1165: Megan Dahle: A Four-Part Framework for Making Sense of Your Business Numbers

Welcome to a well-designed business.

My name is Luanne Igarra and I'm so glad you found this podcast.

Together with my husband Vince and our partner Bill, we have grown our company Windowworks

from the ground up.

So I know and I understand the challenges you face in running your interior design business.

I also know that your talent alone isn't enough to ensure your success.

So on this podcast, we talk about strategies and practical steps to help you grow your business.

But make no mistake about it.

We have our share of fun here too, mixed in with those aha moments that I love so much.

This isn't fluff, nobody has time for that.

Whether you are a new interior designer or a seasoned designer, I am here to help you

create and to manage the kind of interior design firm that you dream of.

It's straight talk and it's action.

Are you ready?

Let's get started.

Hi, welcome to a well-designed business.

We're going to start with a question today.

Have you ever looked at your financial reports and thought, all right, what does this actually

mean?

Right?

Not just what happened last month, but what it means for your decisions, your energy

or your stress level and whether or not, are you actually building the business you think

you are?

Because here's the thing, most creative business owners, you're not bad with money.

You might be overwhelmed by the finances and more often than not, you're not looking

at information that tells you where you've been and doesn't help you decide what comes

next.

Well, my guest today, Megan Dolly, lives exactly at that intersection.

Megan has a master's degree in accounting in over two decades of experience and working

inside hundreds of small businesses, but what makes her really different is this.

She doesn't just understand numbers, she sees them literally.

Like from a young age, Megan has seen numbers as shapes and colors and today she uses that

ability to translate spreadsheets and balance sheets and financial statements into something

that most of us creatives have never experienced before, which is clarity.

Without judgment, without rules, without someone telling you, you should think something,

know something or do something.

But with a way to understand what your resources are actually buying you, where growth is possible

and why your business might feel heavier than it needs to be.

In this conversation, Megan walks us through a simple framework for thinking about the

financial aspect of your business.

While it's grounded in accounting, this is not an accounting lesson.

It's a way to see your business more honestly so you can lead it more intentionally.

And as you listen, I want you to notice something.

This episode is not about becoming a numbers person.

It's about becoming a decision maker, which brings me to this.

If you have been feeling unsure about what your next step in business is, not emotionally

unsure, strategically unsure, that is exactly why we have created the prerex for success

for Lou University.

Lou University prerex for success is a live session, guided by me, designed to help you

understand the stage of business that you are in now, not the one you hope to be in, right?

You want you to help you see how sales, marketing, finance, operation, and leadership, how

you can map the challenges you're facing right now, so that you can see if Lou University

course is part of the roadmap to getting from where you are now to where you do want

to be.

So this isn't teaching, we're not teaching you finance or marketing or operations or leadership

in this session.

It's not a preview of the classes either.

It is a session to help you uncover where the gaps are so that maybe when you look at

the roster of Lou U classes, you go, oh, that one could help me here, all right?

So join us live on February 17th, 2026, and here's a thing, bonuses are available only

for live attendees, mega bonuses, big time bonuses, bonuses that we've

never given away before, all right?

And you know, not for nothing, but you'll walk away and possibly walk away with having been

able to make a confident decision about where your next step should be, all right?

So the link to get into that zoom is on the show notes.

It's probably also in my Instagram, and if God forbid, you can't find it in any of those

places.

You can go to louandlikearrow.com, forward slash events, and it will be there as well.

All right, let's get into my conversation with Megan Dolly.

Hey, Megan, thanks so much for joining me on a well-designed business today.

Oh, my pleasure, it's so great to be here, Lou Ann.

So Megan, you're going to talk to us about money.

We like people who talk to us about money, we like people, yes, we do.

Here's what we do.

We like kind humans that talk to us right, brain individuals nicely about money.

That's why we like it, okay?

And I saw that you were a speaker at IDS, so you automatically have to be a kind human.

Plus, I met you at IDS in Chicago, X amount of years ago.

So you're in the kind human money talking space as far as I'm concerned.

Oh, thanks.

Okay.

You have a four-part framework that you want to walk us through that,

that what helps us understand the parts of our business about the money,

how it hits our business, talk to me about it.

All of that, all of that.

So usually when clients come to me, they almost have their tail between their legs

and they're like, I can't believe I got this far without knowing my numbers.

I feel so embarrassed for asking about this.

I'd say 95% of my clients are embarrassed about asking these questions

because they are doing so well and have gotten this far

and they feel so guilty about not knowing their numbers or embarrassed

or whatever emotion you want.

I know. I got it.

I want to put onto that.

Yeah.

So I have a little bit, I have a visual brain.

I've always had this visual brain when it came to numbers.

And I want help to help people with the visual brain walk through what the numbers actually mean.

Because if you think about it, if you think about your balance sheet

and income statement, they're historical.

Great. That's helpful.

But it's missing like at least 50% of the picture of what actually needs to happen inside a business.

So we're going to talk about two directions.

First of all, historical versus future.

OK.

And then we're going to talk about the four functions inside your business

that actually take place in every business.

There's these four, these four elements take place.

So if we can have a visual cue instead of a spreadsheet cue

to understand those parts, I guarantee you

you probably already understand or have a good sense

for what's going on in your business in these four areas

without needing to be told by your financial statements.

Oh, well, I love that.

Yeah.

I love the idea of very curious to understand what these visuals are

and because I'm a good test pilot for this.

Because I know enough to be dangerous.

OK.

But as much as I know and standing side by side

with the Vennman for a thousand years

and even having worked with Michelle Williams,

there's still this and my mom is my bookkeeper

who has been a bookkeeper for businesses for decades.

You know, there's still this one like, like Vinnie will look at me.

I will randomly ask him a question.

And he'll be like, you know the answer to that little

and I'll be like, you know, buddy, how about you just answer it for me?

How about that?

How about you just answer it?

Why do I have to sit here and bend my brain on it?

And he's like, OK, let me walk you through it again.

I'm like, you poor baby.

Walk me through it again.

You know, and frankly, that's not like where your energy

is probably not spent anyway.

Right.

Do I need to hold this or can I just ask you every six months

how to get to that number again?

How about that?

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So let's start there.

Like, you have a bookkeeper.

That's awesome.

I had most of my clients have bookkeepers.

And that's great because they're bringing clean information to me.

Right.

But they're like, I still can't see.

Well, that's the future.

That's the future talking here because no bookkeeping equals history.

Oh, OK.

I thought it was funny because I was like, that's funny.

But all right, I'm on board.

What do you want me to do?

OK, so bookkeeping is history, right?

Yes.

And so I come from an accounting background.

I've got my masters.

Like, I've been a doing accounting for 20-some odd years.

And accountants and bookkeepers like to give you a right answer.

They like to be correct.

They like to be able to say, this is a fact.

You're so right.

That is a personality trait of them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so when we go to them and say, hey, help me think about the future,

they're like, well, this is probably what's going to happen.

But don't hold me that because there's a lot of different things that could happen.

That's true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

OK.

So if we can get to the present moment with clean books, that's a great start.

Great.

Checkmark.

Right.

You have somebody doing your books.

They're giving you like, here's what's in receivables.

Here's what your income statement, balance sheet, weight.

But I also find, and I'm sure you do too, just to not go past that, is particularly like

the interior design business.

If you don't use a bookkeeper who is versed in interior design, you can get a lot of

horse crap happening in your books, right?

Like, I mean, even my business, my business is not in interior design and not nearly as

complex as a designer's business, but it's not a normal business model.

My mom has run bookkeeping for multiple business models, but it's like, is that a speaker

expense?

