Wealth Podcast Post

Know your Numbers with Aimee Laliberte

George Grombacher August 11, 2022


Background
share close

Know your Numbers with Aimee Laliberte

LifeBlood: We talked about why and how to know your numbers, focusing on real metrics versus vanity, creating virtuous cycles, and how to get started, with Aimee LaLiberte, Virtual CFO and bookkeeper

Listen to learn how small daily actions make all the difference!

You can learn more about Aimee at MyVirtualCFO.co, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Thanks, as always for listening! If you got some value and enjoyed the show, please leave us a review here:

​​https://ratethispodcast.com/lifebloodpodcast

You can learn more about us at LifeBlood.Live, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook or you’d like to be a guest on the show, contact us at contact@LifeBlood.Live. 

Stay up to date by getting our monthly updates.

Want to say “Thanks!” You can buy us a cup of coffee

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/lifeblood

Invest in yourself. Bring it All Together.

Work with a coach to unlock personal and professional potential.

Our Guests

George Grombacher

LALIBERTE_AIMEE-Aimee-LaLiberte1

Aimee LaLiberte

Episode Transcript

george grombacher 0:00
Come on live with us, Georgie and the time is right. Welcome. Today’s guests struggle powerful Amy. Liberty. Amy, are you ready to do this?

Unknown Speaker 0:18
I am. Let’s go.

george grombacher 0:20
Let’s go. Amy is the chief number cruncher with the wellness bookkeeper. She’s helping to streamline bookkeeping to create confident money mindset, and a renewed focus for business owners and nonprofits. Amy excited to have you on tell us a little about your personal life smart about your work and why you do what you do.

Unknown Speaker 0:39
Yes, so I am born and raised from upstate New York, two and a half hours outside of New York City specifically, and I married for it’ll be 20 years, I have three kids, one for baby. And, and I am just you know, living life the way that I have always wanted, which is like creating intention. And having my own business helping business owners create relationship with money. And I do that for very obvious things like bookkeeping, forecasting, like CFO level stuff. And then we also talk about mindset, because the mind set and the and the growth mindset is really critical to creating scaling businesses and creating any financial goal that you wish to create both professionally and personally.

george grombacher 1:32
Yeah, I appreciate that. When When did you you probably always recognized or when did you recognize the role that mindset played? And then when did you decide that you wanted to actually work that into the like, your, your work?

Unknown Speaker 1:48
Yeah, so I so before, like, it was like, formally in my business, I was a competitive athlete. So I knew that the mindset piece of it, like you could train and train, I was a competitive swimmer. So you could train and train and train and I was someone who could really put in the time and train. But sometimes, like, my time wasn’t reflected of all that effort. And so what I eventually realized was that I was like, in my head. And once I started to realize that, that that connection existed, I really started to sort of develop that, and then come like, I don’t know, let’s just say like, 1015 years later, I realized that like the mindset work is critical. You can turn around and have all the financials in place, and we can review, you know, income statements and balance sheets and cash flow statements. But if you have a scarcity mindset, if you have blind spots, when it comes to your thoughts around money, and just like the way in which you make decisions with money, it will, it will hurt you more than help you. You can strive and hustle and use that scarcity mindset. But at some point, there’s a reckoning. And it usually starts to happen when businesses are looking to scale to like the next level, and to the next level is pretty personally defined. But But I tend to see it a lot when someone’s at like multiple six trying to get to their first seven figures. And then if they’re at their first seven, they’re multiple, seven, eight figures.

george grombacher 3:20
Do you find that people self diagnose that? Or how do you help people to broach the subject?

