250: Financials are the Foundation to Work Life Balance
Michele Williams:
Hello, my name is Michele, and you're listening to Profit is a Choice.
Joining me on the podcast today is Val Duvick. She is the owner of Val Marlene Creative. She is a Profit First coach and a business coach for those in creative industries. We're going to have so many awesome things to talk about today including Profit First, what it is like to be a creative, how to balance the energy between our left logical side and right creative side, as well as how to get to a happy, medium place where our financials are easy to look at and simple to maintain. I invite you to listen in.
Every day, empowered entrepreneurs are taking ownership of their company financial health and enjoying the rewards of reduced stress and more creativity. With my background as a financial software developer, owner of multiple businesses in the interior design industry, educator, and speaker, I coach women in the interior design industry to increase their profits, regain ownership of their bottom line, and to have fun again in their business. Welcome to Profit is a Choice. Hey, Val, welcome to the podcast.
Val Duvick:
Hey, thanks for having me.
Michele Williams:
I am excited to chat with you. We met through Profit First. We were connected by headquarters, and we've had a conversation, and then certainly one preshow today. I just have to tell you, it is such a pleasure to speak to another business owner, a female business owner, and a young female business owner at that. I have probably 30 years on you, but to hear somebody so grounded in what they're doing and trying to make such a difference in the world and in whatever corner of the world that you have any kind of sway over to really try to get support created right for these business owners that are trying to find a way to make money, make a good living, do something that they love or that they have been talented and gifted in, and to kind of find that way, and to merge all those things. It's not always easy. We're told to go chase your dreams. Go do what you love to do. I've got a thing hanging up that says to think of if you do what you love to do, you'll never work a day in your life. Like all those things and they sound good. It's not that they're not good, but there's a lot more to it than that.
Val Duvick:
Oh, yeah.
Michele Williams:
As we jump in, Val, tell us a little bit about your journey. Where did you start your entrepreneurial foray into business, and how did that lead you to where you are now?
Val Duvick:
Yeah, so I actually started in college. I became a photographer for the newspaper at my university, and then within a couple of months had my first session as a family photographer. Then that next summer, I had my first wedding, and that started everything. My dad is actually his own boss, and I've always thought that that was cool, but I didn't necessarily think that's where I would be. Once I started to experience having control of where I was spending my time, and especially creative control, I just had a lot of opinions about how something should look and feel. So, it was really fun to be in control of that. And as I got further into business, though, as everyone will understand, I realized how hard it is. It's not all the fun and games of the creative piece, right? We have to figure out how to manage our time and do what we need to get done, but also the numbers. The numbers and finances are such a huge part of my story because it does not come naturally to me at all. I am a very classic right, brain creative. I tell people I'm allergic to numbers because it feels so intense that my brain just does not want to understand them, but I realized I had to if I wanted to have the type of business and work-life balance that I wanted.
I found out about Profit First, learned how to really manage my money and the cash flow, and started business coaching around a similar time. I had done some mentorship a little bit before that, more on the creative side of the business, but just started to have more and more conversations with people where I couldn't not talk about the money because it affects everything. There just wasn't a lot of that, and I would say there still isn't a whole lot of that happening in my industry, at least, where money is really being talked about in a practical way. I started just teaching as I was learning and just taking my clients along with me on that journey. Then this past summer, I got Profit First certified, and I'm just all in on that because I have seen the life change that comes from that. My heart is with the creatives. I want them to be able to do what they love because creatives are so passionate. We put all of ourselves into our work and a lot of times that ends up taking away from our life. So that's really where my heart is with teaching finances. I want people to be able to still live their lives and have a profitable business at the same time.
Michele Williams:
I agree with everything you said, and I find it interesting. I was telling a potential client, just this week, I said, money is amoral. There is no morality tied to it, right? It's simply a tool. So, like in your industry, if you think about maybe some of the different pictures that you need to take, wedding photography is very different than indoor photography or interior design photography. It's different than I'm going to do headshot photography or lifestyle photography, they all are a bit different in the lighting, perhaps in the camera that you would use or the lens that you would use. To do each of those things, you can't just walk in. You can always have a basic camera, but you're also going to get basic pictures. If you really want it to be done well and to be done in the style and in the way that you would expect it to be done, for the type of picture that you're doing, you have to have the right tools and money is simply a tool to be used in quite the same way. So, if I don't have the money to invest in the next thing, then I'm not going to get to do that.
