Do you struggle with understanding money? Maybe you’re afraid to address it. In today’s episode, Katherine Pomerantz joins us to highlight the complex relationship most entrepreneurs have with money. Listen in as she explains how to make financial management less daunting by viewing money as a storytelling medium and implementing rituals to ease the bookkeeping process.
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Guest Bio:
Katherine, actress turned accountant, has capitalized on her artistic background to create the Money Storyteller MethodTM – a mindset and accounting framework that helps business owners map out and easily achieve ambitious goals. She believes every idea has the ability to change the world if given the right financial support and has founded an accounting firm, financial education company, and app to make sustainable, highly profitable business the new normal. Her expertise has been featured by VICE Media, Discover Card, The Penny Hoarder, and the Stacking Benjamins Podcast. She loves yoga, walking dogs, and throwing rad birthday parties.
Today’s episode is brought to you by my Client Hub Template inside the DIY Systems Template Shop. Business owners often have their client information spread across a variety of different tools, making it hard to access the information they need to make critical decisions. That’s why I built the Client Hub Template for Airtable, to take the guesswork out of building your own!
Find it Quickly:
(01:28) Understanding Money as a Storytelling Medium
(03:29) The Importance of Regular Financial Check-Ins
(04:51) Forming a Healthy Relationship with Money
(08:52) Creating a Money Ritual Framework
(18:12) Practical Steps for Financial Organization
(22:16) Creating Effective Money Rituals
(22:57) Custom Checklists for Financial Management
(23:43) Outsourcing Bookkeeping
(24:59) Weekly, Monthly, and Quarterly Financial Tasks
(30:10 Setting and Tracking KPIs
(36:30) Learning from Business Mistakes
Connect with Katherine
Website: katherinepomerantz.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/katherinepomerantz
Review the Transcript:
Colie: Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Business First Creatives podcast. Y’all, today we’re going to talk about money. All of us love money and all of us hate money almost equally. And each and every one of us has a money story that impacts our lives, both personally and professionally as entrepreneurs. And so today I am chatting with Katherine Pomerantz and she is going to hopefully help us form. or at least get us started on having a better relationship with money for 2025. Catherine, good morning and welcome to the podcast.
Katherine: Oh, thank you. Good morning back. I am so excited to be here.
Colie: So let’s just get right to it. do you see? And I mean, this is a big question and I think the listening audience knows we just basically go wherever these conversations take us. But like, what is the biggest struggle that you see small business entrepreneurs have with money. Like just what’s the most common that just comes to mind.
Katherine: Yeah, so my answer to this is going to be very much informed by my background. Okay, so let me give some context. I am an actress turned accountant and money coach. And I always joke like, Hey, I’m a cute little blonde actress. Like if I can do this, you can do this, right? Like it’s money’s not so hard, which I joke, but like truly, actually money isn’t that hard.
So why does it feel so hard? And so I think my answer is, is that we make it really hard, but I can also answer the like, why is this such a big mistake? And why is this a myth? Because my background is a storyteller. Because I’m a storyteller first, money’s easy for me because money is a language like all humans, all human languages, all human inventions, we use languages and we use money to tell stories, to make sense of our chaos.
I believe this is something that humans like fully understand. Fundamentally do. It’s in our nature. We can’t help it. It’s how we want to make meaning of our lives. We tell stories about it. We invented money. So money plays by our rules. Money is a storytelling medium. Um, I mean, I mean this literally.
Money has all sorts of weird jargon that you have to learn. So it is truly a language that like you want to become more fluent in. But it is also like a way that we share meaning, share our perception of values and stuff. So the reason Let’s bring this all home. That money can be easy, if we think about it from a storytelling perspective, is because financial reports tell stories.
And me as a storyteller, in using my storytelling I can make money make sense. I can make it easier to follow. That was a lot in like two minutes, so
Colie: It was, but here’s the thing, when it comes to financial reporting, I feel like a lot of people don’t like the story that their financial reports tell. And that is completely separate from like, I don’t know how to explain it. Like, if you ask the average entrepreneur, Hey, when’s the last time that you, like, do you, do you, when’s the last time you looked at your profits and your profit and loss statements?
Some people will look at you like, what’s a profit and loss statement? And you’re just like, okay, wow, like we have a lot of work to do. And other people, you know, will be like, oh, I look at it every single month or hey, I look at it on like a weekly basis, which by the way is really ridiculous. If you are looking at it on a weekly basis, you are doing too much, but
Katherine: Okay, hold on. I will
Colie: she’s gonna jump in.
Katherine: I don’t know a single millionaire who doesn’t look at their money at least weekly.
Colie: Okay,
Katherine: Just saying.
Colie: I don’t know any millionaires.
Katherine: Oh,
Colie: that’s, that’s actually a lie. I know a few of them. I would be interested
Katherine: work, I work for quite a few of them. That, uh, we work for quite a few of
Colie: thinking. I should ask a few of them, How often do you look at your profit and loss statement?
Okay.
