#awinewith Sarah Petty: why you're not paying yourself, and how to fix it
✨ Thank you to IP Australia for supporting the SPARK podcast and women in business ✨
If your business can't pay you a proper wage, that's not a badge of honour, it's a structural problem. Sarah Petty is the founder of Olive Business Partners, a virtual CFO firm helping business owners grow with the right financial advice, and a returning SPARKTV guest. Since her last visit she's gone from solo founder to a team of six, and in this episode she shares exactly how, plus the money conversation every woman in business needs to hear: why so many founders pay themselves less than their team (or nothing at all), and the owner-first method for fixing it.
How do you scale from solo founder to a team of six in 12 months?
Sarah used the same fractional model she sells: a social media manager to bring strategy and consistency to her content, a business manager to streamline systems and onboarding ("she's doing a 10 times better job of running it than me"), and three additional CFOs with different industry backgrounds so every client gets matched with the right expertise. Her hiring rule is a balance: "You don't want to hire too early, where you don't have enough work for that person, but you don't want to hire too late, where things are just chaos and you're fighting fires." Several of those hires came through her SPARK network.
Why aren't women founders paying themselves?
Working across male and female clients, Sarah sees the pattern clearly: men make the call for help faster, while women delay because "we feel like we've got to wear all the hats and fix it ourselves." Many women also never step into the CEO role, staying in the doing while paying themselves less than their team members, or nothing at all, for years. Her reframe cuts through the hustle-culture myth: "If you left and sold the business, you would have to replace yourself as CEO. If your business can't afford to pay that role, your business has a structural problem." Not shame, just a signal, and signals can be acted on.
What is owner-first goal setting?
Most founders set a top-line revenue goal pulled out of the air. Sarah's method runs the maths in reverse. Start with the salary you want as the owner (even a modest one to begin), add the profit you want the business to make on top, then add the full cost of running the business. The total of those three numbers is your revenue target. "That way you know if you're hitting that revenue number, you're going to be able to pay all of those things." If the number looks huge, better to know, because now you can build a strategy to reach it. And start the habit small: Sarah paid herself from her first $1,000, "even if it's just covering your Netflix subscription to start with."
Is all growth good growth?
No. Sarah has seen $5 million businesses with next to no profit, and $300K businesses banking $150K for the owner. "It's not always about revenue growth, it's about what actually creates profit and allows you to pay yourself." The same trap applies to strategy: what got you to your first million won't get you to the next one, and stagnating doesn't mean you're failing, it means the approach needs to change. And if you've been avoiding your numbers entirely? It's never too late to start. Sarah googled "is it too late to start piano over 40" before buying one over Christmas. The internet said it's fine. "So if I can do that, you can start looking at your numbers."
Sarah's one piece of advice for women in business
"Step into that CEO role early. You are doing something amazing, you are building something, and you deserve to be valued as the CEO of your business. Don't shy away from it, no matter how small your business is. You are doing amazing things, so own it!"
Meet Sarah Petty, Founder of Olive Business Partners
Sarah Petty is the founder of Olive Business Partners, a virtual CFO firm that gives business owners fractional access to CFO-level strategy: forecasting, planning and growth decisions, without the full-time hire. After 20 years in corporate finance, she now leads a team of CFOs matched to each client's industry and stage, with support that flexes as the business grows.
You can find her here:
Full transcript
Danielle: We're here! Sarah, oh my god! Welcome back to SPARK TV!
Sarah: Thank you, I'm so glad to be back!
Danielle: I don't have that many guests on multiple times, so I'm so excited that you're up there. We get to chat quite regularly through SPARK, but it's nice to actually have a dedicated amount of time to really get into the nitty-gritty of what's been going on in business.
Sarah: Yeah, thank you. Well, I feel very privileged to be a repeat guest on SPARK TV.
Danielle: Let's start out by telling everyone who you are and what you do.
