[00:00:29] Serena: Welcome back to the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast. Today I have another lovely guest, Sabrina Parsons, who is with Live Plan, and you are currently the ceo. Right?
[00:00:41] Sabrina: That's correct.
[00:00:42] Serena: Awesome. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself to our audience. Give a little background on what brought you to live plan.
[00:00:50] Sabrina: Yeah. So um, I have been ceo, it's actually the company's Palo Alto software. The product is live plan. So I've been CEO since 2007 the business actually was started in 1987 in Palo Alto, California although it is now in Eugene, Oregon. But we kept the name Palo Alto Software and it actually was started by my father in Palo Alto way back when originally as a consulting company. He was a Stanford MBA who graduated in, I think 84 from Stanford, and the Silicon Valley at the time was all the big hardware guys. That's kind of the big stuff that was going on. It was Xerox and Apple and HP and he started doing a lot of business plan consulting for them. And in doing that kind of had this idea of like, Hey, what about the entrepreneur who can't afford you know, a Stanford MBA to do consulting and do business planning? What do they do? So that was the original idea.
Fast forward, you know, 20 some years and the business was in Oregon and my dad was looking to kind of move on and not sure what he wanted to do. I. Came to Eugene, Oregon with my husband in '03 and we knew that it would be a great place to start. A family and work life balance would be easier if there wasn't lots of commuting. And so we started working with Palo Alto Software and four years later my dad stepped down and basically from one day to the next said, I think I'm done with this. You know, what would you do if you were ceo? And I had lots of ideas and he was like, great, it's happening tomorrow.
[00:02:34] Serena: Oh my goodness.
[00:02:36] Sabrina: So that is how I became involved. And I think the reason that I was excited about it and the reason I had lots of ideas for the business is, That. Prior to Palo Alto software in the early.com era from '96 to '03, I was in the Silicon Valley and involved in a lot of .com startups and just really got the bug for starting businesses, entrepreneurship, management. I was involved when I was young and some startups that were a little crazy and not very well run. A lot of mistakes. And so learning from those I really enjoy and, you know, my passion is helping people run business better, and particularly from the financial side, helping them embrace financial strategy and financial forecasting. No matter if they are Main Street business or going for 15 million of funding. It just always seems like the financials are scary and a big hurdle for most entrepreneurs.
[00:03:41] Serena: Yeah, I would agree. I would agree on that. So one of the questions I have is what other softwares or, niches in the software industry does Palo Alto have under their umbrella, I guess ?
[00:03:57] Sabrina: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. So live plan is really our flagship software, but we also run a fairly large content website b plans.com that really is there to teach and educate all entrepreneurs on what it means to do planning from, you know, whether you're planning. To get funding, whether you're planning to sell your business, whether you're doing some internal planning because you're bringing on a partner. And so B plans have thousands and thousands of pages and we get about a million unique visitors a month to the website, and we don't advertise to drive traffic. It is a true content site. So kind of think like Entrepreneur or Ink Magazine. But the niche very focused on helping educate people on planning and strategy and financial management. And so that's a big portion of what we do at Palo Alto Software. And we have a content team and an editing team, and lot of seo for that website, but we don't do any Google ads to drive traffic to b plans.com. We do have a whole ad group that works on driving traffic to our products like Live Plan. But yeah, B Plans is a really big part of our strategy and a big part of our business.
[00:05:19] Serena: Okay. Does a lot of traffic from B Plans convert to live plan users?
[00:05:25] Sabrina: It does, it does. It's a great funnel. It's, it's one of those where we've been very careful to keep B plans a true high value content site because, you know, if people trust us and they know that we have really good content and really you know, real advice that they can use, that they don't have to buy something to actually benefit. It Benefits us in that they trust us and they want more from us. And ultimately at some point they'll probably end up trying live plans. So it is absolutely a, you know, funnel for live plan and it's a content marketing strategy but one that's been around for a long time. V plans.com has been around since 1999. So, you know, doing content marketing before content market before--
[00:06:15] Serena: it was a thing.
[00:06:16] Sabrina: Yeah, exactly.
[00:06:18] Serena: But that's, that's probably why it's such high quality too. And you get so much traffic because it's just existed out there for so long. It's been indexed over and over and over .
[00:06:28] Sabrina: Yeah. So there, there's a lot there that you know, you can't buy. Right. The page rank quality. The indexing. But it is, you know, it is a challenge as you run something like this for so many years, you are beholden to say Google and the search engine and algorithms and updates and things that happen. And, you know, we have experts and a team that's very specifically focused on making sure that our content is always well indexed and it's so, it also means you have to really play the game by the rules because, you know, you'll see content sites pop up and they'll be doing things that eventually the Google algorithm will catch, and then you'll be, you will be on page five or page six.