Katherine: uh, it may not be their profit and loss. Yeah, it may not be their profit and loss, but I bet they’re looking at cash flow weekly. I bet they’re looking at cash
Colie: Oh, no, I get that because I mean every time I log into Dubsado, it’s telling me what my cash flow is for that part of my business. Every time I look at Thrivecart, it’s telling me what my cash flow is for that part of my business. So, yes, Catherine, I agree with you.
Katherine: Yeah, yeah, we want to pull it together in a comprehensive, holistic image. I don’t know a single millionaire who doesn’t look at their money, personally and professionally, in one big picture, at least weekly.
People who make a lot of money, treat money really well. They pay attention to it. They communicate with it regularly.
Um, and actually, here, I’ll change my answer. I, cause you said like, oh, people don’t like the story that they’re seeing. I think a lot of times people think they’re not gonna like the story that they’re seeing. And when they work with me and I can coach them through that emotional activation and I can help them with the bookkeeping and accounting systems, right, because I’m an accountant and a money coach, we’re both and my team,
they show up and they look at it and they’re like, okay, that was still like painful, but it’s not as bad as I thought.
And in all honesty, I actually learned a lot while I did it and I found new ideas and then I’m going to keep looking at it more. So I think the biggest mistake is that people Make a mountain out of a molehill. They just don’t look. They don’t look at it enough. They don’t know how to read the story. Um, because that’s the other thing, is sometimes you don’t like the story that’s being told, but like, are you even telling the right story?
Did you even set it up to tell you the story that you need for your goals? Like, that’s a whole other rabbit hole we could fall down, but I just, I’m sorry, I couldn’t let that one go, or I’m just like, oh my, My girl? I don’t know. I think money is way more important than that. It deserves some work. And I do also preface that with that I am the true, like, ADHD creative actress.
I don’t, I don’t like to be super disciplined and systemized. I’m really bad at it. Habits are like, uh, what is a daily habit? That’s not a thing. But I have learned, part of the reason I am so in love with my money is that by putting some strong foundations in by putting some bare minimum stability in my life, I get to be as creatively free and as messy as I want.
I talk all the time and very openly about my mess because I, I can, I can be messy. It’s safe for me to be messy because my financial foundation is really secure. And I did that for myself. I did that in my own business. A lot of us are, you know, not to get too like historical or philosophical, like, you know, but back in the day, artists and creatives had patrons.
You know, that like, took care of them and paid all their bills? I’m my own patron.
Colie: Yes.
Katherine: We can all, we, and it doesn’t take that much money. It just takes a little bit of money skills to be able to do that for yourself. So, there you go.
Colie: So I feel like we’ve already highlighted. I mean, I think the other part of this conversation is to help you have a better relationship. And we already said the word. I think it also means that you have to form some habits. So would you agree that the first habit that we’re going to talk about for 2025 is that perhaps you want to get in the habit of looking at your money on a weekly basis?
Katherine: Yeah, and it, and it can be weekly. I mean, we want to get started. If I think weekly is a great, I mean, obviously I literally challenge you like, Hey, wait, no, weekly is great. but I think at least twice a month at the fair, at the bare minimum monthly. The bare minimum monthly. Yeah.
Colie: Now, I think before someone can actually look at their numbers twice a month, monthly, weekly, whatever cadence they choose.
And I do want to say, like you should pick a cadence that you can stick with. It’s like forming a habit in any other area of your business.
If you do it weekly and then you miss five weeks in a row, it is going to be hard for you to get back on the saddle and do it.
But maybe if you start monthly. and that feels good to you, then maybe you can increase it as you go. But before someone can even start to look at their money, you said you don’t really like systems,
Katherine: Yeah.
Colie: I would challenge you to say systems are everywhere. So how is it, like, what is it that we have to do with our numbers in order to get ready to do that habit of looking at it either monthly, twice a month, or weekly?
Katherine: Yeah. Yeah. It’s so, I didn’t realize we were going to get on this and I’m like, Ooh, I’m going to have to challenge a lot of things that we’re talking about today,
but I want to be careful in that. I don’t want to put barriers in front of us getting started. So I just kicked off the latest of my coaching accelerator, right?
And I have an answer for how can you show up and look at your money weekly and how can it be fun and how can it be less activating and how can you start to get into the numbers and the strategies right away? Even if you don’t really feel like you know where everything is or you don’t feel organized or you certainly don’t know what you’re looking at, how can we still show up for the habit and just get started?
I have a whole ritual about that, right? And as you level up your money literacy, the ritual is just going to help you get better and better and better and better. So I’ll break down the ritual. I’ll teach it to you guys today if you want.
Colie: Okay.
Katherine: But I want to like just make sure we kind of like pay attention to the only thing to keep us from getting started is getting started, which I know.
I know, I know, I know, right? We’ve all heard that before, like, duh, of course, sure, yeah, but I’m busy, but I’m blah blah blah. There’s a, there’s part of my storytelling training. where when we talk about money, we want to make sure we cast money in the right role in the story, right?
