Can you freaking believe it’s December already? December and January are when things really pick up for us at Evolved Finance. Between submitting 1099s and sending bookkeeping files over to our clients’ accountants, it’s definitely the busiest time of year for us. It’s also the time of year where a lot of entrepreneurs start to panic about their bookkeeping and taxes. That’s why the timing was so perfect for this month’s guest. Her name is Keila Hill-Trawick and she is the owner of Little Fish A...
Nov 30, 2020•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you’re a big fan of Marie Forleo, who is arguably one of the most successful business coaches and course creators in the world, then you’ve probably heard that she is not going to be working with affiliate partners next year to sell B-School. If you aren’t familiar with Marie, this is a pretty big deal. Mainly because she is the QUEEN of affiliate launches. So much so that she built her entire business model around doing one GIGANTIC affiliate launch every year and made millions of dollars as...
Nov 23, 2020•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast The holidays can be a complicated time for online businesses. While the holiday season can make or break retail, manufacturing, and e-commerce businesses, it seems to have a smaller effect on coaching and info-based online businesses (the types of businesses we serve at Evolved Finance). Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of takes from different business experts about what online businesses should do during the holiday season. That’s why for this episode, we discuss: What we’ve seen with our clien...
Nov 16, 2020•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Entrepreneurship is inherently risky. Period. That being said, it doesn’t HAVE TO be any riskier than working for someone else. It’s up to you as a business owner to be aware of any vulnerabilities your business might have and get in front of them as soon as possible. As your business grows, new vulnerabilities will come into play, but you will also have more resources available to you to make those vulnerabilities a non-factor. So for this episode, we discuss: The risks new online businesses ha...
Nov 09, 2020•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast One of the most attractive parts of running an online business is the fact you can do so much on your own. In fact, most of the smaller businesses ($100k-$250k a year) we work with barely have any team at all. But what every single entrepreneur we work with quickly realizes is that they can only get so far on their own. Whether you are hiring your first virtual assistant or hiring your first full-time employee, the task can seem daunting. Especially because contractors and employees are some of ...
Nov 02, 2020•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nobody can be good at EVERYTHING in their business. At the same time, it’s not reasonable to only focus on the aspects of your business that you like and completely ignore everything else. When you start a business, you’re accepting that you don’t get to ONLY be a specialist anymore. Business owners have to be leaders, problem solvers, sales reps, strategists…the list just gets longer the fewer people you have on your team! That’s why in this episode, we discuss: What one of our Evolved Finance ...
Oct 26, 2020•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast One of the biggest reasons people have for starting their own business is that they want to be their own boss. What many new entrepreneurs quickly realize, however, is that the boss doesn’t always get paid that much in the beginning. As any business grows, there becomes more cash flow left over each month. But how do you know when the time is right to give yourself a raise? When should you be investing in a different area of the business to help it grow even more? That’s why for this episode, we...
Oct 19, 2020•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast With the release of President Trump’s tax returns in September of this year, there have been a lot of heated discussions online about what his tax returns have revealed about his businesses’ financial health. While I do not want to get into the politics of this, the release of any major politician’s tax returns tends to generate a lot of misinformation and confusion around how taxes work as well as what constitutes a healthy business. While neither I nor Corey are accountants, we do have 16 year...
Oct 12, 2020•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast I went to high school in the late ’90s, right when the internet was starting to become popular. Back then, if you told me to create a website, you might as well have asked me to assemble my own airplane from scratch—I would not have even known where to start. Now, over 20 years later, creating a website is so easy most elementary school kids could figure it out. Companies like WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace have made creating a website accessible to the masses. Despite the lower barrier to entr...
Oct 05, 2020•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you’ve been in the online business world for long enough, you know how many trends and fads have come and gone in such a short period of time. When I left the corporate world to partner up with Corey at Evolved Finance, e-books and 1-on-1 coaching were going out of style and courses were coming in hot. Now, membership sites and group coaching programs are all the rage. The reality is, all these online business models can turn into six or seven-figure ventures, but each one also has its unique...