Unknown Speaker 3:27
Yeah, so I honestly I think a lot of it comes down to a level of awareness around your thoughts. And that sounds so basic. And it really is, there’s really nothing like, it’s I’m not saying that once you have awareness, you’re like, Oh, right. I have a scarcity mindset. Okay, I’ll fix that check. Like, obviously, there’s some unpacking and stuff that needs to happen there. But there are like so many people who don’t have the awareness around why they do what they do when it comes to money, or, you know, or even when, like the origin of which it came from. So if you’re someone who is afraid to look at your business financials, there’s usually some scarcity mindset there. And as soon as like, we start to kind of talk to talk about it and like, unravel it, it really comes down to like, they think that they’re not good with math. They’re not they think that they’re not good with money. For women. I feel like it’s a lot of like, I wasn’t the person that would manage the money. Like I was never taught this. And so some of it is just that there’s just a lack of awareness and then they just feel like because they don’t know it’s because it’s just sort of feeding into the thought of like, I’m like, not good at math. I’m not this I’m not that. And that’s where it really starts to become a decision of like, I don’t want to lead your listeners to think like you’re gonna say, Oh, I have a scarcity mindset and I’m gonna go into like, I have an abundant mindset or are, you know, I have a positive relationship with money. If you think about your relationship with money and your mindset around money, and compare it to any relationship that you’ve ever had with a human, it’s the same thing. It takes time, it takes a lot of work, to, to really just start to unpack and unearth. And even when you’ve resolved maybe some like core scarcity, mindset beliefs, whenever you start to scale and start to do something that is unfamiliar, it starts like it will start it will show up again. And it doesn’t mean that it’s gone wrong. It’s just the way in which your brain is like, Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, we have never done this before, this is bad, we need to be scared, we should stop and just come back. And let’s go back to what’s familiar. It’s just a difference between awareness and understanding that your brain doesn’t want to do things that is unfamiliar, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do them, you should really examine and decide in an intentional way, and, and work with your mind to create the neural pathways in order to then make it familiar to, you know, have a relationship with money to like, look at your financials, to create financial goals, to do all of those things. In order to build a business, a life, whatever it is that you desire, and you need money to do it. To make that happen for you.

george grombacher 6:24
Such powerful stuff there. And I just couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t agree any more, I’d like to talk about how we have an operating system just like our phones. And if my operating system says or tells me that money is the root of all evil, or in order to be successful with money, I need to be screwing people over or I’m not good with money. Well, that’s going to have a profound impact on my behaviors around it. And that was me forever. I resisted budgeting. And I resisted, you know, paying attention and paying bills and filing taxes for a long time because I had this negative money mindset and didn’t figure it out until I was like 35 years old. And believe it or not, it didn’t serve me for that long. So it’s it’s a very real thing.

Unknown Speaker 7:05
For sure, absolutely. And I think that I think the other part that that happens is that a lot of people don’t talk about that. I think that you know, there’s people that are like, Oh, everything is great, I’m making all this money, and then you like that may not be your story. And then you feel like what’s wrong with me. And I think it’s because there’s not like an open dialogue around money, both good and bad. Neutral, like there’s just like the context around money. It’s it’s feels oftentimes very one sided and very shiny and pretty. And not necessarily like the other side, there’s not the other side of the coin that’s happening, because who wants to talk about, like that type of stuff. But I think that that’s really what starts to normalize the conversation around money.

george grombacher 7:51
Yeah, and it’s such an important thing. You’re right, we are, we’re excited about showing off the good things about money like cars, or jewelry, or clothes, or vacations or whatever. But you don’t normally advertise the fact that maybe I’m broke, and I don’t have enough money, and I’m paycheck to paycheck kind of thing. But the reality is that two thirds of us are there. And there’s few of us who are perfect. And you know, that’s we just need to lean into that and recognize that it’s part of the human condition to be not necessarily naturally good at money, but to recognize, like you talked about, just be mindful of it, pay attention, and then start working and moving in the right direction. So I’m fine to saying that you can give somebody the greatest guitar in the world. But if they didn’t know how to play it, then then it wouldn’t matter. So you can give somebody the greatest bookkeeping systems, the greatest forecasting tools. But if they’re not interacting correctly, or they don’t know how to use it, then it doesn’t matter. So you need to teach people and train people. And that’s probably not a, that’s probably not a natural thing, either. How do people when you’re engaging with people, what are some of the common problems that you’re seeing?

