Mom Owned and Operated
Candid conversations with and for moms about the real deal of raising a family, running a business, and remembering yourself.
Tired of the fluff and just want real talk about what it takes to succeed as a mompreneur? Then you've come to the right place.
Join your host, business growth strategist Rita Suzanne, as she dives into the nitty-gritty of building a business while raising a family. With over 10 years of experience helping women entrepreneurs thrive, Rita knows what it takes to make it all work.
In each episode, Rita sits down with inspiring mom business owners to uncover the strategies, mindsets, and tactics that are actually making a difference in their lives and businesses.
Tune in and discover the secrets to building a successful business without sacrificing your family or yourself.
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Mom Owned and Operated
From Accountant to CFO Navigating Small Business Finances with Annie Hillman
In this episode of the Mom Owned and Operated podcast, Rita Suzanne and Annie Hillman discuss raising a family, running a business and remembering yourself.
Annie is the founder + CEO of 1428 Financial, a virtual bookkeeping agency helping business owners embrace their CEO status and focus on the things in their zone of genius instead of spending hours googling how to categorize transactions in Quickbooks.
She started college as a math major, wanting to be a teacher, but found accounting and fell in love. While finishing her degree, she took a temporary accounting job at a winery, working her way up to staff accountant. While that job was interesting, she left in 2020 to start 1428 Financial and feels blessed to get to spend every day helping people treat numbers like a tool, not a threat, so they can run empowered, profitable businesses with confidence.
You can connect with Annie on her website, on Instagram and LinkedIn.
Send a text message! Email, if you want a reply though. ;)
P.S. You can find more interviews at momownedandoperated.com and learn about working with Rita at ritasuzanne.com/apply/
Hi, this is Mom Owned and Operated. I am Rita, suzanne, and today I have my guest, annie Hillman, with me. Annie, I'm so excited to chat with you all about knowing your numbers and all of the things. Please tell everyone all about you, your family and your business.
Annie Hillman:My name is Annie. I started my business four years ago. Previously, I worked in winery accounting, which was a really fun job, but I knew that I wanted more freedom and flexibility once we had kids and I have a daughter who's two and I started my business before having my daughter, which I always say was like my best decision I've ever made, because all the moms out there who start a business when they already have kids props to you, you're like amazing and so yeah, so I've been running my business for four years. We do bookkeeping and CFO services for business owners. We primarily work with online service providers, so this could be operations agencies, this could be social media managers, brand and web designers anything really that falls into that online service provider bucket.
Rita Suzanne:I love it. So let's just go back to why you felt like it was better to start your business prior to having your daughter, to having your daughter?
Annie Hillman:Yeah, that's, that's a great question. So I was working, you know, 10 hours a day. I joke very dramatically that I was chained to my desk for 10 hours a day and I kind of just had this thought of you know, if I'm going to have children, don't, I want to spend time with them and be with them, and I know there's a lot of people out there who love that corporate lifestyle and that's worked for them. For me, I knew that I didn't want that. That's not how I wanted to live my life. So it was kind of a happenstance thing.
Annie Hillman:I started doing a friend of my husband's books, just kind of on the side, for a little extra side money, and then I was like wait a minute, this is really fun, I could do this and I could help small business owners and, like I said, my, my previous job was really interesting and it was fun. But now that I get to serve small business owners and help them and it's it's really amazing because I get to, it's where it. These are the people that need help and I love that I get to just serve such a diverse like clientele. It's not just one business where we're doing one thing and we're, you know, selling bottles of wine, which is great and it was exciting, but I just. It's so much more fulfilling getting to do what I do now.
Rita Suzanne:So is it that you can kind of problem solve at the same time while you're doing their books and stuff for them?
Annie Hillman:Exactly and it's getting to really. You know, when you work for a huge corporation or a you know a big company, most of the time their CEO knows a lot about finances, and for me I love that. Working with small business owners, I get to like not only help them make sure their books are on track, make sure everything's up to date for taxes, but also that education piece is really, really fulfilling to me because once upon a time in college I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to. I was planning to teach high school math, which I'm glad I kind of was deterred from doing that because high school teenagers are fun but, I think teaching small business owners is so much more fun.
