ARTICLES
Click the buttons below to view and read my articles, or read the articles on Medium instead.
"Working with Ella was a game-changer for my business. She not only optimized my lead funnel operations but also walked me through every step of the process so I could understand and learn along the way. Her approach was thorough, patient, and incredibly effective — I felt supported the entire time.Thanks to Ella, I saved valuable time and now have a much smoother system in place. If you're a small business owner looking to improve your operations and increase your value, I highly recommend working with Ella. She’s the real deal! She has a heart and mind of gold."~ Emily, Golden Compass Solutions LLC
Why I Recommend Reading “Profit First” Before You Launch Your Small Business
How Mike Michalowicz’s “Profit First” System Helped Me Get My Business Finances in Order
Published April 7, 2023
In this article I am sharing…- How I was handling my business finances before Profit First.
- How the Profit First System helped me in my business.
- My interpretation of the fundamentals of the system for a solo service provider.
- Why you ought to read Mike Michalowicz’s book, for yourself.DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial advisor, this article is not financial advice. Please be sure to hire credentialed and licensed financial professionals to help you to make the best decisions for you and your business.1. How was I handling my business finances before Profit First?The short answer is, “poorly.”When I launched my first business as a “side job” in 2005, I wasn’t concerned or interested in learning about business finance. I thought that because I could support myself via my regular job, I could do whatever I wanted with my business revenue, so long as I had enough in my bank account to cover tax expenses when the time came. When I received an influx of business revenue, I’d jump on buying whatever “business” supply or service I’d been wanting to purchase; whether it was software, professional development, marketing, supplies, or anything else that struck my fancy.This was a terrible strategy. I was inconsistent, and had no real system in place to responsibly allocate my revenue to meet the needs of my business. I look back now and realize that had I known better, my business would have been profitable from the beginning, I would have had a much clearer understanding of my business’ financial state, I would have been able to make wiser business investments as my business grew, and I’d likely have had more actual money to show for all my hard work. Since my bills were getting paid, I did not know the difference.
I simply had no idea what I was doing.Which is a great example of how when you take on new projects big or small, “you simply don’t know what you don’t know.”2. How did the Profit First system help me in my business?I was introduced to Mike Michalowicz’s book “Profit First,” during a business conference I attended. Initially I wasn’t particularly interested. However, after hearing a number of other business owners talk about how life changing the strategies inside the book had been for them, I decided to give the book a chance.Mike’s storytelling hooked me right away and his straightforward financial strategy made a lot of sense to me. So I dug into his book, did more research, spoke to my financial professional, and began making plans for switching to the Profit First strategy. A couple of weeks later, I had the infrastructure set and began implementing Mike’s system.Within a few short months the system was teaching me about my business’s financial state. I learned how to make more thoughtful purchases for my business, felt the relief of having funds set aside for taxes, discovered how much my business was actually paying me, and realized just how badly I was undercharging for my expertise.I had been so determined to be affordable in comparison to larger businesses offering similar services that I had sabotaged my bottom line. And, on a deeper level, I was afraid to raise my rates because I struggled to see my own value.But, once I fully implemented the Profit First system, this undercharging problem could no longer be ignored. Working backwards using my newfound understanding, I determined exactly what my new rate needed to be and discovered my rates were about 40% too low!?! I was horrified to realize just how much money I’d been missing out on.Armed with these calculations I was ready to make my rate change official.I grandfathered some of my long-time clients in at their old rate for a few months, providing them with a time-line on when the rate change would take affect for them while all my new clients started at the new rate.I did loose a few clients, but honestly these were clients that had not truly valued my services in the first place.Many of my clients were thrilled for me when I made the change, they knew my value and were happy that I was standing in it fully asking for what I deserved from them. Within a few months, I actually began drawing more clients than before, and I was easily diverting clients who would not have been a good fit. Though there were some other changes I made which contributed to this, I know that pricing myself properly and making better financial decisions for my business were a big part of that shift for my business.With my new rate and the Profit First system in place, I was able to identify exactly which products and services I wanted to continue spending money on for my business, and how many clients I would need to leave my “day job.”