Is that an advertiser?

Is that a this?

Is that a that?

Is it about?

Is that?

What is a chairman of the board?

She's like, what is a chairman of the board, you know what I'm saying?

So I find that if we're not constantly saying not that, not that column, not that column,

until a bookkeeper gets a good handle, it's also just garbage and garbage out, right, Megan?

Absolutely.

And then you add the extra layer on that of how much cash of your clients that you're

holding.

That's not yours.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

So get yourself a good book for that industry, for sure.

So secondly, we want to like look in the future.

We want to know what's coming down the road, what we have already in the pipeline, what's

already been signed on the dotted line, when is that cash coming in, how much of it

is ours?

And so just a basic cash forecast is also super important.

Okay.

And all of this is going to have the same four elements.

So we're going to zoom out a little bit and we're going to take a look at your business

model.

Because whenever we're talking about numbers, numbers are a description.

They're adjectives.

They're describing something.

And in this case, they're describing your business model.

Okay.

Okay.

So we're going to go to the first part of any business model.

You need to find people to raise their hands and lean in.

Right.

The outcome that we are measuring when we are doing outreach, call it marketing, call

it outreach, call it networking, the outcome is, is that somebody is interested.

Right.

Yes.

So that first element, if you think to your current book of clients, where are they coming

from?

Are they coming from my, now, the women that I volunteer with at my kids school?

Are they coming from my B and I group?

Are they coming from contractors?

Are they coming from Instagram?

Like they're different places that they're coming from.

Okay.

So if we can measure our efforts in those particular areas, like what is it that we are doing?

So for example, if you have been doing an interior design for 20 years and all of your

clients, I've been coming from contacts that you have with your kids at school and your

kids are graduating and going off to college.

Yeah, your pipeline is about to dry up.

Your pipeline is about to dry up, but we know that now.

And we can see that coming and that's where like, oh, okay, we want to go find something

that's more like referral based if we can start getting the referrals from those clients

or if I can join a tennis club, something that you know is going to take time to build

up, but it's in replacement of something else.

So the first number I always look at, which is the hardest one to quantify because it

is the little squiggly is, do I have an inflow inflow of people who know what I do?

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Right.

And this is also the part where I strongly encourage my clients if we're going to go select

something different, something new, I want to do, enjoy it.

If it is like pulling teeth for you to sit in your local rotary club and smooth and

rub elbows.

And that's painful for you.

That's not sustainable.

Right.

And please don't do it.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we want eyes on, we can have eyes on the future by having eyes on where are my people

coming from?

Okay.

And how are my efforts?

So if we can quarterly, twice a year, know that number, dive into the list of clients that

you have and the people that you've talked over the year and where they came from.

That's actually a really great exercise.

Yeah.

And you have to do it every month.

Right.

It's not on your income statement.

Right.

But you're going to learn something from it.

Yeah.

I actually have, that's one of the first things I have all my chairman of the boards to first

month.

Get me the data history of all your clients.

And if you have a billion clients, get me the last three years, exactly how they found

you.

Like don't just say referral, referral from Sally at the PTA's mother, you know, or

referral from Joe, the builder, like, because with, there is, there's a lot of information

in that.

But sometimes it just surprises us because we forgot and we forgot that that connection

led to that connection led to that connection.

And we just think of the first one and we forget that the source was originally two before

that.

And the other thing I find that sometimes we learn is we're like, whoa, you know, I'm

walking around going Instagram doesn't work for me, but wow, you know, four out of seven

came from Instagram.

That's typically not what we learn.

We learn something different, actually.

What we usually learn is, geez, none of them are coming from Instagram and I'm torturing

myself here.

Why is not work for me the way it works for Julia from Chris love Julia?

Why is it different for her, right?

So, but I love that exercise because it really is very telling, right, Megan?

It really is interesting data that informs what we do and how we go after and keep that pipeline

going.

Yeah, it is.

It is.

And especially when I have clients that are like, well, I've been, I've been going to

all of these meetings for this networking group and it's not working like how long have

you been doing it?

For years, how many clients have you gotten none?

Yeah.

Now of a sudden we're reliant on it, like it has to work because something else dried

up.

Right.

Right.

Right.

So think about it as like your headwaters.

That's your headwaters.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

We want to be in the places where we can express what we do to people who would who would

want our services, right?

And they can hear us.

Those are the elements.

So if something, if we can't, if we're like, we nobody wants what we have, we know what

to fix.

We need to go find headwaters.

Sounds good.

So now they're raising their hand and this one is found on the income statement.

It's sales.

Okay.

Once they raise their hand, how we communicate with them, how we invite them in, you know,

consistently, not thinking that, oh, they didn't open that email because now they don't

want me.

That means they don't want me because they didn't open that email.

How are we consistently communicating and inviting people into our world and inviting

them to sign on that dotted line?

Okay.

If we have a bunch of inquiries and we don't have any sales, we need to fix our sales

function.

Right.

Right.

That was wrong.

That was wrong.

Right.

So if we're looking at that forward forecast or if we're looking historically on your income

statement in sales month over month over month, because it is a long sales cycle, you

know, that is declining, declining, declining, or it's going up and up and up and up.

You know, we're either getting better.

We can, well, you know, we put in this new, this new sales process a couple months ago

and we're seeing the results of it.

So efforts, we want to be able to measure our efforts and we want to be able to, to point

to, oh, it's working or who's not working.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because there's a problem there.

If you're generating leads, but you're not closing, you know, whatever percentage is

historically good for you, I would say probably 60% is good for any business, a closing

ratio, right?

And maybe you go to 70 or 75 if you're a longer, more seasoned business with more referrals,

but either you're not communicating your services properly.

So it can be understood because a confused mind can't buy.

That's like a number one sales thing.

If I don't understand what the heck you're saying, I can't buy it.

I can love you.

I can love your portfolio.

I can think you're sweet.

I want to want to be your friend.

But if I can't understand the path to how you charge me, how I give you money, how much

the money, all this is going to be and how you're going to deliver it, I'm just going

to walk away, right?

Or maybe you've got all that communicated really well, but the price point on it is it

right?

It's at a whack.

It's either, and what's funny is a lot of people think a big mistake is if it's too high

and really a big mistake is if it's too low, right?

Is that really is like, that's scary.

It's like, wait, all that for only that, that's not a good thing to your educated consumer.

You know, everybody wants to deal, everybody wants value, but they don't want to be like,

let me take my 200K and gamble on somebody that their price is so low, I don't trust

it, right?

Yes, yes, it's your price is a communication of your value and if it's way under what

they expect it, it's not a lot of experience there, I don't know if I'm in good hands.

Right, right.

It just, and all of that is a made up assumption based on a low price.

It doesn't mean there is an experience there, right?

It just, it's a made up assumption.

Okay, so then we're in our, so in our, in our books, we're seeing our sales, we're seeing

our gross sales.

Yes.

And on your future forecast, your future cash forecast, you can see other sales that are

coming in, usually in interior design, about six, you six months out is where is about

as far as you can get before it starts prunigling off and that's about right because that's

about the sales cycle there.

Right, right.

You're seeing like you're getting the design fees at phase one and you're getting a procurement

money at phase two, you're getting project management fees at phase two or whatever it

is.

So you're, you've got the almost like in a traditional business, the deposit and balance

do cycle.

It's just different things and call different things and happens at different stages in

a design firm, but ex client that signs on January 1st is going to be paying you sometimes

for six, eight months a year or two or three, right?

And that's what you're talking about.

Exactly.

Okay.