Sep 28, 2020•56 min•Transcript available on Metacast During my time working for adidas America, I quickly learned how important data is to running a successful business. Do we need to order more inventory? Look at the data. Do we need to run a promotion? Look at the data. Do we need to change the pricing of a product? Look at the data. Are we on track to hit our sales targets? Look at the data. Any major decision I made or was a part of was always based on some sort of financial, inventory, or marketing data. I understand that adidas is a multi-bi...
Sep 24, 2020•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hiring a bookkeeper is a lot like hiring a mechanic. You’re taking a leap of faith that they’re not going to screw you over. After all, unless you know how to fix your own car, how would you even know whether your mechanic is doing a good job or not? The same goes for a bookkeeper. Luckily, you don’t have to be a bookkeeper yourself to know if your bookkeeper is doing quality work. That’s why for this episode, we discuss: The top complaint we hear from our clients about their past bookkeepers Wh...
Sep 24, 2020•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast I got a surprise text message from my brother-in-law and his long-time girlfriend a few weeks ago. They wanted me to help them put together a personal budget. I was honestly shocked they were asking for help on this. They’re both in their early twenties and finishing up their last year of school, so it would be really easy for them to just “wing it.” I know when I was their age, it was the last thing on my mind—in fact, I avoided it altogether. I waited 5-6 years before I put together my own fir...
Sep 07, 2020•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast I’ve probably said this 100 times now, but simply growing your business’s revenue is not enough to build your wealth as the owner. Is a steady stream of sales important for any business? Of course! Does generating more sales create the potential for better cash flow? Absolutely! But if a business does not manage its expenses as the revenue increases, then profitability suffers, which means the business owner can’t increase their own pay. The same goes for your personal finances. It’s hard to bui...
Aug 31, 2020•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast In 2019, Corey and I bit the bullet and finally invested in our first coaching program. It was $10k for 8 weeks of support. Outside of our employees, it was the biggest investment we had ever made in our business at one time. Did we get the results we were looking for after the 8 weeks? Kinda. Was it worth it? 100%. Without those very intense eight weeks of analyzing and scrutinizing our business, we would not have been able to handle the last twelve months of growth we experienced. Honestly, it...
Aug 24, 2020•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast When I jumped into the online business world six years ago, one of the first concepts I had to wrap my head around was affiliate marketing. As someone who had spent the previous 5 years in the sporting goods industry, it just wasn’t a strategy I was familiar with. But back in 2014, almost all our clients were either running affiliate promotions for their own products or promoting a product for someone else. Over the last 5 years, however, we’ve slowly seen our clients focus less and less on both...
Aug 17, 2020•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast When there is an aspect of our business that we don’t understand, we tell ourselves it’s because the subject matter is too confusing or too complicated. While there definitely are areas of expertise like computer programming or law that take a lot of specialized knowledge to understand fully, we can easily outsource this type of work to experts. But when it comes to things like finance, most entrepreneurs overthink and over complicate it because they lack a basic foundational understanding of th...
Aug 10, 2020•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Here are the top two things MOST entrepreneurs love to spend time doing: 1. Marketing 2. Creating products and offers Here are the top two things MOST entrepreneurs hate doing: 1. Dealing with their finances 2. Documenting internal processes We know as well as anyone how much entrepreneurs love to avoid their finances, but when our clients start working with us, they realize they can actually feel empowered when it comes to their money. It turns out Dean Soto from Pro Sulum has the same experien...
Aug 03, 2020•55 min•Transcript available on Metacast Part of being a successful online business owner is knowing who you need on your team and what they should be responsible for. Hiring people to manage functions like social media, copywriting, customer service, and graphic design is straight forward: you figure out what job needs to be done and pay someone to do it. But who should be involved in your finances? In my experience, there are four key roles that every online business should have covered, and one role many business owners think they n...
Jul 27, 2020•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Let’s face it…we don’t really know what the next 6 months are going to look like. Honestly, I’m still trying to wrap my head around what has just happened these last 6 months. Surprisingly, we have actually seen the online businesses we work with thrive this year as more people are spending larger amounts of time on the internet. But can we expect this COVID bump to last? I honestly don’t know. That’s why for this episode, we discuss: The inherent risks of running an online business in the US du...
