Healing Hidden Trauma and Succeeding in Business — The Cash Flow CFO Podcast Ep. 56 | Transcript

Episode Introduction

I join host Andrea Jensen of The Cash Flow CFO Podcast for a rich conversation about the intersection of relational trauma, money psychology, and entrepreneurship. In this episode, I share how my own childhood trauma background — and the healing work I’ve done over the years — shaped not only my personal life but the multi-seven-figure business I’ve built: Evergreen Counseling, a boutique trauma-informed therapy center in Berkeley, California. We explore how unresolved relational trauma shows up in the way ambitious women relate to money, risk, and success, and why the psychological work is inseparable from the financial work of building a thriving business.

For driven women who keep bumping up against invisible ceilings in their businesses or find themselves caught in fear-based financial patterns despite outward success, this conversation offers both validation and practical insight. Andrea and I discuss the concept of money as a portal into our personal work, the power of EMDR to rewire fear-based neural pathways, and the financial management frameworks every growing business needs — from the four-bucket revenue model to budget-versus-actual dashboards. Whether you are a therapist, entrepreneur, or simply a driven woman navigating the emotional terrain of building something from the ground up, this episode will meet you where you are.

Key Takeaways

• Relational trauma — occurring in power-imbalanced relationships between a child and caregiver — profoundly shapes how driven women show up in business, especially around money, risk, and self-worth.
• Money is one of the most powerful mirrors for uncovering unprocessed personal content: the financial patterns we struggle with often point directly to the psychological work waiting to be done.
• EMDR therapy is a highly effective tool for rewiring deeply grooved neural pathways that keep historical fear and scarcity responses activated in the present, even when actual safety and abundance exist.
• Entrepreneurship and long-term relationships are two of the most powerful laboratories for seeing your unprocessed material — what shows up in your business often reflects what lives in your psychology.
• Building a therapy practice (or any service business) requires solid financial infrastructure: understanding the four core revenue buckets — cost of goods, G&A, marketing, and profit — is essential for sustainable growth.
• Many ambitious women from relational trauma backgrounds harbor unconscious financial templates — such as the belief that abundance can disappear at any moment — that limit their capacity to invest in growth or raise their rates.
• Hiring a practice manager and building a leadership team to handle HR complexity is one of the most important structural moves for scaling a multi-clinician therapy practice.
• Staying nimble and adapting to technological change is critical: businesses that fail to evolve are now at greater risk than newer ones, even if they have survived past the traditional early-stage danger zone.

Notable Quotes

“Money becomes this extraordinary portal into somebody’s personal work, because money will help show us and reflect back to us what our personal work is and what we might need to attend to.”

“If you wanna know what your stuff is, if you wanna know what your personal work is, try being in business for yourself or being in a long-term romantic relationship. Those are two very powerful mirrors to see what your unprocessed content is.”

“I see women who come to me with a million in the bank — enough security buffers — and yet they still believe that any moment they’re going to end up on the street. That’s an example of deeply, deeply ingrained neural pathways that have been set by historical experiences that we do need to work through.”

“I created what I needed, and it grew from there. I launched this therapy center when my daughter was three months old — now she and it have both just turned five. We have a staff of 20 clinicians and see about 450 people a week.”

“Combining the mindset work, the psychological work required to process our unprocessed material from the past, combined with tools like the Financial Management Dashboard — what an unstoppable combination.”

Topics Covered

• Relational Trauma and Entrepreneurship: How early childhood relational wounds — including neglect, invalidation, and emotional harm — shape the way driven women approach business, money, and risk as adults.
• Money Psychology: The ways in which financial patterns (overworking, undercharging, hoarding, fear of investing) are often symptoms of unprocessed historical trauma rather than rational responses to present-day circumstances.
• EMDR Therapy for Business Owners: How Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing helps rewire fear-based neural pathways so that past trauma no longer hijacks present-day financial and professional decision-making.
• Building Evergreen Counseling: The origin story of Annie’s boutique trauma-informed therapy center in Berkeley — from a solo vision to a 20-clinician practice serving approximately 450 clients per week — and the unexpected complexity of HR management, multi-state compliance, and California labor law.
• Financial Management for Therapy Practices: Andrea Jensen’s breakdown of the four revenue buckets (cost of goods/services, G&A, marketing, and profit), the Financial Management Dashboard, and how budget-versus-actual analysis empowers business owners to make informed decisions quickly.
• Pricing and Risk Tolerance: Why misaligned financial percentages often point to a pricing problem — and how a business owner’s psychological relationship to risk shapes their capacity to invest in growth or take on financing.
• Staying Nimble in a Changing Market: The emerging data showing that older, more established businesses now face greater failure risk than newer ones due to slower technology adoption — and why staying adaptable is non-negotiable.

