Interview: Building Financial Freedom in Your Business
Owning your own business can make you financially free. You can set your own hours, pursue your passions, and achieve your goals. But how do you build financial freedom into your business model?
Natalie Cook, CEO of Copper8 Strategies, LLC, joins host Ben Easter to discuss how to simplify your business, scale, hire, and achieve financial freedom.
Ben Easter 00:00
Hi I'm Ben Easter and you're listening to the shift to freedom Podcast, the podcast that gives you the mindsets, strategies, tips and tricks to live your freedom and love your life. If you're here, I suspect that you have a total badass inside you but chances are that you haven't let it playful out yet. Maybe you've been told not to that it's too much. Maybe you've been worried about what other people will think or maybe you just haven't made the space to shine. If any of that sounds familiar, you've come to the right place each week my co host tonight will be exposing the lies that keep that badass chain and more importantly sharing the tools to help you break free and share that most authentic you with the world. So if you want more freedom, possibility or courage then I'd invite you to take a deep breath. Get curious and listen carefully for your shift to freedom. Welcome back to the shift to Freedom podcast. I'm your host Ben Easter today. I am so excited to have this conversation. I think this will really help you freedom seekers out there. Today we're talking to Natalie cook the CEO of Copper Age strategies. Welcome to the show, Natalie.
Natalie Cook 01:19
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Ben. Yeah, I'm
Ben Easter 01:21
really excited to have this conversation. There's so so much of what creates freedom in the world, I think is really understanding the way that money works and how to get money working for you. In your in your business and in your life. And so why don't you start by telling us a little bit about what you're doing over there at coporate? You know, let us know about the company. How did it come to be and then like kind of just like super high level what are you what are you up to?
Natalie Cook 01:43
Yeah, so how it came to be is I worked in ad tech investments at the Gates Foundation. And I want to just switch into for profit. I freelanced for a little bit and I kept coming back to finance and I have an MBA in finance. Spent some time in corporate finance at Starbucks. And when I was gonna go out on my own, I'm like, this makes sense. This is what business owners need. I love working directly with CEOs of companies. And so that's how it came to be. And what we do is we focus on businesses with unique, some sort of unique business model or complicated problem. So that could be hiring all part time staff or hiring all international staff or their product is really unique or they have multiple types. of products that don't necessarily go together. That's our sweet spot. And we take businesses that are getting to a million or at a million and scaling. So really, it's that unique business model plus scaling. That is our core focus. And so we provide two services, fractional CFO support and then we also have management consulting strategy outside that would be a deeper amount of analysis whether or not you have a CFO in house.
Ben Easter 02:47
Awesome, cool. And on a personal note, what was it that drew you to finance like, what are you were you interested in finance in the first place?
Natalie Cook 02:55
So finance, if you're in a business, it sees everything right? So you get to you have to know everything about the business? Because yes, it's but for me what clicked was like you can't. We'd be working on strategy projects. And I'd be like, what were the numbers like? It doesn't make sense. If you're not going to tie your numbers to your strategy. You don't have a strategy and so to me, it was like, finance was this weird thing and I didn't quite understand and then when I figured out all it was was business strategy, I was like, Well, that makes total sense. All it is, is figuring out your why. And, and then it was like, Okay, well, of course, this is what we're gonna do and this is how you can help businesses. And then when I started doing consulting, I found that it was just like, the biggest gap. So I never I never saw myself long term and in finance, I kind of just like happened upon it. I was in finance adjacent roles it fit. It makes sense. And then I was like, this doesn't really feel right. But then when I started consulting, I'm like, Yes, this is right. This is what people need. This makes sense for my brain. It's but it really to me it was the IT strategy and and that was just the most exciting piece of it.
Ben Easter 04:05
I love that. I love the strategic focus too, because I think a lot of times people and I'm excited to get into this in this conversation because I think it's it's not always that people think about there being like a financial strategy. It's more like do we have money coming in? And then do like how much money is going out? And is the money coming in more than the money going out? And on some level, I guess, you know, that is the essence of business. But there's so much more to it than that. So I think like I'm really interested to hear how do you think Well, first, let me ask you this. At what size business at what level of business development? Would you say that it would be important for someone to start thinking about CFO versus just having like an accountant or bookkeeper that sort of thing?