Jul 20, 2020•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Over the last couple years, the books “Rocket Fuel” and “Traction” have become popular reads for many online entrepreneurs. Both Corey and I loved “Traction” and incorporated several of the principles from the books into our own business. One concept that has become extremely popular is the two roles you need in a successful business: the “visionary” and the “integrator.” Naturally, every business owner tends to see themselves as the visionary. They believe the next step for their business is to...
Jul 13, 2020•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Successfully selling your products and/or services is how you generate revenue for your business. Understanding and managing the costs associated with selling to your customers is how you make a profit. And when I say cost, I mean from both a financial and time standpoint. Luckily, online entrepreneurs have a multitude of ways they can generate leads for their businesses, but these options all have different costs (in both money and time) associated with them. That’s why for this episode, we dis...
Jul 06, 2020•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast There are a lot of great business educators out there helping entrepreneurs to master the different aspects of their businesses. In fact, many of our clients are those educators. And we know exactly how great they are at what they do because we see their numbers. But as important as it is to lock down your Instagram strategy, hone your copywriting skills, or up-level your webinar presentations, there is still the “un-sexy” part of running your business that most business coaches just don’t talk ...
Jun 29, 2020•53 min•Transcript available on Metacast When COVID-19 started to hit in full force in early to mid-March of this year, I had a wave of panic wash over me. I found myself thinking… “Will our client’s businesses get through this shutdown?” “Will our clients have customers who can still afford their products?” “Will Evolved Finance have to prepare to downsize?” Luckily, those doubts didn’t last long. Corey and I had always speculated that online businesses would be particularly recession-proof (at least compared to other businesses), and...
Jun 22, 2020•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast At its core, bookkeeping is about keeping score in your business. The financial reporting that a bookkeeper puts together for their clients is the scoreboard that shows if a business is doing the right things from both a sales and operations perspective to keep it profitable and thriving. But what if things aren’t looking as good as you want them to on your financial reports? You have two options: make more sales or cut back on expenses. For smaller online businesses, it truly can be this simple...
Jun 15, 2020•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast As I write this scheduled email, it’s June 3rd, 2020. It’s the day after #blackouttuesday. Doing a podcast about business right now does not feel right. Staying silent about the current situation in America doesn’t feel right either. That’s why for this episode, we at Evolved Finance acknowledge the struggles of our fellow black Americans and reaffirm our commitment to being a company that welcomes diversity and inclusion in an effort to fight systematic racism. We are working to be better, and ...
Jun 08, 2020•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Before I joined forces with Corey at Evolved Finance back in late 2014, I had spent the last 5 years at adidas, specifically working in the golf division. adidas is a company with an extremely recognizable and powerful brand. Likely one of the most recognizable brands in the world. Although I tried to resist drinking the Kool-Aid, the power of the adidas brand has me likely wearing adidas shoes for the rest of my life (I wasn’t a Nike guy, to begin with, anyway). But shaping a brand like adidas ...
Jun 01, 2020•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nobody starts their online business because they’re excited about getting deep into the weeds of their finances. Entrepreneurs want to build their audiences and them into customers. And to be fair, is there anything better than making money by helping people with something you are really good at helping them with? Unfortunately, your online business isn’t just about sales, marketing, and customer service. It’s also about tracking and managing your money. That’s where bookkeeping comes in. For mo...
May 25, 2020•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Money has got to be one of the most interesting inventions humanity has ever created. It is a core component of every civilized society and the driving force behind every economy in existence. However, if money is such a fundamental piece of the systems that we all live in, why do we each prioritize money differently? Evolved Finance spends all day organizing, tracking, and analyzing money for our clients, so it should be no surprise that I think about money a lot. Without money, Corey and I wou...
May 18, 2020•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Thanks to everyone who attended our free Know Your Numbers Now workshop last week. One of the big themes that came up time and time again was profitability. If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, then that shouldn’t come as a surprise. When entrepreneurs think about profitability, they usually think it’s all about cutting expenses or even creating more revenue streams. But it’s not that simple. Streamlining your operations and simplifying your offers can have a major impact on pro...
May 11, 2020•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
