[00:00:00] Fiona Johnston
We've made a lot of progress as a society in many of the areas that we needed to in the last few hundred years. But one thing that has not changed enough is money. If we want to be able to tip the scales towards the favour of marginalised people, we need to understand the secret. The more we talk about money and the secrets that usually stay at the golf club, the more likely we are to be able to make money. My mission is to get more money into the hands of good people, specifically good business people like you. This is Money Secrets, the place to learn about the money secrets of successful small business owners, because I believe small business can change the world. And in order to do that, we need to be making a lot of money. Let's go.
[00:00:51]
This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I'd like to acknowledge them as the Traditional Owners and custodians of this land and water that I live, work and play on. I'd like to pay respects to Elders both past and present and note that sovereignty ceded.
This always was and always will be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.
[00:01:19]
Before we dive into Money Secrets the podcast, I thought you might like to know who I am. So, my name is Fee Johnston. You probably haven't met anyone quite like me before. I'm a chartered accountant. Who's a creative communicative impact led human obsessed with small business. I've spent the last 24 years working exclusively in small business, which makes small and medium business, not only my passion, but also my specialty and my niche. I love small business with every fiber of my being. And I believe that small business can change the world.
[00:01:55]
How did I get here? Great question. Let's go on an audio adventure right back to the start with eight year old Fi.
[00:02:06]
Eight year old Fi falls in love with small business while working at the school fete in the ice cream van. It's magic. I fall in love with the act of service, receiving the orders, getting the orders right and handing over the correct change. It is exhilarating for eight year old Fi. So much so that a teacher had to tap me on the shoulder and ask me to give someone else a try.
[00:02:50]
Fast forward to 21 year old Fi who starts working in an accounting firm for small businesses. Apart from a year in the UK and Europe like lots of Australians, I was at that charming accounting firm for six years where I became a chartered accountant and honed my numbers, strategy and client relationship skills.
This version of me loved the clients and I'm really good at explaining their numbers to them. But to be honest, I hate doing their tax returns and dealing with the ATO. This might be the first inkling that I'm not like most accountants.
[00:03:24]
So, 27 year old Fee gets in her car and moves to Melbourne from the Gold Coast and starts working at Mountain Goat Brewery.
It's a craft brewery based in Richmond, Melbourne and working there is like all of my dreams have collided. The team there loves music as much as I do. They're great people and it's an ethical and sustainable business that's fun and innovative. This role is where I cut my teeth in the world of small business as a force for good.
Getting to explore what it looks like to run a business based on community, innovation and grit and doing it sustainably. At Mountain Goat I got to work on the finances, the marketing, recruitment, sales, human resources and business strategy as the general manager and financial controller. Working there was honestly one of the best things that's happened to me.
[00:04:15]
Skipping ahead past the global financial crisis. 31 year old Fee heads to the Grampians around three and a half hours away from Melbourne. Think beautiful rock faces and national parks. I'm there for a weekend with friends and somehow end up starting my own business in an olive grove thanks to a conversation.
I had the very lucky pleasure of meeting the co founder of Mount Zero Olives, Jane Seymour, who became my first client and a huge impetus behind launching my consulting business. Of course, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing and will literally take on any work that comes my way and do it seven days a week.
And what I'm doing is Working with small business owners on business planning and financial mapping.
[00:04:57]
Fast forward to two years in business and honestly, it's been really tough. I have less than 1 in my bank account for the second New Year's Eve in a row. I realized I need a goal. Cue New York. I knew that I needed to set a really tangible goal to get myself out of that little broke hole that I was in.
I set myself a goal of going somewhere really expensive, and of course, New York popped to mind easily. The goal that I set was to get to New York and be able to spend a whole month there in six months time. And to be honest, this was an outrageous goal for a solo female that had less than 1 in her bank account, but I needed to get unbroke.
It took me 18 months to get to New York, but I did get there and I learned a really valuable lesson. A financial goal is more likely to be reached when it's attached to something real. If the goal has a purpose, something you can touch and feel, like being in New York, it's much more likely to happen. In other words, we need to know why we are doing something.
All of a sudden, that started to make a lot of sense.
[00:06:00]
Post New York Fi somehow gets tangled up with two really shady business owners. This here people pleaser throws herself into the task of saving these two businesses who are my clients. Both of these were run by, in hindsight, reckless and egotistical men.