That's actually a really good way to start like immediately see if there is an issue coming

up in your, in your outreach or in your sales, is that we look at that future forecast and

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, in two months, two months from now, ah, ah, ah, we're getting to

the last payments of all three clients at the same time.

Well, I'm just going to make some bank.

What are we doing here?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now let's, let's put our attention where it actually needs to go, shall we?

Yeah.

And then we come around to like their, they sign on the dotted line capacity.

So we have these headwaters, this river comes down, it's either diverted into sales or

it's, you know, keeps to go on down, they're going to be in our mailing list for what that's

fine.

But what are, how much are we capturing?

Right.

Now we have our capacity.

How many glasses of water can we fill with what's coming through those sales, right?

And if, so we, let's say we have four glasses, four empty glasses, that's we have, we have

room to take on these four projects.

And so if we're filling them up with these sales, and we still have two empty glasses,

right?

Like, huh, you know, we have the sales, but I also have like this, this assistant designer,

I don't have the hours to fill.

Once we start putting those sales on our future forecast, and we're looking around, okay,

we have the sales coming in.

We don't necessarily have the hours.

Once your capacity in your sales, if you were to measure, I can, I can take care of

$100,000 in revenue every month.

I have $75,000 of revenue a month.

And that might still be profitable for you.

That's great.

That's fantastic.

But the difference between what your business is able to handle in the capacity and what

it's actually bringing in on a consistent basis in the sales, the difference between those

two is going to show you your efficiency.

Okay.

So it's the relationship between your sales and capacity that really matters.

And it's often overlooked by designers, because they don't, this is, it's more difficult

to understand, like how my designers are about 70% available, that other 30% I'm trying

to do that.

But if you're looking at the culture of your business through the eyes of your capacity,

I can do 100, we do about 75, and if it's about that 75 minute dwindles, or if that 75

is going to grow up to 100, great.

But if it's their consistent mismatch between your capacity and your sales, what happens

is that your staff gets in the habit of that 75 being their new cap.

Yeah.

They feel like they're busy at 75 and you're like, sweetie, you're optimized for 100, get

it rolling when I bring 100 in.

But then it's like a mutiny, right?

Like I'm working so cold.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right?

Like all of a sudden it shifts.

We've been doing, you know, last year we did 100,000, we did between 100 and 150 consistently

all the time, and sure there are ups and downs when things do certainly feel busier than

they are.

It's just the phases of projects, getting at the same time.

It happens, totally happens.

But if that consistently happens time after time after time, we need to find something that's

productive for your staff to do so that, yeah, they feel busy because they are busy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now, take a step back for the designer listening that is trying to understand, is there a way

to explain it fairly straightforward, Megan, how I know the dollar of value of my capacity,

right?

Like I've got, like, so there's got to, there's a formula for this is how many people

on my team.

It's me and one person.

It's just me.

It's me and 15 people.

What's that formula?

They get, get to that.

So how I do this with my clients is that we line up each person that is billable in the

firm.

And we look historically at about what is their billable time, is it 70%, is it 80%, some

people are at 15% because they're just dabbling, you know, in some of the more technical

things.

And what's their billable rate?

And even if you do flat rate, even if you're doing flat rate, there is an internal hourly

rate that you are charging for your employees.

We can find that historically.

It's findable.

So billable.

Well, and I'm like, I mean, you got to, I got to believe we agree on this.

I don't care if you bill a flat rate.

It has to be calculated from your billable rate, right?

Yes.

Like, I just had this in Las Vegas market a couple of weeks ago, week or so ago.

And somebody like was like, I don't, I don't, you know, are you in favor of billable by

the hour or flat fee?

And I'm like, I don't care because if your flat fee isn't based on your billable hours,

you are leaving money on the table.

I said, so I don't care how you say it to the client.

But I do care that you calculated by the hour every time, right?

Yes.

Yes.

Whether it's post mortem or whatever it is, you need to know that these flat rates, like

you're not leaking money out out of the floor.

There's so many people do it based on gut.

Yeah, there should be about $10,000.

You know, and it's like, well, I probably won't take that many hours to do it.

And then, you know, the tough part is, you come up with the $10,000, by the time you put

it in the proposal and email it away, you would it down to $6,500 because you're afraid

to send it at 10, right?

Right.

So, yeah, I mean, the, the flat rate has to come from something.

You can't just come from a gut feeling, right?

Preach.

Preach.

And I like that you mentioned the very practical from the data, right?

It's like, if you've done five kitchens and the same square footage and they all take

you a random hours, because I have no idea, 30 to 35 hours, well, then, yeah, you know,

you can have, go to your, your data, your spreadsheet that says, one kitchen, X amount

of square feet is going to be X amount of dollars, because that's based on my 35 times

my hourly, right?

We're not like calculating it every blasted time, but we're calculating it often enough

to get good data to give us the good number, right, Megan?

Oh, my gosh.

Louanne, one of the most effective exercises I do for my clients that every time they're

like, oh, my gosh, that explains everything, whether they're hourly or flat rate, because

they discount your hours.

And you're like, oh, that's too many.

I can't feel them.

Exactly.

Exactly.

That was my father too long.

Inevitably is we do this, it's super painful and it takes two hours, but it's like eye

opening.

We go through what it takes to get a project completed.

Oh, my God.

We're doing the work.

How many visits does it take?

What's the difference between a client that takes eight hours and what's on this specific,

this one tiny task we go task by task by task, like down to 15 minutes in every time,

every time.

They're shocked.

They're shocked.

That it takes that long.

It takes at least two and a half times longer than they thought.

Always.

Usually at least three.

Always, always, always, always, I have found this in my one-on-one coaching.

You know, it's like if somebody is like, oh, they just want me to pick wallpaper.

It's three hours.

I'm like, it's not three hours to pick wallpaper.

It's not, oh, well, I mean, you know, I mean, and I'm like, okay, standing in the wallpaper

showroom, maybe it takes three hours, but not the whole deliverable of you presenting

the wallpaper, you know, going to the showroom, finding it, going to their house, figuring

out what you want.

And then what happens is somebody will be like, but I can't build somebody 10 hours to

pick wallpaper.

They won't think it's worth it.

Right.

That person, if all they want is wallpaper picked and they don't want it professionally

picked based on your experience, your expertise and your resources, they can go on the internet

and shop for wallpaper.

That is not a luxury consumer.

That is somebody who wants a personal shopper, right?

But we can't debate that when you do it with your professional expertise, there's nothing

three hours about it.

No, no, no, and if it's a one-off item, let's not, like by the time you go to the house,

you take your pictures, you have a conversation about what kind of paper it should be, what

is the floor, like, blah, blah, blah, go to the wallpaper showroom, spend an hour there,

flipping through things, ordering samples, bringing the samples back to the house, now getting

the wallpaper guide to give you an estimate, now creating a proposal based on the episode,

now getting the money, now placing the order back at the showroom, now receiving the order,

now calling the wallpaper guide to get it hung, now stand there looking at her, go and

fall off.

It's done.

Yeah, three hours.

My butt.

Right.

There's so many little elements in there that are forgotten, like email the installer you

have to talk to the installer in the context switching between each of those tasks and

doing the other stuff.

It's far beyond.

Yeah.

So when it comes to capacity, knowing what you're capable of doing is the hourly rate times

the percentage that were actually billable and add that up for each person, and that's

how much you're able to make per month, and I know procurement, when it comes to the,

we figure that out too.

So for your income statement and you're consistently like, like 30% of your gross profit is coming

from procurement and the other 70% is your profit, we're going to put a 30% bump on

on what that profitability gross revenue is for your capacity.

Okay.

Okay.

So that is actually very clear, right?