Unknown Speaker 9:04
Yeah, so I mostly work with six and seven figure business owners. And the common thing that I often hear, and I want to say this, because I feel like if you are just starting out, and you think you have this, this thought, like know that, like this is common, regardless of how many zeroes you have in your account, and it’s, we’re doing really well with business, and but our bank account doesn’t reflect that. And what that tells me is that they’re, they’re not looking at their financials, because there’s a reason for that. And there’s a few different reasons. So it’s not like, Oh, it must be just this, but it could be like a whole, like, it could be a few different things. So really trying to identify what the root cause of that is, in order to then to start to treat it. And I think, like that’s probably the most common thing and it’s that the person that is coming to me has been someone who’s been doing their books on the weekend, because again, when it comes to money, and when it comes to your business financials, there is a level of trust that you that I believe that you want to have with someone that’s seeing your money and seeing all the things because, you know, oftentimes, like, when it comes to the business, my role is to be like the person that has like their eyes on the money at all time and understands what’s happening and going and being able to relay the messages and execute based on that. And so you really need to have a level of trust. So it’s like, first of all, like understanding that bringing this person in is like a really big first step. But that making sure that you have a really great rapport with them is really important because this person you’re going to have very confidential personal vulnerable conversations with. And so it’s really just like getting a CEO comfortable with, like, wanting to start understanding that they need to outsource and then finding the person that works well with them. And once they have that, then it really starts to like everything starts to unfold. But But yeah, I feel like that’s the common thing. They just don’t know what’s happening with their financials, they know that something’s not right, but they don’t know how to figure out what it is.

george grombacher 11:18
Which certainly makes sense. And when we’re talking about entrepreneurs, I imagine that we want our profit lines or our profit margins to be larger. And if we’re losing small percentages here and there, which which people probably are without even knowing it, that’s really cutting into it and small amounts, which you probably find tons of tiny little amounts all over the place, lead to really, really large percentages over the long term, big picture.

Unknown Speaker 11:46
Yeah, I mean, so I would love to tell you that all of my clients are worried about their profit margins. I think the part that I think is like, that’s where we want to get them, some of them do, but they’re so focused on they’re like, I’ve done this much money in revenue, and I’m, like, awesome, but if you’ve done, let’s say, 2.5 million in revenue, and you have 2.3 million and expenses, like you don’t have a healthy business, and I think that that’s the part like versus like, if you have $100,000 business, and you’ve got $50,000 profit, like, that’s 50%, like net profit, like, that’s awesome. So I think that it’s like really understanding that, like, the revenue is often like that vanity metric. And that’s where everyone is, like, focused, right? They want to be like growth they want like the big number, versus like what that net profit is and what like the profitability margin is that’s the number like that’s the number that I think matters. That’s really the testament of like, how much the business if you’re someone who’s in business, because you want to scale and sell that number, I think matters more than the revenue number because that is what makes it like, how not only like, how, how big is your business? But like, How smart are you? And how savvy are you with running the numbers and managing the general expenses on the business to create the profitability?

george grombacher 13:12
Yeah, that’s a that’s a great point. It’s like That’s awesome that that your revenues that but what does it really mean? What is really actually showing up in your bank account personally, and is this an attractive asset to a would be buyer, one point down the road, if that’s a year from now, or 10 years from now? Why not be thinking about that?

Unknown Speaker 13:32
Right. And even if you’re someone who is not interested in selling their business, maybe that’s not the reason that you have your business. But again, that bottom number tells like is the one that will chances are, that’s the number that’s going to feed your lifestyle, and that’s going to feed your children and so that number matters more than anything because you want to make sure that the reason that you started the business and you’ve put all of this time and attention and energy into it is because you have a desire for a very specific lifestyle. And this is the fuel like the business is the fuel for that lifestyle. So creating greater intention around the financials and especially the profit really helps like fuel and is like the lifeblood of the of your life.

george grombacher 14:20
Well done. Amy.

Unknown Speaker 14:23
I’m on fire today.

george grombacher 14:25
What kind of how to when when, when when you’re engaging with people, it’s probably going to be dependent but how often are Are you encouraging asking people to be doing planning sessions to be carving out time to just be thinking about business looking forward?

Unknown Speaker 14:44
Yeah, so um, you know, there’s, there’s your annual planning, which I think is sort of that like big picture like, like, let’s just throw everything and see like what is however you wish to do that. And there’s that part of it. then there’s like your quarterly, then monthly and then weekly and in terms of like, so it happens quite a bit. And the reason that it happens quite a bit is that I believe, like when it comes to the finances, real time reconciliations, so you constantly see what’s happening in the business. So you know, what the cash flow is, and how things are moving in and out. Because oftentimes, if you’re waiting till the end of the month, finishing out all the stuff and then looking at the financials, like you’re already a couple of weeks into the next month. So if there are course corrections that need to happen, you don’t want to be doing them for six weeks later you want I want you to do right now. So looking at those numbers and saying, okay, my goal was to have net profit of x, am I creating that result? And why or why not? And having those if you’re not, if you don’t have someone like me, then the doing that independently, and if you do have someone like me, like you’re going through that on a monthly basis, but that’s something that you should be doing on a weekly basis, once the finances are like complete, like looking at them and being able to say like, okay, you know, like, I thought I was gonna have this much in revenue, like what’s going on? And is it because the sales are down is it because you’ve got a collection situation, like, but knowing like having like, being able to, like, ask and respond, like really helps flex that muscle of like having that relationship with money, which fosters confidence, which then helps you like continue to make decisions and grow and scale