Natalie Cook 04:47
depends on the kind of business but really, I think you should think about a financial advisor, whether it's a formal CFO or just somebody who understands finance when you start so accounting is backwards looking. It's really taking what's happened and putting it all the right buckets. You should have that but the finance pieces like you know, I think we're gonna get into hiring so it's like, well, how do I how do I hire and then make protect myself from my business? And how do I look forward? Those things are always necessary. The there's not a good starting point. We particularly work with businesses when they're right around that million because I found that if their pre revenue or before that mark, then our services are just too robust for what we provide. However, there's tons of businesses that are providing advisory services that are coming out that are trying to meet people that are below that mark, that are just a lighter lift that are more just having that it's more like one on one coaching is how I think of it and it when you start
Ben Easter 05:53
Yeah, and this is great. This is beautiful. And before we get into kind of more of the specifics what kinds of questions would someone be going to a CFO thinker, like that financial coaching kind of part for their business? What kinds of questions would they be going and trying to answer with the help of an expert in this way? Yeah,
Natalie Cook 06:13
it's what do I do with the numbers that I've just been given from my accountant?
Ben Easter 06:19
So we take what we take the situation what we look at backwards, and then like now what am I going to do?
Natalie Cook 06:23
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I just got these pieces of paper that have numbers on them. I don't know what they mean. Do I just do it for taxes? Right? Yeah. Like there's so much more in depth that you can go. The one of the key things that I will look at if I do a little on the coaching on the side for the smaller businesses and one of the key things we just start with is like Do you understand your profit and loss? And can you take some piece of insights and then make a different decision next month based on that insight?
Ben Easter 06:58
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So doing something with our, with the insects that we're having, taking some kind of action. And so maybe that's a good place for us to get get specific here because I think I think the can understand the connection between like, freedom and what freedom means on like, a personal level, as well as a business level is really useful. And since we're already talking about the p&l, you have a strong opinion on freedom in the p&l and how financial freedom for business shows up in the p&l. So tell us a little bit about that. How's that look?
Natalie Cook 07:29
Yeah, so I, I work with quite a few venture backed startups. So let me start with those examples. Because I don't think they build freedom into their models, right. They're thinking long term they're thinking we're gonna get bought, get to profitability later which profitability for those of you who are kind of new to finance, it's your bottom line. That saying you're not negative after a certain period of time, on the bottom line of your p&l, which is your net income. I personally am a big believer in like, let's focus on the bottom line first. What is that supposed to look like? Profit right, your revenue higher than your expenses. Exactly. Exactly. So if you're thinking about your personal finances, you want to spend less than you make, right? That's the whole goal, right? It's no different. So make $100,000 Spend $90,000 start there. Just figure out what that is supposed to look like and then work backwards.
Ben Easter 08:22
Because if we if we don't do that, then the game is always figuring out some source of funding, and that's where these VC we're not going to talk about the SV thing that happened, but that's where a lot of times we're like kind of passing the hot potato so to speak down down the path. And so your invitation it sounds like is to focus but start to conceive of what profitability looks like for your business. Right in the very beginning. Right. Yeah.
Natalie Cook 08:50
And so I think when you're it depends on the size of business, but let's just give an example. You're a business owner and your only goal is to provide for yourself and your family. Then you're you're gonna start with what's your owners compensation, how are you taking home, start there, and then work backwards from there and what is the rest of the business need to look like in order for you to get paid what you want to get paid? VC businesses are looking at what they're gonna get paid in. The future. So they're working towards that goal. You want to work if you want pure freedom to not go in this cycle of constantly fundraiser or constantly having to just always be like marketing to just white knuckling that marketing and sales. Yeah. Working from Hey, is my product profitable? Right, is the business problem, meaning the cost of delivering the product? Yeah, right. Can it cover the additional costs? So a lot of times, businesses focus so much on their gross margin. So that's your revenue minus your cost of goods or your cost of sales, that they forget there. There's a whole other section of costs below that line, right?