Rita Suzanne:No, I agree. Plus, you get a lot more freedom and flexibility and you get to spend time with your daughter, which is the most you know fulfilling part, I think, of our businesses as moms. I think that that's the driving force for most of us. When we start our businesses, you know whether it's after or before we have our children. I always tell my clients, when we're even talking about goals, one of the things that they should look at is their numbers every single month to make sure, kind of look and see what is selling the most for them and use that as a barometer of what they should kind of focus on and you know what's not selling. So what are the reports that they should be looking at? Like what numbers should they be looking at? Like what?
Rita Suzanne:do you like, let's get into all of that, yeah, I love this question.
Annie Hillman:So I would say, like everything you said, I completely agree with you want to know, not only like how much revenue you're bringing in, but what of your different offers are bring is bringing in the most revenue. And let's say, for example, you have one offer that you don't even market that much but it's kind of bringing in the bulk of your revenue, then maybe what would happen if you shifted your marketing and said I'm going to focus on this and you could bring in even more? So having that level of visibility on what you know, what offers are performing well, or maybe there's one that you're pouring so much into and is not doing anything for you, where could that energy be better spent? So I definitely echo that. The reports I would say the one report that you're going to want to look at on a monthly basis, no matter what is your profit and loss. Sometimes it's also called the income statement, and so this is going to give you the meat of the data that you want and that's going to help you run your business.
Annie Hillman:Of course, to look at your P&L and have an accurate P&L, you have to have your bookkeeping done, whether you have a bookkeeper or you are doing it yourself, and you have to do that first, and then you can look at your P&L and what it's going to show you is first your revenue, all the revenue that you what level you're breaking it down to you can see those different offers and how they're performing. And then, after your revenue, you're going to see your all of your expenses. So this is going to be everything that goes into running your business. So this is going to be subscriptions. Let's say you use Canva for your business and you pay a monthly fee for that. Let's say all of your Stripe fees If you use Stripe as a payment processor, you take a client out to lunch that's going to be in there, all of those expenses that it takes to run your business. And then what's left over is going to be your profit. So you have all of your revenue minus your expenses and you're left with your profit.
Annie Hillman:So this is why that P&L is going to give you so much information, because it's giving you all of that data and you can look at all of those and kind of scrutinize them and say you know, I am happy with my revenue, I would like to increase it, I would like to maintain it at that, and you can do the same with your expenses. It's really, if you're not looking at your numbers, it's easy to just kind of fly blindly and just say, okay, you know I'm doing pretty good. But looking at your P&L and seeing all of your expenses, you can say I, on a at least quarterly basis, like to tell my clients to look at their subscriptions and we do this together and just say do I need all of these subscriptions? Am I using them? Am I going to like, is there any that I can get rid of? Is there any that I'm paying for something where this one actually already does the same thing? So I can get rid of this one.
Annie Hillman:And so just having that level of visibility on your expenses is huge and is really going to help you to operate like at a level of profit. It's going to help you with your profitability and making sure that it's where it should be and where you want it to be. So that's the biggest report I recommend looking at. There's also one more report called the balance sheet, that can give you a lot of data, specifically if you have any credit card debt or if you have loans, or if you want to know how much you're paying yourself through owner's draws. You're going to find all of that information on the balance sheet, so that's a really good one to look at as well on the balance sheet, so that's a really good one to look at as well.
Rita Suzanne:Yeah, so it made me think of when you were talking about the profit and loss and comparing the subscriptions and all of that stuff. One question that I always get when I'm recording these podcasts is why am I using Google Meet instead of Zoom? Right, because most people are using Zoom, but a speaking topic that I always that I love to talk about is finding your profit leaks, right, and so one thing that kind of initiated me looking at the comparison between Zoom and Google Meet was I could not update my computer with Zoom. I could not. I could not get it to update.