It's simple math.

It's, I have five people working for me.

They were all billable, 80% of their hours, times X amount of hours, times are hourly

rate.

That's how much we can design in a month.

That's it.

That's where we're at, right?

Amen.

Okay.

Okay.

Now we have this fourth element, I call stewardship, and this is the care that you take

of your resources.

Incredible.

I'm the money person, so it means the cash most of the time, but a side product of this

is also your energy, and your time, like the full purpose of this is to make sure that

your attention is focused in the part of your business where the attention is needed

the most.

You are in a relationship with your business, and if your business is begging you for some

outreach care, and you're like, oh, I just need to fix this capacity process real quick,

and then I'll get over there.

Like, could you imagine your kids saying, hum, I'm hungry, mom, I'm hungry, and you're

like, oh, man, you should take a nap.

You just seem so tired.

We're on busy feeding your brother over here.

You're starving.

Go start.

Right.

Right.

stewardship, we want to make sure that we are caring for our resources starting with cash.

We want to give our cash a job.

We know what it's going to do before it hits the bank account.

We know if it's going to take care of our outreach, if it's taking care of our sales, if

it's taking care of our capacity, we know that if it's taking care of us, we know that

it's if it's saving for the future, we know if it's going to go be paid in for taxes,

we want to know so that it's not this tempting like, oh, look at that bank, I have, I have

not seen my bank account that in a long time.

Oh, I've always wanted to redo my office.

I'm just going to go redo it right now, right, right, right, right, right.

And I'm going to tell myself it's a legitimate expense too, because I have nothing against

I've had many.

100%.

Yes.

100%.

But we got to know it was you have the money to do it, not just any money to do it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so we get to this stewardship.

But they're like, I really want to redo my office.

I'm like, let's take a look at the cash flow, look at this, you have money to redo your

office.

Let's name it now.

You know that some of your clients want recliners, right?

And you're thinking, please, please don't make me put that in that room.

Well, Kravit just gave you a gift.

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We're talking sleek silhouettes, tailored arms and backs, gorgeous details.

And yes, it reclines.

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and you can customize it with curated fabrics and finish options that fit your design vision.

So if you've been avoiding motion furniture, it's time to take another look.

Head over to Kravit.com and check out Kravit motion, because form and function finally

just call the truce.

Give it a job.

So do you as do you ascribe to a version of like profit first, Megan, where we get a big

check in and X, you know, seven percent or whatever gets pulled out for taxes and X percent

gets pulled out for operations, X percent gets, you know, obviously all cost of goods gets

pulled out.

But if it's a design fee, there's no cost of goods, right?

Yes.

So I'm a huge advocate of profit first for a lot of people.

It doesn't work for everybody.

I used to be a profit first professional.

Oh, where are you?

Yep.

Yep.

It doesn't fix everything, right?

It doesn't point to like the how to fix.

But it's certainly especially when you have a lot of other people's money that is

right.

Yeah, yeah.

Tax money.

Move that aside.

Yep.

Yep.

Yeah.

Cost of goods in taxes feels like, and what I've learned with all the people I've spoken

to Megan is, if your brain clicks and finances, you're like, why do you need to

profit first?

Like Vinnie was like, this is silly.

Like this is, and I'm like, well, that's because you can mentally separate it in your

head.

When you're looking at $500,000 in the business checking account, you automatically

chink, chink, chink, chink, cost of goods, boom, taxes, boom.

The rest of us, we kind of need it in our face.

We kind of need to be like, okay, that's for that, you know what I mean?

Like my mom's always like, when I'm like, pull the taxes out, pull the taxes out.

I don't want to think about it.

Just pull them out.

Yeah.

No, and I do profit first with my money.

I, you know, I'm pretty, I'm pretty dang good with the number of us.

I say so myself.

Yeah.

I do profit first because I want to see that tax money over there and say, if I want to

see my owner pay like, oh, good, I can pay, if nothing else happens, I can pay myself

for six months.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just a sense of heart.

That's why mine is the profit account, which is not according to profit first, the

1%.

The profit account to me is my security blanket account.

That's my three, six months of runway.

I've adapted the accounts to what I like to what my squirrel brain needs.

I need to know that I got six months of payroll for my people.

I need to know the taxes are covered, you know, and then after that, I can kind of move

it around.

I can figure it out in my head, operations money and blah, blah, blah.

But those are the two that I don't want to wonder about.

I want to open up the checkbook and I don't want to see them in my main account.

They've not even there.

I got to click to a different account to see him.

I, you know, I actually burned myself on that.

I did and I was like, I'm, I'm so smart.

I'm an accountant.

I know what I'm doing.

I got burned so bad on taxes one year.

I was like, okay, nope.

Yeah.

I think the only reason I haven't gotten burned on taxes is because I can't even say it's

because of Vin, right?

Because you think it would be because of Vin because he's never been burned on taxes.

He's been running businesses for 50 years.

But it's by the time I made LN Inc.

It's business off of window works.

I had heard so many horror stories of not just regular humans, but finance people like

yourself and Michelle Williams that are like, yep, that first year in business did not

have the taxes.

And I'm like, sweetie, that ain't going to happen to me.

I am not doing that.

It's so good that you can learn from other people's mistakes.

Yeah.

Me, I prefer to make them big on my own.

They really drive home.

Yeah.

No, it's, it's, and it's funny because Kat Anderson, she teaches online bookkeeping 101

at Lou University and she teaches our second phase construction class, documentation class.

And she's a money brain and she one time said to me, I don't get the whole profit first

thing.

So it's funny.

I do know that there's like you said, there's some people, it's not a cure all.

It's not the end all be all, but I feel like if especially you're feeling like, you know,

how you say most designers come to you like, oh, my God, how did I get this far?

And I still don't understand this.

For me, you take a $100,000 check for furniture and $50,000 of it is for furniture.

That I don't want to look at that money.

I'm like, just put that, that's not yours.

Don't even have it in that account.

So I'm a big fan of moving that taxes and that cost of goods monies away, especially

if you're on that beginning journey of really understanding how to manage your money, right?

Like that's an easy first step that you can take with little guidance and it will serve

you in my opinion, right?

Absolutely, absolutely.

And it makes you feel smart.

Yeah.

Like that too.

Like I got this.

Look what I did.

I'm crying.

I did this.

I clicked, click and move.

It is true though.

It does.

It makes you feel, maybe it just makes you feel like in control, right?

Yes.

Yes.

And that's the thing.

Like if you step back, sure, your income statement is going to show you your sales.

It's going to show you most of your stewardship unless something's hanging on the balance sheet,

but really stewardship is about naming the cash.

So those two elements are found on your financial statements.

The second one, you just got to go digging a little bit between your progeny and your

state.

And I bet, I bet if you just close your eyes now and not even putting a number on it,

I bet you could get a feel for how confident you are in your sales, how confident you are

in your capacity, how confident you are in your outreach and your stewardship.

Like you know these numbers, it just feels like everybody else knows a different version

of it.

It should be on a spreadsheet.

See and look and understand this.

And there might be parts in there that you don't feel comfortable about, but if you know

what parts you aren't comfortable about, your go to solution is no longer going to be,

I got to go make more sales.

Right.

Right.

The solution might be adjusting your capacity.

It might be an adjustment in your expenses.

It might be something else, but abdicating your authority to somebody else that promises

to make more sales for you without knowing what your situation is, I've been there.

I was going to tell you what, what you're describing now, we run into a lot in the

window treatment industry.

So we have the other company exciting windows where we teach and mentor window treatment

professionals every single week on how to be profitable, then in myself and our partner

seed.