Ben Easter 09:56
taxes, insurance, licensure, all zactly because that overhead to the power and all that stuff.
Natalie Cook 10:02
Yeah. So I don't want to get into too technical financial details, but I love a good contribution margin analysis. Okay, I
Ben Easter 10:10
have no idea what that is. What is the contribution analysis
Natalie Cook 10:13
so it's it's slightly different than gross margin, but similar I think they get confused. Okay, difference meaning your contribution margin what you're saying is what have your fixed costs so your your sorry, let me clarify your variable costs change with the volume of sales. And this is saying of those variable costs what's left to cover your fixed costs,
Ben Easter 10:38
like let's take a simple examples like if we're made if we have a hot dog company, then our variable costs are going to be like every the more hotdogs we sell, the more meat we need for inside the hot dogs. Exactly. But our fixed costs might be the cost of power to run the machines or rent on the warehouse that's gonna stay the same every month.
Natalie Cook 10:58
Yep, exactly. And so if you can, that's a good analysis to give you an insight and there's I won't get into the super technical people can reach out to me and I will spend two hours talking about it, but there are ratios that will tell you like your business has the capability to be profitable. Yeah, right. Versus, well, you are it doesn't matter
Ben Easter 11:20
how much money you make. You're always going to be spending more than it costs you exactly more than you're making to make that money. Yeah,
Natalie Cook 11:28
exactly. So if you can, if you're going to launch a product, you can start there. If you already have your product, you can go back and look at that. But then the idea of being like well, what what are your goals towards freedom? What does freedom look like for you figuring out where that fits? So could be ordered compensation could be net income.
Ben Easter 11:44
Yeah. But we're talking about the way that the owner is getting paid. So we're talking about like personal freedom. Okay, yeah. And starting there. And now, do you think of that as being the bottom line? Or do you factor that you factor that into the p&l itself? Okay,
Natalie Cook 11:59
yeah. I would love to see a business where the owner and the business owners, however many owners there are, are making what they want for their business and it's providing them personal freedom, right? Because then they're going to be relieved and then they're going to be able to invest in other businesses and provide more value, totally. And then the economy spins and we love it. Right, exactly. And about bottom line. So the net income line is also very, a big chunk of that revenue, right? So depends on the type of business but 10 to 30% is a really, really good net income. Okay, great. And if you have both of those you can do whatever you want, right?
Ben Easter 12:38
Yeah, cuz your business is working at that point. Exactly. Yeah. That's awesome. So what I'm hearing you say is, start with your personal finances and understand kind of your like budget is a word but like understand what it costs you to live the life that you live. And if especially if you're starting a new business, or really if you're the purpose of most people's businesses, and I'm, you know, I don't want to get prescriptive, but like really, this is the purpose of having a business in our lives is so that we can experience whatever kind of freedom we want to a business is a vehicle for doing that. And so the invitation here is to start with your personal finances and understand what your number for your you your family. However, you want to invest that money in your reality, your own personal reality, start there and then build the business finances around that number. So what's the first step? So once we find that number, the first step is to like work backwards, like from taxes, and then and then kind of move up the line there and see like, alright, well, how much do we need to be spending in marketing in order to get the, we need to understand our model, right? And that's where somebody like you would help, right to figure out like, well, you know, how much does it cost us to make this or any of these expenses? Unnecessary? What's the minimum, it costs us to make money in our business? How many how does it you know, we turn $1 into $5 or $10, or whatever, in order to get to that bottom line. And that's the way that we would kind of think about this if we're building a business for freedom.