I’m an actress. Let’s cast it in the right role. And there’s no wrong role, but there are roles that are less effective.
And so one of the roles that I talk about is that, you know, at the end of a lot of stories and then in a traditional hero’s journey framework, if anyone is familiar with actual storytelling, right?
Or marketing comes, this comes up a lot. If anyone’s familiar with that framework, you win the treasure at the end of the story. So in a plot, you know, there’s something for the hero to go out and achieve and win. And a lot of times people are making money their treasure as like, oh, I’m going to do all this hard work and I’ve started my business because I’m going to go make a bunch of money.
Colie: Okay.
Katherine: Respect, me too, I want to make a bunch of money. But if money’s only coming at the end I don’t want to live a life or run a business where money only comes at the end of it. That sounds, yes, you want money throughout. That would be really tough, right? I actually did live that as an actress. I did not have a lot of money.
I know how hard that is. I would not wish that on someone. So when we ask questions around, like, what do we need to get started? Or like I, when you’re saying things like that, I’m like, Ooh, we, we might make money a treasure if we’re putting, if we’re putting barriers to getting started, right? You’re ready right now.
Let’s not put our success into a future date. Let’s just like, let’s just like, open a spreadsheet and get started, or open a bank statement, or open your Dubsado, as you said, and just get started, right? Is that enough of a lead in? Should we, should we talk about the ritual framework
Colie: Yeah, we can talk about the ritual
framework now. I’m interested to hear it. I have my pen and my piece of paper. And so guys, if you don’t have one, you might want to grab one.
Katherine: Please do, but be safe while driving, if you are still driving and listening to podcasts.
Colie: I mean, that’s the only way I usually listen to podcasts, but
Katherine: yeah, yeah.
Colie: I am the queen of voice notes. Do you do that too? Like if someone says something really hot in a podcast, I pause it and then I say, Hey Siri. And of course, you know, my car reacts to me and then I start to give myself a voice note so that I can go back and do it.
Yeah, you
Katherine: I have not.
Colie: Girl, voice notes. I’m telling you.
Katherine: I do voice notes all the time. I don’t do them while driving. That’s so smart. I love that. Okay. Brilliant. Okay. Um, thank you. I should, I’ll, I’ll write that down for myself. So here’s, here’s one back at you. So I have my money ritual framework. I use the word ritual very specifically because yes, it’s important about habits.
But like I said, like I am a creative freedom is my primary value. Habits, habits feel like work. So I like.
Colie: chains.
Katherine: feel like chains. Yeah. Yeah. Ritual, however, has a very important place, again, in just like our human psyche. Rituals are important because they occur in designated time periods. They repeat on our calendar, Hey, we already talked about how important it’s to block off time for your money. So the very first part of forming a ritual is forming a recurring time at which this is gonna occur. weekly or at least monthly.
Colie: hmm.
Katherine: Rituals also have a pattern to them.
They include physical action as well as like spiritual or internal work. So I want a ritual with my money. I want to like be fully present and embodied for it. Right?
Colie: Yes.
Katherine: So what often happens with money when people are working with money or like, Hey, we already kind of talked about, people don’t like the story they’re seeing in their financial reports.
is that we’re doing all this good work and we’re working really hard and then something happens that like really activates us and then we get all like in a tizzy and we get all emotional and we get stressed or we get anxious or we get like actually even just sometimes really excited. I know I have been too excited to send somebody a proposal because my body is like oh my god they said yes I can’t believe it oh my god that’s so much money oh my are we really doing this like I’ve been overly excited and still couldn’t take action right?
Emotions are tough y’all. So we get activated. We get activated and then we have to do all of this mindset work and all of this like meditation, all these things like get ourselves back to neutral. And then maybe we can keep taking steps forward. And depending on how big the activation, it might take us days, weeks, months, to work that emotion through.
I, I’ve also, I’ve been there, I’ve been there where things will just knock me back. And I just freeze up, right? So. What I found, because again, I’m kind of lazy. I don’t like to work more than I have to. I don’t like to be told what to do. So,
Colie: think a lot of us
know.
Katherine: yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s the creative spirit. I think there’s something inherent to creativity that’s like, no, I’m a super special snowflake.
Like, how dare you? Right? Like, so I say this with love and no judgment and actually respect. I actually want more of that in the world. I want us to be more of our authentic selves. I think that makes life more interesting. Yeah. But what if we just turn this on, like, on its head? What if we did all of the beautiful, like, energy body mindset work first?
So we’re actually coming at it not just neutral, but, like, from our best, most abundant self. And then we got into the numbers and the strategy, and then we, like, took it forward from there.
So that’s what I did. That’s, that’s how we approach money when I teach it to people. Is that the ritual framework has five steps.
The first is, let’s make money our teammate. So I already kind of talked about money as treasure is like, don’t put money as like the thing you’re going to win. And you mentioned, yeah, we want money throughout the story. Yeah, money’s your teammate. Money works hard for you. Money can be assigned jobs in your business and money will keep working long after you stop.