Full Transcript

Andrea Jensen (Host): [upbeat music] Hey, everybody. This is Andrea Jensen from The Cashflow CFO, and you’re listening to The Cashflow CFO Podcast, the show that explores the financial side of running a business for people who wanna maximize profitability and scale with confidence. If you want to make smart financial decisions based on data and put more of your hard-earned profits into your pocket, this is the podcast for you. This episode of The Cashflow CFO Podcast is brought to you by The Cashflow CFO. Did you know that on average business owners have up to 84% of their personal net worth tied up in their business? Our virtual CPAs and CFOs, as well as accounting and bookkeeping experts, empower business owners just like you to make big leaps that help them maximize profitability and scale with confidence. Visit thecashflowcfo.com for more information, and thank you for listening. Hey, everyone. It’s Andrea, and our guest for today is Annie Wright. Annie is a licensed psychotherapist and a relational trauma recovery specialist. She’s deeply committed to supporting ambitious, upwardly mobile women who come from backgrounds of relational trauma. She founded and runs Evergreen Counseling, a boutique trauma-informed therapy center in Berkeley, California. In addition to her direct clinical work, Annie also runs an online course called Hard Families, Good Boundaries, a transformative video-based program that helps folks deal more effectively with the difficult family members who may be in their lives. I don’t know anyone who has those. [laughs]

Annie Wright: [laughs]

Andrea Jensen (Host): Annie is a published mental health author, with her opinions appearing in Business Insider, Forbes, NBC, The Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and more. Every bit of Annie’s work in the world, her clinical work, the center she founded, the course she runs, and every article she writes is designed to support ambitious, upwardly mobile women who come from relational trauma backgrounds. It’s her own story, and now it’s her life’s work. I love this. Welcome to the show, Annie.

Annie Wright: Aw. Thank you, Andrea. I’m so, so happy to be here with you. Thank you for such a great intro.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Oh, yes. It was beautifully written, and it is so eloquently you, so I’m — I love that. And I’m so excited to talk to you because we share a lot of the same women that we have the opportunity and the pleasure of working with, and upwardly mobile women. Hello.

Annie Wright: Mm-hmm.

Andrea Jensen (Host): There’s lots of those in our groups. [laughs]

Annie Wright: [laughs] Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yes. Yes. And we met actually in one of those groups, The Trust, with Ali Brown, and we’re surrounded by upwardly mobile women in there just crushing it in business and doing life on their own terms, which is so, so, so cool.

Annie Wright: Mm-hmm.

Andrea Jensen (Host): So I’m excited to have you on the show and, you know, talking to our audience. I just feel like there’s so much overlap between money and the physical, what it does to your nervous system, and then all the stuff we’re bringing from our growing up, right? The things that we’ve picked up along the way, our baggage. I would love to just turn it over to you and share with us a little bit about how did you get started? How has this work changed your life as an entrepreneur, as a mom, as you know, all of the hats that we wear in the world? I’d love to just learn all about that.

Annie Wright: Absolutely. Oh my gosh. This is gonna be a juicy conversation.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yes.

