EP 90: Financial Success Without the B.S. for Entrepreneurs
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Hey everybody, welcome back to the Acquire podcast. I'm your host Jenny Wright and we get to talk about some really cool topics on this podcast. List building, launches, how to grow, how to scale, and eventually how it looks to transition into the CEO role of your business and have other people doing all the wonderful stuff for you so you can focus on the things that you're super good at. And today I really want to get into a conversation that's got two sides. One side is sort of the financial

needs of the business, right? So what you need to know and also lead generation. And the two of them actually tie together really, really well. And today's guest is Annie Kuhl. And she's done the mastering of both sides here. So she went from being a burnout social worker, making 26K up to a powerhouse investor with over $350,000 invested and a real estate mogul and all these wonderful things and taking like 20,000

years off her retirement age plan schedule. Like really cool story to get into with this. And here's the thing, Annie Cole is going to be breaking down for us some of the financial sides we need to know at the different levels in our business. And then we're going to talk about some cool lead generation stuff. So Annie, you are a money essentials coach for women, right?

Yes. Yep. I am a financial coach, but honestly, my work intersects. I've found since launching my business and becoming a coach that has a lot of intersections at personal finance, which includes debt, budgeting, income. And then that also intersects with our income, which oftentimes includes career and business goals. So when I'm coaching women, I'm helping them reach their money goals and it's covering all of those things. So yeah.

You have a little bit of a little secret in your back pocket, because when you were able to start your business, you had some of this financial literacy information. You also had some psychology in your background. So you kind of knew how people made decisions on what they might buy or how they would act. So you had those two wonderful things to kind of propel you forward. But what I want to ask you about first is, what was the switch that

got you from being like the job person into entrepreneurship? And how did how did that transition happen? I'm so fascinated by these things. I love that question. And I am an accidental entrepreneur. So it's even better.

Me too. Me too. I think that, yeah, it happens to a lot of people. So I was definitely, I am an introvert. I am type a, I am do things by the books. I definitely would not have been a risk taker and wanting to start my own business. But what happened was, um, it was Christmas two years ago. My husband and I were sitting in, uh,

Hawaii and we were having some drinks and we were just saying, what would it look like if we started working a little bit less? Because we both had been working really hard. I'd been getting my doctorate. We were just really busy. And so I decided to go part-time in my work position. And as I went part-time, I thought I would want to just relax and do nothing. But instead the achiever in me thought, let's write a book. So I wrote a book called 101 Ways to Build Wealth

I shared it with the world and then it turned into this business of starting to financially coach women. And it just came out of my personal experience of learning that there's so many things you can do to advocate for yourself in your career, ways you can invest to make more money, ways you can retire early. And I wanted to share all these little financial tips with other people. So from there, it's, you know, everything else is history, but it was definitely accidental. It was not something intentional. I paralleled.

that quite a bit. And yeah, I mean, I don't know a lot of people who aren't accidental entrepreneurs at this point. So many of us are. But isn't it fun, the stories that lead us to where we are? It's so cool. It is. I wanted to talk to you about a little bit on the financial side. So the people that are listening to this podcast, we've been around the block a few times, right? So we've, you know, we're making some money. We're interested in assuring some

However, you would want to determine what you would call wealth and you want to grow and you want to scale. And before we get into the conversation about lead gen, what financial things do you find even seasoned entrepreneurs doing that if you could, you would put a big like red X and go, don't do that. Don't touch that. Don't go anywhere near it. What would you advise people? Yeah, I think.

It's hard to even put words to what I'm thinking because what I'm thinking is a really bigger picture than the tactical pieces. So for example, I just led a workshop this morning on key performance indicators and teaching women business owners how to track their key performance indicators. So here's what we did. We had people outline their goals. And for example, one person wanted to make a certain amount of net profit this year.

We then went to a profit and loss sheet and actually outlined what are the things you're going to sell? What is the price point of those things? And how many of those would you need to sell to make money? And so she had this list of about five different things she sells. One of them is a membership. It's a very low ticket thing. So even if she reaches her goal, that's only bringing in a couple thousand dollars a year. We have a couple other pieces to that where she has some high ticket options. If she only gets four clients a month at a thousand dollars a month, you

you know, that's going to be a lot more income. So we were looking at her, her goal to make more money and then breaking it down into what the actual income would be. And then seeing, could she actually reach her goal based on the clients that she would be bringing in and the different product sales. And she definitely could, but there's different ways she could maneuver that to reach her goal. And I think that's the piece that's missing for people is, are you breaking it down? And if you're a seasoned professional, yes, you have a profit and loss sheet, you're tracking your income, but

Are you thinking even bigger? For example, are you just limiting your business to yourself? Are you saying, what can I physically do? How many clients can I take on? What products can I develop? Or are you thinking bigger? Can I create something that I truly just facilitate and I hire other people to run the program or design the program or...

