Episode 55: Avoiding Your Books? Let’s Talk About Why (And What to Do Next)

  📍 Welcome to the Creative Minds Smart Money Podcast, where we turn financial confusion into creative confidence. I’m Samantha Eck, bookkeeper and fractional CFO for creative entrepreneurs. Each week I’m sharing my financial expertise and actionable strategies to help you build a thriving creative business. Plus, you’ll hear from industry experts who bring fresh perspectives on growing your business beyond the numbers. Because building a successful creative business starts with strong financial foundations. Your next chapter starts now.

 you are listening to the Creative Minds Smart Money Podcast, and today’s topic is all about avoiding your books, why it happens, how to break this cycle, and what to do next, because of course it happens more than you think. And I really wanna dismantle this whole shame and judgment and fear around financial avoidance and kind of.

Analyze and discuss the real reason that it shows up so that we can give you some tools to move forward with confidence instead of being afraid of your books, because being afraid of them is definitely not something we want for you ever. So let’s dive into this and really get into it.

Okay, so you know the feeling when you know you need to look at your finances, but somehow you always just avoid it. You don’t look at them, whether that’s you’re just too busy or something else is going on, or

you just avoid looking at them overall. Avoidance doesn’t mean that , you’re either bad with money or you’re not good at doing something, or whatever it is. It’s really just that you, your body and your brain are trying to protect you from something that it doesn’t feel equipped to face. And of course with numbers like we aren’t, like a lot of business owners aren’t equipped to.

Understand or face the numbers that are coming at them. There’s so much that goes into it that it’s, it is a scary thing. So I just wanna talk again about why avoidance happens and the difference between what a break is, what a spiral is, and how we can come back to where numbers with a little bit more trust and a little bit less shame and judgment based on what we’re seeing because it’s a topic that I see a lot and honestly, it’s something that I see with a lot of.

Women entrepreneurs that I work with is the judgment and the shame around their finances or around their money, and that’s why they avoid it. So obviously avoidance is very emotional. It’s not just something that comes logistically, whether that’s you’ve grown too fast and you dunno where your numbers mean anymore.

Based off of our last episode we’re talking about where we hit that six figure wall, and now it just becomes a little bit overwhelming. That’s something that sometimes you just avoid your books because you have grown so quickly and you just don’t know. What your numbers mean and you just don’t wanna look at them anymore.

You’re like, I don’t even wanna think about it. I don’t wanna look at it. I don’t want to analyze it. I don’t even wanna see it. And then of course, one of the other things that’s an emotional trigger is that you’re afraid that you are success or the success that you’ve been seeing won’t hold up on the microscope.

Like when you look at everything with a fine tooth comb. It’s just not going to give you the same impression that you got when you just glanced at it overall. And then another trigger is like whether you’ve had a past audit from the IRS, maybe you’re scared of your finances because of that. You’ve had a bad accountant, someone who messed up your books, and you’re like, I just don’t even wanna look at it anymore because.

I just know it’s a mess and I just don’t wanna do it. Or, maybe you’ve messed it up in some sort of way. And that’s not anything to say that I’m shaming you. It happens honestly, it happens more than you think and it’s totally normal. And then of course, either you have a shame lace moment that left a mark on you.

Maybe you overspent on coffee, maybe you went negative one month, something like that. Something that has left you not wanting to look at your numbers. And then of course, the last kind of trigger, or something that’s deeply connected to it is you don’t wanna confirm what you already suspect, which is that you’re either in a cash crunch or you know you’re gonna owe a lot of taxes.

There’s some sort of tax issue. It doesn’t make you irresponsible. It just means you’re either overloaded, you’re under supported, or you’re just under prepared to take on the impact that your finances are going to have, not just on your body, but. On your mental load. Now, there’s an episode that we had way back at the beginning with Melissa Ween who talked about, the mind body connection with money.

And I just wanna just reiterate that impact, that yes, avoidance and all of these things are deeply connected to our emotions and are deeply connected to the way we feel in our bodies. So it’s a weird thing to talk about, but it’s completely normal. Now avoidance obviously does have a cost and it’s usually paid, whether that’s in anxiety or emotions.

It’s not paid in like the cost of money. It’s paid in the toll that it takes on us and our bodies. So costs that might come up because you’re avoiding your numbers because you’re not looking at them, obviously are surprise tax bills because you just have not done your taxes in years ’cause you just don’t wanna look at your books and now you’re doing your taxes and you realize you owe 20 K in taxes.

You make business decisions and launches without data that could help you understand it if it’s profitable or not. You are feeling really broke, but you’re not. It’s just the fact that you don’t know what your numbers are, and it’s just a little bit disorganized. You can’t understand what the data’s trying to tell you.