Annie Wright: Um, so the how of how I came to the work is, you know, in a nutshell, I’m sort of the penultimate example of what’s personal is professional. I arrived at this specialty, to this work, because I myself come from a pretty egregious childhood trauma background. I didn’t know that at the time. And then in my mid-20s when I started to know what I didn’t know, and began my own healing journey, I decided there was very little literature out there on what qualified as my childhood trauma background. So I decided I would create a niche in the space, talking more about relational trauma, which as I define it is what occurs usually between a child and a caregiver in the context of a power imbalanced relationship that undermines the child’s safety, wellbeing, and dignity, right? And it can, of course, exist on a spectrum. And when I say that I work with ambitious, upwardly mobile women, well, that’s also my life story. I mean, there were times where we were in poverty. I was the first in my family to go to college, let alone the Ivy League, and first to break many different cycles — graduate school, becoming a multi seven-figure entrepreneur and self-made multimillionaire. So there are a lot of elements of upwardly mobile and ambitious that I identify with. But I do wanna say for anyone listening, I also define ambitious and upwardly mobile not necessarily just in financial terms, but really anyone who’s looking to break cycles of trauma or dysfunction in their family history and do better for themselves and their family than what came before them. So I wanna just widen the lens there for any members of your audience who are like, “Well, I don’t entirely identify with Ivy League or multimillionaire yet.” And then, you know, in terms of what role has doing the psychological work played in my own life, it has done everything for it. I would not be where I am professionally, I would not be where I am psychologically, as a mother, as a friend, as a colleague, as an entrepreneur in the world, if it weren’t for having attended to the gaps in my own psychological foundation. And I think what’s very salient and relevant for your audience, Andrea, is that I know that there is a direct correlation between the amount of financial success I’ve achieved in the world and the achievements that are still coming my way, as a result of the foundational work that I’ve done. So often, so many of us from relational trauma histories — well, let me step back for a second. Any of us, regardless of whether or not we come from a relational trauma history or a childhood abuse history, we have money stuff. Like, if you’re a human, you have money stuff, all of us, period, full stop. What’s also true is that those of us who come from relational trauma histories tend to have more significant gaps in our developmental foundations, meaning challenges with boundaries, challenges with self-esteem, challenges asserting ourselves, challenges taking proper care of ourselves, right? And so when you imagine those deficits applied to the content area of money, well, you can imagine that you arrive maybe into adulthood or your professional entrepreneurial journey with even more content to work through.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Mm-hmm.

Annie Wright: So I always think that money becomes this extraordinary portal into somebody’s personal work, right, regardless, again, of their background, because money will help show us and reflect back to us what our personal work is and what we might need to attend to.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Mm.

Annie Wright: So you can tell, like, I have a lot to say about this, but I’ll pause and just hear what comes up for you when I share all this.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yeah. No, 100%, absolutely. You know, I think that there’s, like you said, you’re widening the lens of this conversation because the spectrum of our stuff that we’re bringing into adulthood with us, it could be something that you didn’t even realize was there. And it’s very, you know, in the big scheme of things, right, you’re like, “Oh, that was fine, but you know, it happened, and whatever, and I moved on.” But our — I mean, I don’t wanna get too deep into like the physicality of it, but like it’s in our epigenetics. So I think that this is such a relevant conversation, and for anyone listening who’s kinda like they keep bumping up against something in their growth, and especially, you know, what’s the saying about entrepreneurship? I’m sure you’re giggling, so you know what it is.

Annie Wright: There’s a lot to say about entrepreneurship. [laughs]

Andrea Jensen (Host): [laughs]

Annie Wright: Well, I’m not sure what the saying is, but I’ll tell you, Andrea, what I always tell folks. I’m like, “If you wanna know what your stuff is, if you wanna know what your personal work is, try being in business for yourself or being in a long-term romantic relationship. Those are two very powerful mirrors to see what your unprocessed content is.”

Andrea Jensen (Host): Absolutely. The best self-development is through entrepreneurship, because you can’t hide from it.

Annie Wright: I agree. I agree. It really becomes the laboratory with which we actually get to put into practice all the things we need to work on. I personally do think that a lot of my healing work came in tandem with becoming an entrepreneur and vice versa, right? Because of my healing work, I could be the entrepreneur I am today. It’s kind of hard to separate the two.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yeah. No, absolutely. Fully agree with that. And you know, through my journey as well, there was a lot of — I came from corporate, and corporate for a woman in finance was not the most pleasurable place to be. And when I left corporate, I had to really do some work to go, “You don’t have to sit at the desk from 9:00 to 5:00,” because I was just so deeply ingrained in that. And I just felt the biggest sense of guilt when I was not doing all the things that I thought I had to do in corporate, you know?