Val Duvick:
Right.
Michele Williams:
One of the things I want to mention and I'm going to call you out on it just because I think it's kind of fun. So, you have an autoresponder on your email and it pretty much says, hey, thank you so much for reaching out, I don't check my email all the time. I batch-check my email. Here are the times I'm going to do it. These days I spend with my family and I'm just not working and not available and these are the days, and this is the order in which I'm going to go through my email to respond to you. When that first came out, the first time I got it, I was like, oh, okay, girl, I hear you, I see you, I know what you're doing. I've seen different versions of it, but usually, it's something like, I'm busy working on projects. I will check it at 1230 or at 08:00 a.m. and at the end of the day and I'll respond, but yours went even further from that. I think what was so interesting about it to me, I actually saved it because I thought it was a good example of not just saying I'm not sitting with my email open so that I get that ADHD ding ding, ding ding ding ding ding ding to go look at it. But you were saying, I have chosen to put some boundaries in place around my work life, that word we all hate work-life balance. But I've chosen to, if you will, set the boundaries for this is work, this is life and I have young children and they need me and this is the days that I need to be with them, that I either don't have childcare or that our life looks a little different these days.
I have to tell you, Val, my first response was kind of like, do I even need to respond back to her? Because is she going to read my email? Is it going to be the fifth one on the list? And then my next thought was, I have high respect that you're just being honest to say, I'll get back to you, but it's not going to be this knee-jerk two-second response that we almost like Pavlov's Dog where we're like, salivating, waiting on the next email to come in. I thought that was really cool. I can imagine well, I'm not going to say I imagine, I'm going to ask you. I can imagine, for me, it would take me, I'm not going to say guts or courage to do it, but I think that I would really have to sit down and have a very clear kind of conversation with myself on what are the expectations that I am putting on myself, my life, my work, my business, and my communication in that to be able to write that. Can you share? And listen, I think what you did is profitable in communication, because what it did when we look at on this podcast, we look at profit not just as the money, but profitable choices that we're making, because everything leads back to the money. And you had to take a stand and say, these days are off limits for business. So, if you're expecting, like, a return email on Tuesday, or I don't know, I don't remember what your days were, but let's say Tuesday and Thursday, if you're expecting me to respond on Tuesday and Thursday, that's not going to happen. But you can expect an email on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or something like that. How did you get to the point and to the place that you were so willing to just be honest and clear with yourself and honest and clear with those that were reaching out to you, to state here's what I will and will not do?
Val Duvick:
Yeah, well, it's definitely been a journey, especially as a young mom, taking kind of step-by-step as we've progressed through the years. My oldest is going to be five in March, which is kind of crazy that it's actually been that long, but I just realized it all started with me. I knew I wouldn't love trying to juggle both at the same time because I think I'm very distractable, which I think is another creative thing. A lot of creatives are very distractable. I tested it out at first, I wanted to see, okay, what would it look like to do some work. Actually, with my first, she came a month early, and I had to do some work the first couple of weeks after she was born. That was not my plan. I would prefer to turn it off. But over the years, I've just noticed in myself that I am a better mom when I can be fully focused on them and not worry about work. I also feel like I'm doing better in my business when I'm not trying to parent at the same time that I'm doing my work. There have been a lot of iterations of that, but I think it was probably two years ago that I started the autoresponder. I feel like a big part of the client experience and having an excellent client experience is setting expectations, and I want people to experience that right away with me. Part of that is to inspire them that they don't have to have work hours that everyone else has. Their traditional perception of what our work time should look like doesn't have to be the same for everyone. I want people to know they're not going to hear from me right away so that I don't feel guilty about when I respond, so they know what to expect, but then also to just slyly give them a little taste of this is the kind of coach I am. I care about life more than business, and I want to build my business around my life. It's kind of two, three-fold, there's a lot going into that, but it was honestly such a weight off my shoulders when I finally put that in the autoresponder. It's annoying. It's annoying to me that even when I go to all mail, I cannot find things anymore because I have so many outgoing autoresponder emails. So now I have to actually type and search for things. I'm sure it's annoying to my clients to some extent, but I'm okay with that because they'll get used to it and it does, it just sets that tone for the relationship.