3. How does the Profit First system work?Before I proceed with telling you more about the fundamentals of Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First system, I want to remind you that I’m not a financial professional and I‘m not advising you. What I am doing is encouraging you to please read the book for yourself and to speak to your financial professional(s) before making any changes in how you handle your business money.I also want to be clear that because I was and am a solopreneur in the truest sense of the word (just me, offering a remote service, no employees, no complex vendor arrangements or ingredients to buy, nobrick and mortar) who works in the USA, my use of the PF system is the absolutely most basic version explained in Mike’s book. If your business model includes more expenses and/or staff, if you pay yourself using payroll software with deductions, and/or you live and work outside the USA, your version of the Profit First system will look different and likely more complicated than what I’m about to describe.When I implemented Mike’s system, there were no online banks and most banking websites were pretty basic. The majority of the big banks charged for all additional services or “extra” accounts, so instead of navigating all those extra fees I chose to work with my local community credit union. They allowed me to take my business account and create additional linked accounts attached to my business. (This will all make a little more sense shortly.)My Profit First banking set-up had two business checking accounts and two business savings accounts labeled for easy bi-monthly distribution.I had a checking account labeled “Revenue,” which is where I had all my business funds automatically deposited from my payment processor.The other checking account was labeled “Operating Expenses 30%,” this one was attached to my business debit card to make my business spending easier.
I had two savings accounts, one labeled “Profit 5%,” and another labeled “Taxes 15%.”Twice per month, I’d go into my banking application for my “PF Distribution.” I’d pull 5% from the revenue account to put in the profit account, 15% went to the tax account, 30% went to the operating expenses account, and 50% was transferred to my personal checking account. The revenue account is intended to go down to zero after every PF distribution, but it’s important to keep in mind that many banks charge customers fees anytime accounts drop below a certain number; I was fortunate my bank didn’t.Today, online banking has come a long way, quite a few banking apps now permit business owners to set-up and label sub-accounts, as well as automated percentage distributions with every new deposit.For the “Taxes” distribution, Mike recommends setting up your tax savings account with a completely different bank, ideally one that makes it complicated to pull money from. If a business owner struggles with discipline and could see themselves “borrowing/stealing” from their tax savings account for a splurge or an emergency, then it would be wise for them to find a way to create some additional obstacles for themselves by moving that tax distribution savings account to a different bank that is easy to deposit into but difficult to withdraw from.Mike also recommends coming up with some kind of way to celebrate a business’s success (no matter how small) with funds from the profit account annually, twice per year, or quarterly.For me the 15% for the tax distribution has worked well, however taxes where you live may look very different. Do check with your tax professional before committing to any particular number here.By keeping only 30% of my gross revenue in the checking account linked to my business debit card, I am forced to pay attention to my business spending. I know exactly how much money I need in this account each month to cover my monthly and annual expenses, and if I want to purchase something special for my business, I need to work within this budget by saving over time or finding a way to bring in some additional revenue.My experience with my previous business means I can move forward with my business finances with more confidence this time around. I am excited to be starting my new business on the PF system from the start! My plan for when business picks up steam, is to increase my owner’s pay percentage distribution and decrease my operating expenses budget. What I mean is, as I bring in more money, if I find a way to keep my expenses low or to reduce them further, I can budget for 25% operating expenses and increase my owner’s pay to 55%. Then, if I keep this up I can bump operating expenses down to 20% and owner’s pay up to 60%, and so on.With my new business being remote, I hope to be able to get my operating expenses down to 10% so I can take home 70% of my gross income. I may decide to use this same principle to increase the percentage I distribute to my profit account as well.4. Why read Mike Michalowicz’s book Profit First?The nuances of your business are unique to you and there is so much more content in the book than I’ve shared here. Even if your business is a remote solo business and you feel ready to jump on the system as explained above, it’s important that you read Mike’s book and discuss it with your financial professional(s) before moving forward.If you’re a brand new business, or you’re still in the planning phase, this is the perfect time to learn about the Profit First system and work with your financial professionals to determine how best to implement Mike’s system in your business when you first open your business bank account.If you’re struggling with your business finances for one reason or another (there are many), this is the time to make time to read Mike’s book and discuss with your financial professionals how you can best implement your own Profit First system to get your business back on track. I venture to say it’s not too late. You can’t “fix” the past, but you can move forward with intention and wisdom.If you’re still uncertain or you don’t have the few dollars to buy the book, consider borrowing the book from your local library instead, and you can also listen to one or more of Mike Michalowicz’s Profit First podcast episodes and learn more on his website for free.