So it's been an interesting experience and learning throughout the years as Google changes as well. And what is the algorithm gonna do and what do they want, and. You know, lots of us have seen Google kind of take over the results in the top. You used to be able to buy all the top five and you can't because Google's actually inserting their own. Also the way Google now indexes with like a paragraph of content through oftentimes people don't even click through to the site anymore cuz they have a question, they type it in and then there's five different paragraphs and they're like, oh, I'm good.
[00:07:58] Serena: Yeah.
[00:07:58] Sabrina: And you know, it's, it's a challenge because a lot of times what you read is out of context, so it might not even be correct.
[00:08:06] Serena: Yeah.
[00:08:06] Sabrina: So yeah, it's been interesting over the years and you know, we just know that we always have to. You know, be as far ahead of the curve as we can with what's coming up with Google and search engines and seo.
[00:08:21] Serena: Yeah. It's a good lesson in not getting comfortable with your success too, like
[00:08:27] Sabrina: Oh, absolutely.
[00:08:27] Serena: Right. You've been up there since the nineties, and so you could , you could be like a company like Xerox and be like, we're just comfortable .
[00:08:37] Sabrina: Yeah.
[00:08:38] Serena: Or blockbuster, whatever, and not wanna change with whatever the trends are and whatnot. So, yeah. So one of the things that you talked about a second ago, briefly, you brushed over it, which was the work life balance and the idea that if you aren't commuting as much, you should have, you know, the ability to have more work life balance. And that's one thing that brought us to Arizona as well, because I used to be in San Diego. Lots of traffic, lots of commuting. And on my Facebook memories, I was just like, one popped up last night and I had screenshotted my morning commute map. It was only like a 10 mile drive, but it was an hour long . And I was like, man, I do not miss that. But that's one of the things that brought us here is the slower pace of life. We are working remotely and we are able to spend more time with family.
So I know you took over the company. As a mom, were you already a mom when you took over as ceo?
[00:09:44] Sabrina: Oh yeah.
[00:09:44] Serena: Okay.
[00:09:45] Sabrina: Yeah.
[00:09:45] Serena: So can you talk about like the age of your children and
[00:09:49] Sabrina: yeah.
[00:09:49] Serena: All that stuff.
[00:09:51] Sabrina: Yeah. I took over in 2007, so at the time I had two very young children. I had a one year old and a three year old.
[00:09:59] Serena: Wow.
[00:10:00] Sabrina: And then in oh nine I had my third son, so I. Pregnant as a ceo, which was a, you know, a, it's just a different sort of experience and as a woman and the one who's pregnant, you know so yes, I have had to kind of navigate what does that mean to be the CEO and have kids and have little kids.
I'm at a different point in life now where my kids are all getting a little bit older. My youngest is gonna be 13 and then I've got a 16 year old who's a junior in high school, and we launched my older son into college in August, which was a big step. So I've got a freshman in college. But I would say, I don't know that I I truly understood work life balance until I had kids. And that's not to say that like you have to have kids to understand it. Not at all. But for me, it's always been really important to be honest with myself and to say, I'm not going to be a good ceo. I am feeling guilty or worried or anxious about my role as a mom and I, and I needed to just recognize that and embrace that and just say, I'm not gonna apologize for being a mother and I'm gonna arrange things. And that also doesn't mean that I'm not gonna work really hard. It's just I'm gonna work hard within a schedule that works for me and not other people, and I'm not gonna apologize. Or you know, a lot of times you see women quietly just not say things, right. They have to go to a doctor's appointment and they don't say, it's my two year old's well check. They just say, oh, I have an appointment.
[00:11:48] Serena: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:49] Sabrina: And so I have found for me, one of the, sort of the tenants of my work life balance is to really embrace who I am and what I need to be successful and to not apologize for it. Women tend to apologize way too much. For things that are not in our control. And to really just embrace that and to be able to really show people that I can work hard but still prioritize what I need as a working mom.
And some of that is some of those compromises, right? Eugene is a small town. There isn't a lot of traffic. I'm in my home office right now, but that's really. Just more of the post covid. I used to go to the office every day and I still go three, four times a week to the office and I'll probably go in in a couple of hours. But I can get to the office in, you know, eight minutes. My kids and like all of their activities are within 10 minutes. And so there is that just realization of the compromises. Like you mentioned, moving to Arizona where like I have friends in the Bay Area, that's where I grew up. That's where I started my career. And you know, everything takes longer there and there's only so many minutes and hours in a day and everything. Like they have to drive 30 minutes to take their kids and then 30 more minutes to the office and then 40 minutes for the soccer practice and we have just eliminated that by having the company in Eugene.