Rita Suzanne:So then I started looking at all of you know everything else, and then I realized I'm already paying for Google workplace, which includes Google Meet. Why am I fussing over here with Zoom when Google Meet does the exact same thing? And I was paying double for years and didn't even realize that I was, and so I use that as a prime example of double paying for something that you really don't need to and for maybe just for the convenience, because everybody else is using Zoom. So why shouldn't I use Zoom?
Annie Hillman:Absolutely no, I completely agree, and that's that's something that we go through with our clients pretty often, just to kind of make sure that you're not, like you said, double paying for for things that you don't actually need.
Rita Suzanne:I think a lot of times it's for the convenience, right, or because everybody else is using it, and the same thing happened to me when I first started. Everybody was using Dropbox and so I signed up for Dropbox and I wish I would have just signed up for Drive and instead, I did the same thing.
Annie Hillman:I was like why am I using Dropbox?
Rita Suzanne:Yeah, it was both of them. I ended up canceling using Dropbox. Yeah, it was both of them. I ended up, you know, canceling my Dropbox, you know, but I had them for years because several of my clients had Dropbox accounts and then I just ended up switching over, I mean. So, yeah, lessons learned, you know, throughout the years, but I think it's important to have somebody who's going to help you figure out, like, what things to do and what not to do. So one thing that you mentioned was owner's draw, because I think that oftentimes people feel like that profit of the business, like that's their income, right, and like that's the money that I get, so what, how do they end up paying themselves? Like, yeah, is that really depend on the structure of their business? What do you? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, so it does depend on the structure of your business.
Annie Hillman:So you know, when you're kind of starting your business, you're either going to be a sole proprietor or a single member LLC, and this is kind of dependent on what state you live on. Mostly live in mostly, and that's because there's varying fees, Like we just previously talked about how we both lived in California. California has pretty insane LLC fees. So for some people that's not feasible in the beginning. I do recommend, if possible, to get an LLC, like other States. It's like 50 bucks and it's it's nothing. So if possible, I recommend getting an LLC in the beginning. But you might be operating as a sole proprietor. So for those two, the way that you pay yourself is called an owner's draw and it's really simple. You just transfer money from your business account to your personal account. It's not an expense. So make sure that if you're doing your own bookkeeping, that it's categorized as an owner's draw because it's it's technically falls under what's called equity, so that's your stake in the company. Once you move up to something like an S corp which I think is very much a buzzword these days in in the online industry Once you move up to the S corp, you're going to pay yourself through a salary and so this is you. You could pay. You could do this yourself and calculate all the taxes. I don't recommend doing that. Use something like Gusto. Their fees are pretty cheap. They calculate all the taxes for you. They pay the taxes on your behalf. It's really straightforward and there is a there's kind of a threshold.
Annie Hillman:I recommend starting to think about becoming an S-corp once you've hit 60 to 70,000 in profit. It's really variable because it depends on where you live. It depends on what your job is, how much you're working. So this is where we bring in a CPA that's going to give you what's called a reasonable compensation number and they're going to tell you, based on all those factors, this is how much you should be paying yourself. The cool thing is, once you reach that level of being an S-corp, you are going to be saving in taxes.
Annie Hillman:But you have to make sure it's at you do it at the right moment. If you do it too early, it's not really your, it doesn't really make sense, and so you're paying more in fees for, like, the salary excuse me, for the payroll fees, for things like you know, the fact that you have to do a different tax return, all those things. So when you get to that 60 to 70 profit margin is where it kind of starts to make more sense. But a CPA is going to come in at that point and kind of tell you okay, this is what you need to pay yourself. This is when it makes sense, but it's, like I said, very variable. That's why we recommend not only having, like, a good bookkeeper on your team, but also having a CPA, because they're going to the two of them together are going to really be able to have the most well-rounded financial support for you.