Money’s not human. Money doesn’t get tired. Money doesn’t wear out. Money is an energy source all by itself. So, let’s assign money clear jobs and tell it to go do that work. So, let money work for you. Let money be your teammate. It’s like that mindset step. I use a little like, Reminder of okay, what do you need to do to get into that space where you’re showing up for money and for your team money?
You’re ready to communicate with it. You’ve handled any of the emotional baggage that you’ve got with it, right? So this could be meditation. This could be read some affirmations for yourself This could be like just do a quick body scan This could be I mean i’ve i’ve worked with clients who are so woo woo that we literally like Created a literal ritual for them to call on their ancestral spirits to like embody money together And this could be like Oh my God, Catherine, don’t ask me to meditate.
So like, okay, clean your desk. Right. Just like prepare your physical space. Listen to Taylor Swift. Right. I assign people like, no, get a glass of wine and some music. And they laugh. And I’m like, no, it needs to be more fun for you or you won’t do it. Go get a glass of wine and listen to some loud music. I wasn’t kidding.
Like this is your ritual. Show up, like at a date, right? Like this is for you and your money. So what is that first quick step to, um, Calm your nervous system down, feel safe, feel abundant, make money your teammate. Then do something that reminds you of why you’re doing this. That value centered business plan.
So, read the Mission Vision Value Statement for your business. Remind yourself, like, yes I’m in it for the money, but I’m also in it to help people in these specific ways. I want to see this kind of impact from my work. I have people who will just like get pictures of their family and put them on their desks like here’s my why I have people who have vision boards that they display I have people who make like little graphs for their uh desktop that they can pull open I have my mission vision value statement of my business like displayed where I can read them.
Colie: Have you ever had somebody, it’s a thing that people talk about, and I don’t think people talk about it enough, but having a folder of like your testimonials and nice shit that people say about
Katherine: Oh, I have that.
Colie: yeah, in a folder, and hey, maybe that’s what some of you need to do, and for the photographers out there, like maybe you need to get your favorite
photos that you’ve ever taken and make a slideshow, and maybe you watch that slideshow, or again, I like the love notes part.
Love notes are awesome. They’re fantastic.
Katherine: I love all of those ideas so much, I’m going to start using those as examples. It’s like, yeah, just, because a lot of times people are like, well, what do I do if they haven’t done like, they don’t have like a clear brand, like mission and things, like, it’s like, yeah, like, go look at your client testimonials.
Go read the nice emails you’ve had. Collect them. Read them. Like, read the impact that your work is having. Ugh, brilliant idea. The photos one too, especially. Yeah, yeah, go look at how beautiful you make the worlds. Go, go look at the special memories you’re capturing for people and all those awesome moments I can hold on to because of your work.
Yes, please. Right? That step only needs to take like, you know, 30 seconds. Just remind, remind you of your why. Then let’s look at our bookkeeping. Then let’s dig into our numbers. Do the admin work. Send the invoices. Follow up on the bills. Like, get everything organized. Collect all the receipts. Don’t skip money mapping.
That’s my branded word for that financial reports. Every good story needs a treasure map. So, Point yourself in the direction of where you’re headed. So, review something and all that, you’ve just organized all those numbers, review it strategically. Ooh, what numbers are up this month? What numbers are down this month?
Why? What story are these numbers implying to me? What am I tracking to pay attention to? Are my strategies working? Not just like, did I get everything collected? How well am I performing stuff? Like, are my strategies working? Ask yourself some like, why or why not questions about numbers.
And then all of that beautiful internal thought work, do something in the real world, accountability, take real action.
So this could be something like, Call a friend and ask questions. Reach out to somebody for help. Delegate some work to a VA. Send five emails to leads that you need to close this week. Reach out to your accountant and ask a question, right? Like, have somebody review your numbers. Like, do something, block off more time to do more research or make sure your money ritual, if you didn’t finish, right, maybe your admin work is too big for your ritual this week, block off more time to get it done, right?
Something to make your, you know, Actions, tangible, right, away, something. Because then you keep up your momentum. No matter how busy you are, you’re always doing the next right thing to move things forward. again, the intention being let’s show up as our best self at the start.
So that way, even if we get into it and we’re going through something tough and the numbers are not the way we want to see them. We can keep moving forward rather than we see numbers we don’t like and then we get super activated and then we just freeze up or run away. We don’t want to that. So we’re gonna show up and do a little bit of work to feel good in our bodies.
Calm our nervous system down. Spend some time just like feeling abundant, letting money be our teammate. Connect with your why, that value centered business plan. Do your bookkeeping. That’s the admin. Gotta get yourself organized. Make sure you do some money mapping. You’re not just organizing yourself to file taxes, y’all.
You’re not working for the government, you’re working for yourself. So ask yourself some strategic questions about your cash flow, about your profits, and then take action right away.