[00:13:13] Serena: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a time waster that a lot of people don't realize, especially if you grew up in that and you are used to being in a car a lot. That was a huge adjustment for me cuz I'm from the southwest . We're I would only take 10 minutes to get all the way across town.
[00:13:31] Sabrina: Yeah.
[00:13:31] Serena: A small town and. Made that shift to moving to a city. I was like, what in the heck? I'm in the car all the time.
[00:13:38] Sabrina: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:13:39] Serena: And no time to live.
[00:13:41] Sabrina: Exactly. And it just, the flexibility, right? Like you can't, when you've got a 35, 40 minute drive in front of you, like you don't have that flexibility of like, oh, I'm gonna like, Push this five or six or seven minutes, you don't have that. Like then all of a sudden you're like, oh, now I'm in worse traffic. And you know, it just like everything compounds itself in terms of the complexity and you know, and I get it. And a lot of people have to be where they are. It's been really interesting though in technology. And I would assume, I mean, I think I've read a lot about the accounting industry, where it's been interesting to see the reality of people don't actually need to come into the office.
[00:14:25] Serena: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:26] Sabrina: and the increased flexibility that's given people, particularly our employees who have young children, which, you know, for me it's been a different experience with Covid, with older kids, but the struggles that our employees with young kids have because of daycare and, you know, my 13 year old can sit in front of a computer and do his homework. A two year old cannot.
[00:14:54] Serena: Yeah. They need that interaction and that just hands on attention a lot of time. Yeah. That's, it's been like a blessing and a curse I think for some people. Like, it's like, great, I get to be home with my kid, but I'm absolutely not productive because they always need me and I'm here for them. So, yeah. It's, it's been interesting.
So. One of the things that if we switch gears back to talking about live plan a lot of people have heard me talk about it before because I use it in my business for my companies, and then I also use it for my clients. But one of the, the things I really love about it is it's ideal for a startup business that especially is seeking SBA funding. The SBA loves the reports that come out of Live Plan, so can you talk about how that process evolved? Like did you have contacts at the sba? What kind of spurred the creation of those features?
[00:15:56] Sabrina: Yeah, that's a great question. I think the number one thing, and the reason that we decided to make sure that Live Plan would produce the documents SBA funded loans needed was that original idea my dad had when he founded the company that he wanted to guide somebody who was just a main street business to do business right. And to understand how to get started right. And to understand even, you know, if you're going for a loan, how much money do I really need? Well, without doing the financial forecast, you don't know how much cash you need. So the very sort of premise of, of the product and the idea was helping people who weren't going to venture capitalists and angel inventors much more about like, let's help somebody get a bank loan. And when you get into that in the US then you say, oh, we clearly need to be working with the sba.
So we have had a relationship with small business development centers for about 30 years. We've worked with the sba, we've had templates on sba.gov, we've done workshops, we work with score. We work with women business centers. We donate and discount and do a lot of also a lot of opportunities to give back in those areas as well for underserved entrepreneurs. But it's been a key for us that we really do wanna serve that, you know, main street business that's just trying to figure it all out and doesn't have a lot of resources and is often very intimidated on the financial side and intimidated when they're going for a loan. And the sba, you know, bank officer says you need all this stuff and then people panic and you know, being able to give them a tool that they can work with oftentimes paired with a service provider because it's hard. So that's a very common way that people get through it, but they feel like they now don't have to worry about like, is this right? Am I gonna get laughed at? Like, what do I actually need? So it, it's something that, you know, we really have a passion for is helping all small businesses and entrepreneurs.