Sarah: Sure! So, I'm Sarah Petty, I'm the founder of Olive Business Partners, and we are a virtual CFO firm. What we do is help business owners to grow their business, and help them with the right financial advice to do that. There are so many businesses out there that start not thinking about the finance side, or not wanting to do the finance side. It's not something people necessarily enjoy, and you often haven't been taught, right? I've spent 20 years of my career in finance, so I know this back to front, but if you haven't been taught, you often don't know how to manage it. And it is the number one reason most businesses fail: they don't understand their financials, and it's often down to lack of cash flow. So my mission is all about helping business owners get access to the right advice and expertise to avoid those problems, because often they can be avoided, with foresight, planning, and a better understanding of your financial position. We are not accountants or bookkeepers. Those are very important roles, but they're more about compliance and managing your books. What we do is help you look forward: your forecasting, your planning, your growth goals, and then the financial decisions you need to make to get there.
Danielle: I love it, and I also love that it's in that virtual, fractional capacity. Because oftentimes, as small business owners, we think, well, I can't afford to bring a CFO into my business. How many other roles do I need to fill before that one? But you make it accessible, so we can get access to the strategy at probably really critical times in our business.
Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. I love the fractional model, because it really allows business owners to tap into that expertise without having to hire a full-time resource. And whether it's a CFO or other fractional roles, in marketing or sales or technology, it's not just big businesses that need access to that. The sooner you get access to that expertise in your business, the more sustainable the business is, the better results we see, the faster the growth. And we provide a model that flexes with the business. You might start on a more minimal support package, and as your business grows, you can increase the level of support, and we get to grow with your business.
Danielle: Yeah. And you made that comment earlier, as small business owners we're not often taught the ins and outs of the finance of running a business. And I think sometimes we feel a bit of shame around that, like for some reason we go, we're a business owner, we should magically know everything about every vertical inside our business. But the reality is that we don't, so bringing in that expertise is just such a smart move.
Sarah: Yeah, for sure. You become a business owner and you have to wear all the hats suddenly, right? You've probably gone into business because you have a specific skill set or a great idea, but suddenly you're finance, and you're IT, and you're marketing, and you're sales, and you don't have training in all of those skill sets. Finance is my background, but there are plenty of other parts of my business that I had to quickly upskill in.
Danielle: Yeah, I love it. And when we were speaking last time, I think we spoke about the journey of going from corporate to you as a business owner. But I know that in the last 12 months you've had incredible growth. What has the last 12 months looked like for you?
Sarah: Yeah, I think when we were talking last on the podcast, it was just me. It was literally just me doing everything, wearing all the hats: doing the sales, doing the client delivery, managing the back end. And we often have to start like that as a business owner, right? But I got really quick traction with client growth, and so I had to make some decisions about bringing on some support to help me, because I can't do it all myself. And I've tapped into that fractional model myself, so I didn't have to bring on full-time employees but could still get the expertise I need. The first hire I made was support with social media. I have a great social media manager, and she's helped me with the strategy. I was posting stuff on social media, but just random, whatever thought came into my head, not thinking about my target audience, my messaging, a bit of a strategy behind it. She's really helped me get that in place, and she keeps me accountable to maintain the consistency as well. The second hire was a business manager. She helps me in the back end of the business: she's streamlined processes and the systems I use, she does things like client onboarding, organising things with the team. That's a huge weight off my shoulders, because there's so much of that in the background you have to sort out as a business owner. And not only is she taking it off my plate, she's doing a better job, because she's trained in that area, she's great at operations, she thinks about ways to improve processes. She's doing a 10 times better job of running it than me, and we've made some huge improvements. And then, as the client base grew, it got beyond what I could manage myself, and I'd always had the idea in my mind to grow the firm, to be able to offer the right skill set for the right business. So I now also have three other CFOs working with me who help do the client work. Most of them I've known for a long time, so I know they're great at what they do. They have different skill sets and backgrounds to me, we've all worked in different industries, some more in small business, some in bigger business. That way I can really match the client's needs with the CFO. So we're now a team of five, six people, with those fractional roles in the business, so I have the expertise without having to hire a whole full-time team, and it allows me to flex their support as my business grows. We're in a completely different place to last time we spoke.