Michele Williams:
Well, I will say the second and third time I got it, I just knew it was coming. I was like, okay, now what was the day again that she might get back to me? Okay. And then I just moved on. I host an event every year in September for my clients, and they all come to Atlanta. At any given time, there can be anywhere between 40 and 50 of us here, and we're working on our strategic plans for the next one, three, five years. So, every year we get together and we go back through them again and we tweak them and we update them. Some people are building them for the first time if they've just entered my program, and I have some people who have done it for seven, eight, or nine years, they just keep coming back to just tighten up that plan. I asked them this year, and I've asked them for the last couple of years, but I was very intentional about it in September and I asked them, I said, before we start doing your business strategic plan, I want you to write down on paper what you want your home life to be. What is it that you want to do? When do you want to try to go on vacation? You may not know the exact week, but do you know a month or a quarter? You may not know all of the details, but I need you to write down, my kid has jiu-jitsu on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and so I need to leave the office by 4:30, or for me, one of the big things was my kids were going to be on the football field on Friday nights. I needed to be on that field, and on Saturday, we were going to be doing ABC and XYZ. What is it that your life requires of you and that you want to give your life now? Now, let's look at what's available for the business because if we don't, the business will take up every ounce of time that we give it. It will encroach everywhere. The whole reason that we build fences in our backyard is so we know where to play, we know where safety is. I remember, Val, being that young mom. Like I said, I've got some years on you, and I've owned my own business since 2000. So almost 24 years, starting the 25th year coming up. I can remember just being in a heap of tears. I think I said this to you on one of our last conversations with my husband, I said to him, I said, I feel like if I'm being a mom, I'm not being a great business owner. If I'm a business owner, I'm not being a great mom. If I'm doing great as a mom, I suck at business and if I do great at business, I suck at being a mom. I did eventually figure out my own boundaries, but I think women primarily are in a huge pressure cooker for having to do it all. Fry up that bacon, bring it home in a pan, like all the things. Not that my husband didn't think about the boys and me when we were at home. Not that he didn't think about us, but he never thought, I don't need to be at work, I should only be at home. It never dawned on him, in his mind, I need to get up, I got to go to work, this is my role, this is what I'm doing to provide for the family. It's not so he didn't miss us, but he didn't feel the same type of guilt. I felt a different type of guilt, that I could only choose one thing. Yet everything in me craved more than just, if I had only done business, I would have craved my family. And if I had only had my family, I craved doing something else. Coming to grips with the multidimensional parts of me, but also realizing I couldn't do everything all at one time with perfection. It's not possible for anybody.
So, I started letting all those things go but it took time. Back in the day, we didn't have the Internet. People weren't talking about it the same way. It wasn't a conversation. I remember telling people, I don't even know where I fit in. Everybody's either stay-at-home moms or they work in corporate. Like the whole cottage industry side hustle, it wasn't a big thing. It felt trailblazing to some degree and then figuring out if I'm going to give this much time and attention, I best be making some money at it. Because if not, I could be a full-time mom and not bring home money. I don't need to be giving my time, effort, and energy away for free and still bring home no money and take the time away from my family. That was where my big kind of I'm going to say friction point was back in 2003 when I realized, oh my gosh, I'm not making the money that I need to make, but I am missing soccer and I'm missing some of these other things. I've got to kind of pull it all together. You and I said before we got on that as creatives, it is very easy to think more in the creative realm and not in the money, numbers, or financial realm. I'm sure you're not the only one with an allergy to numbers, but honestly, the power of the numbers is what gives us the freedom to build the fence and to build the boundaries around our lives and our business. Share a little bit about how you came to the conclusion that knowing the numbers is actually where the freedom is.