[00:18:12] Serena: Yeah. Yeah. I have a specific client who I helped through her dreaming stages all the way to opening. She is now open. She was supposed to open right before Covid hit , and then, you know, everything got pushed back. Well, she wasn't supposed to open then. She was going to start the process of getting the loan and all the things. Just everything obviously got pushed back cuz she's a brick and mortar. But it was really awesome to be able to use a tool like Live Plan to help not only make sure that I'm not forgetting all the questions to ask her. Like that's the other thing, it's like a good guide for even someone with experience. Like sometimes we forget like, oh, we forgot about this one aspect. Like, nope, it is all in there. Like you can't forget anything. And then having like my deeper knowledge of what she's trying to achieve. Walking her through this stuff and tying in the numbers and everything was super helpful. And then I just love that you can update the forecast and it updates your business plan. You don't have to go back and , recreate things every time you make a change, cuz there's always tons of changes. Like she, I don't know how many times she went back and forth with, with her loan officer or score mentors or whatever, and we had to make changes. And that would've been so much more cumbersome if we were doing it in Excel
[00:19:35] Sabrina: And we always, you know, I think that's the biggest, like the fear people have of like, I don't know how to do this. You're telling me to like forecast into the future and it can, it can just bring a lot of anxiety and that's, you know, part of why we built Live Plan to update so easily is this idea of, and even the name live plan, right? Like, It is not correct. It's never gonna be correct. You don't know the future. The point is to understand the drivers and how things work together and if you, you know, if your trajectory and your revenue look like that, how much money do you need? When do you break even? And then you have to update because none of us know the future. And you know, I sometimes tell I mentor a lot of different entrepreneurs and I sometimes tell them like, if you actually know the future, you shouldn't start a business. Just play the stock market . Now you would like, you know, that like there's no point. You don't know the future and that's okay. And like the more that you actually work with your plan and adjust it, the actually the better you know your business.
[00:20:44] Serena: Exactly. Yeah. So She ended up getting a $500,000 sba
[00:20:50] Sabrina: Wow.
[00:20:50] Serena: With the work that we did together. So I'm like, that's kind of like a feather in my cat, I guess
[00:20:54] Sabrina: it is. Yeah.
[00:20:55] Serena: But thanks to you guys, because truly like live plan was an instrumental piece in that, just having everything organized and easy to follow and easy to update and all that good stuff. So.
[00:21:10] Sabrina: Great. We love it and I love to hear, you know, cuz a lot of times, you know, people wonder like, well maybe live plan can get $10,000 but is it good for bigger loans and you know, and that's sometimes it's a challenge for people. Cuz one of the things we've done with live plan is it is financially correct and because of that you can really model any size business.
So I use live plan and I do a business plan and a forecast for Palo Alto software. And we manage to that forecast with our management team. So every month we look at it and we look at plan versus actual and where the variance is and why. And then we can dig in and we can start to uncover places where we could put more attention or make a different decision. So we definitely in the software world is called eating your own dog food, but we definitely eat our own dog food.
[00:22:02] Serena: Yeah, I agree. I'm the same way. I, I use it with my clients and I use it in my business too because, and I tell this to my students and other bookkeepers as well. It's like, if you wanna learn how to do the thing, like do it with your own business, like practice what you're preaching, you'll learn it more deeply and you'll be more confident in it because you're actually applying it in your own business. That's the beauty is like we have our own businesses. We get to test things out on .
[00:22:28] Sabrina: Exactly. Exactly. And that's, you know, for me, once I think you get over that barrier of the fear of the numbers and you start to understand how things work together. And you know, if you're a brick and mortar, there's certain fixed costs, but then there's variable. If you're, you know, selling products and how much you sell and when you have to order it. But the more that you understand your numbers, the more fun I think it is to then play and like play with the scenario and say, well, what would happen if I did this?
[00:22:59] Serena: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:00] Sabrina: And it becomes, I think if you're doing it more like, for me, and I, maybe I, I mean I'm clearly a numbers geek, but I love to just like, it becomes this sort of exciting like possibility of. Let's see what happens. What if we, you know, added this product or, you know, wanted to focus on adding a different tier and what would that look like and how do I model that? And okay, could I then hire six more people to help with that? And just, I love the way that, like, you can have the idea but actually get the nuts and bolts on it. And actually, See the scenario and say, okay, this is worth pursuing, or Nope, this does not look worth pursuing and let's just put that idea to bed.
[00:23:48] Serena: Yeah, I've recently modeled out something for a client where they wanted to hire this like key position in their company. And this person is already working for them kind of part-time as a side hustle, but she wants to come on full-time. She wants to leave her like corporate career, but she's gonna have to a salary. Right?
[00:24:06] Sabrina: Yeah.
[00:24:06] Serena: And so they were like, what would it look like if we did pay her almost what she's getting? And then bonus her based on like, if we profit, you know, 50% more than we did this last year. Like, what would it take to get there? And it was like, Very eyeopening for them, and it's like you could afford it, that'll dip into your own profits. But like what would it look like to model where the business would have to be so that you guys still make as much as you had been making? And she makes, right? Cause in theory, you hire that position. You want that to drive more revenue, so what kind of revenue could it drive? And it was like a really exciting process to walk them like, I'm a nerd too. So, it was a really exciting process to walk them through. Like they have like a, you know, a half a million dollar business right now, but like, What that position could bring in is another half a million. If they, you know, if she did things correctly and they all worked together as a team and the two owners, that husband and wife, they would be working less. They were like, wow, this is actually possible. And the, the hard part to talk people through is that they're, They, it is kind of fake, right? Cuz you're just like, you're forecasting something. And they're like, but what if that doesn't work out? And I'm like, well then you probably like she needs to deliver on the position.