Danielle: How does that feel? Oftentimes people are in solo land for a number of years while they find their feet, but you've scaled really quickly. You said you had to make some decisions. What was that process like? I feel like you're strategic, so I almost think you would have approached it the same way you'd approach looking at someone's financials. But what was it like actually going, hang on a second, I've got to really think about the future of this business?
Sarah: Yeah. I mean, I am someone who thinks 10 steps ahead, always, and that's what I have to do for my clients, so I am a big planner. Sometimes that really works for me, sometimes, if there's no plan, I'm getting really stressed, and my husband probably thinks it's really annoying at times. But it works in business. So yes, I was thinking at all times about where I wanted to take the business and how I wanted to grow it. And it is hard, but you've got to find that tipping point. You don't want to hire too early, where you don't have enough work for that person to do and you can't quite afford it. But you don't want to hire too late, where things are just chaos, and you're working out problems and fighting fires rather than thinking proactively about what you're doing. So it was thinking ahead and hiring at those right times, before it really ramped up. And I think the business manager role was key in that, because she's helped me think longer term as well. We're setting up processes that will help to scale the business, not just for now. And, sorry, I just need to move my cat out of the way.
Danielle: I know! I love it when we have little furry visitors!
Sarah: I was hoping she would sleep through this, but she's trying to jump on my desk.
Danielle: Got to get in on the action, you know? Be on the podcast. Oh, so good. And it is really interesting, even the conversation we were having about bringing in a fractional CFO, doing it before you need a full CFO, because you want to take advantage of the strategy. I guess that's the interesting thing about the phase of business you're in now: it is all about ratcheting up, doing it just before you're ready, but foreseeing the future. Getting that balance right can often be the key to scaling.
Sarah: You're right. I mean, nine times out of ten, our clients are coming to us when they've actually passed that point, and it's more of a, "I'm drowning."
Danielle: Everything's on fire!
Sarah: Yes! Which is fine, we will sort through that. In an ideal scenario, you're thinking ahead and hiring before that happens, but I get it. We're all busy as business owners, you're trying to concentrate on a hundred different priorities at once, and sometimes until a problem really occurs, you're not thinking about it. That's fine. That happens, we come in, we sort out the problems, get things back on track, and then we start to build from there. I'll sometimes get the question of, when's the right time to hire, and should I fix all the problems before I hire? And I think about it like my car: if I had a problem with my car, I wouldn't try to fix it myself and then take it to a mechanic, because I have no idea what I'm doing. It's better to get the expert to come in, look at the problem, sort it out really quickly, and then get back on track to build.
Danielle: I always think, too, you think your problems are the worst in the world. But I'm sure people come to you and they're like, oh my god, I've got this issue, and they feel so terrible, and you're like, I've seen worse than that! We can fix that and move forward.
Sarah: Yeah, definitely. They're common problems across all businesses, no matter what stage, just at different scale. Sometimes businesses feel like, oh, I've been in business 10 years, we're a multi-million dollar business, I feel silly coming to you with this problem. But there are businesses doing tens of millions of dollars still having the same problem. It just happens at different stages, and each time you grow, it creates challenges again. So there's nothing we really haven't seen, no problem we've been absolutely shocked about. A lot of the time they're problems I've seen in my own business too. It's from experience that you learn and work out what to do. There's nothing in your numbers that will shock me.
Danielle: That is so good. So obviously now you're working with a number of other businesses, and lots of women in business. Are you seeing any common themes crop up that you want to comment on?
Sarah: Yeah. So in my business we're not gender-specific, we work across male clients, female clients, business owners of all backgrounds. Without over-generalising, I do find that men are better at making a quicker decision. They will say, okay, problem, I need the help, yep, come in and fix it. Whereas women, we feel like we've got to wear all the hats, and we've got to fix it ourselves, and we're not willing to ask for help a lot of the time. So that's often the case, that they're delaying asking for help because they feel like they should be able to do it all. We all have that mindset. The other thing I really see is that, as the owner of the business, a lot of women aren't really stepping into that role of the CEO. It's not just about leading the business, it's also paying yourself as the CEO, being the one setting the direction, thinking more strategically. They're still doing a lot of the doing, but if you want to grow the business, you've got to step out of being the doer and be the leader of your business. You've got to play the role of a CEO. And even the ones that are doing that, I'm seeing they're either paying themselves a very minimal wage, often lower than what they're paying their team members, or they're not paying themselves anything at all, and they're going for months, years, without being paid. And that, for me, is really concerning. You put all this time and effort into the business, you're taking full accountability as the owner, but your role's not being valued by the business if you're not being paid.