Annie Wright: Absolutely.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Which is really funny because when I was in corporate, I would be sitting at my desk going, “This is ridiculous. I finished my work in five hours, and now I have to sit here.” So anyway.

Annie Wright: And that’s just one example, right, of a story, a template we have about what it is to earn our money, to be a good employee, what will happen if we step outside of that mold. I mean, this is just one of 100,000 examples of what can activate our nervous system and be an unconscious template that we move through the world with. And that’s maybe on sort of what I would call like the lighter end of the spectrum.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Mm-hmm.

Annie Wright: On the more severe end of the spectrum, right, for any of us who grew up with financial insecurity or housing insecurity or food insecurity, we may find ourselves locked into stories of, “If I don’t work 80 to 90-hour weeks, if I don’t do all the work, or if I don’t hang on to every single penny, God forbid I invest into something, it will all come crashing down.” And what’s really interesting, Andrea, in my work is when I see women who come to me with a million in the bank, or enough security buffers, and yet they still believe that any moment they’re going to end up on the street, right?

Andrea Jensen (Host): Mm.

Annie Wright: That’s an example of deeply, deeply ingrained and deeply grooved neural pathways that have been set by historical experiences that we do need to work through, because those deep neural grooves are lighting up the limbic system of the brain — creating a cascade of fear and anxiety and cortisol throughout the body for that individual anytime anything remotely triggering happens to them, despite the abundance of actual safety around them. So that’s where my work usually comes in as a highly trained trauma clinician doing EMDR with these individuals to help rewire neural pathways so that our historical traumatic content is not lodged in the brain and lighting up neural pathways that are no longer relevant to our present-day reality. So that’s where it becomes really fun working with ambitious, upwardly mobile women. Once we see what their content is, resolving it, and then freeing them up to have different lived experiences.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yeah. That’s beautiful.

Annie Wright: Mm-hmm.

Andrea Jensen (Host): I think that’s so, so, so, so impactful, and yet it’s almost something that’s not talked about enough, is the other side of that. You know? I was just having this conversation with my mom, and I was like, “Why are people not talking about hormones enough?” [laughs] And she’s texting me back going, “You’d think in this day and age.” She’s like, “My generation, okay, I get it. But your generation? Like, come on, people. Get with the program.” [laughs]

Annie Wright: Oh, boy. Yeah. I think the more we can do to support our nervous systems and our hormonal health before we arrive at perimenopause, let alone menopause, perhaps the easier experience we will have. Not that I think it’s necessarily easy for anyone. But certainly I join you in wishing there was just more conversation in general about many aspects of women’s health, including their psychological health.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So tell me a little bit more — if somebody’s listening and they’re like, “Yeah, I just thought trauma was, like, physical or emotional.” I love that you said it could be housing insecurity, food insecurity. There are so many other things that I don’t think people give enough value to, the way it can impact you as you move through adulthood. I’d love to just know, like, what are some of the ways that you could say, “Okay, if you feel like this, this could be something that you’re coming up against”?

Annie Wright: Definitely. So this is one of my favorite conversations on the planet, a little psychoeducation, a little teachable moment. Most people, even in this day and age, still believe that trauma is a single incident event that might happen to, let’s say, a war veteran or certainly a car crash or a rape. And by all means, those can be and are very traumatic experiences generally. But nine years ago when I started writing online, I wanted to widen the conversation about trauma in general. The definition of trauma that I really subscribe to is not just that one stereotypical idea of trauma, but rather this definition comes from a clinician I really respect, Karen Saakvitne, who posits that trauma is a subjective experience that overwhelms the brain’s body and mind and frankly overwhelms our ability to cope. So when seen through that lens, we can widen the perspective on what counts as trauma. It is not necessarily a discrete set of events. It is an event or set of events or something that takes place over a long period of time that for you subjectively overwhelmed your body and brain’s ability to cope. In addition to that, it’s very important for us to collectively realize that trauma has a couple of discrete categories that we need to be able to know to see ourselves in. There are acute single incident traumas, right? Really scary things that can happen. Car crashes, really bad plane flights, et cetera. There’s also complex developmental trauma that takes place over a long period of time. There’s chronic trauma, which can take the form of growing up in a really unsafe community or perpetual bullying that happens over a couple of years in middle school. And then there’s another bucket I always like to remind people of, too, which is racial trauma, and sort of collective social traumas.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Mm-hmm.