[00:25:23] Sabrina: Yeah.
[00:25:23] Serena: And in her role. So at that point, if you're not hitting those numbers, then you. Might let her go. Like then they're like, oh no, that doesn't sound fun.
[00:25:34] Sabrina: Yeah. But I mean that reality of being able to see it and then being able to lay it out, you know, like you say, and being able to be very concrete with like, this is the level we need to be at. And so that's what has to be achieved. And then you can have that honest conversation with that person to say there's risk for you. There's risk. And here's where we're all at, which, you know, I think it, it does at least give you that, a little bit more of that clarity than like that fogginess of like, we think this might work, but to actually say, no, it can work. Here's what it takes. And then month by month to say, are we where we're supposed to be? And if not, how do we dial the knobs or do we call.
[00:26:17] Serena: Yeah. Yeah. That's the other piece too, is like a lot of business owners, they'll want to create like this annual budget or whatever, and I'm like, but it's gonna be useless if we don't compare to it every month.
[00:26:30] Sabrina: Yes, exactly.
[00:26:32] Serena: Unless you wanna do that manually, but you don't have to with life plan. But yeah, the other component too is, When the business is fairly new and you don't have that history yet, this client has a couple years of history. So we have those trends of like, if you did just exactly what you've been doing the past couple years, you know that you can duplicate what you've done. But then it's a question of like, how much time were you putting in? Is it too much time for you? Are you like getting burnt out? And there's so many more conversations that are involved with creating these plans than a lot of us accountants we're in the black and white and we're like, we just wanna give them answers.
And it's like a lot of it just really depends on the client and like what their goals are. Like how much do they wanna work? Do they wanna, are they okay? Like continuing to work loads and loads of hours to reach those goals. there's just so many variables that a lot of accountants are like, that's too scary,
[00:27:29] Sabrina: Well, and it's, yeah, and it's interesting because I think you're right, right? One of the things that I think draws people to accounting is it's this process and you know, it's all these numbers and it's like math, right? People who love math, and it's like, Once you understand the concept and you do the formula and everything adds up, and you're like, oh, that's awesome. It all adds up. You know, and yeah, that, that sense of like doing math where you're not sure it adds up and where does that go?
But yeah, I mean, I think one of the things we talk about a lot with entrepreneurs is that idea of, okay, you've got your business, you seem happy with your business, but like how much are you working and what are you paying yourself? And are there opportunities, like maybe you don't wanna grow per se, but maybe you wanna say, I need more work life balance. How do I get that? And it really turns into a financial question, right? Oh, you need to hire someone in order for you to work less. And so what does that look like and what do we have to model? And what, what would the business look like if you hired the person and where would you have to be?
But even just having those like numbers and goals to say like, okay, could you sell, you know, you run a bike shop, could you sell three more bikes every month? Is that possible? And most of the times, I think when you work with people, at least even if it's scary, you can throw numbers out where you can be like, can you sell 50 more bikes? And they're like, no, no way. You know? And they know right away. And you're like, how about 10? And they're like, oh, maybe. And so getting to that place where like a lot of times people feel like, I don't know how to do this. And if you guide them, they actually know way more than they realize and they just need that guidance to be like, okay, let's talk about it step by step and put it down and track it. But you actually know you, you know, an entrepreneur will tell you if you have a forecast that's crazy. They'll be like, I'll never do that. That's crazy. Yeah. Versus like, Ooh, that feels aggressive, but doable.
[00:29:38] Serena: Mm-hmm.
[00:29:39] Sabrina: and, and maybe I learn things along the way, but if I actually put it down and track it and follow it, I'm learning the right things along the way.