Danielle: Why do you think that is? Because I think it's a really important conversation to have, because I see it a lot as well. And I've even seen it from another perspective. A decade ago, when I started my first business, Scrunch, which was a tech startup, we raised capital from investors, so there was almost an expectation that you were on a very minimal salary, or no salary, because it was all hustle culture, sweat equity, drive the business, blah blah blah. Now I run a business that is 100% mine, and I'll never talk to an investor again. Famous last words, of course. But now the circles I'm running in are less startup land and more small business land, and it's the same thing. And obviously with SPARK I talk to a lot of women in business, and I see it all the time, except for my amazing finance ladies, who are like, no, if your business doesn't make enough money to pay you, then what are you even doing? That's not even a business. Why do you think women do this? What are we doing wrong here?
Sarah: I mean, you're right, there's a common misconception that it's just normal to not pay yourself for several years when you're a startup. And you're right that there are some investors who even expect that, that the owner just puts in all the sweat equity and doesn't pay themselves for several years. But an investor who truly understands financials knows that is a cost of the business. If you were not running it as the owner, if you left and sold it to someone else, you would have to replace yourself as the CEO. So if you can't afford to pay that role, it doesn't matter whether it's you as the owner or someone else, your business has a structural problem. And I think that's the thing, and I'm not shaming anyone here, because it can be hard in those early days to generate enough cash and profit to pay yourself. But what it's signalling to you, if your business can't pay you a proper wage, is that there is a structural problem in your business that you need to address. And as women, we just feel like we have to do these things out of love and passion, and often money isn't the number one driver. A lot of women start their own business because there's purpose and passion behind what they do, which is amazing. You want more money in the hands of those people! But to grow your impact, you need to have money. Money helps you invest in your business, reach a greater number of customers and clients, and create a bigger impact. That's often not the frame of mind many women have. So they either feel a bit ashamed and don't know how to get advice to fix it, or they feel like, if it's something they're passionate about, they shouldn't really charge that much for it, or they should be giving it as a gift to the world. And you can have a balance, right? I do some pro bono work, or subsidised work here and there, but not at the cost of my business profit or my own salary. You can structure the business in a way that you can still give back where it makes sense. But I value my role as the CEO of the business.
Danielle: Yeah. And I love that you're talking about this as potentially a structural problem in the business, which tells me there's a solution, and us women can start paying ourselves. So if I'm listening to this podcast right now, and I'm like, oh crap, that's me, I haven't paid myself in years, and I'm getting a little over it: how do you start to think about taking a wage as a business owner?
Sarah: Yeah. So I think a lot of people don't understand what level of revenue they need to be generating to allow that to happen. When businesses set goals for the year, they'll often set a top-line revenue number. I want to make 10K a month, 20K a month, a million dollars a month, whatever you're aiming for.
Danielle: Yes, please. I'll take that one.
Sarah: We set that and we go for it, but we don't think about what that means flowing through to everything else in the business. You see all these business owners online saying, I'm a million dollar business owner, six figures, seven figures, eight figures. But how much is actually profit, and how much is going into their own bank account? That's the question. Not many of them talk about that. So when we work with clients, we take a slightly different approach to goal setting, what we call an owner-first goal-setting approach. I know, Dani, you're familiar with Profit First, which a lot more business owners are becoming savvy with, where you put profit aside before anything else. We take it a step further: owner first. Before you start with anything else, what is the salary that you want to be earning as an owner? And if you're not earning much, or nothing at the moment, I'm not suggesting you start with a million dollar salary. We can get there, but just not yet.
Danielle: Good, I'm glad there's a roadmap in your mind.