Yeah. I mean, you know, like when you start hiring, yes. When you start thinking about going beyond just being a service provider, I think that's where we all start. We think I love this thing. You know, for me, I love finance. I just want to meet with women and talk about finance. But if I write a book and then I sell that book and promote it, I'm then reaching, you know, millions of people with my information. And then they refer someone else and then they bring someone else into my world. And then they get on my email list and then they want something bigger. There's just so it's so big.

It can be so big. And I think that's the piece I hope that people take away is start thinking bigger and then get into the tactical of the how, how to actually do that. I completely agree. And I know a lot of people who think that thinking bigger gets overwhelming. And I'm not going to lie. It is overwhelming.

At the same time, it's completely necessary, right? And doing things like a P&L, doing things like KPIs, you would think that when you left your J-O-B, you would never probably touch those again because you probably don't want to touch them again. I know that I didn't. I was working in investor relations and communications at some point, and I'm like, every day was the financials. But the reality is, if you want to move from being just a service provider to

to having a scalable, profitable business that eventually you pull back a little bit from somebody else can, you know, do some of the integration for you. You have to, you actually have to embrace some of those job things and pull in the KPIs, the PNLs, you got to do future planning, you got to do all those things and the diversification, right? So you're talking about having small, medium, large products, you're talking about the scale of those products,

This makes my eyes twinkle a little bit because that means we have to have a conversation about leads, right? So in the workshop that you ran this morning where you're talking about, okay, if you sell four clients at, you know, $1,000 each, blah, blah, blah, right? What a lot of people don't do is they do that, but then what they don't do is they don't then figure out how many leads or people they need to fulfill that plan. The plan's great. Love it. Make all the Ascension plans you want.

But if you don't connect it to the metrics of lead generation, you're screwed.

Absolutely. And that's exactly what we did. So we had, you know, one of this person's goals was the dollar amount. And so that's when we got right into P&L because we wanted to be really clear, you know, is this dollar amount even feasible? And I think you need to do that work. If you say, I want to make $100,000 this year, but you have no idea where it would come from or which products. The other thing I think happens a lot is we fall in love with something that we love, but it's not actually good for the business. So be thoughtful. I always say like, there's no...

black and white, but tap into your values and tap into your P&L because you might have a membership that you love, but you only have people pay $15 a month. Even if you had a hundred people, that's only going to be $1,500 a month. Is that really going to get you to your goal versus a high ticket product? Or again, if you can scale and then you advertise, you run all the advertising or you direct someone to run the advertising that then brings the people in and someone else facilitates, you

You just can get more income coming in. So think about the products you love, but also how that's going to impact your bottom line.

So what we did this morning is we talked about the income goal, but then we talked about lead gen. So you want to start working backwards. So if you want five new clients, how many times, you know, what is your user journey? So does someone find you on Instagram, follow you, you send them a direct message, you get them on a booking call, they either convert or they don't. In which case you can work backwards and say, well, if I want four clients,

If I convert one in four, that means I would need to do four times those calls to get the people on a call. So I need to book 16 calls to get four clients, right?

If I want to book 16 calls, how many people do I have to engage with? Cause not everyone's going to hop on a call. So does one third of people hop on a call there now I'm three times again. So three times 16, those are the number of conversations I need to have. And is this weekly? Is this monthly? Is this annually? You know, you can start to break it down into the numbers, which I definitely geek about because that's where it feels so tedious and annoying. And you're like, I don't want to track this. I don't want to get into the weeds, but when you get into the weeds, you'll find out

what's working and what to change. So if your conversion rate is great, great. Maybe you have to get less people into the calls in the first place, but if you're not even engaging, you don't have enough conversations to start with. You're never going to hit the bookings. You're never going to hit the conversion. So you know where to focus your efforts. And I think that's, what's so great about it. I love the weeds. I love it. I love, I love getting into the nitty gritty and I think everybody needs to. And if you're, if you're

reticent to do so if you're like, "I really don't want to do that because then I've got to look at the metrics and the numbers and the math and everything and that's not your thing."

embrace, right? Like, I, you have to embrace some of these things in order to achieve your goal. You just, it just, it's a suck it up and do it. I absolutely used to hate some of these processes, but you have, you have to take them. You got to do it. And, and I think some of the metrics that people don't look at are the, the,

especially at scale, is the small incremental percentage changes that have big long-term effects, right? And so, yes, you need to have 16 conversations, you know, to be able to sell these people.

but how are they getting in? So if you look at something like your Instagram profile, is it optimized to then engage with those people? If you're sending people to a landing page for a lead magnet, is that page optimized and how are you getting leads in? So if your landing page is only converting at 10%, you're screwed. You're not going to get enough traffic. You're going to spend all your time spinning your wheels trying to get people to that landing page. And then when they get there, it's not going to convert.