[00:29:47] Serena: Yeah, that's such a good point. And presenting it in a way that, like the business owners tend to get really overwhelmed with like the spreadsheets and just a bunch of numbers. But if you do what you just said and you're like tying it to a number of units that they have to sell because they, they know that information, right? Then they can wrap their heads around it a lot easier. Like you said, so using the language of your clients and your business owners is definitely key
[00:30:15] Sabrina: Yeah, and I think sometimes, I mean, I work with a lot of accountants and bookkeepers and I think sometimes one of the things I'll remind them and then they're like, okay, that makes sense, is like you are comfortable with the numbers and the financial terms and like you know what a gross margin is and you know what cost of goods are and you can read a p and l and you understand balance sheets. That's your expertise. You don't have to be the bike shop owner expert, like you can let them be the expert. You don't have to know bike shops or bakeries or architecture firms or whatever. You know you're helping. They have the expertise where they need you is the expertise on the financial side.
[00:30:59] Serena: Yeah.
[00:30:59] Sabrina: And like, you know, asking them the right questions, guiding them, leaning on their expert and their passion knowledge, and then bringing that expertise of the actual numbers and financials and you know, that part to the table so that you can say, you know, I don't have to be an expert in your business, but I can tell you, hey, your gross margin is not working out here, and what can we do about it? And let me translate that. Like your cost of goods are too high. Can you negotiate with your provider or do we need to price your product more?
[00:31:34] Serena: Yeah that's so true. I, I do find it helps when you are familiar with their industry so you know what kind of questions to ask.
[00:31:43] Sabrina: Yes.
[00:31:43] Serena: And you kind of know what's going on in the industry as a whole, like if you're, especially if you're niche, this is like one of my favorite things about working with the. Types of companies is that I can be like, yeah, you're actually blowing your profit margin out of the water compared to the rest of our clients. You should be proud of yourself cause a lot of people, they don't, they don't know cuz they're not comparing to other companies and they don't have the visibility into that. They don't even realize that you can get the visibility into what other companies in their industry are doing. And so sometimes it's. They're working really hard to like increase those profit margins and they're like, I want it to be better. And I'm like, you realize that you're already better .
[00:32:27] Sabrina: Exactly. And then that, then you can have that conversation of like, well, if you want, you know, you probably not gonna increase your profit margins, but, so maybe we just have, you just have to grow. Maybe that's where you have to go. It's like, You won't increase the margin, but we can grow. But yeah, it is, it is great to be able to help someone understand within the context of knowing their industry and saying, Hey, you're great over here. Maybe this side of things is where you could, you know, improve. Let's not waste time in improving the profit margin, the profit margin's great. Let's put our efforts into a different place.
[00:33:03] Serena: Yeah. Yeah. So do you have any, like, is there anything on. The live plan roadmap that you're able to share with us, like new features that are coming out that might excite people, like--
[00:33:17] Sabrina: yeah, I mean, I'm always excited about features and I always have a list that's so long and like the developers, you know, are like Sabrina, we know you have like, feature ideas for like the next five years, which, you know, we don't like to do. We definitely like to really have a process and development of listening to our customers and users and it's customer driven development. We just launched our .csv export so you can now export into Excel or, you know, Anything that takes a .csv, which is exciting and something a lot of people have wanted, and coming down the pipeline, we're gonna just continue to make improvements in the, what we would call, iterative forecasting in that ability to iterate on your forecast, do more scenarios, just make it easier and easier and easier. So things like comparing two scenarios. So you can actually compare them side by side, because right now you look at one at a time. And so you'd have to, you have to kind of flip back and forth, or you do the trick a lot of people do where you open a scenario one tab and the other scenario and the other tab. So we're actually gonna allow you to compare scenarios so that you can see things
[00:34:33] Serena: At eye level that's great.
[00:34:34] Sabrina: Exactly, exactly. And allow you to do some things within the modeling where you could, in a scenario, you could you know, say, Hey, I wanna see what happens if I add, you know, this revenue stream with these costs, and then turn that on and off so you can actually see it with and without. So a lot of just helping people on the modeling and the iterating making it easy, fast you know, moving towards letting people edit actually in the actual tables and not in wizards. So our, our focus is really in that forecasting module right now to just continue to make it easier and more powerful, but not more complicated.
[00:35:23] Serena: Yeah. Do you have anything in the pipeline to like drill down on actuals yet? , I put you on the spot.
[00:35:32] Sabrina: Yeah. No, I mean there's, there's lots. Yes. So the, the one thing we've done and we're gonna do more of and make it easier is in the forecast, if you've connected to qbo, you can bring in the live. And right now that comes into the p and l, and then we have the cash line so you can see where your cash is and the p and l and that live forecast really allows you to basically say, okay, there's no point in me looking at a forecast from today backwards. It's a forecast. I already know what my numbers are, so let's bring in the actuals and let's then. You know, take those actuals and add them to the forecast so that I know what you know. If I'm halfway through the year, I should be able to see where I'm headed, actuals versus forecast. And also on the cash side, the cash can get really in the forecast just incorrect because things happen. So to be able to true up that cash and then see where you're going. So we're gonna continue to improve that, bring that into the balance sheet, really allow you to see that really continue to allow you to really play with the actuals in the forecast module because that helps people on that ongoing side of it.