Colie: So the systems part of my brain has to ask, do people need to have these down in some kind of written form, and or a checklist that they do, and or some kind of SOP? I feel like that is the only way that I would make sure that I was getting it done, but also to make sure that I’m still learning from like what I did as my action step, like let’s say in January versus what I did as my action step in like May. I like to be able to go back and like refer
to whatever it is that I did so that maybe it is something that like needs to be repeated. But since you are the money expert on this call, I just wanted to know, is it something that you have people document or are they just really making sure that they go through all five steps?
Katherine: So it can be a little bit of a both and, right? When I, I’ve practiced enough at it that I do, and I mean, I mean this literally, whenever I touch my money, I follow this ritual. Even if it’s as a quick one minute to open a piece of mail and pay a bill, I will make sure I do a little hit of this because I want to pay that bill in the spirit of look what you did for me money.
Yeah. Go take care of me. Go pay for my, you know, heat, like go, go put a roof over my head. Right. I want to keep that flow going. I have other times of the year, like when I’m going to build the full money map, like the full business revenue plan, KPI, the full dashboard for a client or for myself. That’s a period of like.
hours or days, right? So the money ritual can get expanded out. So part of the thing, you’re very insightful. Um, part of the things we do in my program, right? Or one on one is that we do make custom checklists and there is a different checklist for weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually. Now I know that sounds like a lot to
Colie: it doesn’t sound like a
Katherine: Yeah. Well, great.
Colie: who you’re talking to.
It might
be a lot for some people, but
Katherine: Might be some, some people listening might be like, what are you kidding me? But truly weekly can be like, All of this should take you no more than two hours a month. If it’s taking you more than two hours a month, go get some accounting support, okay? Go get some admin support.
You’re a business owner, you’ve got way more important things than, and I say that with full biases, if I consider this necessary, but you are the visionary and the leader of your business, you don’t need to be in the weeds keeping yourself organized. Okay?
Colie: No, I agree. I think the very first hire in my business was bookkeeping.
Katherine: Heck yes,
Colie: took me a really long time to outsource. I will also say that people on this podcast know I am the person who thinks that I can do everything better than anybody that I could hire. I mean, even my bookkeepers. I don’t hire bookkeepers because I am incapable of doing the numbers.
I hire them because I could be making more money doing other things Instead of the time that it takes me in order to I mean bookkeeping was definitely one of those things that I like put off I mean Catherine my husband is still amazed that this doesn’t happen anymore. But for the first few years my business April Let’s say April 12th, because I am a last minute Lucy. April 12th, every year, I would sit in my office, I would close the door, and I would be in there for like nine hours a day
because I hadn’t categorized any of my expenses,
I didn’t have any of my mileage done, like I would be going through and literally doing a year’s worth of bookkeeping in three days.
Now, It worked really well for me for a few years. And then I was like, this is the most ridiculous thing that I’m sure no one else is doing this. Although many people are doing it.
Katherine: A lot of people are doing it,
Colie: But then I was like, this is not for me anymore. Like, I need, I need to not think about this. Like this needs to be off my plate.
Katherine: Yes, yeah, absolutely. So, weekly, 15 30 minutes max. Like monthly, 1 hour, maybe 90 minutes max. Depending on how into the strategies and the money mapping you want to get, right? And then like quarterly, give yourself a few hours because I think quarterly is important to do bigger reflections. Yeah. Um, so that’s kind of the checklist that we’ll build out for people is that, yes, here’s my, here’s my list of things that I do tell people.
Write notes. If you write down, hey, I want to make 20, 000 in this thing, why? Why 20, 000? Like, why did I pick that number? So that way when you refer back to it, you can be like, where did I? What?
Colie: shouldn’t be, I pulled it out of a hat or my coach, my coach told me to, or that’s how much this costs. Yeah.
Katherine: at least write that down. So you don’t spend hours trying to recreate your math being like, how did I get to 20 K?
Like, I don’t even know. Right. Like, so yes, I, I’m a, I’m obviously I run an accounting firm. I document everything, but I do think that’s a really, really powerful thing is you’ve got a ritual framework of how to show up and make it emotionally easier. Make it a checklist, make it an SOP so that it you don’t have to have the mental process of it.
I also love. for people not just having like weekly, monthly, quarterly, like admin checklist of like, okay, these are the things I need to hit my bookkeeping and money mapping wise. I like having a little like bank of different ideas I can use for the first two steps. What’s my body craving today? Maybe I’m really low energy.
So like I, what I normally would do wouldn’t work. I need something super low energy so I still can have that abundance hit, right? Or maybe I only have one to two minutes and I just really need to get through this because I have like only 10 minutes today, right? So I like to have a little bank of like, okay, am I feeling more playful?
Am I feeling more creative and meditative? Am I feeling more energetic? Do I want to be in my body? Do I just want to like sit here and like, hurt a little bit. Like, you know, like, whatever, whatever vibe I’m bringing to it, I want to have a little, like, thing, a little list of things I know that work, so I could just kind of pick the one I want, right?
Because again, I don’t like to be told what to do.