And so if you can get percentage points, right, and you can say, I can get this page converting at 14 or 20 or 30 or whatever it is. But even if you're converting at 30% and you can get that page to 31%, that's massive down the line, right? And that plays into your future P&L. I mean, if you can get that 1%, that is...

an extra client potentially and that means it's an extra whatever amount thousand ten thousand thirty thousand i don't know that you can then reinvest in the business or put into ads or something and that's how you've got to focus your brain that's the that's the little switch you got to put on in order to go from small business owner servicing four to five clients

to at scale taking care of 100, 200, whatever it is, or 15 people at 30K in a mastermind. That's the difference. Yes.

Oh, I have so many ideas. The first thing I'll say is I'm also running a group right now where we're talking about different lead gen efforts. And we looked at the numbers of what the potential reach is of different strategies. So for example, let's say you post online, you post something on Instagram. Yeah, you get 200 views.

And 50% of them are your followers. They're a tight knit group. You know, you nail the message message. You have people coming to you. You're building tight relationships. That's great. That's going to be really tight community and people are highly engaged. But think about the numbers. You only reach 200 people. If you want massive reach, if you're at the point where your business just doesn't have enough eyes on it, I

I wouldn't necessarily focus there. That's great to build those connections, build relationships. And I actually think social media is great for getting clients on the door because they'll fall in love with you and your content. They'll feel like, I know this person, I like them, but there's other things you can do that have so much more reach. So for example, if you're on a podcast, a low, a tiny like new podcast might get 100 to 500 downloads a month. That's total downloads, not just your episode, total downloads.

But if you're on a top 1% podcast, they might have 1 million downloads a month. Very similarly, if you get a media feature, like if you're going to post something and I do a lot in the finance space, so go banking rates online. Every feature gets about 4,000 eyes on it. If you go for something really big like MSN or Spotify,

you know, CBS, things like that, 50,000 eyes get on those articles. So if you have a backlink to your website from one of those articles, imagine 50,000 people reading something where I'm talking about consumer debt and how to take care of your debt, something that people are really engaged in 50,000 eyes, then clicking and potentially coming to your website, which as you mentioned, you want to have very organized and ready as a funnel to guide them towards booking a call, downloading a freebie, reading something, believing you, whatever it is,

that you just are going to get more eyes. So I think you just have to be so intentional about what are you trying to do with your business? Are you trying to get more people aware that you exist? Are you trying to get more people in the door? And then even when you bring them in your world, you're

what do you want to do with them? Because if you sell them right away, yes, you might sell something, but they might not really, you know, they might not be that engaged or they might be a little judgy because they don't know you yet versus do you want them to give you their email? And then do you want to nurture them for a while and guide them into something bigger? Do you want to give them something for free so that they can get a taste and fall in love with you and then want to pay for something? Like you just, you want to be so intentional with all these things. So it's where

It's like where woo meets numbers, where the magic of the psychology and what we experience meets the actual tactical numbers. Completely, completely. Because if you do love spreadsheets and you do love the numbers, then you may not be the kind of person that thinks on the... You might be very tactical and intentional, but you may not be thinking of the humanistic side of how people interact and

and what you might think is like a no-brainer land on page opt-in receive book call may not be the journey that the other person on the other end is willing to or ready to make and yeah and what's what's missing in that for them and so this is where the opportunity i find and tell me what you think this is where the opportunity we have to create more two-way conversation than one way and so i find that like a lead magnet is a very one-way conversation a podcast

can facilitate a two-way conversation, a summit definitely feels more like a conversation. And webinars and interactive workshops and so on are definitely more of a two-way conversation. But if you are only focusing on a one-way conversation, because you're an introvert, and I am as well, and will love to just stay behind the scenes wherever I can, you're shooting yourself in the foot to be able to have those essential two-way conversations.

and not be able to connect with people more deeply.