On the dashboard side with actuals we really wanna make that more flexible so that people can decide what they actually wanna see. All of those they're actually, the developers would call them widgets. So the little boxes of like all those KPIs are actually, were built to be flexible. So that is something that we can allow people to organize the dashboard, decide which KPIs they wanna see in there, and then potentially decide some custom KPIs.
So those are things on the roadmap, you know, in the. Like definitely. So our fiscal year starts October one, so we're at the beginning of our fiscal year. But these are all things that we're looking at in this fiscal year to really focus in on and just help make that forecasting and really that ongoing management easier and kind of bring that like aha moment faster to people by bringing in those actuals.
[00:37:47] Serena: Yeah, I'm excited for all of those features and I've submitted requests that have actually been implemented, which is really exciting. So I always like to tell other bookkeepers and accountants, like when they complain about certain softwares, I'm like, just submit a feature request. They don't know that you need this unless you submit that request.
[00:38:05] Sabrina: Oh yeah.
[00:38:06] Serena: I'm always like submitting requests when I see something that, you know, I would like or could be. Nothing wrong with asking .
[00:38:14] Sabrina: No, and that's, I mean, for us, and you know, I think a lot of software is going in that direction in terms of development. That is key to our strategy is customer driven development, customer research, really, instead of saying, we think customers want this, is to listen to them and to say, wait a minute, you're using it. What do you want? And when we hear feature requests. We will take those and then we will take it out and, you know, interview 50 more people and say, you know, Serena says she wants this. What do you think and how, how would you use it and do you want it and do you not? And we'll even do like some mockups sometimes and put them in front of user groups. So for us, you know, I love hearing from users and I'm always telling people, tell us what you want. Tell us what you want. And particularly, Someone like you who's working with live plan with multiple clients. Like you're a power user. we want to hear what you want because you're using it all the time.
[00:39:14] Serena: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I don't remember if you said, did you have an accounting background or did you. Or just the business or where did, like how did you get so nerdy with numbers?
[00:39:28] Sabrina: That's a great question. So I don't have an accounting background. I have a liberal arts degree, history, and I actually have a minor in early childhood education. I got out of college in 1990. And because I'd grown up in the Bay Area, I wanted to go back. I went to school back east and I was dying to get back to California. And the .com sort of boom was happening. And that was where I got bit by the entrepreneurial bug of like, this is cool. This is super exciting to start businesses innovate, you know, be involved in sort of this, you know, world where things move so quickly and you have to innovate or die.
But in doing that, and being involved young, when I didn't have a lot of business experience, I saw a lot of mistakes and you know, those like top 10 things startups do wrong. And a lot of them are the same ones. And the number one thing I saw again and again and again, it was a lack of really paying attention to the numbers and not understanding them, not caring. That's, you know, we're gonna get $25 million from, you know, the VCs on Sand Hill. And I was involved in companies that did get that, and then two years later ran out of money. It's like, Sounds like a lot of money. Yeah. So that's, I think, where I got really interested in, if you actually hone in and you understand the numbers, you can make better decisions and you, you are making decisions based, not just on passion or gut, you're actually making decisions and understanding how they affect. how much cash you have and your bottom line.
I was someone who really I thought at some point I might major in math in college and I went to a liberal arts college and so I decided not to. So I do love math. Always have been kind of a math person, so I think I naturally, I like that numbers feel like they can tell me answers, and I think that's from my like passion of liking math.
[00:41:47] Serena: Yeah. Yeah. It's funny, I've probably said this like a times on my podcast already, but like, I was not, like, I was, I got good grades in math, but I wasn't very interested in it growing up and I didn't, like, I would make silly little mistakes and so then like sometimes I would get a not great grade, but it was like one little mistake that then like affected the rest of the problem because I just would like go through it so fast. But that's what I like about accounting. Is that like it forces you to double check your work?
[00:42:17] Sabrina: Yeah.
[00:42:18] Serena: Cause I don't prefer to do that. Like that's just not my personality type to go back and double check stuff. if you read my emails, you know, that but yeah. So accounting helps you like. Quote unquote right answer. But the more I've been involved in accounting and in the industry and stuff, I really do like have more of a passion now for the unknown. Right? The forecasting and the planning and the future forward looking stuff. So that's what excites me these days.