Colie: I feel like that’s a theme. None of us like to be told
Katherine: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Colie: and I feel like for like for some people who might feel guilty about like a Pleasure that they have so like there is a Thai restaurant that I absolutely love
I feel like that would be like a good like when I sit down to do my money I should totally be eating drunken noodles or from Busaba.
Like that’s what I should do or I should make myself my favorite cocktail. If I have perhaps reduced my drinking, then that could be when I have my cocktail and I sit down and I, you know, you make it as pleasurable as possible, but you shouldn’t do the same thing every time. You know, you want to spice it up a little bit.
Katherine: Yeah, yeah, and I think if somebody who’s listening to this is like, I really truly don’t do things unless they’re fun, because I work with a lot of people like that, right? They’ll avoid things that feel boring or frustrating. That’s only human, but some of us really have that drive. Have your fun little treat and make it part of the end of the ritual, right?
It’s like, okay, as my accountability, I’m going to celebrate the work that I just did. Celebrate the process, not the results. I showed up for my money ritual today, so I definitely deserve my Thai food. I showed up for my money ritual today, so I definitely deserve to, like, take the rest of the afternoon off.
Colie: and you’re like, okay, she just said a lot. So we do have a freebie link for you in the show notes. It’s strategic CEO checklist, how to stay organized and profitable in less than two hours a month. So clearly if Catherine is telling us that she has checklists to help us get this done, you should really be able to get this done in less than two hours.
Katherine: yeah. Those are my true checklists for like, oh yeah, speaking of weekly, monthly, quarterly, oh, by the way, it’s all right there, and one for, a bonus one for tax season. Prepping yourself for tax season. So.
Colie: Which is very, I mean, this is January. This is January when we’re recording. And guys, this is January when it’s gonna actually come live. So, there was a little oopsie between Catherine and I when we were trying to schedule this. I had her on my calendar, but this, like, now in January was when we scheduled it.
So, I mean, this is gonna be like the fastest turnaround edit that I think I’ve ever
Katherine: Oh, oh, I’m honored. Truly, because it is, it’s timely for the audience. So truly, I’m so glad that we could still make it work. And, um, uh, yeah, like good. I’m proud of you then. Look at you reaching new heights, new speed. Good for you.
Colie: I like January. I mean, every single year that I’ve had this podcast, I have always done, like, and I hate that this is, like, usually associated with, like, weight loss or whatever, but, like, new year, new you. Like, I
always feel like in January, I want to have experts on the podcast that are going to help you do something that is going to prepare you to have a better year than you had last. And like we’ve been saying throughout this entire podcast, a lot of us have bad relationships with money. It’s either that it, you know, prohibits us from actually jumping in where it wouldn’t be that bad, or perhaps we’ve had some horror stories in our past that are still affecting us today.
I mean, you know, that’s just what happens.
But I do want to take one more side one more like Path? Whatever we want to say. You mentioned Tangent.
There we go. Hey, I’m losing words today. You mentioned KPIs and I feel like I need a bell in my office every time someone says the word KPI. So specifically are there two or three KPIs that you think that all of us should be doing at some point during the month in order to have a better relationship with our money?
Like what are the numbers? Three of them. And I know it’s going to vary, so you know, don’t feel pressure, but you know, Like what are three KPIs that you would be like, Oh, no, this, this is probably something that I could recommend for everyone.
Katherine: At the risk of being the most controversial guest you’ve ever had possibly, I am going to say I couldn’t possibly give a universal one, but here’s why.
I think most people do KPIs wrong.
Colie: Ooh, that’s spicy.
You finish your thought and then I’m gonna ask you to follow up.
Katherine: Yeah. I think that a lot of people are tracking performance indicators, not key performance indicators. They’re tracking numbers that tell them how well activities are being performed in their business. Useful. But I think that that’s an incomplete picture. So as a storyteller, I want to know the clear cause and effect relationship between the actions in my business and the results that I’m getting.
Colie: Mm hmm.
Katherine: And as your profit coach, I want you to be doing a lot less because you’ll make more money
Colie: Yes.
Katherine: and you’ll have more profit and you will have more energy and time and attention. I’m a, I’m a mom, y’all. I’m like, I’m all for it. And you can kind of tell, like, I don’t want to overwork myself. I just don’t, I just, I’m not about that life.
So when you are looking at your numbers, right, you have a new ritual so you can actually show up for that work. And you are looking at the monthly, you followed my checklist, I’ve got a couple reflection questions on there you can use for your money mapping portion, right, if you have no idea how to get started.
And you start to notice patterns in your numbers. You will start to notice the things that are working and I want you to then pick that as your KPI and I want you to think of a few things you could do to make that number bigger.
Colie: Better. Mm
Katherine: And then that’s all I want you to focus on for this next 90 days. If it worked, great.
Do more of it. If it didn’t, stop doing it entirely. So, and I say that in terms of there’s lots of things that people’s KPIs could overlap, but the how and the why they’re driving to it is not quite the same, right? Um, Yeah.
