Cash Confident: An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Creating A Profitable Business – Melissa Houston

 

The number one reason why businesses fail is financial mismanagement. In this very turbulent time, we can’t afford to fall into this scary statistic. What we need, instead, is to become cash confident. In this episode, Melissa Houston helps us develop the confidence to handle business finances and become more resilient in these interesting times in the economy. Melissa is a CPA, speaker, author, and the founder of She Means Profit, a podcast and blog that teaches successful business owners how to increase their profit margins, so they keep more money in their pockets and increase their net worth. She brings her expertise and experience to teach us how to build the financial foundation for our businesses. With her book, Cash Confident, Melissa guides entrepreneurs to create a profitable business by becoming financially savvy and confident in managing their finances. Tune in to this conversation to discover the great nuggets and insights Melissa has for you to survive the turbulence and scale your business.

 

Get in touch with Melissa Houston:

Website: https://melissahoustoncpa.com

Company Site: shemeansprofit.com

 

If you are interested in learning more about passively investing in multifamily and Build-to-Rent properties, click here to schedule a call with the CPI Capital Team or contact us at info@cpicapital.ca. If you like to Co-Syndicate and close on larger deal as a General Partner click here. You can read more about CPI Capital at https://www.cpicapital.ca/.

#avabenesocky #augustbiniaz #cpicapital

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Important Links

• She Means Profit
• Cash Confident: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating a Profitable Business
• CPI Capital
• She Means Profit – Podcast
• Amazon – Cash Confident: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating a Profitable Business
• Suze Orman – Past Episode on the She Means Profit Podcast
• The Wealthy Barber
• The 5-Step Roadmap To A Profitable Business

 

About Melissa Houston

Melissa Houston is a CPA, speaker, author, and is the founder of She Means Profit, a podcast and blog that teaches successful business owners how to increase their profit margins, so they keep more money in their pocket and increase their net worth. Melissa is the author of the Simon & Schuster book Cash Confident and a contributor at ForbesWomen.

 

Cash Confident: An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Creating A Profitable Business – Melissa Houston

The world is on fire when it comes to the debt market, the equity market, and the banking system. It’s interesting times. We were watching the Fed increasing interest rates by 25 basis points and 50 basis points. It looked cute almost discussing and posting about it. Next thing you know, banks are failing. General partners are in distress. Deals are in distress. Commercial real estate. The office space is about to implode. Interesting times are happening in real estate and the economy, but we’re here. As a general partner and as an investment firm is about being resilient and going through these times.

Our guest is an extra special guest. She is coming back on the show again. She’s been on our show before, Melissa Houston. We’re very excited. She’s going to talk to us about the foundation when it comes to finances in relation to a business. She’s authored a book recently. Why don’t you tell our audience a bit more about our guest?

This is important stuff. If you’re a business owner, you need to get the finance part down first if you want to have a successful business. We’re excited to dive into Melissa’s mind. A little bit about Melissa Houston. Melissa Houston is a CPA. She’s a speaker, an author, and the Founder of She Means Profit, a podcast and blog that teaches successful business owners how to increase their profit margins so they can keep more money in their pockets and increase their net worth. Melissa is the author of the Simon & Schuster book, Cash Confident and a contributor at Forbes Woman. We believe this interview with Melissa will bring great value to business owners looking to scale their businesses and survive the turbulence. Welcome back to our show, Melissa.

Welcome back.

Thanks so much for having me.

 

 

We’re excited to have you. I want to get right into things, Melissa. Eighty-two percent of businesses fail. Why is that, and how can this be avoided?

It’s such a high and scary statistic. The majority of the reason why a business fails is because of a lack of financial management. Financial mismanagement is the number one reason why businesses fail, and it’s usually due to cashflow reasons. This can be easily avoided by looking at your numbers and knowing what your business numbers are telling you. Many business owners avoid it at the fear or frustration of not knowing how to interpret financial data. Essentially, that’s why the book was written. It’s to help business owners avoid this scary statistic.

 

 

There’s a percentage of businesses that fail in the first year, and then that percentage is even more in the second year. It compounds.

Thinking about the cashflow and stuff, most of the business owners that you talk to start off probably having some money ready to go. They try to plan out how they’re going to spend that for the first little bit. Maybe the business isn’t taking off quite as they planned. Do they start going to the bank trying to get a loan, go to their friends and family, or try to get cash from wherever they can?