Rita Suzanne:So what is? I feel like I know the answer to this, but what is the biggest thing that holds people back from hiring a bookkeeper?
Annie Hillman:Yeah, this is a great question. There's a couple things I think. One of them is cost. I think you know it's anything in our business we kind of hesitate to outsource. I know I've done it before. I've now since become. I've seen the other side and I understand how valuable outsourcing can be. But in the beginning, when you're just starting a business and you're like, okay, I have to monitor every single dollar going in, now I can't really afford to pay a bookkeeper $400 a month. It seems like a lot. So that's, that cost is going to be one thing, and but I always like to look at the other side of it. Yes, Okay, you are spending, like I said, 300, 400, $500 a month on a bookkeeper. That feels like a lot of money. However, what are you going to do with that time you get back?
Annie Hillman:So I had this experience a couple of weeks ago and I shared this on my Instagram stories, where I had someone I was going to replace my front door. I had it in my mind I'm going to replace my front door and I got doing the project and I was like you know, this is a little bit more complicated than I think it could be. I thought it was going to be. Let's just hire it. So we found a handyman. He ended up doing it. I think it was for like $200, $250.
Annie Hillman:During that time I was on a discovery call with a client and it ended up turning into a strategy call and I charged 300 for my strategy calls. So in that time even though, yes, it was kind of hard to be like, okay, sure, I'll pay him 200, $250 to fix my door for me I ended up making money because I spent that time instead on my business. And this is this is so common. If you are using, let's say, three to four hours, maybe more of your month to do your books, it doesn't feel like that much time when you're in it, but would you rather be spending it elsewhere? Would you rather be spending it selling, working on that new project you have, coming up or even just at the park with your kids, Because that's what you feel like doing that day? So I know that the cost can seem scary, as with anytime you outsource something, but I like to look at the other side of it. What do you?
Rita Suzanne:get back, but it's also an expense, and I think that oftentimes, like people don't have enough expenses to offset their income, and so they need to also think about that Right, absolutely.
Annie Hillman:Yeah, absolutely, and that's why we have a lot of resources for people who are in the beginning in our DIYing.
Annie Hillman:Because I don't, I would, I will never look down upon someone who, just who wants to DIY their books.
Annie Hillman:I think that there's a time and a place, just like there was a time and a place when I did my own social media. Now I don't. There's just there's a time and a place, and I think that if you're making the effort to do it, you put a monthly money meeting on your calendar every month, like go you, because you're making the effort to get it done. And that's why it's really big for me not only to structure our like free content for to help educate those people who want to DIY, but also to provide resources for people who want to, because we completely understand it's not always whether you want to or not can sometimes be irrelevant when it comes to outsourcing. It's whether you actually can afford it. And so if you are able to kind of do it for yourself and do it on your own and have the resources to be able to do it, well then that's great and and I will never, never say no to that or never think that that's a bad idea as long as you're doing it.
Rita Suzanne:Yeah, the thing I was thinking was that I think oftentimes people are so embarrassed of the state of their current books that they don't want somebody to see it.
Annie Hillman:Yeah, and that's that's so valid, honestly. But that's what, that's why we do what we do. We're we're never here to judge, we're never here to look down upon someone, like I said, who's doing it themselves. Because you're doing the best that you can. You're as a business owner. You have 5 million things on your plate. You have you're wearing all the different hats.
Annie Hillman:If you don't do it like as well, we don't expect you to do it as well as a bookkeeper would. Um, but as long as you have some visibility because it's helping you as well to see your numbers Um, not only is it, you will meet where you're at. Basically is, if, if you haven't touched them ever, that's okay, we'll come in and we'll start from scratch. Um, if you've been doing it and you're not really sure what you're doing, we do every time we start working with client, we do a comprehensive review that kind of goes back and says like, okay, reviews everything that you've done, or, if you have a previous bookkeeper, what they've done, just to kind of make sure we're starting off on the right foot. So we're just here to meet you where you're at, no matter where that is in your business, whether that's wanting to DIY and just needing help, or wanting to move forward with monthly bookkeeping and ready to start that.