Colie: and I completely agree. And you and I had a conversation before we hit record and we were talking about my audience. So specifically for photographers, I feel like they like to hone in on the, well, how much money did I make this month with, you know, don’t get me wrong. All, all business owners like to look at that number. But for us in particular, for those of us that have more seasonal businesses, because like for family photography, you are like working yourself to death in fall, but in winter. you tend to be like dead. And the thing is I have actually never had that business because I photograph only people inside of houses. And so winter does not affect me. Newborns are born year round. So the way that I look at my income and my number of inquiries and my average sale per client, all of these things could be KPIs. I mean, I’m not going to tell you exactly, you know, like you said, it’s really specific to what you’re doing that’s working well, but. For me, it’s not so much of a concern as of what month it’s in and is it closely related to how many inquiries I got and what season it is and like all of these things. But like other people, you can’t just look at a number and be like, Oh, that’s really terrible because there might be a story behind it
and that might be your usual.
And so you can’t take that number and compare it to like September when, you know, a lot of photographers are making money hand over fist.
Katherine: Yeah, and I think the other thing that people do a lot of is that when they want to expand, they automatically start looking for new, new voices, new strategies, new things to try, new channels. And I have found that if you can actually identify what’s already working in your business,
Colie: Double down.
Katherine: and double down and just become the world’s best person at doing this exact specific thing, you will expand, expand, expand, expand, expand.
So I cannot tell you how many business owners I have worked with who are trying to pivot in some big way and if I just like go back under their numbers and I ask them a couple questions and I kind of like clear some of the crud and the frustration they’re feeling, that this thing they’ve been doing all along that they got frustrated with because it wasn’t getting them enough.
Is what they need to keep following. We just need to systemize and make it simpler and easier and doing less. We need to do less to make this easier, to make this better. We need to hone our skills on this one thing. Right? So
that,
Colie: and simplify.
yeah.
you said my two favorite words. I
mean, hello. Mm
Katherine: of people do KPIs wrong, is people are just going to add new KPIs and, Oh, I’ll know this new thing is working because it’s going to get me x, y, or z result.
It’s like, no, I would rather ask my money, Hey money, you tell me where you’re thriving, Give me some data, give me some information about the story that we’re doing together as my teammates. And then I can try to influence that number up, up, up, up, up. And that, that I think is a much more effective way for KPI.
So I just, I can’t give you a universal because if I’m really doing that process well with somebody, we might be chasing the same metric, but maybe for different reasons and maybe in different ways. So.
Colie: I also think I’m a steak, and I’m not a money coach, so, you know,
Katherine: Oh.
Colie: that in mind. I feel like people, like, they want to add on more and more KPIs instead of focusing on the
Katherine: Yes.
Colie: you’re going to get further. That’s why I said two or three. Like You really, like, if you start with this two or three and you have a lot of data on those two and three, maybe you will figure out one or two other numbers that could help you tell a better story of the first three.
But, like, if you sit down and you have a list of KPIs, it’s like 12. No, you’re doing too much.
You’re doing too much.
Katherine: A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah, those are not all KPIs. They can’t be. By definition, they can’t be.
Colie: it’s not key.
Katherine: Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Exactly.
Colie: All right, Catherine. So there’s this question that I used to ask all of my guests and you are my third guest of 2025, but I don’t think I’ve asked a single person this in a whole year on this podcast, but I used to ask everyone, what was your biggest fuck up in business? What did you learn from it? And how did you grow? And I happen to know after meeting you twice in person at system saved me events. Hello, Jordan. I know what your biggest fuck up was. So I would like for you to tell us. In a very short manner,
what your biggest fuck up was, and how you learned from it, and how it affected your business going forward.
Katherine: Yeah. Yeah, well, it’s interesting we’re talking about systems
because I think that my biggest fuck up as short as I could make it is that I doubled the size of my business for five years in a row and had a baby every day. And did not have the systems in place to handle that. Now specifically what happened is that I had hired a new accountant to help cover a lot of my workload.
for my maternity leave. My first daughter was born in November. So I came back, in January, which is already like, we are in the thick of it. January, it’s already started, right? Cause we do bookkeeping and taxes. So we’re doing end of year closeouts. We’re doing payroll. I mean, we’re already really in it.
And the accountant that I hired was committing fraud. it took me not that long, but it took me longer than it should have. to catch on to it because we just weren’t organized enough. And to this day, I don’t, I genuinely truly don’t know if this person was malicious or just really overwhelmed. I really don’t know because we never had a conversation about it.
It did not end amicably, um, unfortunately. And I, because the way you phrase it is what was my biggest fuck up and I’m like, so me as a leader, I was not putting people in places where they were going to thrive. I was not having systems in place that was going to handle the work and, and I did not have good follow up or follow through and I had a manager who I thought was doing that.
Who wasn’t the right fit for the role. So I had leadership develop, I had leadership feelings. I, as a leader, I’d never had a team that size. I am an artist. I don’t come from big corporate, I don’t know how to be a leader. What, what is that? Right? So like I had leadership feelings and I had systems feelings.