…
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Are you struggling with navigating the money part of your small business? Have you read Profit First? Have you implemented the PF system in your business? How has PF helped you and your business?
What is a CRM? How does it help a small business?
Why Use One?
Published April 7, 2023
In this article I am sharing…- My experiences before using a CRM.
- What is a CRM anyway?
- How using a CRM helped me and my business.
- Why you need a CRM.My business, before using a CRM:When I launched my first business, I quickly learned how easily it was for inquiries to fall through the cracks. I found I needed to create a system for tracking every new lead, my follow-ups, successful registrations, appointment scheduling, and more. So I did what most relatively tech savvy people do, I set up an Excel spreadsheet. This wasn’t a perfect system, but while my business was small, if I kept up with the data, it worked for me.Sometime after 2006, I “upgraded” my little system by creating a couple Google Forms to help me collect and track lead and client data. I used the automation provided to populate new spreadsheets in Google Sheets. This minor “upgrade” added some automation for me, saved me a little time and stress, but still required me to pay attention to my sheets to ensure I didn’t miss out on new inquiries. When I learned how to set my Google sheet to email me when a lead submitted an inquiry form, I got my first real taste for how powerfully automation could change my working experience.Like you (I suspect, since you’re reading this article), I didn’t have a clue what a Client Relationship Manager (CRM) was or how it might have helped me. I had no idea there were systems available to businesses to help them keep track of everything I was shoe-horning and more.I was fortunate to be a relatively organized person, and so creating systems came naturally for me. I found myself creating a lead to client funnel and client experience workflow before I ever knew what those terms were. As the years have gone by, I’ve learned that the majority of people, especially solopreneur creative types do not have this ability. As each new technology became available, I wasn’t afraid to check them out and even test them on my business.2. What is a CRM?For a long time, Client Relationship Managers (CRMs) weren’t accessible to small businesses like mine. For years, the term was never brought up in solopreneur networking circles. Though big Corporations had been using CRMs for years, they weren’t designed to meet the needs of smaller businesses and the cost was out of reach.Eventually, I started hearing about CRMs designed for small businesses like mine. Being unafraid of technology and always curious about new tools, I began digging in. I found industry specific CRMs, general CRMS, those that were customizable in unique ways, those that very specifically addressed certain focuses some businesses might have, affordable options, expensive options, the list goes on… Initially, the affordable ones were missing key features for me, or had some characteristics I truly disliked, while the ones that appealed to me were priced too high for my budget. Some more affordable CRMs put their branding on everything a business might send to their leads and clients, confusing those receiving any email correspondence (this happened to me as a consumer on several occasions).So, WHAT is a CRM and HOW does it help small businesses?A CRM is software used to help businesses manage their client relationships. The software helps you manage and keep track of essentially everything. I hear many small business owners wishing they could afford to hire assistants, more often than not, these solopreneurs don’t need assistants at all, they need a good CRM.A good CRM will help you manage, track, and automate:New leads, Active clients, Archived clients, Packages, Payments, Contracts, Proposals, Questionnaires, Lead/Client data specific to your business, Appointments, Touch points, Lead funnels, Workflows, Canned emails, Reminders for you and for clients, Financial and other reports, If you have employees, employee integrations, All the steps in all the things, and, allow you to customize everything with your branding. Some also have landing pages, allow for emailing eNewsletters, and more.Choosing the right CRM for you, your business, and your clients is key. CRMs are not all created equal, some CRMs are quite the investment, and every business has unique needs. Taking the time to get clear about what your ideal customer journey will look like is essential to help you identify the features you ought to be looking for in a CRM. Understanding how your needs might change as your business grows will also help you select a CRM that will serve you as well several years from now as it does on day one, all without investing in a CRM full of bells and whistles your business has no use.3. How using a CRM has helped me and my business…Throughout my years with my first business, I’d gained a tremendous amount of clarity