Yep. I think that's so true. And I I've also found that it kind of depends on the product too. So if someone wants a checklist or, you know, my book has been a good example. They just want the book and they want the resource there. It's going to be an easier sell without having a two-way conversation because your landing page can be pretty robust and show signs that you're credible and trustworthy and that other people loved it too. So that's going to be an easier sell, but coaching and programs and things that you commit to, um,

Those things, people definitely want to work with you. That's why I think the consulting call or the one-on-one call is just so valuable to be able to get in front of people. But I love what you're saying about summits and podcasts. Anytime it's long form content, especially video content where you're talking and telling stories, you know, people are getting to know me right now. They're hearing me. They're maybe seeing my face. They're hearing my voice.

they are deciding whether they trust me and think I'm credible. And they're hearing that for 30 straight minutes. So that's just a totally different level now of relationship I have with someone. And then if we did this and then got on a call and they got to talk to me face to face, that versus landing on a webpage, there's just no comparison. They're just totally different. Yeah, completely agree. It's an absolute 180 when you do something like that. I kind of want to transition and talk about

long-term wealth building strategies? Because everything that we've sort of talked about to this point allows us to scale, but then how do we deal with the scale, right? So do you think you could share sort of some of your tried and true wealth building strategies that you could tell different business owners who want to both have the short-term income goals and then the long-term security goals and also take that retirement date and like kick it down 20 years?

Yes. Oh, my favorite thing in the world. So I'm happy to talk about this. First I'll say, so I'm a business owner and my husband's also a business owner. So I'll share some examples from both of our experiences because they're a little bit different, but remember that whatever your financial goals are for your business, I hope they are personally tied to you. And they're really valuable because if we just want to go out and make a bunch of money,

You might not actually get what you're looking for. You might make the money, but you don't know why. So do you want to retire early? Do you want to have enough income to send your kids to a certain college? Do you want to have the dream home? You know, what is it you're working towards? And I hope that your business is something you're passionate about, but ultimately ties back to your life and something outside of just working. So that's number one. Once you have that vision for your life and you want to start working towards it at the business level, excuse me,

Definitely work with someone, a CPA certified public accountant as early as you can. It costs money to pay a professional to help you with your taxes, but most of the time you're going to save money or make money. It's just going to be worth it in the long run. So work with a professional because they will tell you how to structure your business, how to take right off to your business, how to overall save money on what you need to spend and pay in taxes. So that's number one, number two in your business, have a really clear profit and loss sheet.

Be ruthless at times, look through the things and say, this product is not selling. It might be time to retire it. We're getting such and such feedback on this thing. We really need to revamp this thing. It's old. Our website hasn't been updated in a while. We need to pour the money in there to get more clients in our expenses. We're paying for a bunch of stuff that we don't really use anymore. We need to upgrade them. Just be aware of your expenses and your income so that you are profiting as much as possible. And then I know a lot of business owners say, well, I don't want to pay myself.

you need to be a little selfish and you have to pay yourself. If you do not take care of yourself, you will not like your business. You won't want to run it. You will burn out. You have, your business needs to make you money. So do that. And then beyond that, start thinking about your personal finances. So you have enough money coming in.

have a really clear budget and you want your budget to be values aligned. So you want to create, it could be as simple as a Google spreadsheet or page in your journal, write down the things that you spend money on, know what they are and be intentional about them so that you feel like your life is really well worth it. And you're not just throwing money around and you're

create space in your budget to be able to invest. If there was one thing you wanted to do to build wealth, it's investing because if you invest a dollar on average in the stock market every single year, it will grow by 10% in value. There's really no other way to do that. I mean, you can invest either in the stock market, you can invest in businesses, or you can invest in real estate. The stock market's the easiest because you can put it in through your retirement account or another account

And just make money. It is so, so simple and easy and it compounds. So the earlier we all know this, but the earlier you do it, the better, the more money you put in, the better, just make it a habit. And one of the things you can do, if you feel like that sounds boring and you're not excited, go online, Google free retirement calculator, plug in your current amount and your current numbers.

see what happens if you added a hundred dollars a month, you will be shocked and you will suddenly be very excited because you realize I could stop working so many decades sooner. And then push yourself, say, what if I invested $200 a month, $300 a month? What would look differently? What if I cut these expenses that aren't really enticing me? Get yourself excited about what's possible and yeah, start investing. Investing is, it is key to building wealth.

Completely, completely. I'm on the same page with you. And one of the one of the podcast episodes that I did recently as a solo was all about sort of future proofing our businesses. You know, it's 2025 and 2025 has been a remarkably different year so far. And we're only like a month and a half in.

There's a lot of people who are anticipating that we will have either an economic slowdown or that the way things have been running historically are changing, right? Even in the financial markets, right? And so when I think about how we need to future-proof financially and also in our businesses just with our leads and stuff, I'm telling people to double down on list building and lead gen now.

Yeah. And doing a complete audit, top to bottom, ruthless. Yes. Financial audit and eliminate anything you can eliminate, like you're talking about personal audit. Right. I just got rid of a couple streaming services that I don't need. I want, but I don't need.