Yes. That is such a good point because when you’re starting off a business, there’s so much cash outlay that you have to consider. Quite often, business owners and entrepreneurs get into a predicament where they do run out of cash. This is what I advise people all the time. You don’t wait until you’re at the point where you’ve run out of cash and things are looking bad in your business to go approach a bank or different types of investors. That’s when chances are so slim that they will fund you in your business.

You want to be proactive. Proactively managing your cash and having cash reserves. Once they get depleted, you want to make sure you avoid that. Get to the bank when things are going well so that you can apply for extra lines of credit or extra financing. Approach investors when things are looking good so that people feel more of a buy-in. They feel it’s less risky to help you and they want to help you at that point.

 

 

That makes a whole lot of sense. Being a business owner or self-starting a startup, it’s insane how fast that money can drain. You don’t think. You’re like, “I got lots of money sitting there.” Before you know it, money goes fast.

In certain businesses, for example, a real estate private equity firm, most of our profit’s on the backend when a deal is divested.

There’s not a stable income coming in.

There are a lot of learning lessons on the job with us because we’ve closed on a few deals, but the majority of our profits haven’t been realized yet. That was a strain on us when it came to our cashflow, burn rate, and runway concepts. There was a lot of learning on the job. As Ava is saying, you don’t know what you don’t know. For us, there was another concept.

Before starting CPI Capital, I always taught about an accountant as a bookkeeper. After starting CPI Capital, I realized this whole accounting ecosystem includes accountants, bookkeepers, tax strategists, tax lawyers, cross-border accountants, advisors, controllers, and CFOs or Chief Financial Officers. There are so many people involved that are also needed within a business to keep things going.

Let’s talk about it hypothetically within the real estate space. They have a great business idea and they’re looking to build a business around that business idea. If it’s a short-term rental, development, or multi-family acquisition, they’re looking to start a business. How do they not overextend themselves by hiring or bringing too many of these consultants on board and keep a business still going?

Give us your thesis on that, because a lot of times, I’ve also noticed that a lot of big groups bring on a CPA partner. If they’re needed within that business, they come on. Talk to us about some things that business owners can use how to scale their businesses. Who do they bring on first, is it a bookkeeper or an advisor? Talk to us about that.

You hit the nail on the head when you said the accounting landscape is very confusing. People don’t know if they turn to the bookkeeper or if they think their CPA is going to be their tax accountant. There’s a lot of confusion. To clear that up a bit, when you’re first starting a business, you need to look at how much cash you have and where you can allocate those resources.

When you're first starting a business, you really need to look at how much cash you have and where you can allocate those resources. Click To Tweet

You should be starting with a bookkeeper and a qualified bookkeeper at that. You want to make sure that when you hire a bookkeeper, they’re going to do your books well. When you do take your books for getting your business tax return done, your accountant is not going to have to redo their work, and that is a nightmare. That is way less cost-effective than putting the cash out late for a qualified bookkeeper at first.

I put a lot of emphasis on this point because over 20 years of experience, I have seen so many disasters come through the door where we spend 10 times longer and much higher rates trying to correct the mistakes of a bookkeeper than doing the tax return. Having a bookkeeper is number one for the finance aspect of your team.

As your business starts growing or as you need assistance, there are great professionals out there that are fractional CFOs. Those are so handy for small businesses because if you notice, every large corporation has a full-time CFO. Small businesses in the past have not been able to afford it, so they lose out on the senior guidance and advisory capacity that a CFO offers. Being able to hire them on a fractional basis is cost-effective for small businesses.

A CFO and your tax accountant are two different roles. I highly recommend that people use a separate CFO and a tax accountant. Your CFO is there to guide you through the year whereas your tax accountant is a tax professional and they’re an expert. They spend most of their time on taxes. They are going to work with you with cost-saving and tax-saving opportunities. They’re going to work with you to do your corporate return. If you’re incorporated or however you’ve structured your business, you will be doing that business return with your tax accountant.

Having a bookkeeper, having a separate CFO or a fractional CFO, and having a tax accountant are the three main types of financial advisors you want to have on your team. You also mentioned tax lawyers and all sorts of different financial experts. Those are typically hired on an as-needed basis. You don’t necessarily need to go in and hire one right away or put one on retainer if you have no need for them. Having a need for them, and then getting them through trusted referrals.

There’s one more consultant or one more brain power that’s needed within the company that we have realized. It’s because when we syndicate our deals, we have many different entities, limited partnerships, corporations, and LLCs both in Canada and the US. We have many investors we have to send distributions. There are tax filings for a lot of these entities. There are forms that we received from different states within the US.