Natalie Cook 14:01
Yeah, so um, I I'm a big fan of the book profit first. Okay, great, which I feel like it's controversial among fractional CFOs. Okay, how about that later? I just learned that I didn't know. I think that that gives a pretty high level view of how you come back into those numbers. And then you can kind of tweak it to your business specifically. So some industries are just a little different. Like I'm a professional services firm, I don't run a 30% operating expenses, but some, some businesses do most do. Okay, that's a rule of thumb. Yeah, in generally, I mean, if you're spending a lot more than it depends, right? So it's just, it varies quite a bit, but that's generally a rule if you're under a certain amount, you can kind of expect this amount of operating expenses and the percentage goes down as you scale. There's a lot of those and if you can figure that out for your industry and your revenue size, then you've got to back into it. So you can basically just plug some numbers if you're good at Excel. And I'm sure that people are sleeping like That sounds really hard.
Ben Easter 15:03
That's what you want to talk to somebody like that.
Natalie Cook 15:07
And you can say, great, my I need to make $5,000 a month in income. So my revenue has to be $10,000 or $25,000, or whatever that depending
Ben Easter 15:17
on how much it costs you to make. $1.
Natalie Cook 15:20
Exactly, exactly. And that's just a really good starting point. And then the next thing is really looking at all your expenses and being scrappy, it pays off right? It builds freedom, in my opinion, right? You know that in personal finance, you spend less you have more to save and do the things that you want to do. There's nothing wrong with spending money on the right things. Yeah, there's no difference in business.
Ben Easter 15:45
That's actually a question that I wanted to ask you is like how do you think about the the tent the dynamic tension that exists between, you know, building a business that's successful and what it means to then have more income? And then what so what do we do with that? So it's like the tension between, you know, lifestyle and growth, you might say, or investment or whatever that looks like, I mean, savings is the lowest version of that then like, how do you think about the tension between lifestyle and
Natalie Cook 16:16
I think we live in a really, really cool time where you can be both and yeah, right. We have all this technology. We have social media, we've got all these things that allow you to market and sell and very different way for sometimes very low effort. Yeah, in products that are. Yeah, really low effort. And I love that because you don't have to choose anymore to some degree. Right? Yeah. I think when you really do get that tension, it's your personal choice of what does it mean for you is does having a million dollar top line revenue means something to you personally? Or do you think the world needs you to have that? Yeah, and then and then same with your personal income? What do you really what's your real goal? Is it to take a lot of vacations while you're probably not going to scale your business as quickly as somebody else who doesn't take vacations, but that's still amazing, right? I would love to be paid to travel all over the world. But not have to actually like interact with businesses. When I shoot, I'm making a different choice right now and then I'll get there later. So you have to lizard personal tension, for sure. But taking advantage of all the time that we live and being a both and scenario is the best, right? I'd rather grow a business slowly. That's profitable. That's a little more conservative in its growth, versus getting on the cover of Forbes because that, you know, I made all this fantastic growth, but I was miserable and really wasn't taking home as much pay. I think it would be it's surprising how many business owners do not pay themselves market rate. And I think it's like this is the whole goal of business, right? If you own the business, you should be taking dividends you should be paying yourself you should be building value in the marketplace. And taking those and reinvesting them into other businesses. And it's, yeah,
Ben Easter 18:21
philosophically, we're really aligned there and I just want to like also hold space for like, some people are here to play the money game. That's like, that's what they want to do. And there's nothing wrong with that if that's the game that you want to play. And also there are other ways there are other games that we can be playing in the world like the vacation game or the you know the free time or even the balance game we can be playing and it's going to kind of have a tension with the money game like someone like Warren Buffett is here to play the money game and you know even well into being a multi multi million dollar he's like stopping for his you know, Egg McMuffin at McDonald's for breakfast, you know, so that he can use that money to invest in other things. So the point that I'm making here is like, decide on your purpose for business and, and also, it sounds like we're very philosophically aligned that the point of business is for us while we're here to live a life that we want to live while we're here.
