[00:00:00] Intro Peach-opoly series
This episode is one part of a series unpacking my brand campaign, Peachopoly. I cannot wait to share the behind the scenes of how we pulled this crazy thing together. You're going to be hearing from everybody who was involved in the campaign, because I wanna really show what goes into creating something like this. I really hope you enjoy.
Fi
Hello, we're back on the Money Secrets podcast as part of the Peachopoly series, and today we are gonna talk about episode two, which stars the amazing Megan Winter, who is the founder of Good Kind Media. She is a meta ads expert, and she has a team of five. And in this episode, you are going to hear Megan and me talking about what she lands on on the [00:01:00] Peachopoly board, which is your next hire.
So here is the episode, and I'll come back afterwards.
Peach-oploy episode 3
Oh, this is a good one. I'm ready, I think. Am I? Oh, I don't know. Fi, what do you think? Ooh, your next hire. Maybe. I'm just not sure that's what I should be spending my money on right now. Mate, you are great at managing your money. This is definitely the right move.
Let's go shopping. Look, you're a great marketer, so bringing the money in is kind of easy for you, yeah? I mean, yeah. Revenue is great, I love our clients, and we've got a steady flow of leads. Spending the money is where things get a little bit tricky though, yeah? Yeah. I mean, we have the money, I just don't know where to spend it because I've made bad decisions in the past.
Look, I get it. Let's make a really good decision together. There's so many things you could spend your money on: a campaign, coaching, a new website, admin, meta ads, or a marketing [00:02:00] s- ... Whoa, you can buy any of these, but what makes the most sense right now? I think you need help with your client delivery to me.
That is your next hire
Okay, makes sense. I mean, what I really want is a contractor, but what everyone keeps telling me is that I need an employee, but I've tried that before, and it really doesn't sit well. Who cares? Hiring contractors suits you and your business model. So what you're saying is that I can actually afford to find a contractor with all the right ingredients to suit me and my business?
Absolutely. Okay, let's ring it up Ding. If you keep doing what you're doing and managing your money well, there's always gonna be money for the things that matter. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Wait, have you guys got chicken here?
Fi
So now that you've heard the episode, I want to explain a few things because you were listening to the video rather than watching it.[00:03:00]
So like many of the agency owners that I work with, Megan is really good at bringing money in. I mean, you would hope so as a marketing agency. Like, I find that a lot of marketers and marketing agencies, meta ads agencies, social media agencies, bringing money in tends to be easier for them than working out what to do with it once it's come in.
So what Megan and I did was we went to the supermarket, and at the supermarket Megan was able to look at the different things that she might spend her money on. And we made this hilarious, if I say so myself, um, pretend supermarket where she could buy an employee, she could pay the ATO, she could invest in a new website, she could create her own campaign.
And what we were talking through is something that a lot of, um, a lot of businesses struggle with working out how to manage their money, but [00:04:00] particularly growing service providers and growing product businesses. When a business is growing, the money coming in and out starts to get more complex, more layered.
There's just more coming in and therefore there's gonna be more going out. And so with Megan, we use the Profit First system. We don't talk about that in the episode, but the Profit First system is something that I put in place with all of my Good Money Club and one-on-one clients. It's a book. You can go and read it.
There's quite a few episodes already on the Money Secrets podcast about Profit First, which you can go back to. But with Megan, what we were talking about is, okay, I've got money to spend. I know that my business is growing, and that there's something that I need to invest in, but I'm not sure what that is.
Because I know Megan's business, I know that there is a lot of demand for her meta ads services. I also know that she has [00:05:00] support in other parts of her business. And so what I can see for her is that she actually needs another meta ads manager. She needs another person to be delivering client work, and I know that because Megan and I work closely together in Good Money Club.
We've been working together now for about two years I think it is. So- We go to the supermarket, Megan's looking at all of the different options. We talk about the fact that getting some help with client delivery, AKA another meta ads manager or an account manager. Then we come to the question of whether that is going to be a contractor or an employee.
Now, I think this decision is actually harder than most people give it credit for, and I actually see a lot of accountants giving pretty bad advice on this topic, I've gotta say. I hear a lot of, um, people who, you know, have worked with another accountant or a coach before me, and the advice they've been given is to compare [00:06:00] what it's gonna cost an employee to work for you over a full year Compared to what it would cost to have a contractor to do the same role.
And I just think that's a really limited way of looking at this decision. There are a lot of differences between an employee and a contractor, and because I know how Megan operates, I know how she thrives, contractors work really well in her business. That's why I made the recommendation that, yes, a contractor is the right approach here, too.
Now, funnily enough, Megan gets advice from other people. She's been in business for a really long time. I think she's 15 years this year, and she's been told by a lot of coaches and advisors that she should be hiring employees. But I disagree. I think the choice between a contractor and an employee has a lot to do with how the founder operates.
So some founders absolutely thrive on having a team [00:07:00] of employees that they can mentor and coach and build their skills. They, you know, feel really comfortable that there's enough clients to be able to pay the salaries of all of those team members. They thrive on that kind of people management and, you know, helping to develop the careers of their team, and that's fantastic.
But there's also founders out there who aren't really motivated by that. They love working with contractors who can be much more self-sufficient. And it's not necessarily even a financial decision. It's more of a decision around what works for me and what works for my business model and what works for the way that I kind of operate as a leader in this business.
So when you're comparing the cost of a wage and super and other on costs that come with a, an employee, and you're trying to compare that to the cost of a contractor, [00:08:00] you're not comparing apples to apples. So if you're trying to make the decision between a contractor and employee, a couple of things to consider.
