Building Financial Confidence and Stability | A Guide for Business Owners and Creatives
Hi Friends, today, I’ll walk you through how to build a strong financial foundation that can pay you for the rest of your life!
My name is Lucas and I love to help business owners improve their finances. Like most people, I grew up living paycheck to paycheck. By my late thirties my photo business was booming but because I had such a weak foundation with money, and little experience running a business, my financial problems were growing rapidly.
Now, just a few years later, I’m in the best financial position of my life and I did it by creating lasting financial stability - Today, I’ll show you how. (If you prefer to watch the video, please check it out here…)
Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity…
When it comes to creating financial stability, simplicity is king.
Learn the basics, practice the basics and perfect the basics.
It’s easy, it requires little effort and once you get into a rhythm, your finances work in the background so you can focus on things that are more important.
Today I’ll walk you through six phases that I went through to create financial stability and while this strategy works well for me, it’s not the only way. So, take what works for you and feel free to leave the rest. Now let’s get to it.
Phase 1: Clean Your Financial House and Simplify
Most of us have accumulated a ton of financial junk over the years so the first thing to do is to clean house and simplify.
Identify the few things that are actually important and remove the unimportant.
Think about it.. Three different credit cards with three different companies earning three different rewards is not simple. Keeping track of all those accounts is a huge waste of time and energy.
In contrast, the easier your finances are to maintain, the less time and thought they require. I recommend one set of accounts for your personal life and one set for your business.
This achieves three things:
Your business and personal finances are separated and organized.
You remove all the unimportant financial junk.
Everything is easier to manage.
The first step to creating financial stability is to simplify and streamline your day to day experience with money. Identify the few financial products that you enjoy using and then clean house. I walk you through the entire process in this video..
Phase 2: Identify and plug your financial leaks
The second phase to building financial stability is to identify and plug your financial leaks. So what’s a financial leak?
Poor spending habits
Carrying bad debt
Not knowing how to use a credit card
Not having a plan for your money
Not getting paid on time
Not knowing how to handle seasonal or irregular income
Not saving money
Avoiding your finances
Paying more taxes than you need to and the list goes on and on
Because most of us never learned how to manage a business or our finances, we figure it as we go. That works for a little while but eventually money starts slipping through the cracks.
Take the Jensen’s for instance… they were shocked to see that they had been wasting over $200k each year! How is that even possible? It’s pretty straightforward actually - it was a combination of poor spending habits, no plan for their money, avoiding their finances and not knowing how to handle large commission checks.
If you would like some help identifying your financial leaks:
Out of all the financial leaks I just listed, how many do you have? If you’d like to find out and see how much money you could be keeping each year, let’s hop on a free call and I’ll walk you through the 10 minute exercise.
So, if you’d like to manage your money and your business, create financial stability by plugging your financial leaks and capture more of your hard earned income.
Phase 3: Create a financial plan
Most people live paycheck to paycheck because they have no plan for their money so the third phase to creating financial stability is to create a simple financial plan.
Technically, budgeting is a plan and it works UNLESS, you don’t stick with it. I tried so many different apps and techniques BUT all of it was so tedious that I couldn’t make it past 2 months.
Instead of forcing yourself into a financial box that someone else created, I invite you to take a look at how you handle money and create a plan that’s easy for you.
For example: when I think I have a lot of money to spend, I spend a lot of money. So, instead of letting a $10k check sit in my business account, I reduce the amount available by splitting it up - I send $2500 to my savings, my lifestyle, my taxes and leave some for my business.
This simple plan achieves 3 things:
My financial goals and responsibilities get taken care of
I improve my shitty spending because there’s less money to waste.
It’s much easier and faster than budgeting so I actually stick with it
Phase 4: Make it easy and enjoyable for people to give you money
So far we’ve looked at the inside of our financial house so now, let’s take a look at what’s going on outside. The fourth phase to building financial stability is to make it really easy and enjoyable for people to give you money and while that seems obvious, it’s often overlooked.
