Financial Fitness with Tracey Bissett

01/07/21 • 17 min

Interview Connections | The Leading Podcast Booking Agency

Today is a special client feature episode of Rock the Podcast with finance expert Tracey Bissett! Tracey is on a mission to redefine the world's economic future by increasing the financial literacy of entrepreneurs, also known as financial fitness. With over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry, Tracey can help entrepreneurs in all industries, both on and offline.

As the founder, President, and Chief Financial Fitness Trainer at Bissett Financial Fitness, Inc., Tracey helps her clients understand and improve their level of financial fitness with a goal of increased confidence using their financial skills so they can be successful in their financial life. In addition, Tracey is a professor at Centennial College’s School of Business program and regularly leads speaking engagements to increase financial fitness awareness.

Tracey starts the episode by talking to us about entrepreneurship and cashflow. Most early entrepreneurs are looking at their profit and loss, and their sales and expenses. Tracey notes that depending on your business, just because you make a sale does not mean that you necessarily have the cash in the bank. There can be a disconnect for business owners between sales and cashflow.

Cashflow is money coming in, money going out, and the timing in which that happens. If you’re in a coaching or service business, you’ll often have payment plans for your clients. As the owner, you might track the sale as it comes in, but you’ll get the money monthly. That’s where this disconnect between what the sales says and what you have in the bank occurs.

Cashflow is the lifeblood of any business. Cashflow dictates whether you keep going or you don’t. Tracey has seen companies go under in as quick as 90 days when they don’t have cashflow coming in!

Another issue Tracey addresses with her clients is billing and collection. Tracey worked with a client who had over $300,000 in sales, but lost $100,000 because she billed them too late and was unable to actually collect the money. Collection is critically important to understand in your business. Entrepreneurs need to understand what is normal for their industry, make sure they have good billing and collection practices, and that they’re actually keeping track that the money is coming in.

Jess had a similar experience starting out as an entrepreneur. After Jess’ first sales call, she told her brand new client that she would bill him at the end of the month. He gave her a great tip, which is “collect the money up front.”

Tracey encourages entrepreneurs to talk to other people in their industry to find out the best practices in billing and collection, because it varies in different industries. It’s important to find out where the boundaries are and to be transparent with your clients about your billing practices. Many business owners will offer a discount if their client pays up front as opposed to in monthly packages, which can be very helpful for entrepreneurs who no longer have to reach out every month for payment.

Tracey also notes that mindset plays a huge role in payments. The main driver if someone is going to pay you is not if they have the money, it’s their character. If they have the willingness to pay you, they will.

On the topic of mindset, Tracey and Jess also discuss the problems entrepreneurs face when they are pricing their services. According to Tracey, service providers are typically bad with their pricing-- they often don’t charge enough! When deciding on your prices, Tracey suggests factoring in expenses and profit margin as well as doing some research into your target market. You’ll want to ensure that your target market wants to pay for what you’re selling.

Tracey also recommends that entrepreneurs and business owners take a regular salary from their business, and factor that into their pricing. If you want to apply for a line of credit, you’ll have to prove that you have the money to pay it back! That steady income will also be imperative for you to meet your goals. Increasing your prices will also give you more freedom to hire a team to take on more clients and invest in marketing and visibility to help you grow even more.

Jess and Tracey agree that oftentimes entrepreneurs face mindset blocks when it comes to their pricing. Tracey believes that we get our mindset about money when we are very young, about 5-7 years old. This mindset comes from our family and our emotions toward money. People need to be observant with how they react when things pertain to money, and if you don’t like your reaction, you can change it.

The bulk of the population comes from a place of scarcity, and therefore has a scarcity mindset with money. It’s okay if you feel that way, but you don’t have to feel that way! Observe your reactions, then make some changes. It’s not going to happen overnight but one thing you can do is practice gratitude to ch...

Previous Episode

Company Vision

Jess and Margy are the co owners of Interview Connections, the first and leading podcast booking agency. This is the podcast where you will learn all about podcast guesting and how to leverage podcast interviews to grow your brand awareness.

On today’s episode of Rock the Podcast, Jess and Margy discuss the importance of defining your company vision, and their experience of creating the company vision for Interview Connections. Jess and Margy always had goals that they set for themselves, and for the business. It wasn’t until recently that they decided they needed a larger vision statement for the company.

Many entrepreneurs have personal goals that they set when they begin their business, but when you start to build a team and bring your company to new heights, it’s important to cast a vision separately from what you want in your own life. Jess and Margy admit that they often collapsed “goals” with “vision,” but they knew they needed to create a vision that their team could rally around.

The Interview Connections Vision Statement is in three parts:

Our vision is to continue to lead the industry as the highest quality and most innovative podcast booking agency in the world
Our vision is to transform entrepreneurs lives by transforming their business with visibility and strategy
Our vision is to amplify the voices of entrepreneurs who embody integrity, authenticity and leadership

Part I: Our vision is to continue to lead the industry as the highest quality and most innovative podcast booking agency in the world.

Their first draft of the Interview Connections vision statement was that the company would be the best booking agency in the world. Jess and Margy decided to get a bit more specific, and indicate their ambition to being the highest quality agency. Interview Connections goes above and beyond with a specific podcast show research department, an in-depth discovery process, weekly check-ins, and a dedicated client success strategist.

Interview Connections also aims to be the most innovative booking agency. We’re constantly asking, “Where is the industry going? What is the role that podcast guesting plays in an entrepreneur’s life, and how can we optimize that in their business?”