Sarah: Always a roadmap. But start with something. As a bare minimum, you want to cover your personal costs. So what is that? Maybe that's $50K a year to start with. That is your starting point. Then you think about the profit that you want to make for the business, on top of that salary. That's money you could reinvest back into the business, that gives you a buffer, that might pay you a bonus at the end of the year. So you work out what that number is on top of your salary. Then you need to understand all the expenses in your business. What is the cost of running your business? If you have other staff, if you rent an office, all those sneaky subscriptions that add up, what is the average cost of running your business? And then you add those three things together: your salary, your target profit, and the cost of running your business. That's what you need to target as your revenue. That way you know, if you're hitting that revenue number, you are going to be able to pay all of those things. And each year you can slowly increase what that salary number is. You might go through all of that and think, oh my god, that revenue number's huge. But it's better to know that, right? Because then you can think about a strategy to get there, and what sales you're targeting. If it's just a revenue number you've pulled out of the air, you can hit that number every year and still keep not producing profit and not paying yourself. So that's how we think about it: really putting the owner first, making sure you're getting a salary, and it's seen as an investment in the business. It's a standard cost in the business, just like everything else.
Danielle: Yeah, and I really like that you talk this way, because you're right, the rhetoric online is very much headlines, the 10K, 20K, 30K months, and I feel like the flavour of the month changes every now and again. But the other thing is, when I talk to women in business, it's, "I feel like my revenue's good, but I never have any money." They haven't actually started in reverse and thought about what they need. A lot of times we see these big headlines and go, oh, if I just get that, I'll be fine. And then you get to the end of the month, or the quarter, or the year, and you're like, where did all the money go? In actual fact, you haven't thought about what you need to sustain you, the business, the profit, the lifestyle that you want.
Sarah: Exactly. And the other thing I often say to owners is that not all growth is good growth. People sometimes think that just bringing in more revenue is going to solve all of your problems. But if you haven't thought about the cost of getting that revenue, it may be more revenue coming in, it might be more work, and you're actually not making a dollar more when it comes to profit. All of that effort comes down to nothing. And this isn't just small businesses. I've seen this with multi-million dollar businesses, turning over $5 million of revenue, looks great at the top line, and their profit is still next to nothing, because all of it is being spent on costs or inefficiencies in the business. Meanwhile there might be a business owner earning $300,000 a year and taking home half of that in profit. So which situation would you rather be in? All that work to build $5 million for nothing, or $300,000 and you still get $150,000 in your back pocket? It's not always about revenue growth. It's thinking about what actually creates profit and allows you to pay yourself as the CEO of your business.
Danielle: Yeah. And I think as well, what is your definition of success? When we look at social media and headlines, it's very easy to be swept up in someone else's definition of success, and feel less-than if you don't have the $5 million revenue line. But understanding what is enough for you, what success looks like, and then reverse engineering the business to meet that, it's just so much more fulfilling at the end of the day. And I love your comment about not all revenue being created equal, because to your point, if you just take on more clients and more clients and more clients, a lot of women get to the stage where they're like, I don't even want to do this anymore. I don't get paid, I don't like it, and I have no time.
Sarah: Yes, and the clients that are just draining, or not responsive, and hard to deal with. That's not worth it. So you're right, it's working out what your level of success is. And that's why I say start with what you need, because everyone's needs are different as to how much money they need for their lifestyle and what they want to make. And we're talking about the financial side here, but when we're working with business owners, we're also talking to them about the type of lifestyle they want. They want to run the business, but maybe they want to take six holidays this year, so we've got to build that in to make it work. Have you got the right structure to support that? Maybe they want to sell in a few years and retire, so that's a different approach as well. It's more than just getting to 5, 10, 20 million. It's what is going to work for you, and how do you create a business structure that supports that particular goal? A lot of people will tell you the millions they're making online, but I question how much of it is actually supporting them, from a finance perspective but also a lifestyle perspective. You can become Alex Hormozi, who sits in a dark room and works all night and all day and thinks he's being successful. Not my cup of tea. Good for him, but not my thing.
Danielle: I know! When you're talking about the six holidays a year, now we're getting to my version of it.