And we see that a lot over there where it's like, it's all, it's a lot of male companies.

EW is probably at least 50, 50, we have a lot of both, but window treatment owners by

far are more men than women and window treatment owners, not work rooms, work rooms are coming

from craft and from skill set, but retailers are usually coming from a sales mentality.

And every problem is fixed by another sale.

And that's how we get.

And I've said, like I came up in window treatments, my role was sales, Vinnie was completely operations

and finance and he did not sell in the beginning of first eight or ten years, not never.

Like if it was his friend, his contact, but he didn't get up every day and like, I go

sell window treatments.

He was like, I get up every day and I manage because we had three businesses within a year.

I manage these three locations and I sold and I know that I know that feeling as another

sale will fix it, another sale will fix it.

Just go make another sale.

Oh, there's only 10K in the bank.

Oh, sell something.

They'll be 15K.

Oh, there's only 20K.

They'll sell something else.

They'll be 40K.

That completely, as you said, abdicates what's happening in operations, what's happening

in stewardship.

It's like, what do I need to do?

Do I need to buy a truck?

Because that's stewardship, right?

What does this business need?

It needs a truck.

Well, okay, you might have 20,000, but do you have 40 because a truck costs 20?

Crying out loud now trucks cost 70.

I don't know.

Decade on planning.

There's no truck about there.

I got the front end wheels.

They used to cost 20.

But you know what I'm saying, and it's like, and we've, I just see that mentality a lot

in window treatment, whereas designers, I don't see that's the breakdown.

Designers aren't like, where can I go make it a sale today?

Let me just go make more sales.

They want more sales.

They want more pipeline, but they don't wake up thinking that.

But where they make the mistake, buy and buy, the sisterio type, is to your point is

taking in big checks and not understanding what's theirs and what is not theirs.

And knowing if what's mine, is it enough to do my studio over again?

Is it enough to, you know, spend three K to go to high point?

Like that's, that's where I find with designers.

Whereas sales people, window treatment people, we're like, I don't know if it's enough,

but I'm just going to make a fifth of the 50,000 in sales and I got to cover it, I'm

sure.

And Vinnie and us at EW are constantly educating them, like Vinnie's statement is, you know,

your business is like an hourglass, not a silo, not straight.

It's an hourglass.

The money comes wide in at the top.

And then all the expenses shake out in the middle.

But then when it winds out at the bottom again, that's your money.

That's your, I'm the owner, I'm creating wealth money, right?

And a lot of times people are just focused on the money coming in the top, just poor

more, poor more, make more sales, make more sales, but they don't watch where it goes.

And then you have people that are watching the expenses, but they're allowing their expenses

to match the top.

And Vinnie's always like, let's crunch that middle.

Let's make the top wide, let's crunch that middle tiny so that all the extra pours

at the bottom to you.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, that's great.

That's great.

Luana, I was once doing a speech, I was a speaker for an association that was having

a meeting and I had a gentleman sit in front and he had been in business for 50 years.

And I was telling him about this.

He's going to such a street interrupted me and he counted his fist on the table.

And he says, I'll never stop selling.

Yeah, you, pal, yeah, you good, that is good.

No one's telling you to, no one's telling you to, let me rephrase.

It's so true.

It's like sell, but then manage the rest of it.

The rest of it.

Right.

Don't just sell.

Right.

Right.

We need to understand the cash.

So with that comes like annoying your expenses.

Right.

Let's do that quarterly review of the detail of what the open number.

Right.

What is it cost to run your business?

Whether you have a sale or you don't have a sale.

What are you writing checks for?

Right.

I can't believe I was paying for that subscription twice because it's not credit card.

Oh, please.

We do a tech review every year.

It's like, oh my god, we're still paying for this.

I thought we canceled it.

But we don't get further than a year.

You know, it's like, okay, Mariala, it's time to do the tech review.

Run it all out.

Figure out what's going on.

Yeah.

And one year we figured out, oh my god, five, six years ago, we had to upgrade to like the zoom enterprise level for a new university run.

But it was like hundreds of dollars more.

This is years ago.

And now they're everybody uses zoom.

So it's not as costly as it used to be.

Right.

But we needed it for six weeks.

And we found out like when I was like, oh, go turn the zoom enterprise.

And the zoom enterprise level on for the next launch.

And we're like, we never tend enough.

I'm like, yeah, money.

Just whip it up.

Step on it.

Throw it down the block.

Because I didn't want it.

I didn't want it.

But that's what you got to do.

You got to like, that's your stewardship, right?

Where you're like protecting your time, your money, your assets, all of the things.

Yeah.

So like you know your numbers intuitively, you, there shouldn't be any surprises.

Right.

The only time that you should be surprised on your income statement is because something got screwed up.

And somebody did something wrong.

Allocated it wrong.

Right.

It's a wrong spot.

Something is odd.

Yeah.

You have a, I've never come across somebody who has looked at their income statement and going, that's completely wrong.

Yeah.

It be not something that, that wasn't not wrong.

I'm having too many negatives in my sentence right now.

How many negatives do I have?

But yeah, like my designers, my people, they think they don't know.

Yeah.

They know.

But they do.

And once we can put this into terms where they feel like now they can actually make decisions based on it.

Oh, I see, I, yes, I have the inflow of, of, of, of inquiries.

I have the sales.

I'm doing great on closing my sales.

I had a kind of a dip back there in August, but I fixed that.

I know my capacity and I know it was little too high and I cut that down a little bit.

And I know how to increase it as these new sales come in.

And I feel like I know exactly where my money is going.

That's where they're finally like that breath of air of like, yes.

Okay.

I'm not done.

I can do it.

Right.

And you're not done.

It's just not been taught to you before.

And you can learn hard things and you can do hard things.

It's all, you know, it's all doable and all knowable.

I said it at the beginning.

You need to, in my opinion, work with someone who's compassionate.

You know, like, just like who understands.

You know, I've said this a thousand times every once in a while.

You know, Vinnie will be like, I just understand.

You're so smart.

How can you not know this?

And I'm like, I don't understand.

You're so smart.

I'm just like, you know, I can do this to be a new or timescoast repusal.

Like stop.

I can do that.

You can do this.

We're just have different brains.

Amen.

Amen.

Because he like you and he when he works with our EW people, he's,

I say to him, you're nice to them.

So you definitely do need somebody who will have patience with you that will talk you

it will let you ask the same question for different ways because you still don't get it, right?

Right.

Now, Megan, what I don't understand at this point is your company, are you a done for you?

Like are you a bookkeeping slash consulting service?

Are you, you do teaching and coaching and you send people on their way to go and, you

know, go forth and understand their numbers?

I really don't understand the services that you provide.

I always start with a money mentorship and that is to make sure that you and I are on

the same page as to how what you understand about your business.

Okay.

I work intimately to get to know you and your business because they're all different.

They're all different.

Right.

If I were to say, oh, you know, just calculated like this and be generic, it's, it's,

it's too intimate.

Yeah.

It's too personal.

Who's that?

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So I always start with a money mentorship.

And that last anywhere between one to three months, just depending on how much hand holding

you need.

It would be enough for you to take this to your bookkeeper and say, hey, these are the

reports I want to see on a quarterly basis.

This is what I want to see.

Okay.

Yep.

And it might be that you, you want to talk about the money stuff with somebody who understands.

And now we have three months under a belt.

We understand that we work together on that CFO level.

And yeah, there is some, there's some book, some people are like, will you be my bookkeeper

because there's a lot that are doing their bookkeeper out there, right?

Right.

Right.