And that's like, that's a cost savings, right? But where like do that ruthless audit in your business. And like you said, drop a product that's not working and redevelop something that could and do some, I'd say conservative testing right now.

Yeah. And solicit feedback, right? So you can't build these things in a vacuum and see if they work and then you've invested 60 hours of your time building it and then it doesn't launch and it doesn't do well. So soliciting feedback I think is essential and future-proofing right now so that you can ride that wave if that wave comes. I'm definitely the person that brings the umbrella on a sunny day because I don't want me to get wet and anybody else. Yep. Yep. I think...

That is spot on. I love all of that. And I suggest all of that regardless of the economy and regardless of what's happening, but especially right now, I think it's so, so important. Also, it's hard to tell if this is a biased perception because I'm newer to the business world myself, but I do feel like there is this growing boom of people launching their own businesses. And one of the things I keep coming back to is,

provide massive, massive value. You have to keep thinking about your product line, your services, and your client experience and make it so excellent so you can stand out. I don't say that to scare anyone or to make you feel like, oh, I'm going to exhaust myself. It doesn't have to be exhausting. Just be precise. So for example, when I was launching my book, before I even launched my book, I gave it away to people for free so that they would review it and give me a testimonial.

Now, when I went to go sell it, I sold it with testimonials on it, which boosted it. So yeah, I gave away some gift cards to people to incentivize them to give me a review, but it made the process better. I'm doing that with one of my new programs right now. It's an eight-week program. I'm spending eight weeks of making no income off of that program. And I am giving...

everything. I'm giving my best value, my best things to all the people that are in it. And I can tell you, they are absolutely thrilled and it's going great. But there's also things where they have said, you know, this was a little, you moved too fast through this, or this isn't relevant for me right now at the stage of my business. So yeah,

user testing and having people give you feedback, even if you're not going to make money in the interim, oh my gosh, you're going to triple 10 times your income in the long-term because you're going to do the right thing. And again, it all comes back to providing the right product, the right value to the right person. And if you keep focusing on that, you really can't go wrong, but yes, you do have to get the leads aware that your products exist. So that's, you know, it's key. Yep. You got to have your fingers in a whole bunch of different

Things all the time, right? No, all, not all your eggs in one basket, which I've been doing. So you've been doing this for two years. I've done this. I've been doing this for about 13 and I have repeatedly made the same mistake. And I think a lot of people do not to, you know, not to say that it was silly because it was, but

I have repeatedly put all my eggs in one basket thinking that I'd be all good. And then something happens and you're like, crap, okay, I'm screwed. So, and then you have to improvise. Improvise now before anything. This is my new strategy and I adopted it in 2024 and I'm really putting it into play in 2025. And I recommend that a lot of people do.

And just as we're wrapping up, because this is a great conversation, Annie, I'm having so much fun talking and geeking out with you. I know, it's so nice. Right? And if this episode has not already lit a fire under you to take charge of your finances, your business growth, your lead gen, I don't know what will. But if you need more convincing, then go and connect with

with Annie because she's going to continue to light that fire under your butt and make sure you move ahead. So we've talked about, you know, money mindset a bit. We've talked about building wealth as an entrepreneur, creating financial freedom if that's your goal, having your goals tied to who you are.

very important. And then also being able to lead gen to facilitate those goals, create a P&L if you don't already have one, but you probably already do. But do that really brutal audit and find out the opportunities just for those little percentage points that really make a difference. Annie, where can everybody connect with you, find you and hear more about you?

That's place is going to be my website. So it's money dash essentials.com. There's so many resources there. So it's not only me, but I also have a team of coaches that bring in specific expertise. So if you want to connect with, you know, the career coach to climb the ladder at the debt at

expert, the person that does business marketing, we have all of those experts on our site and you can set up a free consultation with any of them to test them out. So I highly, highly recommend going there. And then all my socials are linked there as well. Lots of free stuff. We have lots of events coming up, blog posts, anything you can think of. So if you have big money goals, definitely check it out.

Yes, absolutely. And we'll have all that in the show notes as well. So you can connect directly with Annie and what sounds like a great group of coaches, which is fantastic. And one last thing, if you are enjoying Acquire, please take a quick second to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is that you listen. I'd love for you to let me know what you think. It helps me get in front of more people and also share more opportunities.

So I love if people could share and connect. And if you want to know more about what I do, head on over to JennyWright.com. Lots of good stuff over there for you as well. And go take what you learned today. Make some bold money moves. Do something really cool and get really invested in what it is that you're doing so you can create long-term success. And we'll talk to you all soon. Take care.