Sarah: Exactly.
Danielle: So if you're starting from that position, okay, this is what we need to cover costs, this is the salary I want, the profit, the expenses: if you're just starting out, is there merit in an allocation of salary that isn't a full salary, just a small amount? Is there merit in getting into the behaviour before we might be ready for a full salary?
Sarah: 100%. As soon as I made my first $1,000, I paid myself a tiny, tiny, tiny amount, but I paid myself something. Because part of it is the mindset, right? When you're doing that, you get into the habit, but you're also valuing yourself. Whereas if I wait and say, no, I need to become a million dollar business before I pay myself, it may take me years to get there, I may never get there, and I end up not paying myself and not really valuing the role I'm playing in the business. So yes, from day one, even if you pay yourself 10 bucks to start with, put something aside. Then as it grows, you're already in that habit, and you can increase it over time. It doesn't matter what it is to start with, just start putting something aside for yourself, so you're in the mindset that your role matters and you are worth being paid. We're not in business to just do it for fun and never pay ourselves for years and years. You want to create something that's meaningful, that works around your lifestyle, and can create bigger impact for whatever purpose you're trying to achieve. So you need to value yourself that way. Start, no matter how small.
Danielle: Yeah. And it's interesting, if anyone's listening and they haven't been paying themselves, or they've been feeling guilty, especially for those impact-driven businesses we were talking about, it almost seems like a nice way to start, to shift the mindset. Just start really small, and get used to the feeling of paying yourself and valuing what you do.
Sarah: Yeah, just start. Even if it's to pay your monthly Netflix subscription to start with. What's an amount you can pay yourself where you know that cost is now covered? That's how I would go about it. And then each month, think about whether there's capacity to increase it slightly. It's like anything, you have to start small. It seems like a huge jump to suddenly start paying a full salary if you haven't for some time, but start somewhere, and you'll see it will quickly increase.
Danielle: Ugh, I love it so much. What else have you seen over the last 12 months of business, of scaling quickly, of working with clients? Is there anything else that stands out to you?
Sarah: Yeah, it's interesting. When you're in that startup phase, so much of it is trial and error, and building up your network. I came from a corporate background, so when I started out, all of my network were corporate people, and I was like, who am I going to connect with in the business world? And they're great people to be connected to, I've actually got clients through some of them, because their brothers, sisters, wives have businesses. So don't discount them, they can be useful! But I really needed to extend my business network, and that's where joining SPARK and other business networks has been really useful, just to meet other business owners. And some of those hires I mentioned earlier, as I'd mentioned to you, Dani, I actually met them through SPARK.
Danielle: The system works!
Sarah: Yeah, 100%. So that was really important for me, building out the network. Whereas now, I feel like I have a relatively strong network, and if there's a skill set I'm looking for, or I'm looking to get advice from certain business owners, I can reach out and ask several people, or I know someone who knows someone. So that's been really important, building the network over time. And as I've built my business and worked with more and more business owners, I've seen there's so much commonality between the challenges they're going through. Every time you get to a new stage in business, there are new challenges. And the key problem I see is that people find something that's worked, that's got them to the first million dollars of revenue, and they keep doing that, thinking it will get them to 2 million, 3 million, 4 million. And they're stuck, they stagnate at this one stage. But whatever got you there won't get you to the next stage. That's where we come in and help, because you have to reset, you have to do things differently. And it seems counterintuitive, because you're thinking, well, everything I've been doing has got me to this level of success, so why don't I just keep doing that? But it's actually not right. You've really got to change your thinking. Even for myself, moving from being a solo startup to now having a team of people, I've completely had to change my way of thinking, how I structure my business, and my mindset as a whole. Because what got me those first couple of clients isn't going to help me scale the business ongoing. So no matter where you're at in business, if it feels like you keep doing the same thing and you're just stagnating, it's not you. You just need a different approach to get to that next level of growth.
