Top Financial Moves When You Hit 3 Revenue Milestones with Erica Goode, CPA

The Soloist Life

Have you noticed how no one talks about what to do financially when your business hits certain milestones—and then you’re left wondering what financial moves make the most sense? CPA Erica Goode is out to change that.

We discuss:

Building a solid financial base for your brand-new expertise business (and why it’s OK to start with a spreadsheet).

How shame around money can keep you from getting the help you need—and why you want to reach out anyway.

The value of consistency—in paying yourself a salary, staying current with the IRS and starting to direct funds to the causes you care about.

When to think about saving for short and long-term goals, including tax-advantaged retirement.

Being aware of your money mindset and where you live on the SPEND to SAVE continuum.

LINKS

Erica Goode | Guide For Coaches + Consultants | LinkedIn | Instagram

Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

GUEST BIO

Erica Goode, CPA is the host of the Coaches, Consultants, and Money podcast where she helps business owners get their money right. She also runs a virtual accounting firm supporting coaches and consultants with bookkeeping, tax planning, and CFO services. She’s a former Director of Finance at Walgreens and started her career as an auditor at KPMG. Erica also loves avocados and a heavy dose of sarcasm. She lives with her two kids and fellow-CPA husband in the mountains of Idaho.

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TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - 00:28

Erica Goode: There's a lot of professionals who will tell you how much you need to save, but nobody's holding your feet to the fire per se and nobody's keeping you accountable. So like, it sounds all well and good that, yeah, I should put away $20, 000 a year or whatever that may be. But having somebody come alongside you and say, okay, in July, we're doing 10 and in December, we're doing 10. It's in your cashflow forecast, I think makes the hugest difference in the world.

00:32 - 00:57

Rochelle Moulton: Hello, hello. Welcome to Soloist Women, where we're all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I'm Rochelle Moulton, and today I'm here with my pal, Erica Goode. And she is a CPA who runs a virtual accounting firm for coaches and consultants, and she hosts the Coaches, Consultants and Money podcast where she helps business owners get their money right. Erica, welcome. Thanks so much for having

00:57 - 01:01

Erica Goode: me, Michelle. This is so great.

01:01 - 01:15

Rochelle Moulton: Well, I am so looking forward to this discussion for like a multitude of reasons. But 1 of them is because I feel like no 1 ever talks about what to do financially when your business hits different milestones, you know, until it's usually too late.

01:16 - 01:24

Erica Goode: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a huge question I get is, or just some confusion out there of like, what should I be doing first? What should I be doing next?

01:24 - 01:41

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, what do you do when? And so what we're going to talk about today is what to do before you have any revenue. And then when you hit your first 150, 000 and then 300, 000. And Erica, I like how you refer to those as revenue toll gates. You guys are really

01:41 - 01:47

Erica Goode: helpful. Yeah. Yeah, we're all on a journey, and we hit different points around the path.

01:47 - 02:11

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. Well, in addition to that, I'd really love for our listeners to hear how you've gotten to this place. Because whenever we talk, whenever I watch you on Instagram or LinkedIn, by the way, follow her. It's hysterical and helpful at the same time. You exude so much happiness for your life and passion for your work. Let's start with what made you decide to start your own business.

02:12 - 02:43

Erica Goode: Oh, how I got to where I am. I recently said this and it was 1 of those things where people like said it out loud and I heard myself and I was like ooh isn't that the truth I said it's taking me a lot of years and a lot of tears I am very happy nothing fake on social media for me when you see that I appear happy, I'm very happy. I have a long, long, long career corporate career, like I think a lot of the listeners might hear as well. But I came out of college

02:43 - 03:26

Erica Goode: in a traditional CPA kind of way. I went to Big 4 Public Accounting, spent some time there and what I call Accounting Boot Camp, I did audit there and if anybody's familiar with Big 4 Public Accounting, it is a boot camp for sure, but it teaches you well. And after that, I went to Fortune 50 retailer did corporate finance there, and spent years learning, SPNA, financial planning and analysis and budgeting, and just a whole bunch of the corporate race, if you will. And they came a time where it was just, just time to go home. I

03:26 - 04:00

Erica Goode: had had some burnout, I had had some come to Jesus moments. And it was just when I left that role it was you know it was a big big time in my career and at that time that I left I was in a good place actually but I had had enough experience in the corporate life to know that this is not what I should be chasing right now. What I really wanted to chase was our then 5 year olds and 1 year old at home. And I just wanted to be very present at home in that

04:00 - 04:20

Erica Goode: season of life. And so with lots of spreadsheets, and talks with my husband, it was time for me to come home. And he was fully supportive of that. I came home for a few years. And I say I was quote, just mom. Because anybody who is a parent knows that just being mom is still a lot of work.

04:21 - 04:22

Rochelle Moulton: Full-time plus.