Rita Suzanne:Yeah, and you have some free resources for those who still want to actually do it themselves until they're ready, right? Yeah, absolutely so. One thing that I've been asking recently is all about kind of diving into how, as a mom business, we're able to like. What software or tools are you using in your business that are making it easier for you? Is it a project management system? Is it some kind of organization thing Like? What are you using that you can share with everyone?
Annie Hillman:Yeah, that's a great question. I have um. I have a couple that I am in love with, obsessed with Um. The first one is Dipsado. I just love it for onboarding. I originally went um.
Annie Hillman:I had someone set up my Dipsado for me and originally I just wanted to get kind of streamline my onboarding process. But now that I'm I'm in it and I've been using it, it's so robust that there's so much you can do. I now do my invoicing in there. I do. You know, like when I send emails to a client, it's a lot of them are through there. So that's really streamlined things and saved me a lot of time. And the automation is like the fact that you know it automatically sends reminders and stuff is huge. I don't have to think about that. Very much love Dubsado.
Annie Hillman:And then along with that is my CRM and I use ClickUp. It's kind of like my life now it's just in ClickUp. But the first thing I do when I sit down on my computer is I go to my ClickUp and say, okay, this is what I need to do today. And that's helped me as well, because I'm not just kind of sitting down and saying, oh well, maybe I'll do this. Oh, I kind of want to work on this.
Annie Hillman:It gives me a plan and each week I spent some time on Mondays where I set out okay, this is what I'm going to do each day. So those two tools have been huge in helping me to just kind of. You know, cause his moms were just pulled in a million different directions and things come up and, oh my gosh, the baby's sick. Today I can't do any of the work that I was planning to do. Okay, let me just go into click up real quick and shuffle things around so that I know that, okay, this is what I can expect the rest of the week. So those two have been huge for helping me manage that.
Rita Suzanne:Yeah, I find that a lot of times, clients of mine are very reactive in the way that they work, and so like planning things out and getting things prepared is a lot better versus just like just responding to things and just reacting as they happen. Just working ahead will save you a lot more stress and pressure. And I heard this analogy and I thought that it was just so profound and I shared it with somebody a couple of weeks ago, and I think it fits in here as well, where you can either work like the cow or you can work like the lion, and I don't know if you have you heard that before. I haven't.
Rita Suzanne:Okay, so the cow is constantly grazing, right, they're just constantly grazing, grazing, grazing, grazing, grazing, right, they're just constantly grazing, grazing, grazing, grazing. And the lion, the way that they are looking to feed is they're just lying in, wait, right, and then when it's time to hunt, they're ready to pounce. And so instead, what we should do, instead of like constantly grazing, constantly working, working, working, working, working, working, which then burns us out is then we should take that time, take that space to kind of lie in rest, and then we'll be ready when it's time to pounce. Right, it'll, will be, uh, will effectively be able to have that energy for that burst to go. And yeah, I often feel like you know, our mentality is like the grazing, the constant. So I keep telling myself don't be the cow, don't be the cow.
Annie Hillman:I need that on a post-it note on my computer. I like that, I know.
Rita Suzanne:I'm like. First of all, this analogy works multiple ways.
Annie Hillman:But yeah, exactly.
Rita Suzanne:But yeah, I think that that's great, so let's move on to one of my other questions is what is what are you currently listening to or reading at the moment?
Annie Hillman:Yeah, that's a great question. So I, um, I have a bad habit of reading like four books at a time. Um, I've been really getting into like thrillers. So I'm reading this one called the housemaid, and then I'm reading a book called how to talk so your little kids will listen, or I think it's something along the lines of that. And then, as far as like, I like to have like a fiction, a parenting book and a business book, and so, as far as like, like, the business book I'm reading right now is called boundaries. It's like I think it's just called boundaries. It has like a pencil on the cover I can't remember who wrote it and it's not specifically just business book, but it definitely applies both business and life and all three of them. I feel like I I just want to read all day. I have to remind myself that I actually have to do other things too.