But I need you and I to be on the same page linguistically, philosophically, I don't

know, picturesquely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you have to know that when you're talking that they're getting what you're saying

and it might take one person, three conversation, another person, one another person, five, but

it has to be that the shorthand gets developed.

When you say a certain thing, it means something to each other.

Exactly.

And I don't want to be the one telling you what to do.

I'll be your sounding board, right?

Love being your sounding board.

But I don't want you to be to come to me and ask, can I hire somebody?

I want you to come to say, hey, I'm considering making this higher.

Can you help me think through this?

Right.

And now you have flexed that muscle and you've exercised it.

So next time it's ready, you're ready to hire again.

You're like, okay, I'm ready to hire.

Look over my shoulders.

I do this.

I think I got this right.

And then by the third time you're off to the races.

You remember how to evaluate it.

You've learned the process and the key markers for evaluating it from a financial standpoint

if you've got the runway to hire somebody.

Absolutely.

Yes.

Yes.

One of the things that I find, so wait a minute, let me wrap that up.

So somebody can work with you one to three months on mentorship.

Then they can fly the nest, go back to their bookkeeper, feeling confident, because that's

another thing too is a lot of times, you know, I had a chairman of the board last year

of the year before.

You know, it was like, it took me two or three times and the bookkeeper conversation didn't

come up that often, but it was like the second or third time over a few months that there

was just an aside line on about, oh, and you know what?

And when I ask her, you know, she tells me I don't need to know it.

And I finally actually heard it.

And I was like, wait, you know, stop, stop, stop, stop, let's break.

And I'm like, we're not even talking about this now.

I think like, you've said that like, no, no bookkeeper gets to say to you, you don't need

to know that, like, no, like that's a hard no, right?

It's like, uh, yeah, I get to know all of it.

And you might feel it's tedious because I've asked you, I just said to Diana, today my marketing

quarter, Nicole, I'm our glory and brand.

Does all of our work, all of our big creative work on the websites and all of that?

And I have a new landing page that she's making for me.

And of course, I give her all the copy in just a word doc.

And now it comes back on the landing page.

And I literally said to Diana, who is my person.

I check all things like that the way it looks against.

And I'm like, I hate the font on this entire landing page.

It makes my brain hurt.

And I know at this point, it's probably my font.

But I also know that I tend to ignore this font on my own website, probably.

And I'm like, but just check me.

Is it my font?

And she's like, it is your font, Lou, it is.

And I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, how that got in there.

You know what I'm saying?

We have certain like three fonts or whatever that are used.

But when I see it all in front of me, it makes me crazy.

And I'm like, all right, okay, I'm going to leave that one go, right?

But the thing about it is, is that you, the same thing happens with the bookkeeper.

Like she literally is like, yep, every time you see that font and you ask me

it's your font and every time I tell you it is.

So she's not like, what do you think, Lou?

You think it's your font?

You think Nicole just put on some random font.

She doesn't give me attitude about it.

And that's what I was finding with some times with these,

with the designers I work with in her bookkeepers.

It's like, you don't need to know it.

It's like, no, no, you don't get to tell me what I need to know.

If I want to ask you 15 times, and I need to ask you the first,

the same three questions every time we meet,

then that's exactly what I'm going to do.

And you're going to sit there patiently and do it.

Because, you know what, come on, right?

Oh, Lou and I've got a story for you.

So one of my very first clients when I went out on my own,

they came to me because there were three partners.

One was like a 60% owner and the other two were silent partners.

Did a little work here and there, whatever.

But one of them came to me and they're like,

you know, I keep asking the bookkeeper for this information.

And he's like, don't worry about it, don't worry about it.

Well, it turns out not that the bookkeeper was colluding,

but the 60% partner had stolen over $400,000 from the business.

And the bookkeeper knew it.

But he was like, well, since you're 60% owner,

it's yours anyway, you can do whatever you want.

It is important that you know these things.

And it is important that you trust your instincts.

Like anytime you're being gaslit with your instincts,

against your instincts, it just eats away at your confidence.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh my god, it's not like a non-issue.

There are so many rampant stories of, now that, like you said,

it's not the bookkeeper being the one instigating the embezzlement,

but it's in collusion with it.

And putting themselves to sleep at night,

saying you're a 60% partner, I'm sorry.

Unless you're 100%, like, you know,

and unless you're only stealing 60% of the money,

like, get the heck out of here.

They're playing other personal credit cards.

And they're, you know, they're car loans and all of that stuff.

Oh my god.

No, I know.

See, I mean, that for sure, if you feel like something's wiggy,

but even like, I was just talking about like,

I just want to understand the thing.

And I know I ask you every month,

and I'm sorry I still don't get it yet, whatever.

Well, that sounds like a problem,

but I'm not communicating it in a way that you understand

and being adaptable to your learning style.

Right?

But that is the other thing,

because bookkeepers are different animals, right?

They are.

They're not really verbose and communicative and communicative.

And they're not really like, oh, like,

hey, let's have a powwow, you know,

they work like Gold Star.

Did you hear it?

Like, right?

They want to be perfect Gold Star next.

Yeah, next.

That's the truth.

That's the truth.

It is very, when we look at the predictive index,

bookkeepers are very much like, you know,

the accuracy is number one.

And no answer is better than an answer that's wrong, right?

I got to get all my facts and then I'll answer them.

I just make a guess.

No, it's my mother.

I love my mother.

Of course, I love my mother.

I love my mother.

But I ask her a question.

She's just like, I'm looking for my papers.

I'm like, okay, you don't have to do it now.

Well, I'm on the phone.

Like, I'm just, you have all day.

Go get it.

Like, I know she needs to go gather her information,

cross her cheese and dot her eyes and then come back and tell me.

And I'm like, I'm just giving you a list of things I want.

I don't need it now, you know.

You know, I think bookkeepers,

their motto is kind of like,

I'd rather be dead than wrong.

Mine is I'd rather be dead than boring.

Exactly, exactly.

So, all right.

So before I let you go,

so if somebody does the three-month mentorship,

what's, is there something beyond that that if there's deeper engagement?

Like, what happens?

Yes.

And at that point, usually people are like,

can you just be my CFO?

I'm like, yes, I'll be your CFO.

Okay.

So actual, true fractional CFO.

Yes.

Yep.

Absolutely.

And I actually don't let them make that decision until we're done with our mentorship.

Yeah, because you got to know it.

Yeah.

No, you got to know if you're fit.

Right.

And this might be way easier than they thought it was.

Right.

Right, right, right, right.

Yeah.

And so under the CFO umbrella as a fractional,

what are some of the deliverables?

If somebody's thinking,

oh, what would it be like to have a fractional CFO?

What are some of the things that you do?

So we review your financial statements,

Jan, but we also look forward to

I maintain your forecast, your cash forecast

and on that, we also track your goals.

Long-term, short-term goals that that's all about

what we're doing with your money

and all of the levers that we're pulling along the way.

Like if we start and you tell me that you've been paying yourself $10,000 a month

and by the end of the year you want to be paying yourself $20,000 a month,

that's something that we're looking towards and we're tracking

how that's happening, what resources you're using,

what resources you're going to need in order to make that happen,

in future forecasting.

Like, okay.

Am I going to be okay?

Ultimately, that is the question.

If I pull this lever, what is the worst that could happen?

Am I still going to be okay?

Okay. Here's what I heard in my head

and I ended up writing about it in I think my first book.

I'm not sure if it was the first or second,

but what I just heard in my head was it's like

if I go to a doctor, a doctor is going to say,

hey, your cholesterol should be here,

your heart rate should be here,

your blood levels should be here, blah, blah, blah.