And then, so when you add it to that mix, somebody who was being less than honest and that person’s working with other people’s money, it led to. tens of thousands of dollars in fees and filing and penalties and late filings, which we covered. But even still, we lost a lot of clients. We lost a lot of clients over it.
And I, I have no ill will towards that actually, because I’m like, yeah, at the time we were a little bit messy, a little bit more than a little bit messy, in fact. So the learnings from was one. Own only the shit that’s yours to own. Okay. So for too long, I kept working that situation because I was like, well, surely there’s something I could be doing better.
Surely there’s something we can put in place. And I was like, I had a moment months after everything had wound down and I had fired this manager and fired this, this accountant. And, you know, started to pick up the pieces where I was still so just like sad and overwhelmed. And I was like, Googled, what is the definition of fraud?
And then I’m like, this isn’t fucking my fault. Somebody came in and lied and did all these bad things. And I didn’t ask them to do that. I don’t need to own that part of it. So own what’s actually yours to own, which also means let other people own what’s theirs to own. So in terms of leadership developments, I, I think in many ways I’m a very good leader.
I’m actually married to a psychologist who’s a leadership expert. So I have some, some very good resources here. But I’m like, I need to help empower people to actually own their own part of the process. Actually own their own things. And it’s the exact same way I teach clients to own their money, right? I love working with other leaders and business owners for that reason.
Is let’s all own our own shit. Let’s all thrive and be our best authentic selves. So. Let’s learn the boundaries of where that is. That’s the first big takeaway I had. And the second big takeaway is, is that it is important to make sure that you’re going. Slowly and carefully enough to put systems in place that again, those key performance indicators know your core, know the core things that have to get handled and everything else is just extra and you can honestly just cut it out.
So when we were able to do that and reduce the overwhelm in the team and put better software in place and put better systems in place and like learn to me to manage things better. I mean, we’re just, we’re just flying. I, I, I had, um, to give you numbers because we are a numbers person, I lost 43 percent of my clients within that period and within four months we had gotten it back.
We were back up at the same revenue because the new systems were working so well and were so exciting that people were once again being attracted back to us. So, Yeah, it was, it was, it was a really, really tough thing to go through, but it was also one of those I’m like, Oh, I’m a big kid now. I run like a real, real
Colie: Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
ha ha!
Katherine: Like, okay, here we go. So, uh, I certainly, I mean, I, I, I think I’ve done a lot of personal healing, but I, I, of course, still feel bad for my clients who had to go through that with me. Um, but I’m really, the, the clients in the team that saved, We’re getting better results than ever. They’re more loyal than ever.
And I’m really proud of, I’m, I’m, it’s years, it’s years later. It’s been three years and I’m still proud of us. So,
Colie: well, I’m proud of you which is why I wanted you to tell the story
so guys don’t think I put Catherine on the spot I did ask her permission before we got started I was like, hey, there’s this question that I literally haven’t asked anybody in a year But I know that I want to ask you so do you want to talk about this?
Katherine: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Colie: cause guys, it’s not really how, I mean, in business, I feel like, this is January, and while her story was about money, and she is a money coach, I feel like all of us have things that happen to us, and it’s about how we get up, how we put ourselves back together personally, and if it is something that actually happened with your business, how you put it back together professionally, and I, I’m not just telling you the story because she mentioned systems, but honestly, systems are a big part of it. Like, Not just systems that I would create for somebody, but like systems that you create in order to make sure that you keep moving forward and that if anything in your business really fucked up, that you put some systems in place going forward to make sure that that one thing never happens to you again.
Katherine: A hundred percent. Yeah. My money ritual framework, that’s a system because you and your body and your nervous system is a system. So how are you managing that to show up for your business? My leadership, like culture, culture’s, a system and I have a system now for leadership and culture development on my team.
Right? So like, yeah, SY systems are everything. Preach. Oh my gosh. More please. Yeah.
Colie: So Catherine, we are going to leave it at that, but your freebie is going to be linked in the show notes, but tell the listening audience where they can find out more information from you. I know your website is currently under construction, and since this is going up so quickly, your website is not going to be up by the time this goes live.
So maybe how they can find you on like social media.
Katherine: Well, on my website, if you are like, Hey, I’d love to follow up about some of these things. You can still book a call, with me. So, CatherinePalmerHance. com is live. You can still get in touch with me there. If you have other, like, podcast interviews or questions for me, like, please, reach out. I’d love to talk.
I’m most active on LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn under Katherine Pomerantz. And then, the strategic CEO checklists that you grab, that will get you on my newsletter. I send that out every week and I get a lot of people who email me back. I have a lot of pen pals that I really, really love hearing from.
So, honestly, truly, you can send me an email. Katherine at bookkeepingartist. com www. bookkeepingartist. com
Colie: Yeah. Catherine, thank you so much for joining me for this amazing episode of the podcast in January. I truly appreciate it.
Katherine: Oh, thank you so much. This was fun.
Colie: All right, everyone, that’s it for this episode. See you next time.
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