Episode 89: Why I Work With Creatives: The Heart Behind Firestorm Finance

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.

Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of Creative Minds Smart Money. It’s been such a joy these past couple weeks to kind of share a little bit about my background and where I come from. And now to kind of dive into the reason that I chose creatives.

So first of all, I want to upfront and just mention a lot of what I do comes as guidance from the Lord because I pray about it and I ask for that guidance. So I very much integrate my faith and everything that I do in my business. And I already knew when I was doing bookkeeping, I think I talked about this in the last episode about how if I didn’t have enough, like if I didn’t have a certain point in time when I first started my business, that we would just, I would just get another job.

And the Lord has always been very good in making sure that I have clients so that I can continue to do bookkeeping and continue to do what I do best, which really is the bookkeeping and helping my clients to be able to do what they need to in their business to thrive. So that’s always been one of the most exciting things for me. I prayed a lot about who I would go with because when I first started, I don’t think I really had a niche.

A lot of people that I spoke with said, oh, you don’t need a niche, like niching down really limits you. And I will say that despite the fact that I do have a niche, that I did choose the creative industry as someone that I wanted to work with. I have clients from all over.

So I do not just have creative clients. The favorite people that I do work with are my creatives, but I love all my clients, even the ones who aren’t creatives. They’re all great people.

You know, a lot of them have been with me for years. It’s great to actually chat with them. And I’m very excited because next month when we do some episodes in April, we are going to have a couple of my clients come on and talk about their experience working with me.

So it’s going to be a very exciting thing for you guys to kind of see how it has been to have someone work with me on different levels. We have a lady who worked with me in terms of starting in my middle tier package. She went to my top tier package.

She also has CFO services. So we’re going to get kind of like a peek at that. And then we also have a lady who started off with just taxes.

She also having to do her bookkeeping cleanup. And then I stopped doing taxes, but she still has come to me for bookkeeping. So we worked together on her bookkeeping.

We just actually recently upgraded her to the middle tier package and also got her some cashflow in there as well. So those are the two ladies that you’re going to be hearing from. I won’t reveal their names quite yet because I would love to just have that generalized conversation once we get there, but it’s very exciting.

So anyways, back to the topic of why I chose creative specifically. For me, as I told you guys in my background, I did have two creative businesses before I found bookkeeping, before I started bookkeeping. A lot of it was sewing children’s clothing.

It was making stickers and pins for an Etsy store. So I’m very intimately familiar with creatives in general. Now, obviously making clothing and doing pins and stuff like that is a product-based business.

But when you apply the same principles to the service-based business, because I am a service-based business myself, I’m able to help more of these service-based creatives. I do have a couple of creatives that I work with that are product-based that we kind of work with, but the bread and butter of where we can reach limitless possibilities is definitely with service providers that I work with, the social media managers, the graphic designers, things like that. And the specific reason that I chose creatives, like I said, is because I’ve been in their shoes.

And I told you guys this in the past couple episodes. I remember just feeling so confused about money. I didn’t touch money.

I didn’t think about it. I just kind of created. And I think there are a lot, a lot of creatives that do that.

And there’s just a lot that’s going on in their heads that they don’t think about it. And I want to just mention as well, like when you first start out, your finances are very easy. Your finances are very straightforward and simple.

You have, you know, some subscriptions, you have some money coming in, you don’t have a lot going on. But once your business starts to grow and you start to bring in more income, you start to add contractors, you start to add, you know, different things that are going on in your business. More than just one software subscription, things start to get really crazy because, and the reason being, obviously, is because you’re growing.

And a lot of the times what I’ve experienced is these creatives will say, oh, you know, like if I just get $10,000 more, if I just get a little bit more money, I’ll be fine. Like nothing is going to change. I’ll just have more money.

But the problem is, is that more money actually compounds the issues you have, whether it’s a systems issue, whether it is a cashflow issue, whatever it is, is something that is going to be compounded. And I, as a creative from the past, just remember feeling like, oh, I just need more money. I just need more money.

And I am a testament to this fact because I was someone who was thinking that. I just need more money. I just need more money in order to get to the next step.

But that’s not true and it doesn’t help you. If you don’t understand what’s going on with your business and you don’t understand what you’re looking at with your numbers, then you can’t move forward. And I never want anybody to feel the way that I felt while running my business to run their business because there’s a world of possibilities when you actually look at and analyze your numbers.

And I’m not just talking about looking at your past numbers. I’m talking about looking at your cashflow and looking at your numbers that you currently have right in front of you. So actually analyzing everything and saying, okay, do I have the cash to hire a contractor? And one of the most powerful testaments that I can ever say, and again, this is one of the ways we’re going to talk to you with the case study, is that we looked at her cashflow and we had our numbers in.

We knew exactly what she had coming in. We knew what she had going out. We were able to immediately tell her that she could be able to afford another employee in the snap of a finger because we knew exactly what we were looking at.

And even if you are someone with variable income, it is still a very realistic possibility to be able to show you the cashflow that you have coming in because you still have ways of predicting what you’re going to have coming up, right? For example, one of my clients that we have on cashflow has very variable income. She does estate auctions and some of her auctions will end on variable dates. So one week she could have $20,000 in income.