Val Duvick:
Yeah. So actually I would say that work-life balance has also been a struggle for me for most of my career. Even before I learned about Profit First, I was trying to figure out, okay, how can I do this and actually still have a life? At that point when that initially started, I had a day job. I very slowly worked backward from a full-time day job to a part-time and then an even more part-time and then finally was full-time in my business. I knew that it had to be intentional, but I just didn't have the tools yet. I felt like I was trying to build this version of balance that I didn't know physically how I could play that out. When I found out about Profit First, it gave clarity to the how. I would say I really love the image that he gives in the book about guardrails, that our percentages and the spending limits are like guardrails. I like to think about driving up a mountain. I say this to my clients, like, we don't laugh or scoff at guardrails when you're driving up a mountain. We are thankful for them. We understand that without them, we could literally drive off the edge and probably would not make it.
But the other piece to that image that I've started to add is that when you're driving up a mountain, building this business, or wanting to have this mountaintop experience in your business. We have to have these guardrails in place so we can learn to love those in order to get to the mountaintop. Having the vision of the mountaintop, I think, just helps us to appreciate those even more. I see that as that becomes really the tool that we need to appreciate what it actually is going to take to have that balance and really where we need to start with that is we need to know what that mountaintop is. We need to know what I call a definition of success needs to be. We really have to be honest with ourselves. Like you were saying before with my autoresponder. Yes. I had to sit down and have that moment of what do I want my life to look like. And I need to stop striving for someone else's version of success. So many of our goals, I think, in business initially, before we go through this process, are based on someone else's success. Something else we've seen happen and we think we want, but sometimes we don't realize what's behind that Instagram version of success. The person who's working on the beach, they are talking about working from anywhere and making so much that you can do that well, do I even want to be working on the beach or do I want to be on the beach without my laptop? There's so much nuance with what is going to fill each person up individually and everybody's life is different. The commitments are different. Soccer and football or music lessons, like whatever the things are that you care about, it has to be something that you care about for working your numbers around that to actually be worth it. So, we have to get really specific about how we define that.
Michele Williams:
I agree. One of the things that I think the word balance throws so many of us and why I talk about an allergy. We can have an allergy to that word too, because it feels in some ways it feels unattainable. I think it's because we don't have a good definition of it and I like to think more of like, what keeps me centered. Because balance can lead us to think that things are equal, like an equality. But balance doesn't mean equality. Balance means even if you're leaning to the left, that you still know where your center is to hold you up so that you're not falling down. It means you might be able to go to the right. I mean, heck, I go to Pilates and they have us throwing this arm up and that leg up and you're constantly trying to find your center so that you can be balanced where things are not equal. I try to think about it that way so that I have to define what does that mean? I've shared this on the podcast, I'm in this process right now, Val, I shared with you before we came on of kind of looking from my next three to five years and looking at our family with where we are. We now have both of our sons who have graduated high school. They've both graduated college, they've both gotten married. They've gone and are starting their own families with their wives. So we're in a different place than I was even three, five years ago. My time can be spent a little differently right now. I've got friends who've moved, so I'm trying to meet some new people. I've got all these different things that are opportunities around me, but I've got to be very clear on what I'm trying to do in that. So one of them is like, I want to go out once a month with a girlfriend just to have a conversation, but I have to be clear, once a month. If I can do more, I'm going to do more. But what would make me feel centered and balanced and grounded or whatever, however you want to phrase that, is I need to have space in my calendar for once a month to do that for me. I need to be able to go to Pilates twice a week. There's a teacher that I love. I need to be able to go to her class on Wednesdays and Fridays. If I can do that, even though they're in the middle of my workday if I can plan my workday around them, they make me feel like I've done something for me that's outside of the norm. It's being clear not just I want to work out, but I want to work out on this day in this way, with this class. I also sent something to my group the other day, and when we mentioned talking about this, I pulled it up so I could read it while we were on here together. It's written by, I don't know this person, Emmy Ray, but she wrote, what if your markers of success were how well you slept at night, how many books you read, how easily you laughed, how much time you spent storytelling and feeling warm in the arms and homes of people you adore?