Annie Wright: So when we widen the definition in that way, a lot of us can start to see our stories more accurately. And then the question always becomes, okay, well, how do I know if what I lived through was a trauma? Well, in my field we always say trauma survivors have symptoms, not memories. So what I’m always on the lookout for is: is there a set of symptoms, triggers that feel disproportionate to the event that’s happening at hand that might suggest that something historical is at play? That maybe some unprocessed trauma is here? For instance, with that example I was talking about earlier, the woman who despite having a couple million in the bank feels like every time she opens up her email and sees a message from her boss saying, “Hey, we need to talk,” feels like she’s going to end up on the street. That’s a perfect example of a symptom telling a story that says, “Hey, the past is present here.” There might be some unprocessed trauma, because there’s nothing in your lived reality to suggest you’re going to end up on the street.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Mm-hmm.

Annie Wright: So does that answer the question?

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for that.

Annie Wright: You’re welcome.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Um, I’m gonna switch gears here and talk a little bit about business too, and what you’ve created to help support all of these women, which is absolutely amazing. But I will say, if anybody’s listening to this and they’re kinda like, “Eh, I’m getting the, something’s going on,” right? What should they do before we kinda switch gears and put our business hats on? [laughs]

Annie Wright: Well, just, you know, A, breathe, right? I have a saying — anxiety is excitement without breath. So just breathe into it, okay? Because something is there that’s trying to grab your attention. Take a few deep breaths, and then let’s be curious together. If there’s a lot of discomfort, if you find even just me saying the word trauma is making you cringe, okay, let’s just be mindful. That might be a growth edge of something to look at, right? That could be telling you, “Hey, maybe we do wanna look in this little corner of the room with a flashlight.” So I would just say, take care of yourself certainly, but be mindful that that might be there for a reason.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Mm-hmm. Awesome. Thank you for that.

Annie Wright: Of course.

Andrea Jensen (Host): So I think that it’s always so impressive when someone has something to share with the world, right? You’ve lived something, you’ve figured it out, and now you want other people to have that same relief and that same result. And you’ve built a tremendous practice doing just that. [Ad break — The Cash Flow CFO] I’d love to dig in a little bit and just learn, like, how did you decide that you wanted to have a practice that had the capability and the capacity to serve this many people?

Annie Wright: Hmm. Thank you for asking that. So remember how I was saying that I came from an egregious trauma background but didn’t know that until my mid-20s, right? I then wasted a lot more time bouncing around from general therapist to general therapist attempting to get help, and yes, it was helpful to a certain extent. But what I wish I had really been able to find was a place that was specifically designed for people like me — a place that I could call and explain to an intake coordinator, “This is what’s going on. I feel crazy. What do I need? Can I get some help?” And then be matched with a true trauma-trained clinician to actually create effective, rapid neurological change. So I basically knew when I was going through my graduate school journey and licensure process that I wanted to create the very place that I wish had been available to me 20 years ago. So I set out to do that. Now, to be clear, I have two companies. One is a small LLC where I put psychoeducational information out into the world, because I want people to hear this material and see their stories more clearly. And then B, I wanted to create my therapy center so then those people could then come get the adequate help that they actually needed.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Mm-hmm.

Annie Wright: So to be clear, when I set out building this, I did not know it would be as big as it was, right? [laughs] I launched this therapy center when my daughter was three months old, and now it and her just turned five. And I have a staff of 20 clinicians and four full-time administrative players. We see about 450 people a week. I didn’t know it would be as popular and grow as rapidly as it did, but then, Andrea, that speaks to the need in the market for people who identify with coming from relational trauma backgrounds needing this kind of support.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Mm-hmm.