Another week she could have $2,000 in income. And of course, what our concern is, is making sure that her bank account has enough money to cover her payroll, to cover her own pay, to cover whatever else she needs so that we can get her to where she needs to be. So we come up with a baseline number that always needs to stay in the bank account to make sure that we are good, so that we’re not overspending.

So we say, okay, we need to make sure we have at least $10,000 in the bank account to cover payroll and any money you want to pay yourself. So anything over that, we need to be very careful of. Don’t go out for meals if we don’t have enough money during that week, et cetera, et cetera.

It’s very hard because cashflow is always fluctuating when we have those businesses who don’t have the recurring revenue, but it’s also very helpful because it helps you to see trends, right? Like we were immediately able to identify, okay, we have an average of $7,500 in payroll. We need to make sure that we have at least that money in the bank account. So getting off track, going on huge tangents, but I chose creatives because I never want them to be able to feel the way that I felt.

I don’t want them to feel lost. I didn’t want them to get to the tax time and say, hey, how much money did I make? Did I even make anything? I think I lost money. I want them to know.

I want you to get to a period at the end of the year where you’re looking back at your numbers and you’re saying, I know exactly how well I did last year. And I’m so proud of the accomplishments that I’ve made over the past year, because you should be. You should be able to celebrate those numbers.

And a lot of the times, so when we look at things on a month over month basis, sometimes there’s a lot of fluctuations. Sometimes we have a negative month. And I always tell my clients, don’t look at a negative month as like a sign that you’re not successful.

There are good months and there are bad months, and there’s good months and bad months in every business. There’s good months and bad months in huge businesses like Apple, like Samsung, like Microsoft. Everybody has a good financial month fiscally and a bad financial month fiscally.

It’s impossible to have consistent good months. Sometimes things happen. Maybe clients choose to leave.

Maybe, you know, you have a big expense come up. Maybe your computer breaks down and you need to replace your computer. There’s just a bajillion and one things that come up and will need to be done.

So in essence, at the core of what I’m trying to say, why did I choose creatives? Well, I honestly chose creatives because they’re like me. They want to create. They want to take the time to dig into their business and do all the things that they enjoy doing.

The websites, the content creation, the talking to the clients. They don’t want to do the behind the scenes administrative stuff. And while I used to not want to do that for my business, I love living vicariously through creatives and being able to get their numbers and say, wow, like look at how amazing Anna’s doing or look at how amazing Rebecca is doing.

You know, just throwing out random names there, but just being so proud of their progress because I am absolutely my client’s biggest cheerleader. And one of the things that I enjoy about working with creatives, like I said, is living through them, but also being able to see the massive amounts of progress that they’ve made. Like some of the clients that I’ve worked with have gone from making low thousands of dollars a month to making tens of thousands of dollars two months to making twenties of thousands of dollars per month.

So it’s just, it’s, it’s an amazing thing to see the progress and be able to be proud of that and be able to look at their backend and say, wow, this is someone who’s doing amazing work because I didn’t have anybody like that for me when I was doing my creative businesses. I didn’t have anybody cheering me on and telling me how well I was doing. So I didn’t know I was just so focused on creating and the power of having someone behind you telling you how well you’re doing, not just from like, oh my gosh, you’re doing amazing.

Look at your content, like stuff like that. That’s a good thing as well. But also having someone to be like, factually, factually you are doing so well, or, you know, factually, here’s what we could be doing better so that you could be doing so amazing.

And like, I’m always so positive with my clients when we talk about that, but that’s why I want to work with creatives is because I want to see them succeed. There is a statistic out there that say, most businesses don’t ever get past five years in business. I’m in year three, as of recording this podcast, I’m in the third year of my business.

And I’m very much looking forward to, you know, going throughout this year, but my business is also in a very different standpoint than some of these creatives. And I want them to be able to survive. I want them to beat that statistic.

I want them to look back at five years and say, wow, you know, like all the help that Smith has provided me has helped me to get to this certain point in my business. And I want that for all of my clients. So I chose creatives again, because I relate to them because I’ve been in their shoes because I know what it’s like to feel stressed and not be able to know what’s going on in your business.

And because I want to be that person that’s their cheerleader because I’ve been in their shoes. So I want to cheer them on and make sure that they are beating the statistics and being successful. So again, a little bit more personal, a little bit more relational, something that you guys can really connect with and get to know it.

But that’s why I chose creatives. That’s why I work with creatives. And that’s why I love them so, so, so dearly.

So the next episode that we’re going to talk about is going to be our last one in this little personal series. And then, like I said, we’re going to dive into a couple of case studies and talking with some of my clients and the things that have changed for them and the impact that they’ve had with working with me. And then we’ll kind of get back into regular programming.

But I thought this would be a nice break, like I said, for you guys to really get to know me and get to know who I am at my core. As always, guys, I hope you have the best week ever. If you like this episode, please share it, like it, subscribe.

Let me know if you have any topics, suggestions. I always appreciate you guys listening and I see you guys listening and I appreciate it so, so much. I wish you the best week ever.

We’ll see you next week. Farewell, fellow travelers.