Two months later, one of them goes into liquidation owing me 10, 000, and the other one is so aggressive that I decide to let his 5, 000 in outstanding fees to me go to the wind as I block his email address from ever reaching me again. I'm broke again. Broke Fee makes a decision and it turns out to be a really good one.
[00:06:38]
No new clients for a while. I start working with less clients and charging them more. Weirdly, I make way more money doing it this way than I ever have before. And I feel way less stressed. This strategy actually makes sense Fee. It's years before I realized how clever and effective this was. I spend about a year healing and I stopped being broke.
In this less clients, more money era, I'm earning more than I ever have before. And I don't realize that I'm actually at the top of my imaginary income ceiling. By the way, you probably have one too.
[00:07:12]
One freezing Melbourne winter night, I'm working till midnight to get a project done for my biggest client.
I'm working seven days a week on this time sensitive, specialized project. And at the end of this cold month, For some silly reason, I write off a third of the hours I've done for this project, and at the time this seems perfectly reasonable to me. It's around that time that I was introduced to the personal development topic of money mindset, which I had gleefully lapped up as a way to help my clients.
Knowing that I, of course, as an accountant, had the perfect money mindset. Actually, side note. I didn't. After the Fi writes off one third of her invoice moment, I hear myself say to one of my co workers, I'm always working, but I never have any money. She awkwardly laughs as she says, Fi, you say that all the time, you know?
Oh my god. That's when I realise that some words that I heard when I was a teenager, in a financial flashpoint for our family and for me, are affecting my business all these years later. I have a money mindset block that I learned during a challenging time in my family's life. I'm playing out this narrative by working extra fucking hard and not allowing the income in.
I'm turning away income in order to never have any money and kneecapping myself whenever I get close to this imaginary income ceiling that I've set for myself. I start to wonder, Maybe accountants really do have money stories and blocks. I start to see money beliefs everywhere. In client conversations, on Instagram, and even in my own behaviour.
[00:08:58]
Fast forward a few years to 2018. I've been working with an incredible e commerce founder, who has an amazing looking profit and loss statement. She sheepishly tells me about this thing called Profit First and how she wants to try it out. Once I learn what Profit First is, I am hooked. I cannot believe that I did not write this book myself.
Using the money in your bank account as a tool to become more profitable is so revolutionary to me and every client that I've worked with since. Imagining your money as slices of a pie. Is the best way to manage it. And we'll talk about profit first a lot during this podcast.
[00:09:40]
Next minute, it's 2020. And you may remember something about 2020 that the world felt like it was upside down for a while.
My clients started asking me how to manage their own money and financial decision. I started teaching them instead of doing it for them. And it works. I see the power that rewriting their money stories brings, the ease that Profit First brings to their week by week. And this is awesome. Plus, I'd always wanted to be a teacher, so this just feels right.
Marketing my group program, which is now called Good Money Club, makes me think about marketing my business, Letting clients to work with me one on one as a fractional CFO and business coach had always been really easy. But now, I needed to get good at marketing. I needed to be as good at marketing as marketers.
[00:10:30]
Putting myself out there has brought me more people, more conversations and more opportunities to ask questions my way. I've invested a lot of time and money into my marketing skills. Somewhere along that journey I realised there's a perception that marketers are the ones that help business owners to make money and accountants are the ones who handle that.
Actually, there's so much more that I can do to help small business owners to not only understand their money and know how to manage it for [00:11:00] themselves, I can actually help them to make more. Lots more money. Now that is the biggest focus of both my one on one program and group program, building money skills in small business owners so that they can make more money and A bigger impact on the world.
[00:11:17]
After 24 years of working with small businesses, I'm still as obsessed with small business as the eight year old version of me who fell in love with small business in an ice cream van. I'm now the founder of Peach Business and Good Money Club, an investor in multiple small and medium businesses, and now the host of Money Secrets, a podcast where we'll uncover the secrets to making more money and impact
through our small businesses.
I'm thrilled you're here.
[00:11:53]
Thank you so much for listening right up to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Money Secrets, where we talk about the money secrets of successful small business owners. [00:12:00] If you enjoyed the episode, I'd love it if you subscribe to the podcast. But leave us a review or share this episode with one of your friends.
I hope you learned something. I hope you got a new perspective and I really hope you enjoyed the listening experience.