Rita Suzanne:I love it.
Annie Hillman:I love it.
Rita Suzanne:So one of the reasons why I started this podcast was to because I was like going through this traumatic time in my life and I could not, for the life of me, understand how other moms were able to like do all the things because I was failing so epically right, and I needed to know how they were able to raise their families and run their businesses, but also remember themselves. And so I never leave an episode without asking other moms like how are you taking care of yourself? Like what are you doing just for you?
Annie Hillman:Yeah, that's such a great question because I feel like, as moms, we just it kind of falls to the back burner. We we worry about taking care of, about everyone else, but putting out the fires, working on our business. So I definitely think it's something that I it's a constant work in progress for me and I think I have to remind myself and give myself grace about that, because it's not going to be perfect every day. There's some days where I don't I don't do the things that I need to do to take care of myself. But something I've been prioritizing is actually reading.
Annie Hillman:I think I got into a. I tend to get into a spot where everything has to be productive. I have to be productive 24 seven. Even if I'm resting, my rest has to be productive and it's a horrible place to be in. But I think, as moms, because we are pulled in so many different directions, it's so common for us to feel this way. So getting back into reading more fiction has really been just like. It's just been my time to just kind of do what I want to do and do something fun, and reminding myself that it doesn't have to always be productive.
Annie Hillman:The other thing that I've been prioritizing lately is just making sure that I'm getting my movement and my workouts in throughout the week.
Annie Hillman:I love, like it's one of my favorite things to do, is work out and move my body, and I think a lot of times it falls to the back burner because it's like, oh, I don't need to do it. I could work on this project that I'm working on. I could, you know, do X, y, z. So the last couple of months I've been really making sure that time is in my calendar. It's blocked off and I don't dip into it unless it's an absolute emergency. And that has given me. It's so interesting because I feel like once we do those things for ourselves that we need to do, we feel so much better about everything else. We feel like that thing that was daunting in the back of our head it's, it's actually manageable, we can do it. And because I, you know, took 45 minutes to get a workout in, I have all those endorphins running through me and I feel like I can do all the things that I need to do and it's not just scary and daunting anymore.
Rita Suzanne:Yeah, I, um, and you know, and it's definitely a transition period for you because your daughter is so young, and so I just would say, just give yourself a little bit of grace, because you're still in that moment of you know, just kind of getting things together. One thing that I remember when my kids were younger that I implemented right away and I used to do because it made me feel accomplished, no matter what was the miracle morning.
Rita Suzanne:And I don't know if you've heard of it but that helped me, even though it's just five minutes of exercise. You know, it was like doing some kind of like quick Tabata or something. You know, when I made something fast, I then, if I wasn't able to do a full workout, then I felt like, okay, at least I did that, at least I journaled, at least I meditated, at least I did something, you know. So I I want to get back into that practice. It's just really hard for me now because of just the space I'm in at the moment, but I think that for some people I think it's a great practice if they can incorporate it, you know at their time.
Rita Suzanne:I completely agree. Yeah, so where can everyone find you? Where are you at online?
Annie Hillman:Yeah, so my website is 1428financialcom. On Instagram we are 1428financial and that's 1428, not spelled out, just the numbers. Um, instagram is where we're most active, um, but we also kind of hang out a little bit on Pinterest, linkedin, those things. But I'm still learning LinkedIn. It's it's new to me, so, uh, I'm not exactly up to date on that one. But definitely Instagram, we share a lot. Like I said, we share a lot of free content on there that's really educational and just helpful, whether wherever you are are at in your finance journey perfect, and then they can find all of the free gifts and stuff on your website and all of the links will be in the show notes.
Rita Suzanne:Thank you so much for being a guest. It's been amazing.
Annie Hillman:Yeah, this is such a fun conversation.