Simply put, people like working with people that they like - when you’re fun to work with and make the experience really enjoyable for your clients, they keep coming back which is pretty close to printing money.
So, what experience are you providing to your guests? Are you easy to work with? Can the client sign your contract and pay you with a few clicks? Do you have 2-3 simple offerings or do you push them into indecision with a million products and services?
The goal of my photo business is not to provide photography, it’s to make my client’s live’s easier. The goal of The Big Split is not to fix my client’s finances (although that’s a by-product), it’s to show them how they can make their life easier.
If you’d like to build financial stability, make it really easy and enjoyable for people to give you money.
Phase 5: Leverage Experts and Systems
I didn’t have a great start with money but I did realize early on that if I wanted to build genuine wealth, I’d get there faster with a little outside help.The 5th phase to creating financial stability is to leverage experts and systems.
Find a bookkeeper and CPA that are easy to talk to, have a lot of experience helping small business owners, are not intimated by the tax man and are happy to introduce you to money and tax saving strategies.
And be aware that not all experts are created equal - I went through six different tax pros and four different bookkeepers before finding a couple that saved me a lot of money and are easy to work with. So ask a few colleagues for recommendations and interview a few people.
One of the other things I struggled with was running the back end of my business. Contracts, invoices, keeping track of client interactions - I used to write everything down in a notebook and hope that I didn’t lose track and then I found Dubsado.
Dubsado is a client management software that makes it easy for clients to hire me and it’s super easy for me to run the back end of my business. It’s like having a personal assistant to do all of the tasks I don’t want to do.
So, if you’d like to create financial stability, collaborate with few experts and leverage a few systems that will make your life easier and help you achieve your goals faster.
Phase 6: Limiting Financial Beliefs
And that brings us to the 6th phase in creating financial stability - Get clear on what’s holding you back Internally. In my experience, this is the most impactful phase and while I saved it for last, some of you may want to consider putting it first.
Every problem we have, starts with our thoughts. For instance, let’s say that when you were young, you heard your parents say “there’s never enough money” like a seed, the idea get’s planted into your subconscious.
As you get older, that seed grows into several weeds - you become stingy with money, you’re afraid to let go of money and you hustle to make more. When we address the stinginess or we try to stop hustling, all we are doing is cutting the weeds off at the surface.
But, when we go to the source of our problems and pull each limiting belief out by it’s roots, all of the weeds will no longer exist. And that’s why starting with this method can be so effective.
If you’d like to learn how to do this, I walk you through my process in this special 4 part series. Or check out Peter Crone’s financial freedom workshop or Ken Honda’s Money EQ course.
And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, that’s cool. Practice the first 5 phases and you will create financial stability.
A Crumbling Financial Foundation
Take a moment to think about your situation. How long have you been struggling with your finances? How long have you been living Paycheck to paycheck? How many years have you been looking at an empty savings account?
Whether you’ve had these habits for a year or a decade, recognize that it took some time to develop them, so it’ll take some time to replace them. Be patient and easy on yourself.
And if you’d like to build a strong foundation faster, consider The Big Split Boot Camp - It’s just you, me and your finances - I’ll walk you through all 6 phases plus so much more and help you implement all of it in less than week.
As we wrap up, I invite you to do a few things:
Plug your financial leaks, capture more of your hard earned income and practice mastering the basics to financial stability.
Look inward - the sooner you bring Awareness to your limiting beliefs and learn how to Accept them, the sooner you can empower yourself with more productive financial habits.
Set yourself up for success by leveraging experts and systems that will simplify and improve your finances..
Out of the 6, pick one that you’re most excited about or that would be the easiest for you to do. Practice it and once you’re feeling good, move onto the next phase, stacking one on top of the next.
Do this and you’ll be well on your way to building a stable and strong financial foundation which can pay you for the rest of your life.
Thank you so much for your time and energy and thank you for choosing to show up for you!
- Lucas Z.