That's the success that I'm looking for. I would say that many of us are, but we have to put time, effort, energy, and dollars towards that as much as we think we don't have to put dollars towards it. It may not cost me something to sleep at night, but it costs me something somewhere else to be able to sleep at night.
Val Duvick:
Exactly. Yeah. I feel like we don't get specific enough.
Michele Williams:
That's right.
Val Duvick:
I love the specific of one outing with a girlfriend a month. That is the thing that even in the process of having my clients define success, I almost every time have to say, okay, but get more specific. I want you to be able to look at this and have something measurable like, am I doing this?
Michele Williams:
We talk about it in our group too. Profit First in your time. Have you ever thought about it that way? Profit First is a mindset. It's about how do I build sustainability. That's the whole reason we're taking out profit. I've heard all of it. We're not robbing the company. We're not taking money off the top that shouldn't be there. What we're doing is we're building a small nest egg of sustainability so that the company can continue to grow and the company can be okay. We're putting an additional guardrail in place as we move up the mountain. To use your analogy, okay, that's the same thing our 401K is we are taking money, it's an example of Profit First, so our retirement plans, that's what we're doing. We're building sustainability in our older age so that we will have an income then based on the income we have now. Same thing. Well, if we're not Profit Firsting our time, which says what are the things and where do I need to spend time that are going to build sustainable relationships or that are going to be the most important things? You've heard the old if I have a jar and I've got these big boulders and these rocks and sand, it's the same thing. It's what's most important. Let's get that in there first. We look at everything with the same level of importance because we're not willing to make a hard call of what is most important. So, then we have 45 things on the to-do list with an approach of they're all equally important, which they cannot be. So, then we're even more I mean, look, I'm speaking to myself because I can get caught up in it too. I have to be so mindful of what is going to move the needle and what feels like right now, it's not screaming at me, but if I do it, it's going to free me up over here. I need to bite the bullet and get that done. But it's not always what would be most expedient at the time.
Val Duvick:
Yes, and even just the idea of getting things done, checking things off your list may not actually be the most productive thing. We often see checking things off as being productive. We need to be intentional about what we're checking off the list, and there are probably a lot of things on our list that we could just get rid of altogether. Even that comes back to the definition of success because where did those things come from? Are we looking at what someone else is doing and thinking that means we have to do that thing? So much I think of our struggle to be satisfied and have joy in our business, I think is because we are comparing to what other people are doing and putting those expectations on ourselves. This just kind of comes back to my heart of building your business around your life. It's all-encompassing. It's with your time, making sure you have time for the things that you care about in your life, but also your approach to the work that you're doing and the way that you do it. Your systems and processes should be custom to you and built around you, not what everyone else says you have to do. I think that's a big shift that is hard to make. Like you said, that means you have to prioritize. Nobody wants to do that. We don't want to say this is most important.
Michele Williams:
Because we're making a decision and then we have to stand by the decision we made. I think that's kind of what got me even with the email that you sent, you had to make a decision and then you had to say it. I think that is difficult because we are so used these days to either don't say anything and don't rock the boat or we're used to saying what you say and not caring how the chips fall. So if you're somewhere in the middle of those, it does take courage, but I would say courage with yourself to say this is what I think is important right now and it may not be what Instagram is telling me is important, or what the world is telling me is important, or what this group is telling me. But this is what in our home, we believe is how we want to spend our time and our money and our attention and I'm going to hold to that. It's a lot of, I think, getting real with ourselves on what we want to do and then filling in with the business. I was sharing with another business owner this week, we were talking about growing and scaling her business and kind of what she also wanted in her family. I mean, this is a conversation I have a lot. So it's not like a one-off. Sometimes I might say to them, don't grow and scale. Right now, two important words that I have come to love are for now. This is where we are for now. It means that we're not stuck here, but for now, we have made decisions because they are the best decisions we can make for the situation we're in. But in six months, the for now might be different. Just like I shared with you, the four now that my husband and I are in is a very different place than it was five years ago with a kid in college and all those things. It's two kids in college. Our for now is different. When grandchildren come, our for now will be different. When our parents continue to age and when changes have to happen there, it's a different for now when we're those parents who are aged. It's a different for now. That has given me freedom, Val, to be able to say, this isn't the way it always has to be, but for now, this is the best decision that we can make and I'm willing to hold to it. And when inputs change or things change or time changes, I am giving myself the freedom to make a different decision.