And then of course, you’re gonna delay decisions and miss opportunities. Because you don’t know if you can hire, or maybe you meet a VA and you’re like, I love this va. I wanna hire them. But you don’t know if you can because you haven’t looked at your books and you haven’t let them guide you because you’ve been ignoring them.

And again, we know the emotional trigger of why you’re ignoring them. Now we just need to figure out how do we break outta that cycle and how do we get past it? Okay. So in order to avoid avoidance, we don’t want to do huge, huge steps. We really need to focus on something low friction that will get us just a step in the right direction, if that makes sense.

So first of all, we want to start with a few steps. Pause and just locate yourself. You wanna ask yourself. What am I feeling when I look at my books? And this is a serious, go into your QuickBooks, go into your spreadsheet, go into your bank account, and ask yourself, are you feeling guilt? Are you feeling shame?

Are you feeling. Confused, are you feeling broken? What does it make you feel? What emotion does it evoke that’s causing you to have this avoidance? Because of course you can’t organize what you’re still avoiding emotionally, and you have to face that. What I talked about in the last episode was of some sort of emotional intelligence, and this is where you are having that emotional intelligence to face yourself and say, okay, why am I avoiding this?

And then you want to reestablish that new shame zone, remove the narrative of failure. Honestly, avoidance of numbers happen so much more often than you think. Your books are a tool that is utilized to build strategy and to grow. It is not a scorecard that tells you if you’re doing good or not. So stop thinking of it as a success or fail,

just stop thinking of it like a report card. It’s not a report card, and it’s not going to tell you that you’re failing or you’re succeeding. Obviously, it is going to tell you if you’re making money or not, but just because you’re not making money does not mean you’re a failure. It’s just that we need to look at the data and see how we can fix that.

The next thing you wanna do is just take a single action, one single action that’s going to. Lower the pressure and the avoidance by, whether that’s booking a catch up session and catching up on your books, opening your accounting dashboard with, your morning coffee and just no pressure to fix anything.

Just looking and just understanding what’s going on in your business because just looking is the first step towards getting to where you need to next. And then of course, the next step will be to recreate a recurring rhythm. After you’ve looked, you know, atomic habits always says like taking that really, really small step forward.

So maybe you’ve looked, maybe the next time you go in there, maybe you categorize one transaction. The next time you go in there, maybe you categorize 10 transactions. And just continuing to do that and creating a recurring rhythm by doing that monthly, having a monthly check-in . getting a, having a strategy session with yourself, and if you feel like the do it yourself wall is just too high.

Bringing in support so that you can start to create that recurring rhythm, because avoiding your books is similar to like if you skip a dentist appointment, you can for a while, but eventually you know that toothache or those cavities are gonna come and it’s never as bad as you feared. It’s probably just something that they could clear up with a filling or they can clean it, you know? So similar to bookkeeping, we just need to make sure we get that bandaid over it and then really focus on getting into it. So, of course, reconnection is the goal. It’s not perfection. So we just really wanna focus on. Getting in there and reconnecting with your books.

So there’s three re-engagement paths that I suggest, the first step is a cleanup and catch up, and this is not, if you’re like, I can do that myself. For those who really feel deeply behind, the first step you’re gonna wanna do is either do a cleanup and catch up of your books to get caught up to where you are currently.

Now, if you’re someone who needs help and you’re like, Smith, I don’t want to do a cleanup and catch up, I just need someone to take over. We have the entry point ignition point for people who are looking for just baseline bookkeeping services, or even a strategy call, if you wanna jump on a strategy call and figure out like how and where and why you’re avoiding maybe so that we can talk about it.

Because coming back to your numbers is really that active leadership, it’s not punishing you and it’s not meant to punish you. So avoidance is completely human, it’s completely normal. But clarity and confidence is where you’re gonna get peace for your business and peace for your mindset. And it’s always waiting to welcome you back.

So if you come back to it, it’s gonna be welcoming to you of course.

📍 So I just want you to think of it this way, and leaving you with just this. If you imagine your books like a kitchen counter, it’s gotten a little messy. Maybe there’s some milk on there, maybe there’s some crumbs. You don’t burn the house down.

You clear it off, you wipe it clean and you start fresh. So it’s very similar to what you do with bookkeeping. And if you’re ready to come home to your numbers, of course I have you, whether it’s with a bookkeeping package or just to talk it out. Of course, again, you can almost reach out to me. We’ll do it at your pace.

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As always, I wish you the best week ever and we’ll see you next week. Farewell fellow Travelers.