Natalie Cook 19:13
Yes, yeah. I love that I love there. I think definitely holding space for the people that love that game because they they find joy in it. Totally. And I don't I also support high growth venture backed startups. Which is like counter to how I personally feel about running my business, but I love the balance, right? Because then I can say, like, I'm tracking your net income, and do you need this expense, right. When you think about that particular aspect, I do think it's such there is this tension between what is the outside world think of your business versus what's happening behind the scenes, and then you start to get in the cost trap. You start to spend money on things that you don't need.
Ben Easter 19:59
Yeah, this is like the business equivalent of Keeping Up with the Joneses.
Natalie Cook 20:04
It happens and I see it specially happens. I don't want to name any I love my clients don't do this because I obviously personally watched it especially happens in the tech space because you have all these cool tech tools coming out. And then all of a sudden you're buying all this technology for your business because you want to seem like oh, I've got the best tech. They don't need those things. Right. Like, yeah, you got to stop and think about it. Those costs add up faster than you would think.
Ben Easter 20:33
Yeah, this is one of my personal blind spots actually, because I like to I love the tools, the tech tools and saw like see a thing of like, oh, that could be a way for me to like support this function in my business. I like I love getting excited. I love the idea of automation and AI and all this stuff. And like you're saying just with your as with your personal accounts, you know like the Netflix, the Hulu, the Disney plus they can start to add up and they wind up taking a big chunk over time from your business. That's not going to some other piece of growth. There's always going to be that risk reward sort of thing. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. I would I wouldn't be doing our listeners a disservice if we didn't talk a little bit about hiring because I think it's such a useful part of growing the business. And so I'd love to hear from you. What are the financial considerations that you think are really important when we're talking about hiring when we're thinking about hiring when we're ready to this is really relevant for me because we're like actually hiring right now in the business. So what do we how do we think about hiring from a financial perspective?
Natalie Cook 21:33
Yeah, good. Good question. What, let's use a real example. What role are you hiring for in your business?
Ben Easter 21:39
We're hiring an online business manager. Okay. Yeah.
Natalie Cook 21:42
Okay, great. So there's a couple there's two things right. If we think about going back to the freedom mindset of hiring, you all again need to know your goals right? So either you're trying to alleviate your time or someone's time, you're gonna have a larger team. So it might not be directly the business owners time. Or you're trying to increase sales, ideally, both right? And so then thinking about where does that role fit and what directly are they going to impact in the business? So every hire should impact revenue to some degree either seen or unseen, right? So a salesperson is going to come in and they're going to specifically drive revenue. But an online business manager is going to create automation for your business, which is going to alleviate time which is going to alleviate costs, which is going to increase your revenue. Yep. So getting really clear on those goals. First, is key. Like you just have to know that before you hire, everybody makes mistakes. I've made like five in my business because I didn't know what I wanted. And then it wasn't the right thing. So you can't, I felt like when I started I'm like, I've done this right right away. So just know that hold space for that too. Like you're gonna make mistakes, you're gonna hire the wrong person, you're gonna hire the wrong role. It happens. But knowing that well first and then the second thing from a financial consideration are the two things I would focus on our de risking your business from that hire going south and having enough cash saved to cover payroll while those sales build up,
Ben Easter 23:13
which is kind of de risking as well. Yeah. So when you so when you said this the risk and then because that was what I was thinking is like making sure that we have the reserves on hand. So what when you think the IRS can in what other way would we be de risking? Yeah,
Natalie Cook 23:27
good question. So I would say almost always, there's probably a few exceptions to this hire a 1099. To hire first.
Ben Easter 23:35
Okay. Yeah. As a contractor, yes. Always sort of the contractor for 90 days at someone before you marry them is another way to say that.
Natalie Cook 23:43
I think that we live in a world where people are so used to getting offers with benefits and all this signing bonus and all this stuff right away. Right? If you think corporate space. Yeah, that's normal, but you don't have to do that. Yeah, you're hiring as a contractor for 90 days and make it very clear that they're on a trial basis for 90 days and having a very clear employment agreement. De risks you financially from that going south in some other way. Besides the revenue piece.