Annie Wright: So, you know, like so many entrepreneurs, I created what I needed, and it grew from there.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yeah. That’s wonderful. Do you think that the location of your practice plays into that, kind of being in proximity to so many driven [laughs] women?

Annie Wright: [laughs] Yes.

Andrea Jensen (Host): You know, just by nature of that, it was probably such a welcome resource available for them.

Annie Wright: Mm-hmm. I do think so. I do think so. You know, we are located in Berkeley, California, which is at the heart of the Bay Area. And certainly what we have here is a sort of self-selecting population that is ambitious, at least professionally, and very oftentimes academically, because there are so many brilliant institutions all around us.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Mm-hmm.

Annie Wright: So the self-selected population of ambitious and very generally upwardly mobile is already here, and I think what is also true is the more that I have distributed my work in the world and the more that my center gets known for what it actually does, the more we’ve helped people who are first generation or who experienced childhood abuse be able to see themselves and their stories more clearly, and that in combination with the sort of economic privilege of having jobs with good insurance benefits usually gets people into my little therapy center.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yeah. That’s great. It’s such a, you know, it’s like the preparation meets all the things, and it’s just the perfect recipe for fulfilling your life’s mission and also, you know, being able to, as all entrepreneurs are doing — this business is an asset designed to create value. [laughs]

Annie Wright: Yes. Yep. That is 100% true, and boy, you could fill an encyclopedia with all the things I did not know about running a business when I got started.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Oh, goodness.

Annie Wright: But now, five years in, gosh, do I agree with you. Business is an asset designed to create value.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yes, absolutely. Well, tell me a little bit about some of the things that you learned along the way that have really — maybe some tools that you have in place now that you’re like, “Gosh, wish I knew this when I started.”

Annie Wright: How long do we have, Andrea? My goodness.

Andrea Jensen (Host): [laughs]

Annie Wright: Do you mean financial tools, HR tools, management tools? [laughs]

Andrea Jensen (Host): Oh, boy. Yes. I will say hats off — I have a big team as well, W-2 employees. And that in itself is so commendable because it takes a lot. You know, the bigger your team gets, there’s always somebody having a baby or going on vacation or — like, it’s just life, right? But when your team gets big, you’ve got it happening all the time. [laughs]

Annie Wright: All the time. All the time. All the time. In fact, I had to build my leadership team and hire the practice manager almost exclusively for HR management, because as we grew and as we increased our staff, it’s just an enormous amount of work to handle the HR component of a company, period, full stop. So that has been one of the many unexpected things about growing a company — just how complex HR management can be, and how time-consuming.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Mm. Yeah. And we live in the lovely state of California, and we have our own layers of all the things, so. [laughs]

Annie Wright: I always joke that if somebody wants a PhD in running a business, come do it in California. Arguably the hardest place in the world to have a W-2 business and stay compliant with every single labor code, right? Let alone having your employees move to other states spontaneously, and then having to register there and be compliant with all of those laws. California is its own unique beast.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yeah. I think we’re up to seven or eight states where we have team members. And each one, it’s like the full setup, so.

Annie Wright: Same. I’m probably a headache for my CPA because we have to do tax returns for all those states.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Well, I’d love to offer you — what I like to do sometimes with my guests is, ask a CFO. So if you could ask a CFO any question about something in your business, what would it be?

Annie Wright: Oh, gosh. Oh, I love this. Thank you for making yourself available for this. I think a point of curiosity and a thing I’m actively trying to think through and work on right now is: what is the dashboard or the financial management tool that I should create and have in-house that combines both the budget of all my operating expenses — whether it’s fixed and material and software — combined with the salaries and benefits of my administrative team, combined with a tool that somehow illustrates cash flow, so that I can more accurately predict when I can make further investments into the center? How much I should realistically have, especially in a business where when employees leave, they take the profit margin with them. I’m curious — what are one or some of the financial management tools you think that any small, micro company like mine should have for CEO management?