Is this an ongoing role, first of all? Like, is this a project or is it an ongoing role? And do I want to have somebody working for me all through the year? That can be fantastic from a, you know, reliability point of view and for knowing that you can plan out your workload and that your clients are gonna be taken care of and that you're going to have an employee who's pretty much sort of dedicated to your business.
But You also need to account for the six weeks that you'll be paying them that they won't be working. Four weeks of annual leave, two weeks of public holidays, and, you know, maybe there's a little bit of sick leave there too. So you're actually paying for six weeks worth of work that isn't going... There's no work being done.
A lot of people forget that [00:09:00] simple fact when they're trying to compare a contractor to an employee. The other thing about an employee is, bless them, we love them, we love it when we get an amazing employee, but they're not... They don't tend to be as driven as specialist contractors. They might not be as self-sufficient.
So it might be that they will eventually be really good at the job, but they either need some time to kind of embed themselves into your systems, or they need to upskill in a couple of things that are quite specific to your business. Maybe you're trying to hire somebody that's a junior or a mid-weight person, and you're hoping that over time they will end up having the skills of a more senior marketer or ads manager or whatever it is But when you compare that to a contractor, if you get the right contractor, and of course all of this requires really great contracts in place between you and the contractor, and [00:10:00] in a lot of cases you still need to pay superannuation for your contractors.
Actually, my advice is often that if you are working with a sole trader, um, it's actually, m- in most cases, it's better to be paying their superannuation as part of their fee than leaving it unspoken and uncalculated, and then having issues down the track if the ATO comes and looks at the arrangement and decides, "Actually, I know they're not your employee, but they can still be deemed to be a worker, which means that you are obligated to pay their superannuation."
So a lot of my clients, a lot of businesses actually make that part of our contracts is that we pay super as part of the agreed fee that that person is receiving. Of course, if the contractor is a company, you don't pay superannuation to a company. So that's a much clearer, um, kind of agreement where the fee is the fee.
So when you hire a contractor, [00:11:00] if you get the right contractor, that person is gonna be self-sufficient. Like for example, when you hire me as your business and finance strategist, you don't give me a job description. I'm the one driving the work. I know exactly what we're going to do. I know how we're gonna do it.
I know when we're going to do it, and so I'm driving the process rather than you. Of course, it's a collaboration. We're co-creating your business plan or your financial roadmap or whatever we're working on, but it's me driving that process, not you. When you work with Megan, who stars in the episode, she will be the one driving your Meta Ads account or training you to use Meta Ads.
You're not giving her instructions about what to do. So I think comparing a contractor to an employee isn't oranges for oranges or apples for apples, and I think just looking at the financial amount across the year doesn't really tell the whole [00:12:00] story It's also getting increasingly more difficult to terminate an employee's employment.
Uh, even in small business, which used to be a lot more flexible in terms of hiring and terminating employees, it's getting harder and harder to terminate somebody's employment. Now, I do not advocate for being a bad employer or doing anything that is against the law or is immoral or unethical with your employees.
However, there's plenty of instances where the employee that you've hired just is not the right fit, and it can be much more difficult to end an employment relationship than it can be to end a relationship with a contractor. So generally, a contractor will have in their agreement that there's a four-week notice period or a two-month notice period or whatever it is.
The terms will be written down and agreed to between the two of you. So I suppose when you're considering, am I looking for an [00:13:00] employee or a contractor, you've gotta think about, do I wanna mentor and develop a team member, or do I wanna hire a team member who already has the exact skills that I'm looking for?
And look, not all contractors are perfect either. So people are people. We still need to do the same kind of due diligence and familiarization in getting to know each other re- regardless of whether we're hiring an employee or a contractor. But back to the story, Megan decided to hire a contractor because that is what works for her business model.
So if you're in a similar situation, everything comes back to, does my business model and my way of working support having a team of employees or having a team of contractors? Another thing that we were talking about in the episode is that when you are really great at bringing money into your business, which I know a lot of you listening will be, if you're a marketer, if you are even adjacent to the marketing kinda field, [00:14:00] it's probably safe to say that you will be really good at bringing money in, at attracting new clients, at getting new business.
But the spending of your money is perhaps where your weak point comes in. So I cannot recommend Profit First more. It is a money management system, and when you have a great money management system in place, it means that making financial decisions becomes so much easier and so much faster. So this is something that we spend a lot of time in Good Money Club working through.
It's also something that I spend a lot of time working with my one-on-one clients with to make sure that their Profit First setup or their money management setup is working, and it works for their business, and they have a process in place to make sure they have money for the things that they need when they need them.
But also, that they're letting their cash flow help them understand whether or not the business is [00:15:00] truly profitable. So if you're listening to this episode and you are a marketing agency and you're not using Profit First, consider it. If you are a marketing agency or any business that thinks, "Wow, I would actually really benefit from having a money management system.
I notice that it takes me a really long time to make decisions about money," um, get in touch. Find my contact details in the show notes. Send me a DM to peach.business. Let me know what you're working through, and I can let you know how I can help you. Good Money Club could be a good option, or working with me one-on-one could be a good option.
There's also plenty of podcast episodes in the backlog that you'll be able to find that talk about Profit First and money management. So I really hope you can find a way to manage your money that works for you And for now, Megan Winter and I are gonna help her find her next contractor, and I'll see you in the next [00:16:00] episode