Ben Easter 24:09
Yeah. And this, by the way, I think this is another really cool thing that because when we're talking about the globalization of the economy, there's something really interesting that's happening as well in the world, which is that we're having fewer and fewer like I think there is a slow but there is a there's a trend where we're moving less into the employee model and more into the 1099 contractor model because it's like it's worth taking on the responsibility of owning a business and your taxes in order to have the freedom to work with other clients and to be to not have a cap on your income and all that stuff and to work from wherever you want to set your own business up. Right. And so I think that there's something really interesting that we can find more and more people who are willing and desirous of actually being that 1099 role so that they can have that freedom in their business.
Natalie Cook 24:54
Absolutely. I mean, again, that goes back to the both and not either or have that freedom in business. So that's one thing that D risks you from an HR perspective from lawsuits from, you know, you you messed up your employment agreement, they weren't in the right role, you can let go of them without any backlash, right. So that's a huge financial risk to a business is hiring the wrong person firing them and getting sued. Right. And the other piece, yeah, it's still it's all de risking. That's a lot of finance. But the other piece is just making sure you can cover that payroll for two months. Ideally, I think there's certain exceptions to that where a month makes sense because they're gonna immediately trigger it like I think a lot of times new business owners are hiring a virtual assistant, I think you can do one month like you're gonna hopefully get that back or know that that's coming or be able to do it. So there's either circumstances you can get away with my mom. I think three is key. Yeah, I would prefer three and then I would especially if it's a revenue generating role, so think a sales person figuring out that compensation structure really clearly and then maybe having six months of pay, right because it might take them that long to train and understanding that training. Yeah, some of those you just aren't going to know until you have a business that's been around for two to three years and you have a team of 15 Or
Ben Easter 26:17
better, more established processes and you just understand your business a bit better.
Natalie Cook 26:21
Yeah, exactly. And then there's business owners that are like a year in and have no clue what they're doing. They're making their first hire, that's when you want to be pretty conservative as well and then be able to fire that person pretty quickly.
Ben Easter 26:31
Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. So what about because of you? The hidden costs of hiring and turnover I think is like something I'm really interested to hear your perspective on. What does it cost to, to to sides of this? What does it cost to do that to turn over an employee and then like, what is the cost of the business to not do that to not turn over the employee and to have maybe an underperforming employee or even an employee where maybe the business's objectives have changed a little bit and we're still keeping them around, even though they're providing less to the bottom line less impact alone, so
Natalie Cook 27:04
yeah, okay, let's start with the turnover piece. So this is a little old data, I should probably go verify it. But roughly, it costs a business $40,000 To replace a salaried employee. So think of all the cost to like you're spending on interviews, you're spending training, you're spending, if you're paying a recruiting firm, it's going to be more than that, right? That's a huge upfront costs. Totally. That's expensive, right? So that's just do you do not want a $40,000 so it's I don't care how big your business is, and you can afford it. It's just a big expense. Yeah, not pay that and you don't see it. That's the hard thing is you don't you doesn't show up anywhere. All this hidden
Ben Easter 27:44
cost of represents taking somebody's time and they are then not doing something else that they could be doing for the business to add to the bottom line.
Natalie Cook 27:52
I like this example. It's gonna sound a little out there. But there's a cost to meetings, right? So if you gave everybody in your business an hourly cost, whether they have one or not, and then you have 10 people in a meeting for an hour and they all get paid $100 an hour. It was a really expensive meeting. Yeah, that's the same way you should think about that time spent returning over an employee.
Ben Easter 28:11
Yeah. And this by the way, that thing that you just said, is really useful for business owners to think of and you can do it not just with your employees and breaking down like what is the cost of having this person do everything, whether or not they're quote unquote, hourly employee, but you can do that with everything. Like how much does it cost for us to buy this computer and then like, how much time do we get to use out of this computer and what like, what is the capacity of that resource and all that sort of thing. So this is where, again, a financial thinker is really useful to have if you don't already have one in your business. Because figuring out like the actual granular costs of everything is how you figure out that profit. Number in the first place. But so so go back to the so we that was the hidden costs of hiring and turnover. Yeah. Now, can we talk about the other side? Like what happens though, if we have an employee who is underperforming or maybe the business goals have shifted and we're no longer what's the cost to keep somebody around? How do you think about that?