around the client experience I sought. I’d found a way to use the technology available to me to funnel my leads into clients and through a workflow of my design. My system wasn’t perfect, but I made it work for me. Mostly because I was persistent, consistent and unafraid.Eventually, a new CRM popped into my research that became the perfect one for me. It’s affordable, and I can navigate almost my entire workflow from my CRM, many of the steps are automated, including reminders to myself, automated email series for my leads and clients, contracts, invoices, payment processing, and more are all integrated and ready to go for each new client. All customized for my business. I can view my leads and active projects easily from my dashboard, see my upcoming appointments, know what contracts still need signing, see what payments have been collected, and so much more. My CRM doesn’t doesn’t integrate with texting, but it does integrate with Zapier, so I use that integration to automatically text me certain information I want even when away from my computer. (if you’re asking “Zapier?! What’s that?!” Stay tuned, I’ll be writing about Zapier another day.)With my CRM, Dubsado, my business’s entire client workflow is managed by a mostly automated system which I’ve branded, and completely customized to serve mine and my clients’ needs. Once I found Dubsado, the hardest part was taking the time to carefully break down and implement my workflow into the CRM system. This takes patience, persistence, and a willingness to make adjustments. First, I put my contracts into the CRM, then I linked my payment processor (Square), added my packages, set up a lead capture form with a simple automated email response to the lead and automated reminder for me to call the lead, embedded the form onto my website, and continued working through and integrating each step of my customer journey into my CRM. These are steps I now help my clients design and build.Here is an example of how the automation and integration I set up with my CRM handle my lead capture process:(A) A new lead completes and submits the lead capture form on my website.(B) The lead receives an automated email from me via the CRM, this email was scripted by me in my voice, the email is addressed to them by name, and it comes from my business email address.(C) At the same moment, the CRM emails me the information about the new lead and reminds me to call them before the end of the next business day,(D) and Zapier texts me with the information about the new lead as well.By having the above steps automated for me, I am immediately informed about new leads via text and email. Leads are acknowledged personally via email immediately upon inquiring, given the opportunity to tell me more about their needs, and informed on when they can expect to hear from me. This ensures I don’t lose tabs on new leads and that my leads feel cared for.I have many more steps integrated and automated into my workflow via my CRM, each one is designed to save me time and ensure my leads/clients feel cared for. I choose not to bombard them with spam or nag them for a sale, instead providing gentle and attentive customer care using the tools my CRM provides me.4. You need a CRM, if…- You run a business where you work with clients.
- You have trouble keeping track of customers and the steps involved in working with them.
- You want most of your business’ administrative components in one software system.
- You find yourself wishing you could hire an assistant to manage your client relationships.
- Your leads fall through the cracks for one reason or another.
- You sometimes forget to have contracts signed.
- You sometimes struggle to collect payments.
- You find yourself working with clients who haven’t signed contracts or paid their fees.
- You have trouble scheduling appointments, and lose out on revenue as a result.
- You’re busy and find it difficult to keep up with lead/client communication.
- Your leads often lose patience with your struggle through administrative tasks and don’t become paying customers.
- You find your administrative struggles are negatively impacting your business’s reputation.
- You want to focus on your product/service instead of administrative work.…In the past several years, many more CRMs have launched since I found mine. I spent some time researching just a few days ago and found at least three more interesting enough to bookmark for possibilities for my future clients.I love my CRM, Dubsado, it works perfectly for my needs. I have a referral code which activates a discount for new users (and provides me with a credit). Please don’t hesitate to message me directly via Medium to request my Dubsado referral/coupon code.…Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Are you struggling with managing your small business? Have you tried using a CRM? Does it work well for you or not? Do you not feel confident moving forward with setting up a CRM for your small business? Do you have a CRM you don’t know how to optimize? What systems have worked well for you?
