month, and you have control over the profit and you know, all the wealth building tools that come with being a business owner.
But also I talk about, and I know obviously you do too, the exit strategy, right? You know, building that asset so that you can sell it one day. So not only just look at it as being an income producer, but being an asset that you can sell and you know, give yourself a nice little retirement nest egg or go on to build another business or whatever it is that you desire.
Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. So when someone comes to you, like, how do they know they need you? Like, what are they experiencing that they go, I need to go talk to Melissa?
Typically what I see is there's a lot of fear and anxiety when, when people come to me because they feel so overwhelmed about their business finances and they, they feel like, this is generalization, but they feel like they've been failing. Right. And what I often say to, to people is that you started your business with the passion that you had to help people, you know?
So whether you're a lawyer or you're a dentist, or you're selling jewelry, whatever the case may be, that is what you were passionate about and that's how you wanted to help people. Chances are nobody really taught you how to manage the money in your business, right? And even if you did take an accounting or business class, they didn't teach you that. You know, like nobody really teaches you how to do that. So accountants know how to do it because that's what we've done since day one.
I mean, even as an accounting student, I was not taught how to manage money. I was taught debits and credits and you know, financial reports and blah, blah, blah, this stuff. But nobody taught us how to put it together. We just figured it out, right. So having that opportunity to have somebody to show you exactly what you need to know really alleviates the stress.
Right. You know, I just turned the page on my questions here and I realized I missed one that I wanted to talk to you about in terms of calculating profit, which. you know, not just calculating it on the entire business, but like assuming it's a service based business and we have different services.
Let's say we do some one on one stuff, maybe we do some group coaching, maybe we have some sort of product like measuring profit, the importance of measuring profit for each of your offerings versus just on the whole company
Such a good question. I love this question. Yes. And this is where we definitely examine that and the, when we're looking at the pricing strategies, right, because it's really important, especially for product based businesses, I find a lot of them don't know what the gross margin is on their products. So the gross margin is the. Price that they're charging for their product or services, and then all the direct costs that go into it, Right?
So what happens is for product based businesses, they think that their best seller is. Their highest paying product, right? But what happens is your best seller may actually be putting you in the hole if you don't understand your numbers. So you have to examine all the costs that go into this and make sure that you're priced accordingly and turn that best seller into your profit making machine as well. Right? So, yeah, that is definitely part of the strategy.
We look at all the products and services that are being offered and price them accordingly so that you are making that industry standard gross margin.
Right. Yeah, no, that, that was a recent revelation for me. Like where, where, you know, as I work with, with my accountant about like tracking the different income streams differently, and I, first, I'm like, What, what difference does it make? But like, Oh no, you have to
Yeah. When you start seeing what, what makes most money, chances are you're gonna start focusing on selling that
Yes, exactly.
you know?
exactly. Yes. okay, so this is the Hourly to Exit podcast. And so here we talk about that journey from that unsustainable hourly model to building a business that hopefully can sell some day and create wealth. And you know, part of that, of course is creating assets to having exclusivity in your business. And so the assets and including IP and. Market positioning as well as having predictability in the business. So you have independence from the founder and that you have SOPs and the like.
And so when, when we talk about the context of building a scalable and saleable services business, like where does your role come in and how do you help them get there?
Yeah, so this is a good question as well, because when investors are looking to buy your business, they're gonna care about how much cash you're generating in your business, right? And we want to make sure that you are at the right place financially to sell your business. So they will look at it as a good investment. So making sure that your books are up to date and accounted for correctly. I mean, so many times I've seen huge messes in the bookkeeping.
So making sure that's all cleaned up before you put your business up to sell. And ensuring that you're optimizing the profit in your business so that you can get a bigger price tag for it.
Right. Absolutely. You mentioned, one of the things that you do is help people go from six figures to seven figures. Is there a ma is there magic there between six and seven? Like when, When looking at that exit?
I would say if I was looking at it with my investor eyes on it, it wouldn't matter if it's a six, seven, or eight figure business. I would be looking at the profit margins. Right.
That's what it was. At Profit Margins. We were talking about the, the 50%. That's what I was,
Yeah. Yeah. So making sure that the profit margins are healthy, because if you've got a really good business, but the investor wants to grow that business, they're totally able to do that if you've got that solid financial foundation. Right. So it would be much more appealing to me to purchase a Business that earns about 500,000 revenue, but the profit margins are at 50% versus somebody who's earning, you know, two, 3 million. But the profit margins are at 20%.