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yes, absolutely. So we have a tool, it’s called the Financial Management Dashboard. And everything you just outlined is contained in this dashboard. It is absolutely amazing. It will bring together all the key performance indicators of your business model. So some of the things, if somebody wanted to create this on their own, component wise — we talk about breaking down every dollar that you generate in revenue into one of four big buckets in your business. Cost of goods sold, or cost of revenue for a service-based business, is one of them. That’s gonna be your direct labor. And that should be a fully burdened rate, so that should include benefits, employer taxes, things like that, so you have a true hourly rate for each of those team members. That’s gonna be your cost of goods or cost of revenue. Your general and administrative, and your marketing, and your profit. And we actually count profit as a bucket, because your profit has to do several things. It’s not just that number at the bottom of your P&L. Because that profit has to pay income taxes, cover distributions or dividends depending on your entity type, service any debt that the business has from your profit bucket, and you’re going to be using that money to reinvest into the business for future growth. So when we look at having those four metrics front and center, that right there is gonna tell you — as a service-based business, you want your cost of goods to be about 40 to 50% of revenue.

Annie Wright: Okay.

Andrea Jensen (Host): You want your general and administrative expenses to be between 15 to 25. Your marketing — that’s gonna depend on your customer acquisition costs, another metric that should be on your dashboard. And that one typically is between 10 and 20% of revenue. And then profit 20 plus. So you’ll have to massage those percentages according to your business model, which is what your CFO would do for you.

Annie Wright: Ah.

Andrea Jensen (Host): And that is the starting point. If you just had at least that much info on a monthly and then year-to-date look, you would be able to quickly — because as owners of businesses, we don’t wanna spend time poring over all these financial reports. We want someone to say, “Give me what I need to know and let me go fix it,” and off I go. And that’s what the dashboard does. It tells you. So if you look at your gauges, like if you’re driving down the road in your car and you can see, oh gosh, my tire pressure is low — I can go and fix that, and go. The same concept applies to looking at your monthly financial dashboard, seeing what is off, and honing in and fixing just that one thing for 30, 60 days, and then you just keep going. And so having the capability to set a budget, set a forecast, use those percentages I just outlined in that budget, and then measure budget versus actual — every month you should be looking at that and going, “Where are the variances, and what does that mean?” Because that’s really where you get down to the nuts and bolts. What does that variance mean, and how do I fix it to get my numbers back where they need to be?

Annie Wright: Oh.

Andrea Jensen (Host): So that you hit your revenue goals for the year. And that’s kind of the quick and dirty way to do that.

Annie Wright: Wow. May I ask a follow-up question?

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yes, absolutely.

Annie Wright: I can imagine I’m not the only person — your listeners are probably squirming in their cars on the drive home. When you named what those percentages should be for those four buckets, my question is: what if you find one of your buckets is heavily skewed, and there’s little room to shift that based on benefits and salaries that you’ve already established?

Andrea Jensen (Host): Right.

Annie Wright: When you say you have the numbers and then you can go off and fix it — are those percentages truly fixed? What if a business looks very different than that?

Andrea Jensen (Host): I would say if you’re looking at those percentages and there’s no way that you can trim the fat or do anything to get in alignment with those percentages, you need to go back and look at your pricing.

Annie Wright: Ooh. You’re very smart, Andrea.

Andrea Jensen (Host): [laughs] I do this for a living. [laughs]

Annie Wright: Yes. Oh my goodness. And I just wanna double click on something for a second — combining the mindset work, the psychological work that may be required to process our unprocessed material from the past, combined with tools like what you offered, what an unstoppable combination. That’s incredible.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yeah. Absolutely. And they go hand-in-hand, because you can only go so far with data and the analysis. One of the things that we talk to our clients a lot about is what’s your risk tolerance? How much can you handle? You can finance your business in two ways to grow it — you can either use your profits and self-reinvest back in the business, or you can go out and get financing. And people handle the risk of either of those two options very differently. But that’s something that you need to get clear on, and you might have to do some work on that side of the money work. That’s the money work that we don’t do in-house. We’ll give you all the data and crunch all the numbers for you, but then you have to make the decision as the business owner. And you’re gonna make an informed decision, but there’s still a lot that goes with that, a lot of the emotional components.