What we realized that we needed in-house was a controller person, which is a concept that I didn’t even understand. I had done millions of dollars in real estate transactions and I didn’t understand the difference between a bookkeeper and an accountant. I take everything to this group and they do everything. I, later on, realized that they weren’t even CPAs, they were accountants. Talk to us very briefly about the cost of the controller for a more complicated company like ours.

Your controller is also your fractional CPA type of role. Having a fractional CFO or a fractional controller or a full-time controller, whatever you have on staff, there are different levels of seniority or different levels of needs. With your business, your business absolutely needed somebody who’s in there understanding all the sensitive tax laws that you have. Having a qualified controller would make sense for your business, but not every business would need that.

It depends on how you’ve structured your company. If you’re fully in Canada, you’ve got a couple of properties, and it’s not high traffic, you probably don’t need one. If you do, you can still get a fractional controller or a fractional CFO on retainer. The difference between a controller and a CFO is more, the titles can be used interchangeably, especially when you’re talking fractional. You want to make sure that you’ve got a qualified CPA doing the job for you.

Right before we get into discussing your book, which is very important, Ava mentioned about She Means Profit is your podcast and it’s also a blog. If somebody’s running a business and they do need support when it comes to finance and CPA services or fractional CFO, does your group provide any of those services or connect them?

Yes. We do provide fractional CFO services to small businesses.

Let’s get to the book. Your book is called Cash Confident: An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating a Profitable Business. It’s going to be released on May 16th, 2023. Make sure you guys go on Amazon and pre-order your copy, so you can have that in hand.

I will be doing it.

We’ll be doing it ourselves.

Thank you.

In your book, Cash Confident, you talk about a framework on business money management. Let’s touch on a few of these points. One of the points that you mentioned was, how to create a financial plan for your business. Is this as simple as having a business plan?

Business plans and business financial plans are a little bit different in the sense that a business financial plan is focusing solely on how your business is making a profit. This is by far the most favorite thing I like to do with my clients. I encourage every business to have a business financial plan. This is assessing where your business is at. How much revenue’s coming in the door? How much expenses are going out? Your cash outlays, and then the difference is your profit. Understanding what your net profit margin is for your business.

What you do with that is build out a twelve-month plan. It’s like a forecast. It’s especially important if you want to grow and scale your business and you want to do it profitably. When you map out the following twelve months, that is creating your business plan. If you’ve decided that you want to grow your revenue by 3% month over month, then you can plan that out and you can plan out the expenses that are going to go along with it. If your revenue’s increasing, chances are your expenses are going to be increasing as well. If you’re in a growth stage in your business, you want to make sure that your net profit margins are staying stable because growth stages are cash suckers as well.

There are a lot of expenses and cash outlays. Sometimes, depending on how fast you’re growing, your business can either be profitable or it can be starting over where you’ve got all these cash outlays and you’re not getting the cash coming back in the door until the end of the sales cycle. You want to carefully plan out what’s going on in your business so that you can monitor your results. Make sure that as the year goes on and you’re growing your business or conducting business that things are staying as planned. If things go off the rails and you’re monitoring it, you can catch these things before they become big money sucks.

What if the revenue growth doesn’t go as planned? Is your first advice to your client, “You got to pick what you need and cut the cost?”

It depends. Every business is going to be different, but if you’re monitoring your revenue growth each month, then you’re going to catch it early. Let’s say, for hypothetical, that your month was going to be $100,000 in revenue and you only came in at $50,000, you’re going to catch that problem right away and you’re going to have that solution. Depending on what the issue is, then you’ll know if you can resolve the issue and make back that money the following month. If it’s more of a long-term problem, then you’re going to have to cut back some expenses to make sure that you are still maintaining a profitable business.

To touch on this a bit more, I’m a little bit learning on the job. You got the business plan, which includes what your business plan is and what have you, and then at times, you talk about financials. Is a financial plan separate from those financials? Is it a financial forecast? Who does this for you when you’re running a small business?

When you’re running a small business, typically you’re fractional CFO would be doing this for you. A bookkeeper is not equipped to be dealing with future forecasting and such in your business. There’s a difference between the business plan. The business plan is looking at the business as a whole, it’s going to take into your marketing efforts, distribution, and all sorts of different elements of your business.