Val Duvick:
Yeah, that's great. I think that even being okay with maintenance mode is something that the world is telling us is not good and we shouldn't be happy with that. But we need to be okay with being in maintenance mode. What you're doing right now might be exactly where you should be for a while, where you don't always have to be growing and scaling. We can be happy with our current definition of success.
Michele Williams:
Growing and scaling to me doesn't always mean growing bigger. It might be growing a better process. It might be scaling my communication to be done with more ease. I think we only look at growing and scaling with, like you said, getting bigger. People will say to me, Michele, I want to change things in my business, but I don't want to go hire four people and go buy a building. I'm like, oh, chill, you don't have to do that. We can grow and scale within other boundaries. There's no reason that we can't. We just have to think broader. Just like balance doesn't mean equal. We've got to think broader than maybe some of the definitions that we've told ourselves that either are keeping us stuck or that are propelling us to complete burnout on the other side. One of the comments you made in our preshow conversation was that you believe, and you teach that knowing and owning those numbers is truly the foundation to kind of creating the life you want. Not just the business you want, but the life you want. I'm going to let you share a little bit about that and then I'll add in at the end, but tell me what you think about that.
Val Duvick:
Well, I think that when we think about work-life balance, there's something inherent in “balance” that we need to know, and that is what is enough. We need to understand what is it going to take for me to be able to have x number of days where I'm not working. For me, I try to take about two months off every year, and I only work two days a week. For me to do that, I have to understand what I need. What is my minimum, what do I need to bring home and actually pay myself, and then that affects all of the other numbers? That affects where even I set my percentages and what I need to think about my pricing. So, my pricing is based on what I need. It's not based on what everyone else is charging in the industry. I know very little, actually, of what other people who do similar things to me are charging. I think that that's okay because I need to know what it's going to take for me to live the life that I want. It all comes back to those numbers and understanding when enough is enough, how much you have to charge, and how many clients you need to have at those rates in order to make that happen. It all just kind of works backward from that and it really changes even, I would say, the confidence level in pricing specifically. I look at my pricing, and I'm confident in it because I know where every dollar is going and why I set those numbers. So many people are just looking at other people's prices and thinking, well, I have a similar talent, so I can charge about the same thing. We could go on a very long rabbit trail with pricing. So, I don't think we should only look at our needs, we do need to be aware of everything else, but that should be a baseline. Part of that, even, is a personal budget. Do you understand what you have to spend in a month on your groceries and your bills? That's a big one. It's funny because I don't necessarily market that. I teach about that because I think people are a little resistant to it at first. But I have all of my finance clients go through their personal budgets first so that we know what they need. So, I think when we understand the need and the goal, I also have people set both. We need to know the minimum, and we also need to know where you're headed. Once we have that in mind, we can fill in the rest, and it makes it more attainable. It's not just this hope, like, I hope I'll be able to take a month off. No, I know exactly what it will take to do that, and I think it just shifts the whole perspective.