The big difference is that big chunk of money that you're gonna have at the end, right? So to grow and scale a business that it's at 50% profit margin is so much easier than doing it backwards did that make sense? That got a little convoluted there.
No, no, it absolutely did. Yeah. And yeah. And that, you know, a buyer is buying know your, your future, not your past. Right. So
Exactly, exactly. They're gonna look at the financial potential of the business. They're gonna look at all sorts of other financial ratios, like customer retention, customer satisfaction, Um, the list goes on. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but there's, there's a lot of financial ratios that they're gonna examine when they're looking to purchase a business.
Right, right. Well, that brings us to the fact that this is a very meta podcast. You know, I'm a female founder of an expertise based business that I'm hoping to grow to sell someday, and you are the female founder of an expertise based business. So are you growing your business to perhaps sell some
Absolutely
course?
the smart thing to do. You know, you know, I, I really made a conscious effort with, she needs profit to separate my name from the business and ensure that the business can go on
Right, Right. Do you have a team or how do you use solo? Or how do you set up your,
I have a little, Yeah. I mean, may, It's my personality defect, right? I have a little bit of a control freak, so I have a team, but I don't have anybody on payroll,
Yeah.
I contract my
Yeah, that's definitely a team. That's absolutely a team. Yeah, Yeah, and I mean that's just, if you're using a team that shows that you have systems in place and that you have, you know, that's not just you with your genius, which is hard to genius,
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, some people think like, oh, having somebody on payroll is absolutely, you know, the only way to have a team. But that's not the case. And I prefer to, outsource because, like, say for example, marketing and social media, if they're on my payroll, that means I'm responsible for ensuring that their knowledge stays up to date. I don't know the first thing about that,
Mm, right?
burdened with it.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, unless you have, you know, enough, uh, activity. You know, keeping up to date on those things internally makes sense. Like, I mean, the fractional CFO thing, it's kind of the same issue. Like how much of that do you need in house? And people are afraid. They feel like a team means employees and Absolutely does not. I, I agree a hundred percent that team can be your contractors, and that it's a great way to, you know, add leverage to our businesses and, and help us grow cuz.
Yeah.
Stay in your zone in Genius. So to wrap up, um, I know you have a book coming out. Please tell us about that.
Oh, thank you. I'm super excited about this book. It's called Cash Confident. It's the Entrepreneur's Guide to Creating a Profitable Business, and it will be for sale and bookstores. the job date is May 16th, 2023. Little bit of ways, but. Still super excited about it, getting the word out about it so that people are aware that there's going to be an extra resource to help them create the most profitable business that they can create.
Tell us about the, the timeline of getting like a year from when, you know, you're writing the book. Like is that just the publisher's timeline? Like how does
That's the publisher's timeline. So it was really important to me to get a traditional book publishing deal and I, you know, by most standards I got very, very lucky. So this is actually happening pretty quickly. So. let's see. They purchased the book February 20 of this year. We're in 2022. Okay. Sorry. The pandemic has messed up my memory. So February, 2022 and then, Going through the timeline to May 16th, 2023, there's still a lot of work to be done.
There's edits that we still need to go through and book covers, it's a long road to getting a, a book published when, when you're doing it through a
Mm-hmm. That's very exciting. And did you have a whole, outline or like how much did you have to sell your book?
Oh, I had a book proposal that I had been working on for about eight months and got a financial literary agent, and then we decided to change a bit of it, so then worked on it for another three months, and then she sold it. So a lot of work went into the book proposal, which is completely separate from the actual book
Right.
So it's quite a long process, but by by standards. I did it within two years. I guess it'll be about two and a half years by the time it's published. So I feel very fortunate about
Yeah. that. is fantastic. And so I know you have an offer that you share that you can share with the
Yes. So for anybody who's interested in learning more about being the most successful business owner that you can be in creating that profit in your business and understanding your business numbers, uh, you can download my free guide. It's the Five Step Roadmap to Biz Finance Freedom. I'll send you the link. I'm assuming you'll leave it in the show notes.
absolutely.
Perfect. And um, yeah, you can get the, I think it's like a better seven or eight page guide and it gives you more information on how to do that.
Fantastic. Absolutely. That will be in the show notes and as well as please tell people where they can find you.
Yeah, so my main site is Melissa Houston cpa.com, and she means profit.com. And I also have a podcast called She Means Profit. Tune into it and learn all about how you can create profitability in your business.
Fantastic. Well, this has been so wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. I know it was tremendously valuable to the audience, and I look forward to doing again soon.
Thank you so much for having me. This has been such a fun talk.
Good. Thank you. Melissa