george grombacher 16:32
Danna talks about rewiring or creating new neural pathways in your mind that that makes a ton of sense. And the more we do it, the more comfortable we get more confident we become. And it’s it’s it’s a virtuous cycle.

Unknown Speaker 16:46
Yep, absolutely. Love it.

george grombacher 16:49
Well, you mean, the people are ready for that difference making tip? What do you have for them.

Unknown Speaker 16:53
So if you’re someone who carries the thought, I am terrible with money, I need to do better with money, anything that is stemming around that I invite you to start creating a relationship with money. And that comes with like, again, easy, basic steps. If you’re someone who’s not checking your bank account, to start with checking your bank account, then like let’s then we can upset you know, move up to like going into your bookkeeping software. And just looking there, we want to take baby steps. Because ultimately, if you’re able to leverage the financial data in your business, you will be able to create any goal you wish to have in that business. But it all starts with just taking one micro step, and that I’m talking about money here. But that goes with anything, whether it’s in business or life, just what is the one next step? Don’t worry about the 50 steps later, what is the one next step that you can take in order to move forward towards that goal?

george grombacher 17:50
Well, I think that that is great stuff that definitely gets Come on. I love it. So many personal finance issues, business issues with with with with money are so daunting, that that it just causes us to do nothing. And that’s obviously the incorrect thing. Just start taking those small steps that you’re talking about. That really is the key. So I love it. When Amy, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you.

Unknown Speaker 18:19
If you visit my website at my virtual CFO dot CEO, you can check out all of what I have going on. I have a great program called the finance edit. So if you are someone who is looking to create this relationship with money and to do so in a really great container that has some DIY and done with you check it out, and I’d love to have you

george grombacher 18:47
Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, show him your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to my virtual cfo.co. And did you say the financial edit

Unknown Speaker 18:59
or audit, edit finance audit?

george grombacher 19:03
There’s Amy’s finance edit on the site and it’s a great entry point. Dig in and I love DIY resources I love done with you resources. So great to have those options with the best way for you to engage. Thanks again, Amy. Thanks. Hi. Until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Thanks, as always for listening! If you got some value and enjoyed the show, please leave us a review wherever you listen and we’d be grateful if you’d subscribe as well.

You can learn more about us at LifeBlood.Live, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and Facebook.

Our Manifesto

We’re here to help others get better so they can live freely without regret
Believing we’ve each got one life, it’s better to live it well and the time to start is now If you’re someone who believes change begins with you, you’re one of us We’re working to inspire action, enable completion, knowing that, as Thoreau so perfectly put it “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” Let us help you invest in yourself and bring it all together.

Feed your life-long learner by enrolling in one of our courses.

Invest in yourself and bring it all together by working with one of our coaches.

If you’d like to be a guest on the show, or you’d like to become a Certified LifeBlood Coach or Course provider, contact us at Contact@LifeBlood.Live.

Please note- The Money Savage podcast is now the LifeBlood Podcast. Curious why? Check out this episode and read this blog post!

We have numerous formats to welcome a diverse range of potential guests!

  • Be Well- for guests focused on overall wellness
  • Book Club-for authors
  • Brand-for guests focused on marketing
  • Complete-for guests focused on spirituality
  • Compete-for competitors, sports, gaming, betting, fantasy football
  • Create-for entrepreneurs
  • DeFi-for guests focused on crypto, blockchain and other emerging technologies
  • Engage-for guests focused on personal development/success and leadership
  • Express-for journalists/writers/bloggers
  • General-for guests focused on finance/money topics
  • Lifestyle-for guests focused on improving lifestyle
  • Maximize-for guests focused on the workplace
  • Numbers-for accounting and tax professionals
  • Nurture-for guests focused on parenting
  • REI-for guests focused on real estate

Feed your Life-Long Learner

Get what you need to get where you want to go

Rate it
Previous post