Michele Williams:
Okay, so, you know, I agree with that and one of the things that I have in Metrique Solutions is the backward financials where we're doing bottom-up, and it starts with the bottom-up financials. How much money do you need to bring home? How much profit do you need to pay? What are the numbers that you need? At the end of the day, what do we need the business to do for you now let's walk up and look at what business decisions need to happen to make that happen. Then we also give you the opportunity to do it top-down. Oh, I've been told I need to sell this amount of money. What will it give me? Because the truth is usually somewhere in the middle, to your point. But I will tell you, at least with my clients, it's gotten much better. I will tell you, by and large when asking the general question to creative business owners what salary do you need, their answer is usually, I don't know. So I'd like to say, okay, well, if you were to go work in corporate, what salary would you be willing to even have the conversation about? Just give me a starting point. Again, we have them go back sometimes and say, go look at your family budget and tell me how much money after taxes you need to bring home to be able to spend, because then we can calculate what the business needs to do for you. I get it because I've done it, when we start the business, we're just trying to find our way. We're grasping for pricing, and we're taking what other people have. I've used other people's pricing and made money, and I've used other people's pricing and lost money. The challenge isn't in the price. The challenge is, like you said, knowing where every dollar is coming and going. Because then if anybody asks me, do you have any wiggle room, I don't even know what my wiggle room is. I don't know. It's just a number. It's just a number. I have no clue how that number is made up. I don't know what comprises that number. So, I don't know where my wiggle room is or if there's any even built-in.
That's why in the Pricing Without Emotion class that I teach, it is literally understanding every single penny. Where it comes from in the company, how it's used, where it goes, all the details, pieces, and parts. That's why it's not just about building a budget in the business. It's building a budget in your home. I just asked my husband the same thing. He keeps up with our personal finances because I keep up with the business finances of the two companies and otherwise, it's just all of my clients. So, it's just way too much for me. I like numbers, but that's even a bit much. I asked them the other day. I said I think we need to revisit our home budget. Prices have gone up. Things have shifted. We've done some things outside of our financial plan if you will, where the timing is a little different. I think we need to go back and revisit that so that we know what is expected of us over the next three to five to ten years until we decide to retire so that we can realize, do we need to slow down. Do we need to speed up, what are the needs of our family, and then, what are our personal needs so that we can do that? Because look, if my business only needs to make $50,000, I'm not going to tell you that that's all I'm going to make. But I'm going to tell you I'm not going to be trying to make 10 million and killing myself to do it. Because anybody who tells you they can do it without working is crazy. I'm probably not going to do that because there are other things that I want to do with my life than just sit and try to make money. I would love to go do a lot of philanthropic things, but you really can't do a lot of the philanthropy projects until your needs are met or until you have the ability to take care of some other things. Again, finding that balance, how much is enough in any given area? Um, because we can easily overspend in time. We can overspend on resources, we can overspend in even our thoughts or that checklist that you talked about. I can spend too much time checking off the little things that give me an ego bump because I got something done that day while I'm neglecting the really big things that need to be done that are going to change my life. I was going to recommend a book. I don't know if you've read it. The Gap and the Gain. Have you read that?
Val Duvick:
My husband has read it, so I've heard a little bit about it.
Michele Williams:
Okay. I thought of it when you were talking, and I've talked about it lately, but one of the big things is talking about how we compare ourselves to an ideal, but then we set a goal and that goal may not be equal to the ideal. When we do that, then we are never going to be enough. We're never going to catch up. We're never going to really have the success, because the success is an ideal that might not even be achievable or attainable or our goals aren't set to actually get us there. The gain is looking backward and saying, look how far we've come. Look how much we've accomplished. Look where we have been. It really, to me, is very much like a blessings journal or just being very aware of where you've been blessed and how great things are like that heart of gratitude. I think that really sets the stage for moving forward. Instead of focusing on our lack, our wants, or our areas that maybe we haven't measured up in some way, shape, or form, that is always going to lead us to anxiety and depression. Whereas the more that we count our blessings, and they say mercies are new every day. The more that we can have that heart of just recognizing and being grateful and thankful for what currently is or what we've come out of or where we've been, the more that it fuels us in a different way. I think part of success is recognizing those blessings so that we're not so always caught up on how much more we have to do and build and grow, but being thankful for how much more we already have.