[00:42:50] Sabrina: Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I totally, I'm with you. I love that idea that, you know, it's unknown, but that you can actually like do these models that like help you see a little bit, right? It's like way back when, I don't even think kids do it anymore, but you know, the paint by numbers when you all of a sudden start to see what the picture's gonna look like, and I feel like that's what I love about the forecasting is all of a sudden you start to see the picture and you can say, oh wow, okay. I don't know if I like that picture. Let's go back and let's make some changes.
But yeah, it's it's fun and I love that, you know, despite being at a company where I've been at since, you know, the CEO since '07, and it's a company that my dad started in 87, I love the area we're in, because I get to work with so many small businesses and entrepreneurs, and I think it sounds like, you know, it's kind of what you do too. So I get to feel like I'm part of it and the innovating and sort of that entrepreneurial bug all the time, which I really love.
[00:43:58] Serena: Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely like when I go places and someone is like, oh, I'm starting a business. I'm like, Ooh, let's talk. Or they're like, I have this idea, and I'm like, I can create a whole plan for you. Let's do this.
[00:44:13] Sabrina: Yep. I do very similar things, but when my kids were younger I mean, these days the older ones, you know, as, as you get teenagers, they don't like to spend a lot of time with you anymore but when the kids were younger, we would go places and I'd like walk into a business and I'd see something or you know, they'd be expanding and like my kids would be like, don't ask them all those questions. Cause I'd be like, oh my gosh, you're expanding. What? You know, what have you done? What's your like, do you know how much you have to sell every day to break even? I'd ask all these questions. Or we'd go to a restaurant and we'd sit down and you know, it'd be like 20 minutes and no one had come to our table and I'd be like, they're losing like already my husband and I would've ordered drinks and they're losing like $25 and the kids got to a point where they're like, would roll their eyes and be like, mom, don't.
[00:45:11] Serena: Yeah, that's my, that's my teenager too. Like she for sure knows if anyone mentions anything about business around me, I'm like aha! She's like, oh yeah. I was gonna ask you something else and now I can't remember, but that is okay. Oh, yes. Now I know since, since you don't have an accounting background, I'm actually like, excited that you don't, because one of the things that if I remember to ask my guests who aren't accountants I like to ask from a business owner perspective, what is like one or two things that a bookkeeper could do to instantly create more value for their clients, or something that you as a business owner like to look at every week or every month that a bookkeeper could help with?
[00:46:00] Sabrina: Yeah, that's a great question. I would say the number one thing that I would love to see all bookkeepers and accountants doing for small businesses is to not shy away from reorganizing a chart of accounts. There's too often times when I will be helping a small business owner and they'll have a bookkeeper, and the bookkeeper like is super smart, and I'll talk to them and say, but I don't get it. Like the chart of account seems kind of a mess. And they say, yeah, it is. I just do journal entries. It is a big mess. And there's a recognition and the bookkeeper's like sometimes i get the sense that they feel like the business owner isn't gonna appreciate the work or understand it, and they're like, I'm doing journal entries. So it's all correct and it's correct for compliance and for taxes and to be able to say yes. But if you actually organize the chart of accounts, then it gives better reporting, it allows for a business owner to see things in a more strategic way, and you get rid of kind of the mess. And don't use journal entries, and immediately that business owner is gonna look at things that make better sense to them.
[00:47:16] Serena: Mm-hmm.
[00:47:17] Sabrina: because they don't understand journal entries and you do that stuff and they're like just lost. And so that's one thing that I feel like any account or bookkeeper can bring to the table. And you know, maybe the business owner doesn't wanna pay for the work to like clean things up to at least address it to say, hey, You know, because you've got this mess in your accounting and you know your QBO is just crazy. You can't really see things in a strategic way. Here's how I could help you with that.
[00:47:52] Serena: Yeah, that's a really, I like that. That's a really good one. Thank you, yeah. So thank you so much for joining me today. It was such a pleasure. Where should people find you to connect or sign up for Life Plan.
[00:48:10] Sabrina: Well, you can always go to dub dub dub.live plan.com and then I'll also say check out b plans.com cuz it's all free there and there's so much information. So B P L A N s b plans.com. It's a really good starting point if someone's like, I don't know. I don't know if I need like a software. Go to the website that's got all the free content we have, you know, every week we're publishing new articles. We're really trying to help people understand like within the context of like, what's the economy doing today, how does that impact my business? So those are the two places I would say for people to come check us out.
[00:48:53] Serena: Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today.
[00:48:56] Sabrina: Thank you.