Annie Wright: Oh, absolutely. Boy, that’s why I love working with entrepreneurs and driven professionals so much. It’s because they come to me with that content very often when they’re facing black-and-white data or having to really up-level, raise their rates, or make investments in themselves or take on more risk. That’s fascinating what you said in terms of that financial tool. That’s really cool.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yeah. Yes. Thank you. And the other thing is just recently a lot of business owners were confronted with this. The labor market went crazy for a while there. Inflation, the cost of getting supplies, the time it took to get them — there were just so many things that we’ve been confronted with over the last 18 months that really has had business owners wondering. If you don’t have a tool like this, your competitor might. And where are they gonna be making decisions that you’re kind of in the dark on and getting left behind? So —

Annie Wright: So smart. Right. Well, future-proofing your business with good financial management.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yeah. Especially these days, right? Things are changing rapidly with technology.

Annie Wright: Rapidly.

Andrea Jensen (Host): And you know, I am in a mergers and acquisitions mastermind group, and we follow the markets very, very, very closely. There’s some leading indicators that tell us what’s gonna be happening with businesses — buying and selling businesses, acquisitions, all the things. One of the metrics that they just were sharing with us was that they used to say, “Okay, a business under so many years old, the percentage of failure is so extremely high,” right? So they said, “We’re smart entrepreneurs. Don’t go build a business. Go buy a business that’s already past that timeline.” And then your risk of the business not working out is greatly diminished. Now they’re saying if you’ve been in business for 10-plus years, the likelihood of failure is much higher now than it was — because of technology. A business that’s in a later life cycle is less quick to adapt to new technology.

Annie Wright: Fascinating.

Andrea Jensen (Host): It’s gonna leave them behind.

Annie Wright: Wow. That’s really interesting. Right. Well, I was thinking as a business owner who made it past the five-year mark, and we all know what a big one that is — [laughs] that’s really a good cautionary tale about not resting on one’s laurels and staying nimble and pivoting and adapting, right?

Andrea Jensen (Host): Absolutely. Now is not the time to sit back and just — yeah.

Annie Wright: No. No. And here in the heart of the Bay Area, you can’t escape a conversation where AI is not part of it. So that’s a good reminder.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yes. For sure. For sure. Well, Annie, this has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for your willingness to just be open and share your story and how it got you to this incredible place that you’re at in life, in business, in motherhood, and all the good stuff.

Annie Wright: [laughs]

Andrea Jensen (Host): And we were just sharing that we both have five-year-olds, so we’re in the thick of it with that fun stuff.

Annie Wright: Totally. [laughs]

Andrea Jensen (Host): Um, is there anything that I didn’t ask you that I should have asked you?

Annie Wright: No, not that I can think of. But I will say, if it’s okay to say — if you have any listeners who live in California or Florida, because my center serves both states, and if anyone listening had that little “oof” moment of discomfort earlier, or is noticing, “Oh my gosh, I have psychological money blocks,” and they’d like some help, by all means seek myself or my team out at my therapy center. While I don’t necessarily have the black and white data tools that Andrea does, I do have the clinical tools, and would be delighted to be of support.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yes, absolutely. And we will have your website and how to get in touch with you in the show notes as well. So for all of our listeners and those watching on video, please reach out. It’s so cool to be able to bring people like you to our audience who might not know that this even exists and is something out there that can help them leapfrog in their journey and really just feel better. And who doesn’t want that? [laughs]

Annie Wright: Well, thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for having me on. I am just delighted by our conversation, and I feel like I could talk to you for another two hours about all of these issues.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Yeah. Totally.

Annie Wright: And I just wanna say it was a pleasure and a privilege.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Ah, well, thank you so much. And thank you for all of our listeners and viewers, and I hope you guys all have a great day.

Annie Wright: Bye.

Andrea Jensen (Host): Thank you for listening. Don’t forget to like and review, and we’ll catch you on the next episode. If you’re looking for more content or resources in the meantime, check out our website for information, blogs, and our I’ve Got a Spreadsheet for That series. That’s thecashflowcfo.com. We can’t wait to hear from you. [outro music]