Your business financial plan is including the forecasting of your business and focuses on the financial aspect of your business. When you look at a business financial plan, it’s based off the income statement. If you’re looking at your profit and loss statement each month, you’re going to see that pattern and you’re going to build on it for the year.

Another framework you talked about is how to set up a money advisory board. What is that exactly? At CPI Capital, we have an advisory board, but it’s not a money advisory board. I’m looking forward to learning more.

There’s the concept of you’ve got your advisory board, which is very buttoned up and professional where you guys need to have it for the legalities of your business. A lot of businesses and corporations have advisory boards that operate separately from the actual business. They’re giving impartial objective advice to the business.

When I talk about money advisory boards to my small business audience, what that means more is surrounding yourself with people who talk about money and whom you can have a conversation with. Having that CPA, tax accountant, or bookkeeper set up, having other colleagues you can call on. Anybody you can contact and keep the conversation going about money is important. Like anything in life, when you bounce ideas off people, you get a different perspective.

Like anything in life, when you bounce ideas off of people, you get a different perspective. Click To Tweet

Unfortunately, money is the thing that most people don’t talk about in business, how their business is performing, and how profitable their business is. It’s highly recommended that you get that circle of friends or colleagues or whomever where you can have these profit conversations. Tie up those blind spots, have somebody else to bounce ideas off of, figure out ways to increase the profit in your business, and all sorts of stuff like that just to keep that money conversation going.

To differentiate, it’s important to have a board of advisors, but I see it as a bit of optics as well. You have a bunch of board of advisors on your website like, “This is a scrupulous business that they have these advisors,” and you reach out to them as needed. Is the money advisory board outside of that more actual needs you have than a conversation you have about money? How do you go about sourcing this?

It’s less buttoned up. It’s less required. Small businesses are usually 100% owned by the business owner. There’s no legal requirement to have an advisory board, but it’s always smart to have somebody looking in from the outside who can give you valuable feedback on how your business is doing, what they may change or not change, or if there are any ethical issues, anything. Having that informal advisory board for small business owners is a good way to come at it from different angles and protect your business legally.

How do you connect with somebody that’s going to advise you?

It’s just like any other networking. If you meet people that you feel that you have some chemistry with and you’ve got a good rapport with, you feel like their expertise would be valuable. You make efforts to keep them in your network, keep in contact with them, and have these conversations.

Let’s talk about the next framework. How to recognize your business’ financial strengths and weaknesses. Does this have to do with the runway, the burn rate concept, or cashflow?

It has everything to do with business because there’s nothing in business that doesn’t affect your profit line, whether it’s directly or indirectly. Any KPIs which are Key Performance Indicators, that you want to cover or monitor in your business, are where you need to do it. You could be looking at inventory turnover, earn rates, your cashflow, how long it takes for suppliers to pay you after you’ve invoiced them, or how productive your employees are.

There's nothing in business that doesn't affect your profit line, whether it's directly or indirectly. Click To Tweet

Everything in business is measurable, and typically it’s done through KPIs. Having those things that are important to you on your radar, it’s overwhelming to monitor absolutely everything. Your KPIs are going to change over time. What you wanted to monitor in January may be completely different in December from what you’re monitoring. As your business grows and changes, you’re going to have things set up well, and then you’ll move on to the next thing to improve, and then the next thing. Constant improvement in your business is naturally going to happen throughout the life of your business.

When I look at financial strengths or weaknesses, the first thing that comes to mind is, what is our greatest cost, and what is our biggest chance of having an income? For example, for us, when we put a syndicated deal, our profits are made when the project is divested years down the road. That’s our biggest profit that comes in and that’s performance-based. We’re forecasting those profits coming in. Is it fair to compare strengths and weaknesses to where the money’s going and where the money’s coming from?

Absolutely. That’s definitely number one. You want to be monitoring your revenue that’s coming in, your cash that’s going out the door, and where the strengths and weaknesses lie in that, but it doesn’t end there. Whatever is going on in your business. For example, the process that you have in place for making a deal, and this is all hypothetical. Maybe you’ve got a sales associate that comes in and helps you hammer out your deals. You’re noticing that the time for a deal might be 8 weeks and you know that it can be done in 4 weeks. These are the type of KPIs that are non-financial, but still financial because they are going to impact your bottom line. You want to monitor these things.

If it takes eight weeks, you have a chance of losing the deal. Whereas four weeks quick turnaround time, there’s less financial impact. If you lost the deal, you want to make sure that you continue on those timelines. There are all different types of things that you can do that are still financially related but not considered financial ratios.