To me, that's the accountant.

This is what I need.

These are the facts that I need at the end of the year.

I'm just going to report them.

Maybe, you know, your heart rate should be 50 and it's 90.

I'm like, what am I going to tell you, sweetie?

It's the wrong heart rate, but there it is on the paper, right?

Whereas, like, if I'm working with, say, maybe a personal trainer

or a holistic, a personal trainer with a nutritionist,

then they're going to say, okay, your heart rate's at 90,

but it should be 60 and your cholesterol's at this,

but it should be at this and your, you know,

body fat percentage is this, but it should be this.

So let's make the plan and let's keep talking to you all year long

about how we get to that plane.

I'm not that plan.

I'm not just like going to show up again in 12 more months

and analyze if you got there or not.

So a accountant just observes and records

whereas a CFO is working side by side, helping you guide,

make decisions, take make pivots, make new, you know,

hires me, you know, yeah, right?

It's recalculating all the time.

It's recalculating all the time.

Exactly.

Maybe it's time to bring in a coach.

Maybe it's time to bring up personal financial advisors,

time to bring in a better tax accountant.

Right, right, right.

It's like, you know, you can say to the doctor, you know,

well, I have a Twix every day and he could say it's not good,

but he'll just ask you again at the end of the year

to just still have a Twix every day, right?

Whereas your nutritionist is going to be like,

sweetie, with the Twix.

Okay, stop it.

My sister told me today, she's like, you're their mom.

Kind of like their mom.

Right, right, right, right?

Like, that's the thing.

It's like, you're helping along and guiding,

not just observing and reporting.

Right, right, I want you to get so good at this.

I want you to be so good at this.

I want you to actually enjoy the seat of the CEO

rather than just the design.

Because I mean, yeah, you got in for the design

and it probably turned out to be only about 20% of your job.

And you still really, really love it.

Yeah, but there are ways to really love

the other parts of your business

if we can just tweak them into the parts of your personality.

That's going to enjoy that.

Yeah, I can tell you over the years,

I've had enough conversations, both on and off air

with designers that have done this.

They just drawn the line in the sand and said, that's it.

Whether they're two weeks in business, two years or 20 years.

And they're like, I no longer am going to just wing it

with understanding my numbers.

And not one, every single one to a one.

It's like evangelism the after.

It's not like, well, I mean, you really talked about it so much.

I finally did it.

And yeah, I'm glad I did it.

No, everyone is like, I love finance Fridays now.

I love my conversation with my bookkeeper.

I love my conversation with my account.

I feel so on top of it.

I really understand what I'm doing.

It's like literally evangelism.

Because it really is just so mentally freeing

because without it, it's like the doctor telling you

to do these things, but all year long,

you're just like, does this work?

Does more setups work?

Does R's use work?

Does no twigs?

You're just, you're just putsing.

You're not really being guided.

And you don't know what the heck you're doing, right?

Yeah, yeah, it's kind of the wrong spaghetti.

And you can't really tell if it works

because it's kind of a long tail.

Yes, is that the right numbers?

And they're doing this excellently, right?

Because the results are so far out

that it's hard to know.

I love it.

I love it.

OK, is there anything that we left out

of this conversation, Megan,

that we need to like make sure gets hammered home?

I just really want to hammer home

that your intuition is so, so good.

It is so good.

And sometimes the best thing you can do

for your intuition to learn to trust it

is to put the numbers next to it side by side

and be like, yep, I was right.

I love that.

I love that part.

That's so good.

Because I think people don't realize

that this part of your business

is also will benefit from your intuition.

Your finances will too.

Absolutely.

I don't think there's any part of us

that doesn't benefit from listening to our inside voice.

It's like, if it's banging,

if it's banging you on the head,

there's a message you got to get, girl.

Sometimes I've ignored it and regretted it.

Oh, I know.

I know, right?

It's like, uh, that was dumb.

Chuck's making those, you know,

making those mistakes hard, right?

Exactly, exactly.

All right, so they reach you by going to

MeganDolly.com.

Okay.

It's M-E-G-A-N-D-A-H-L-E.

That is correct.

Yeah, because you got two names

that you can spell 16 different ways from Sunday.

You know that, right?

Yeah, that's true.

Hopefully I'm going to be able to do it,

but I know.

We'll also put it in the show notes, of course,

but Megan, this was great.

Thank you so much for being with me today.

Appreciate it.

Oh, my pleasure, Louwean.

This was a blast.

Okay, Megan talked about two important ideas

that run through everything she does.

The first is this distinction

between historical information

and future information.

Your financial statements,

your income statement,

your balance sheet.

Those are historical information.

This tells you what has happened

in your business.

Great information.

You need to know this.

They're essential.

They tell you the facts.

They tell you the totals.

They tell you where the

money came from and where it went.

They're important,

but they're kind of incomplete, right?

Here's what they don't do.

They don't tell you whether

the way you're operating right now

is sustainable.

They don't tell you why the business

might feel harder or heavier

even though the numbers look okay.

And they don't tell you

what and how the decisions you're making today

might become.

The decisions you're making today

might be quietly setting you up

for six months from now.

That's why you can have clean books

and still feel the freaking butterflies

in your stomach.

Not talking from experience

or anything, my friends.

Like Liz and I sit in your same seat, right?

The statements explain the past,

but they don't help you lead the future.

Because what we really need

is help understanding what's happening now

and what our business is quietly moving toward

in the background while you're busy working

on projects doing all the things.

And that's where the second idea comes in.

The four functions that Megan talked about

and how they're always operating inside your business.

She explained it,

the first function is how money

enters your business.

This is your revenue.

This is your cash flow.

This is the work that you say yes to, right?

This is usually the easiest one to sense,

even without a spreadsheet.

You know if inquiries are feeling steady

or they're feeling sparse.

You know if projects are aligned

or they're draining your energy, right?

If money is coming in,

but it feels stressful or unpredictable,

this function may need attention

even though your thinking sales are fine, right?

So you know that feeling, the pipeline,

what is it doing, right?

And here's one of the most common reasons

that this happens.

Oh my goodness, if I had a nickel.

For every time Vin and I saw a business owner operate

on a work and then market cycle, right?

Because when you're busy, you're doing the work,

your head is down, you're delivering projects,

you're not thinking about marketing

because your calendar is full day to day, truly full.

But it's full with current ongoing projects

and that's the sneaky part.

Now projects start to wrap up and there it is

that pit in your stomach.

Uh oh, when's the next project coming in?

So what do you do?

You jump back into action, you start networking again,

you do more on Instagram, you write a blog,

post your reach out to builders,

builders, architects and past clients.

The problem is marketing becomes something you do

when you're nervous instead of something you do

because you're running a business.

Now, Vin and I are partnering exciting windows.

Steve Wichnow is a 50 year veteran

of a major marketing career,

multiple billions of dollars, okay?

And Steve Wichnow says, always be marketing.

Feeding the pipeline is not a panic activity, my friend.

It's an every week, every month,

all year long activity.

When your marketing only happens in bursts,

revenue will always feel unpredictable,

no matter how talented you are.

When you consistently feed the pipeline,

you gain the ability to manage start dates,

to smooth out your cash flow,

and to choose your projects,

the ones you want instead of chasing

any project that comes up.

And that's when your business starts to feel calmer,

not because you're working harder,

but because you're working ahead, right?

You want that feeling, I know you do.

Now, the second function is how money moves

through the business.

Megan approaches this from a clarity

and pattern perspective.

And I want to ground that for you

in how it shows up in your business day to day.

These are your operational expenses.

The money that moves through your business

is your operational expenses.