Val Duvick:
Yeah, and I love that so much. I think that a big part, even of the way that I approach the definition of success, is having a current version that you are meeting. So I think a lot of times we see success as something we haven't accomplished yet, it’s not a goal, it's what I'm currently doing. I've just kind of shifted to that focus in the last year or two because I've just noticed the ceiling is always rising. We're never done there's always something else we could do or a way we could grow in our business. We need to feel like what I'm doing right now is successful, and a lot of us aren't doing that. I think that's where we need to even define that. I actually have my clients create two definitions. What's your ultimate definition of success and what's your definition of success for right now? What can you currently actually meet?
Michele Williams:
See, your for now.
Val Duvick:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, same thing.
Michele Williams:
And that's what the gain is though. That's the same thing on the gain is I have earned or worked to the success that I have today, and don't miss that as we're looking to the future. I love that so much, Val, I'm going to go write out my success for today.
Val Duvick:
Love it.
Michele Williams:
I'll give you another example, and I think they talk about it in that book, but I had my clients do it at the retreat, and I had them how long have you been in business for yourself now?
Val Duvick:
I think I'm at 14 years.
Michele Williams:
Okay. You started very young. I would suggest to you then, year one, let's say I would want you to have at least three to four milestones in there. So maybe year one, year three, year five, year seven, year ten, year 14, something like that. I would have you kind of think back into what were the big pivotal moments and what did you learn in those chunks of time so that you can then start to see the build that got you where you are today. I had my clients do that, and there were tears. There was, oh, my gosh, look where I am. I forgot where I came from. I forgot where I started. It's even in our marriage, we've been married 33 years and almost 40 we've been together. I remember eating peanut butter and jelly and bologna sandwiches so that we could save up money to buy a house. But I have to stop and remember that because it was at such a moment that we wanted something so much greater than what we had that we didn't go out. We sacrificed, we set in. We made our own Christmas ornaments. Like, we did all kinds of crazy stuff. We were young kids in love and newly married and trying to make our way. The same thing happens in business. We've had pivotal moments, moments of clarity, moments where things happened that didn't feel good in the moment, but they created a change in us, either an attitude or something that propelled us to the next thing. So just kind of paying homage to that, like, stopping and saying, these things happened, and they made me who I am and who my business is because I think that's where we can write that definition of success for now, so much more clearly when we look back to see where we came from.
Val Duvick:
Oh, yeah. We can also then have perspective for what we're going through right now that's not ideal.
Michele Williams:
That's right.
Val Duvick:
Because we know, okay, I went through all these things and look at what they did. Look at how that just really grew me and prepared me for what I have now. I am being prepared now for what's next. So, this hard season in my business has a purpose. It's not just pain for pain.
Michele Williams: That's right. So true. As we wrap up our time together today, Val, tell people where they can find you, where they can follow you, and gain some of your wisdom.
Val Duvick:
Yeah, so I'm mostly on Instagram, so if you're looking for more of a social place, that's where I'm going to be hanging out. It's Val_Marlene_Creative and my website is www.valmarlene.com. Pretty much any link you would need to find me is from there.
Michele Williams:
Awesome. Well, we'll put all of that in the show notes as well. I'm so glad that Profit First Headquarters connected us.
Val Duvick:
Me too.
Michele Williams:
I enjoyed that we got to have a lot of great conversations and kind of journey with each other as we have a heart and a goal to support creatives, to know their numbers, to be able to make the choices in their life that they want to make. I'm excited to be on this journey with you, Val.
Val Duvick:
Me too. Thank you so much.
Michele Williams:
You're welcome. Have a great day.
Val Duvick:
You too.
Michele Williams:
Val, thank you so much for joining us today. It was really a pleasure to have you. I am looking forward to continuing to work alongside you as we support the creative industries, um, all the breadth and width of creative industries. For those of you who are in the interior design industry and are listening in, and you want more help understanding your financials in a way that you can have the same level of ownership that Val and I talk about, I want to invite you to check out our CFO2Go offerings. You can find that at Scarletthreadconsulting.com/CFO. You can also hit the Work with Me page. If you want to sign up for a discovery call and let us walk this journey with you. We’d be happy to help you become more profitable because as we all know, profit doesn't happen by accident.
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