04:23 - 04:57

Erica Goode: Yes, but I do say that it was easier than juggling both at the same time, a big corporate career and being mom. And so I was really just happy to be home and be present for for our littles and make PBJs and do bus stop pickup. And so I did that for a couple years and really just missed I missed the work. I never left my corporate gig because I didn't like what I was doing. I have been budgeting and forecasting since I was 8 years old. And I did not leave that job because I didn't

04:57 - 05:07

Erica Goode: like the work. And so I got to a point where I really just missed the accounting, missed the finance aspect of my old career. And so I, you know, accidentally started my own accounting firm, as we do.

05:08 - 05:12

Rochelle Moulton: Now, how did you wind up in Idaho? Because I know you were in Chicago.

05:13 - 05:47

Erica Goode: Yes, I'm lifelong Chicago suburbs, went to college in Illinois. And my husband, who also is a CPA, who also started at Big 4 Public Accounting at the same firm, which is how we met. But he was in Idaho, and I was in Chicago, and we just happened to meet at a conference in Florida. And the rest is history. We got married within a couple of years. And so I always say he did my place for 10 years and we're doing his place for however long we left here now in Idaho.

05:48 - 06:10

Rochelle Moulton: I love that story. You know, all the times we've talked, I never knew when you moved to Idaho and the story behind that. So that's awesome. Yeah. So let's talk revenue for just a minute. Like how long did it take you to hit your first hundred thousand? Like if you were doing it accidentally, like were you not really focused on the revenue but on the work? I mean how did you approach that?

06:10 - 06:45

Erica Goode: Yeah, it really did happen on accident. I accidentally picked up my first client because it was a coach of my daughters who was then said 6 or 7 years old. And, and I really wasn't worried about making money, we had obviously planned financially for me to not have an income. And so it wasn't a financial need for me to go start a business. It was really just a missed passion. And so I picked up my first client and I honestly back then I had never even looked at QuickBooks. Like I came from a huge corporate background.

06:45 - 07:01

Erica Goode: I had never seen QuickBooks. I had to learn software. Yeah, I was I was an SAP. I was in BI tool like these big fortune 50 tools. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, I have to learn how to use a bookkeeping program.

07:01 - 07:02

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah.

07:03 - 07:43

Erica Goode: And so I did. And so it was really just more of a quiet building of a business. And I didn't do any marketing for probably 3 or 4 years. And that was very intentional because because I had experienced burnout and in my life before that really had to work I was very very diligent and I held my boundaries very strong that I wasn't going to build a business that I had to work outside of when my kids needed me. And so I always said, my business is going to grow as fast as my kids grow. And

07:43 - 08:06

Erica Goode: we say they grow fast, but when you're trying to build a business, and if that's your cadence, they also grow very slow. And so my business grew very slow intentionally and happily, because I only worked when they were not in the house when they were in preschool when they were in kindergarten. And so every year they grew an age and a grade, I got to work a little more.

08:07 - 08:13

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. So more of a stair step, kind of like the kids are growing stair steps. So is your your business and your revenue.

08:14 - 08:24

Erica Goode: Yeah. And so I probably didn't hit my chance your question. I probably didn't hit my first 100, 000 until 3 or 4 years in the very intentionally because it didn't tell anybody I had a business. I would not tell anybody.

08:25 - 08:39

Rochelle Moulton: But the other thing is, is you're earning 6 figures and you're not working full time. And when I say full time, I don't mean 40 hours either. I mean, you know, full time in a job job now, nobody works 40 hours. It's always significantly more.

08:39 - 09:01

Erica Goode: So right. Right. Yeah. And even to this day, I don't I don't work 40 hours. And so I still hold true to I only work with my kids are at school and I also and actually where we live, we only do 4 day work weeks. Like the town works on 4 days in the school operates on 4 days. And so I have to operate on 4 days as well.

09:02 - 09:04

Rochelle Moulton: Wow, that's, oh that's a whole other conversation.

09:04 - 09:07

Erica Goode: But I know, yeah it is, fascinating.

09:07 - 09:15

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, it is awesome when you can work your life around that. It probably wouldn't be if you had trouble with that fifth day, but that's a whole other topic.

09:15 - 09:16

Erica Goode: Right.

09:16 - 09:42

Rochelle Moulton: Okay, so thank you Erica for sharing that. Yeah. So let's, let's get down to the kind of these financial moves that we can make. I hate using the word should, but the things we really want to be smart about. So if a listener is just getting started with their expertise business, just starts having revenue come in, what should she be thinking about?

09:43 - 10:01

Erica Goode: Yeah, so I think of kind of the toll gates and the path that we should be on as a pyramid that looks like a hierarchy, you know, way back when we would have called it a food pyramid and put all the carbs at the bottom because we needed to eat all the carbs, right? That's how the 80s were. I don't remember. I don't know if you remember that.