These are the things that allow your business

to function consistently and professionally.

And this is where you can get tripped up

because sometimes you confuse keeping expenses low

with running the business well, right?

So, for example, if you find yourself duct-taping

systems together in your head,

missing details, dropping balls,

and having project information fall through the cracks,

that's not a discipline problem.

That is an infrastructure problem.

And I want you to think about it this way.

If those mistakes and missed details

are costing you thousands of dollars

over the course of a year,

but you hesitate to invest maybe a couple of hundred dollars

a month in a project management system

like my Domas Studio, I got to tell you my friend

that's a backward way of looking at your expenses.

You're trying to save $700.

And maybe you're spending thousands of dollars a year

with the mistakes, right?

So you might have a $5,000 mistake,

three or four times a year,

but you didn't want to spend $7,000 or $100,000

to get into a management program,

a project management program, all right?

The installer didn't get updated me,

but email about the grout color.

The client thought they approved the PO,

you thought they approved the two, but they didn't.

And now the client is back-ordered for six months.

That's saving pennies and bleeding dollars.

So when you review and expense,

the question is, should I spend money on this?

The real question is, what does it cost me

not to spend money here, okay?

Sometimes the answer is, yeah, don't do it.

But a lot of times, the answer is no.

I'm saving pennies and bleeding dollars.

And the same thing applies to support.

If you're missing deadlines,

responding late to clients or losing opportunities

because you're trying to do everything yourself,

that's not being scrappy.

That's limiting your business

and the opportunities for your business.

Hiring a part-time admin or outsourcing bookkeeping

isn't indulgence.

It's about enabling you to operate on time professionally

and consistently.

And that doesn't just make your life easier.

It reinforces, it reinforces your reputation

for reliability, okay?

Megan's point here is not to spend blindly,

and it's also not to cut ruthlessly, right?

It's like doing it with intention

to actually understand what each expense,

what each line item is doing or not doing for the business.

Are your expenses supporting accuracy, consistency,

and growth?

Or are you staying artificially lean

while paying for it in stress, errors,

and lost opportunity?

That's the visibility that she's talking about

in the second section, all right?

Now, the third function, according to Megan,

is how decisions are being made in the present.

This is where your leadership lives,

and it's often not the way people think.

Megan wasn't saying here that you need to be more confident,

more decisive, or somehow tougher when it comes to many.

What she was pointing to is the relationship you have

with the information in front of you.

When numbers feel confusing, abstract, or disconnected

from what's actually happening in your business,

then they really start to feel loaded and judgmental.

It's like a test you're about to fail,

and that's when we avoid them, right?

We don't wanna go look at them, we second guess themselves,

and we make reactive decisions just to get out

of the discomfort, and that's a spiral.

Megan's insight here is the way to get out of the spiral

is not willpower.

It's full understanding of your finances.

When you can first see how money is coming

into your business, and then second,

see what it's doing once it gets there.

The emotional charge drops, it goes away.

The numbers stop feeling scary,

and they start to feel usable, knowable, right?

Now here's the important part.

The third function isn't actually a separate

system or a new decision-making technique.

It's actually the result of the first two functions.

When you understand your revenue patterns,

and you understand your operational expenses,

decisions stop feeling scary.

Because not so much because everything

is suddenly completely certain.

I mean, it's still business, after all.

But because you can understand

the implications of your choices,

if this then that of your money decisions

becomes more clear.

And the calm comes from understanding

and the comfort in knowing what you know.

When you get how money comes in

and how it goes through the business,

the beauty is that the third function comes naturally.

You stop avoiding decisions

because you finally know what you're deciding, right?

And that's what Megan means when she talks about

clean information turns into confidence.

And then that leads us to that fourth function,

which is the one that a lot of us don't see clearly.

The dysfunction is not about how decisions

feel in the moment.

It's about what those decisions

are quietly creating over time.

Function four is about direction.

Every choice you make today stacks on top of the last one.

Every client you say yes to, every price you set,

every system you delay or decide to implement.

Individually, these choices can seem small or manageable,

but collectively, they create momentum, positive or negative.

This is why a business can look successful on paper,

but can be like not really doing good year to year.

You can end the year and think,

I've got all this revenue,

but where's my share of the pie, right?

So when Megan talks about visuals,

I think this is what she means.

Being able to see patterns forming

to recognize whether the business is becoming easier

to operate or more complicated to sustain.

And this function asks a different question

than the first three.

Not can I make this decision,

but if I keep making decisions like this,

where does my business end up?

That's the future that Megan's helping you see.

It's not a forecast, it's not a prediction,

but it is a trajectory.

And the key takeaway,

once you look at the framework this way,

is that you don't need to fix everything at the same time.

But you do want to know where the breakdown is.

The first two functions help you see what's actually happening,

how money is coming in and what it's doing when it's there.

When you see those patterns clearly,

the third function changes naturally.

Decisions become calmer and more grounded, right?

And the fourth function helps you zoom out

and ask the bigger question,

is this business heading where I wanted to go?

That awareness alone can remove so much stress.

And if listening today helped you feel less embarrassed,

less behind or more curious about what your business

and its numbers are actually telling you,

then this conversation did exactly what it was meant to do.

Because it isn't about becoming a numbers person.

Like, let's face it, if you're not one,

you're not gonna be one.

But you can understand your numbers well enough

to lead your business competently.

I promise you, you can, right?

And if you're listening and thinking,

I feel the same uncertainty in other areas,

not just my finances,

whether it's your systems, your marketing,

or how to run the business day to day,

this is exactly why we have created

the LuU pre-rex for success.

The LuU pre-rex for success is a live zoom session with me

to help you see your business as a whole.

Sales, marketing, finance, operations, leadership,

not to teach you, not to sell you,

but to help you make a confident, informed decision

about your next step.

So the session is live February 17th, 2026,

and we will have major bonuses for live attendees, okay?

The link is in the show notes.

You can also go to luannaigara.com forward slash events,

all right?

And you know, we're just gonna talk about

these five areas of business through the conversation.

Hopefully you will understand some areas

where you're a rock star, yay you!

Some areas where you have some gaps.

You know, my chairman of the board clients,

I say to them all the time,

I'm looking for the things that you do really well

so we can leverage them,

and I'm looking for the things you're not so good at

so we can mitigate them, okay?

So that's what this is about.

And if at the end of it,

some of the LuU classes fit that bill

for you to mitigate some of your gaps, yay you, all right?

So I wanna thank Megan for coming on

and also I want to remind you that she is here to help you.

If what you heard today resonated with you

and you're realizing that what you need

isn't just reports, but you need help in understanding

what your numbers are actually telling you,

this is exactly the work that Megan does.

She works with creative business owners as a fractional CFO,

not to tell you what you should do,

but to help you see clearly what's happening

in your business, understand the patterns underneath it

and help you make decisions from a grounded place

instead of fear or guesswork.

This is especially powerful

if you still feel uncertain about your money

or what it means or how to use it.

You can learn more about Megan and her work at her website

MeganDolly.com, which is M-E-G-A-N-D-A-H-L-E.

dot com, the link will be in the show notes.

So Megan, thank you and thank you for listening.

I so appreciate that you show up

and you know what, take a hot minute to thank yourself

for doing the work of understanding

how to run your business.

Decide to be excellent.

Thank you for joining me today.

This podcast is a production of Luanna Igarit Inc.

If you want to know more about me,

my books, or Luanna University, go to LuannaIgarit.com.

And if you are interested in having window works help you

with your next window treatment or awning project

in the New York, New Jersey metro area,

go to windowworksng.com to learn more.

Have an excellent day.