This whole time we’ve been interviewing you, we’ve been looking at this from the perspective of startup business owners, people that build a business and start a business. Can these foundations be used for somebody who’s looking to purchase an existing business, all the points that you made?

Regardless of where you are in your business journey, whether you’re a startup, you’re buying a business, a franchise, or you’ve been in business for years, even if you’re in the mature stage of your business, you can use this book and the tips. Cash management and money management in business are constant. That never changes in the business. That is never a new shiny object. People aren’t looking for the latest and greatest. It is the tried-and-true method that’s pretty much never going to change. You need to be cognizant of this information throughout your career as a business person.

 

Another quick piece of advice I could give to people involved in real estate is, a lot of time they don’t realize they’re running a business. I know people who own and manage short-term rentals. I know people who build single-family homes. They build for-sale business plans. They don’t have an actual business that builds homes, so they see each one of these homes they built as a separate entity, but they have a business.

Each one’s like a mini business. It’s a small business.

It’s like a project, but they’re running a business that manages all those projects, so it’s difficult. A lot of times, real estate people don’t realize that there is a business within all of these different deals they’re doing.

It’s a complete business. Let’s say I met one of those people, they came to me and needed my services, we would put all those rental properties together under one umbrella and measure. “How much money are you bringing in for each unit? How much are your expenses for each unit? Are you making a profit on each unit?” Unfortunately, what happens with business owners is they’re not looking at that and they don’t realize which property, product, service, or whatever it is that they’re investing in or selling, is making money for them or not.

Let’s say you’ve got a huge complex. You think you’re making $3 million a year off it and you think that that’s fantastic and you’re swimming in cash, but you’re not monitoring the expenses. Maybe you’re constantly putting in repairs for this, you have to pay marketing, advertising, getting tenants, paying your supers, and all sorts of expenses that are going into it. If you’re spending $3,000,001, but your revenue is $3 million, you’re still losing $1 each year. A lot of business owners don’t recognize it that way. They think that if the revenue’s coming in, they’re A-OK and they’re not monitoring their expenses.

Before we move to the next segment, give us some other advice when it comes to mistakes you’ve seen new business owners make or something that they’ve missed. This concept of bringing on a fractional CFO is a new concept. It’s something that we’ve looked at possibly utilizing in the past. You have to be a little more sophisticated than the regular business owner. What do you commonly see people that make a mistake? Just by switching or fixing that mistake, their business could be possibly more profitable or it could save them from going to a bad place like bankruptcy or what have you.

The first mistake that comes to mind is business owners thinking that if they’re low on cash, all they need to do is generate revenue. That is a very common misconception. It’s a band-aid solution. If you’re not looking at your financial reports and understanding what your expenses are. You’ve got these huge money leaks going out, but you’re not aware of them and you think bringing in cash is going to resolve the issue. That’s essentially the same thing as trying to put water in a leaky bucket. As much as you try, you’re never going to fill that bucket because the water keeps leaking out.

It’s the same concept with business owners. If you are not looking at what’s going on in your business, and if you need help to interpret what’s going on in your business. The business owners that don’t invest in getting that help end up losing far more money than it would cost to invest in that finance professional to come in and help them, either as a consultant, as a long-term fractional CFO, or on permanent payroll as CFO.

 

They don’t relate that as, “This person’s not bringing in revenue so they can’t help me.” We are trained people to come in and put a stop to money leaks, show you where your profit is coming from, and show you where you can increase your revenues relatively easily and low cost so that you are making an optimizing profit in your business.

That profit is the gold of your business because you want a profitable business. You want to make sure that your business is bringing in money every month so you can pay yourself, you can pay your team, and you don’t have that financial stress keeping you up at night, having everything controlled and feeling financially confident. In a nutshell, the biggest mistake I see small business owners making is not investing in that part of their business.

Melissa, you’re amazing. Anybody who’s starting a business, this is probably gold for you.

Running a business too, not just starting.

This is probably gold for people starting a business because most of them are, “I’ll hire a CFO later. I’ll hire that later.”

They don’t even know what a CFO is.

“I’ll have fractional CFO on top of things. I don’t have the passion for that right now. I’ll hire that later.” What this interview has shown is this is something that’s very important to get started off the bat.

Let’s move to the next segment of the show.

Our favorite part, the Ten Championship Rounds To Financial Freedom. Melissa, I’m going to ask you a series of questions. Whatever comes top of mind.