Part II: Our vision is to transform entrepreneurs lives by transforming their business with visibility and strategy

What you get with Interview Connections is more than just bookings. What lights us up is when our clients have incredible experiences that change their lives on podcast interviews. It’s really about the transformation that happens to business owners as they increase their visibility as they share their story. Podcast guesting transforms how they do their business and it transforms them as people. They are having these incredible conversations, allowing themselves to be seen, and really developing themselves as both people and entrepreneurs.

We want to be taking people through a journey. Asking them, “What is possible when you make this leap in your business? After a year of being interviewed every single week, increasing your visibility, and having a strategy in place to convert leads from this visibility, what does your life look like?”

More than creating profit, a visible entrepreneur can actually step into work knowing that people see them as the expert that they always knew they were. There’s a huge transformation in confidence when you can show up to work knowing where your leads are going to come from.

2020 was the first year that Margy truly committed to being on 4-8 shows a month. She had never been this consistent, and it has totally changed Margy. Not just as an entrepreneur, but that visibility has transformed Margy as a person as well. It’s changed how she’s showing up every day in her life. Margy has been transformed from having these consistent conversations with fellow entrepreneurs on their podcasts.

Part III: Our vision is to amplify the voices of entrepreneurs who embody integrity, authenticity and leadership

Several months ago, Jess and Margy put out an episode on how to be exclusive with your client base. At Interview Connections, we are booking our clients on podcasts, we are helping get their message out in the world. We cannot work with people, when we do not believe in their message! For us at Interview Connections to continue to grow, we have to feel connected and aligned with entrepreneurs that we’re working with.

We have three important values that our clients must embody: integrity, authenticity, and leadership. When you first start out in business, you’re not putting as much thought about who you are working with. Because you’ve just got this service you’re providing, it’s easy to say great let’s work with anyone!

Ask yourself, “What is my legacy? What is the impact I’m having on the world? What is the impact that my company is having...

Next Episode

No Time For Visibility

On today’s episode of Rock the Podcast, Jess and Margy what to do when you feel like you just don’t have time to commit to your visibility. We are asking the question - where is your time going?

We know that there are entrepreneurs out there who know that consistent visibility is incredibly important, but they feel like they simply don’t have time. We at Interview Connections recommend getting on podcasts at least once a week, every single week. Many entrepreneurs that we talk to think that it sounds like a great idea, but they can’t see how to fit it into their schedules.

The first thing Jess and Margy recommend is using a calendar system. Unless you start putting tasks down into a calendar, how will you keep track of your commitments? The second step Jess and Margy discuss is then auditing that calendar. As an entrepreneur, you need to ask yourself, “Is my calendar reflecting my vision and my highest priorities in the business?”

Are you spending time where you should be spending time? Visibility is being seen and heard by more people, so you can get more leads, more clients, and more speaking opportunities. Visibility is a major domino in changing the game for your business and getting to the next level of where you want to be. You don’t have time not to do things that raise your visibility consistently!

Look at your calendar and ask yourself, “Am I spending time on tasks that are not important? Am I doing tasks that someone else besides me could do and should do?”

Jess and Margy also stress the importance of putting those important tasks on your calendar, because if they’re not on your calendar, they likely won’t get done (or at least get done in an acceptable timeline).

Margy is an expert in protecting her time. Both Jess and Margy love using scheduling blocks, and batching tasks in specific blocks of time. Margy has a specific block set aside for podcast interviews, so she never feels overwhelmed with other tasks interfering with her interviews. Podcast interviews don’t have to take over your schedule! Try and create blocks specifically for them, even just one hour a week for interviews.

If you don’t have time to work on your visibility, it points to a bigger issue of how you’re spending or organizing your time. It’s something that we’ve all been through - how many entrepreneurs and business owners have complained about not having enough time?

The key to solving this is being really proactive and not reactive. Set time aside for your highest priorities. Showing up the way you need to be and building the momentum that you need, should be at the very top of your priority list as an entrepreneur.

If you feel like you don’t have the time to do the legwork, you’re right. That’s why you can hire an agency, like us here at Interview Connections, to book you! While we recommend that you outsource the heavy lifting, you need to make the time to show up and connect, give value, share your story, and make those listeners want to take the next step with you.

By objectively looking at your calendar, you can compare your story of what you’re doing and what you have time for, with what is actually happening. You can see if your actions are in alignment with your goals!

Another important tip is to stay in your zone of genius! Do not waste time on tasks that drain you if there is someone on your team who can do that task - and oftentimes those team members are much better suited to do that task than you are.

Be specific about your zone of genius: it’s the things that you are both good at and that you like doing. Do more of those tasks and less time doing tasks out of obligation, or “I should just do it because it’s easy.” Spending your time on those tasks could really be draining you of the energy you need for the tasks in your zone of genius.

If you're an entrepreneur you probably want freedom. Does calendaring make you feel constricted?

Before Jess started really using her calendar, she would come in to work every day wondering, “What’s today going to be?” Margy suggested putting tasks in Jess’s calendar, which Jess initially resisted. But Jess ended up feeling that she was much more productive and effective when she laid out her tasks for the day and committed specific time slots to them.

Jess also brings up the idea of having integrity with yourself. If you look at your calendar and you have dedicated 30 minutes to a task, you need to do it to maintain that integrity with yourself. And most importantly, when you look at your calendar you need to ask, “What am I going to be doing that is moving the needle for my business?”

When you actually ...