Social Media Pages Don't Count
Businesses Need More
Published June 9, 2025
1. What happens when you can't find a beloved brand in your social media feed anymore?Have you ever enjoyed following a person or business on social media or some other platform you frequent, only to have them disappear from your feed? Maybe you don't notice right away but eventually you start wondering where they went. If you've got the bandwidth and time in that moment, you might attempt to search for them… But what if you cannot even remember their brand name? That search likely ended immediately after it started. If you remember their name, and you still cannot find them on the social media site, a web search will hopefully reveal a website with an email list you can join to stay in the know.If you really love this brand, you might purchase from them, you might even tell your friends about them, you might look forward to receiving their eNewsletter, or even join their loyalty program. Phew and yay! But… what if you search and search and never find them again. You likely put it out of your mind and move on, while they have lost you probably forever. And if they lost you through this unknown shift, they've probably lost other followers.2. Why did the brands you love disappear from your social media feed?But the question remains, what happened? Why did they disappear from your feed? It could be that they decided to drop social media, but the chances a brand would do that without informing their followers is pretty slim. Chances are much higher that the social media site for one reason or another decided to temporarily freeze their account, permanently block them from the social media site, or even delete all this brand/user's content from the social media platform.I've known a number of brands that have lost their entire portfolio as well as their followers due to a social media giant deciding for one reason or another that their account was no longer welcome. Now we all want to believe, that as long as we don't do anything "wrong" or "bad" this won't happen to us, so we don't need to worry. But I know that if you were to ask most of these brands, they would tell you they did not believe they were violating policies, that the shut down came as a complete surprise to them. These are generally good people just trying to run a business, and social media seemed an easy way to reach the masses and build a following without the hassle of building their own websites.3. Why is this a big deal?The reality is that when we post on any social media platform, we do not own anything we post. We're essentially giving our hard fought work to the social media companies to keep, use for their own purposes, or delete as they see fit.Taking the time to dive into the ever changing and degraded "privacy policies" each time the app updates will confirm this assertion. We're effectively, "renting" the use of the platform and we're also giving them access to our strategy, our clients, and a whole slew of other data we don't even realize we are giving away for free. In turn, when other businesses on their platform want to post advertisements, they get to purchase this data from the SM platform rather than from you.We do not own any of the work we post. We're putting ourselves, our work, and our followers at the mercy of the "powers that be," so to speak.The other reason this is a big deal is that these social media giants don't care about any of us, they don't care about your little business selling soap, teaching ukelele, or speaking on self-care. If your brand profile on their mega-site doesn't make them money, they'll keep pushing your content down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench of their feed.This doesn't mean having a social media profile for your business can't help your business grow, given the right algorithm of the day and serendipity of the times your profile might just be the kick your little business into hyper-drive. But… we cannot count on this, or trust any of the successes earned there to keep coming.4. Consider thisThere are growing numbers of people leaving social media for a variety of reasons. You likely know at least a person or two within your circle who are leaving all or some social media platforms; if not, I encourage you to search for news stories on the subject.If your business doesn't have an online presence outside of social media, these potential customers will not find you.If a client who adores you and your business recommends you to someone they know who is not on social media, and your only online presence is on social media, that potential lead will not find you. Period.5. What can we do about this?We're all, or most of us are, aware of the dichotomy concerning social media today. Many choose to ignore the negative and just hope for the best. I don't recommend that strategy. There are options to consider, and you have the power to decide how and where your brand is presented online.Dropping social media altogether is an option, but many would argue that is business suicide. Personally, I beg to differ, I've chosen to drop all social media and start over without it, from actual scratch. This strategy is a lot more work, but I'm actually excited because I feel like the people who find and stick with me will be the kind of intentional people I most enjoy working with.You might love social media, and even be finding some success with their algorithms right now, that's great however there is no telling whether or not this positive trajectory will continue for your small business. Either way, whether you love social media or not, if you want to keep your social media profiles, that's completely up to you. As the kids say "You do you."Whether or not you choose to keep your business on social media, you can do a couple of things to protect your brand and your following from the negative possibilities that comes with utilizing this volatile industry for your business marketing.A) You can begin collecting client and follower emails.Even if you don't know exactly what you'll do with this email list or whether you even want to send out a newsletter of any kind, this is your insurance. If everything else goes poof, you still have a list of people who have signed up to be connected to your brand, on purpose.There are dozens of ways to set up an email list. I'm currently searching for a new email list builder for my business because the one I used for my previous business no longer fits my needs. I plan to write another article about the different email list builders available. When I do, I'll link it at the bottom of this article.B) You can purchase a domain name and publish your own website.A website of your own becomes your digital hub, your online "brick and mortar" so to speak. You get to decide everything about this site and it means that you can also reach clients who may have chosen to cut out social media.This site can be as simple as a business card or flyer, or you can build a comprehensive site, even an eCommerce site where you sell your goods and/or services. There are lots of options for this as well and I'll be sure to give you my thoughts on them in a future article.Many people believe building a website is a big, scary, difficult, and expensive project. Though this was once true for any website and can still be so for larger businesses with highly complicated websites, for the rest of us this is no longer true. Getting a website up and running has never been easier. Even for the smallest of business owners and creatives, who have little budgets and low technical skills limited to email there are a plethora of unique options for every business.I plan to write an article about some of my favorite easy to use website builders. When I do, I'll link it below....
What are your thoughts on businesses who only use social media?