10:01 - 10:05

Rochelle Moulton: Still works that way for me. I'm all about the carbs.

10:05 - 10:43

Erica Goode: Yeah, I'm going to live in that decade because those are tasty. So what I think of the financial hierarchy of what business owners need, it's really layering that first financial foundation at the bottom. And that being setting up your LLC, getting your business insurance, getting your business bank account, setting up your bookkeeping procedures or process, how whatever you want that to be and really laying that that foundation so that everything you build your business on top of kind of has that solid financial and legal foundation so that everything is safe and solid on top of it.

10:43 - 10:58

Erica Goode: It's really hard to go back And you almost have to redo everything. If you don't do the LLC, the EIN, all of that seemingly unfun stuff at the beginning, you're going to wind up having to unwind it and rewind it later down the road.

10:58 - 11:10

Rochelle Moulton: So is the current thinking, like if you're starting your business right now that you want to start with an LLC, like right out of the gate versus, you know, like just doing business hours with a separate account.

11:11 - 11:44

Erica Goode: I mean, I think it's easier down the road. I think an LLC always protects you legally. And the reason we set up an LLC is because an LLC kind of acts and I'm not getting legal advice here for the record. LLC kind of is a box and everything you put in that box is your business. All of the risk lives in that box. And so should somebody for example, should somebody, I'll use me as an example, should somebody sue me for bad financial advice, they're suing my LLC, not Erica Goodie. And so they can't touch my

11:44 - 11:49

Erica Goode: house or my cards or my personal assets, they can only touch the assets of that LLC.

11:50 - 12:04

Rochelle Moulton: Perfectly said. It's like I would be petrified to start a business without putting some kind of a ring around it. A ring of protection is kind of how I think about it. Okay, so the LLC you mentioned, insurance?

12:05 - 12:23

Erica Goode: Insurance, so if LLCs protect your personal assets, your business insurance protects your business assets. So the 2 of those are kind of like your, I don't know, powerhouse twins that kind of protect you on both sides of your of your now life. You have a personal life and a business life and you want both of those to be protected.

12:24 - 12:39

Rochelle Moulton: And so when people are just starting out, like are you typically recommending that they have like long term disability insurance, some kind of, you know, business interruption, loss, liability insurance, Like what do you usually recommend right at the beginning?

12:40 - 13:14

Erica Goode: Yeah, I mean, again, I'm not an insurance salesman by any means, but I think just having a general liability professional insurance coverage just to kind of house what you're doing. Some professions have specific coverage like CPAs need E&O insurance and if you're a coach who's also a therapist you might need malpractice insurance And so there's different professions that might need additional items specifically, but in general, I would say a good professional general liability policy is going to cover you at the beginning.

13:15 - 13:42

Rochelle Moulton: Well, I think the other thing like we just have to tackle right now is the bookkeeping side because it just feels like so many people start the business and it's not till tax time in their first year that they start to go, oh, what do I do? And God forbid if it's a shoebox full of receipts, right? What do I do now? So how do you, how should people start with the bookkeeping process at the very beginning stages of their business?

13:42 - 14:15

Erica Goode: Yeah, I'm probably going to be the only CPA who says this. It's okay to start with a spreadsheet. I mean, we all start somewhere, and I think especially in an expertise business where you don't have heavy cost of sales and you don't have heavy expenses, I think a spreadsheet, if that's what you're comfortable with, is perfectly fine to track where your revenue is coming in, what expenses are going out. If you've gone ahead and gotten a business bank account that makes it super extra easy because everything in and out of your business is just filtering through

14:15 - 14:16

Erica Goode: 1 bank account.

14:16 - 14:47

Rochelle Moulton: I like the idea of starting with a spreadsheet. When I started a little side business a while ago, that's what I started with, was just a spreadsheet because it was an easy way between that and the bank account. I could figure out what was there. But Once you start to get more revenue, what I like personally is I love watching, whether it's QuickBooks or FreshBooks or whatever platform somebody uses, I love watching all those little expenses go into the right categories and being able to just click on a report whenever I want.

14:48 - 15:04

Erica Goode: Yes, I mean, I love I love a good accounting software. That's me. And that's why I say it's okay to start with a spreadsheet. I get a lot of clients who come to me embarrassed that they have a spreadsheet like, oh, I just have a spreadsheet. I'm like, no, no, no, you have a spreadsheet. That's fantastic.

15:05 - 15:07

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, it's probably more than a lot of people start with. Yes.

15:07 - 15:35

Erica Goode: I find it especially women will come to me with a little bit of shame, a little bit of their shoulders up, and a little embarrassed that they have a spreadsheet, which is ironically usually far better than what their male counterparts are coming to me with. And so it's so interesting that like, as women, we like, expect