I’m feeling the heat.

First question, Melissa, who was the most influential person in your life?

My dad is the person. He’s the first feminist I was ever exposed to, and I never realized it until I was much older. He always encouraged me to make money, know what was going on with my money, understand how to manage my money, and have a conversation with me about money all the time.

That’s beautiful that you listen to him.

I had my teen years where I didn’t.

What is the number one book you recommend other than yours?

The Wealthy Barber. It’s Canadian. David Chilton wrote it. It is a classic. It must be over 20 years old now, maybe 30. It is a fabulous book to get to understand how your money can work for you.

If you had the opportunity to travel back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?

Invest earlier. Everything I’m telling you is money-related. I’m not all money-centered but invest early because time is on your side. You don’t have to invest as much when you’re younger than you do when you’re older.

 

That’s a common answer we get, by the way.

We all kick ourselves for not doing it.

That’s why we make shows like this for the younger ones. Listen to all of our mistakes.

Invest your money.

What’s the best investment you’ve ever made?

My marriage. I married a good guy. I can’t remember who said it, but I remember somebody saying that one of the biggest decisions you’re ever going to make that’s going to have the most payoff in your life is who you choose to marry. For whatever reason, when you said that, the first person that popped into my mind was my husband.

That’s the best investment I’ve ever moved, too. What’s the worst investment you’ve ever made and what lessons did you learn from it?

Can I answer in a funny way? Immediately, I went to my kids. They just take the money. In all seriousness, shopping. I went through this terrible phase in my legal years.

I read that from one of your posts.

I blew through $100,000 of credit because I wasn’t looking within myself and trying to figure out what was going on within me. I was trying to cover up any pain or discomfort I was feeling by spending money. I try to make myself feel better by getting all these shiny new objects that don’t last. Feeling special lasts ten seconds, and then it’s gone.

I always say, invest your money, off the cashflow you make, then go shopping with that. Off the passive income.

 

 

Living off the passive income is smarter, which I did not do.

That’s okay. Everybody made that mistake in their life, especially when they’re going through different stages in their life. How much would you need in the bank to retire now? What’s your number?

I don’t think of retirement. I do read a lot of articles where I see $1 million is no longer the number, $3 million is the new number. I love what I do and I’m not at that point where I’m thinking about, “When am I going to retire? How much money am I going to need when I retire?” I feel confident that I’ve got what I need to meet my basic needs. Knowing how much is enough, I don’t have that answer. It depends on the lifestyle that you want to keep when you retire.

If you could have dinner with someone dead or alive, who would it be?

Oprah. I would’ve said Suze Orman. Do you know who Suze Orman is?

No, I don’t think so.

Her claim of fame was being the financial advisor on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She was a big influence in my life, but I was lucky enough to interview her a couple of months ago.

I’ll have to watch that.

Melissa, this is a podcast, right?

I have a podcast. I interviewed her on my podcast. I had a good conversation with her for an hour. It was the highlight of my career. I’m like, “I need to aim higher now,” so Oprah is my lady.

I have a quick story about Oprah. I was probably 22. My mom said to me, “Ava, do you want to come to The Oprah Show with me and your sister, or do you want this $300 dress?” that I really wanted. I chose the dress.

That would be what you changed.

Anyways, that’s my quick story about Oprah. She’s amazing. If you weren’t doing what you’re doing, what would you be doing now?

I’d be working full-time somewhere being miserable.

What if you had the option to do anything you wanted? Some people say they would’ve been a race car driver or a professional golf player. Is there something magical or something out of this world that you would’ve done?

I would be running a not-for-profit organization and helping people. If I had unlimited funds, that’s exactly what I would be doing, helping the less fortunate.

Book smarts or street smarts?

Street smarts.

Last question, if you had $1 million in cash and you had to make one investment, what would it be?

I’d invest in my kids. I’ll put money aside for them. As much as their financial trade, I would invest in them.

That’s one of the best answers we’ve ever got. The answer that I like is them investing in themselves, but in your kids, that takes the cake.

That does. Melissa, what’s the best way that people can reach you?

Go to SheMeansProfit.com. There, you will find access to a ton of free resources. My podcast is there. Sign up for The 5-Step Roadmap To A Profitable Business and message me there.

We appreciate it. Thank you for your knowledge and wisdom. We’re happy you came on here.

This was great. Anybody tuning in, make sure you get in touch with Melissa.

Thank you so much for having me. It was so much fun.