Danielle: Yeah, and I think that's important, because there becomes a max on the time you can put into things, right? In the early days it's just, I'll work my ass off and figure it out. And you do that for so long, and yes, things are working, but there comes a point where you cannot physically work any more hours, you cannot work any harder, you cannot take on another client. So you do actually have to take a step back and reset and reassess. And I think that's really hard for business owners, because we do push ourselves to that breaking point of, oh my god, I can't physically do any more. That's a big thing we're talking about in SPARK this year, and why we've introduced this new cadence of a 90-day business audit, monthly CEO time to get realigned, and then a weekly reset. But that's also why I love tapping into someone like you, because there's power in having someone objective come in and ask you the hard questions. Often we're so stuck in our own heads, we actually can't see the way out, other than just doing more.
Sarah: Yeah, it's so true, and you do need that person to come in and be objective about it. Over the last probably two years, I've worked with a number of business coaches as well, tapping into different skill sets and different people depending on where I was at, exactly for that reason. Because I'm so in the weeds of it, as we all are, that I just can't see what's not working, or where I need to look up and do things differently. Working with a coach who can come in and say, hey, have you thought about this? Do you really think that's still serving you? Where else could we be doing something different? It's helped me challenge my thinking, and that's how I've been able to grow quickly as well, because they're seeing the bigger picture while you're in the weeds. But even putting aside that time to reassess your goals and how you're tracking, those sessions with SPARK are really useful. I find the CEO ones really useful, just to put that time aside and reflect, because we often don't. We're just, okay, what's next? What's next? Not reflecting on where we've got to, what's worked, what hasn't. And as women, we're probably better at listing all the things that went wrong and all the failures we've had, and not really thinking about how far we've actually come, all the wins, the things we've done really well. We're not good at celebrating those.
Danielle: No, definitely not sometimes. And sometimes as well, we talked about getting to the end of the month and having no money left because we haven't reverse-engineered where we're going, but sometimes, if we avoid looking at the numbers, if we avoid those check-ins, that's where it gets out of control. And I know it's a bit scary for people, especially if they haven't done it in a while, or ever. But confronting the numbers, or confronting the strategy, or just taking that step back and having a look at what's going on: that's where the success comes. That's where the scale comes, because you unlock those little nuggets of what's working and what's not working, and it helps you feel a little bit calmer and clearer about what next step to take.
Sarah: For sure, and that's back to being that CEO in your business, right? When you think of the CEOs of the big multi-billion dollar businesses, they are looking at this stuff all the time. They're not in the weeds looking at every single detail, but they're working out what matters, and they're checking those key metrics, performance, where it's heading, what decisions they need to make, constantly. That's the role you need to play in your business. And you're right that it can be something people avoid, especially if you haven't looked at it in a long time, or ever, in some cases. But that's okay. It's never too late to start.
Danielle: And as soon as you start, you'll start seeing momentum. So it doesn't matter if you haven't looked at it in a very long time, it's never too late to start.
Sarah: I have a side story that's kind of related to that. Over Christmas, I decided I wanted to learn the piano, and I bought myself one. Well, before I ordered it, I was googling: is it too late to start piano over 40? Not, apparently.
Danielle: The internet said it's fine!
Sarah: ChatGPT said it's fine! So if I can do that, you can start looking at your numbers.
Danielle: Oh my god, that has just made my day. It's so hilarious. It always blows my mind how young people will ask that question, like, is it too late for me to do XYZ? And I'm like, for god's sake, you're 30, you know? 25! You've got to think about the years left to live, that you have to be happy in, people!
Sarah: And even starting a business, right? So many people think, oh, maybe it's too late. But I've met women in their 50s, 60s, starting something new. And sometimes having a bit of wisdom and knowledge and life experience is actually very useful. I'm sure it will serve me with learning the piano, but in business, yes.
Danielle: I'm sure it will. Oh my god, I could talk to you all day. But we should wrap up this podcast in my usual manner. So, reflecting on your time in business, would there be any piece of advice that you would give to another woman on her business journey?
Sarah: My advice would be: really step into that CEO role early. You are doing something amazing, you are building something, and you deserve to be valued as the CEO of your business. That would be my advice. Step into it early, and don't shy away from it, no matter how small your business is. You are doing amazing things, so own it!
Danielle: Yes! That was so good! Thank you.