Natalie Cook 29:06
Yeah, well, there's the cost of their salary and they're not driving revenue, right? So that that's at least one line in that structure. Maybe they're doing a little bit of time that they're helping, but you can immediately see that right? You're just wasting that cost. You can either get a better person in there that's going to drive revenue or reduce time.
Ben Easter 29:26
But that's like opportunity costs is what we're talking about there. Like you could be spending that money to something else that
Natalie Cook 29:30
could be making you more money Exactly. And then the the hidden costs would be what if someone else is doing that job for you and they're not able to do their full time job? Because they're covering for someone else not doing their full time job right. So you're double paying a salary that's not like for two roles that aren't getting finished. That's
Ben Easter 29:47
huge. Yeah. That was a really interesting thing that you just said actually, because that person is getting paid not just to cover that one, which might be obvious to the business owner, but they're also then not it's the opportunity cost of their time. They're then not getting to do whatever it is that they're supposed to, that they were hired to do in the first place. Right.
Natalie Cook 30:03
Right. Right. I think there's a cost to the stress of whoever's managing the employee and knows they're not working right. So think about how much you can't be productive when you're stressed out and anxious. Have to like deal with this thing to huge cost
Ben Easter 30:18
rate? We all know the feeling of like having something weighing on us that we're not able to perform on or that we have some responsibility that's not being able to met be met and then like what's that cost and sleep alone? You know what I mean? Like worrying about it while you're trying to fall asleep?
Natalie Cook 30:32
I my business I track time hours right? I just everybody you gotta definitely bill by the hour. And I track it because we're a professional services firm. So I can see that's one of my KPIs is like how much are we spending per month on each client and but I'm a huge believer in tracking time, which is like not normal for most businesses, if they're not in that way, where you can actually then take that and say, Well, I lost a day of work because I was stressed about this thing and then be like, Oh my gosh, that's how much it costs me to be stressed out. I mean, I don't even want to do the math on that, right. It's too much, but you could and it's worth looking at that because then you would never make that the same mistake again. You'd be like I just have to make this decision and move on because it's costing too much money.
Ben Easter 31:15
I love that. And by the way, if you're listening to this and you believe that thing that she just said which is that there is a literally $1 amount cost of stress in your life. Does that change the way that you think about building your business in the first place? Like does that change the way that you like, imagine the cost of building the same business two different ways. One way has a lot of stress one way has a lot less stress? What's the financial implication of something like that if you believe that stress is going to have some kind of dollar cost on your like that, that sleep cost? That time spent worrying and not thinking about solving some problem that you're solving in your business or creating some value in your business? Like what is the actual physical tangible cost of that? I think that's such an interesting calculation to just guess that to think about, you know,
Natalie Cook 32:03
yeah, yeah, I think the other piece of it too, is when you're not firing that employee that isn't working. There's a reason they're not working. And you don't always have to fix the reason but sometimes you're just holding that person back from something else in their life that they need to go
Ben Easter 32:19
to. Hallelujah. I love that that's like this is like the example I always use is if you're dating somebody and like you stick around, but the relationship is just like kind of met in the first place. Neither of you are then getting to have that really fulfilling relationship that could be out there waiting for you that you just holding yourself back from. Right.
Natalie Cook 32:37
Yeah. And I would argue if you gave me another 20 minutes to think about it, you could assign associate $1 amount to that as well.
Ben Easter 32:45
And see this, by the way, is why you want to have somebody like Natalie on your team, because because thinking of things and breaking them down into dollar costs. And if your brain doesn't work that way, like my brain doesn't work that way to have somebody on your team who can help you to think that way. And to just understand the actual costs, both visible and invisible in your business. Really, really, really useful for building that lifestyle of freedom, building your business to support you in feeling amazing in your life. Yeah, yeah. Natalie, this has been such an amazing conversation
