Welcome to thrive by design, the podcast for ambitious independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing and scaling your business. So you could spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make money. You ready? All right, let's do this. Welcome to the thrive by design Podcast, episode 407. Hey there, it's Tracy Matthews, chief visionary officer of Flourish & Thrive Academy and the host of the show today. And I'm excited. And we're talking about money today. And I have one of our coaches from our momentum program on the show today, Melissa Houston and she is going to be we're going to be talking all about money in your business and why you need to be paying attention to your money, and how to become more cash confident with your business and yourself so that you can ditch all your money stories, so that you can confidently look at the money in your business and so that you can start running your business on the numbers, which is the most important thing. Now if you're listening to this, and you're like, ah, Tracy, this scares me or I don't want to look at the numbers, I get you there was a time when I like to stick my head in the sand. about looking at any numbers, I didn't want to look at a profit and lost statement or a balance sheet or deal with cash flow statements or any of that. But what I quickly realized is more than likely not dealing with the numbers and not paying closer attention to them contributed to my business bankruptcy, and my first business failing and crashing and burning real quickly. We're going to talk a little bit more about that in this episode as well. And there's many lessons to be learned about all these things, all the ups and the downs. So we're gonna dive in in just a minute. And if you haven't done so yet, I would love to invite you to download a brand new free resource, you know, we're going to be talking about the business e side of business over the coming weeks. And so we're going to be talking about money, we're going to be talking about team, we're gonna be talking about leadership, we're going to be talking about how to hire your first VA and all those things. So if you're someone who is feeling overwhelmed, and your business is growing, and you know that you need some help, but you're not sure how to get on marketing VA, or someone on your team, download the ultimate hiring template, you are going to love it. In this template, I'm giving you the exact job description that I wrote, to hire a marketing VA, I'm going to give you my step by step process to make sure that you're hiring properly. And I'm going to give you some insight tips on how to actually train those people so that you actually have that person helping you make money instead of it being a drain on your time. So if you'd like to download that head on over to flourish, thrive academy.com forward slash hiring template, or you can head on over to the show notes and there will be a link right there. Alright, so Melissa Houston is a certified financial advisor and CPA. She is also one of our coaches over here at momentum. She is a master at supporting small businesses with their money so she helps them create financial projections help them financially plan for their business, and more importantly, helps them become profitable. So let's dive in to today's episode with Melissa Houston. Do you know that most small business owners actually avoid working on and talking about and thinking about the money in their business? This can become super problematic, especially for small jewelry business owners who are often running their business on a shoestring. You know, trying to get the orders in trying to pay the bills, financing all that stuff. And at the end of the day, avoiding the money in your business can be one of the biggest mistakes that you've ever made. I'm Tracy Matthews. I'm the chief visionary officer of Flourish & Thrive Academy and I'm the host of the thrive by design podcast. I also wrote a best selling book called The Desired Brand Effect stand out in a saturated market with a timeless jewelry brand. And I have a very special guest on the show today. She's one of our coaches in our momentum program in that momentum program. We support six figure entrepreneurs who are scaling to multiple six and seven figures and she helps them deal with their money stuff. Introducing Melissa Houston. She is a certified CPA accountant And she's also the author of cash confident. And today on the episode, we're going to be taking a look at how you can become more cash confidence in your business, and start owning the numbers in your business to make great business decisions and to continue growing year over year and pay yourself most importantly, a big wage, because we all deserve to get paid for what we do. Alright, let's dive in to this episode with Melissa Houston. I'm so excited to invite Melissa Houston, back to the show today. Welcome, Melissa.