Building Financial Independence as a Business Owner with Guest Kaitlyn Carlson

Lauren: You built your product, you launched your business. You saw success, money in the bank, growing team, happy client, but now you feel like you’re drowning. I’m here to help you get your head above water. I’m Lauren Goldstein. My clients call me The Business Doctor.

Together, we’ll diagnose the root cause of your business. Worries. Whether it’s your people, your process, your product will clarify your business. So you can scale without the burnout and then we will simplify it all. So your business can do what it’s designed to do, make a profit and welcome to The Biz Doctor Podcast.

Welcome back to the show, I’m so excited about today’s show because I have special guest Kaitlyn Carlson, one of my good friends and resident financial expert, advising top female entre. Today, I’m chomping at the bit to dive into these three critical intersection points between business and finance. Why business owners need a financial plan determining whether you are a lifestyle business, or an enterprise business and the importance of a financial success team and how those all relate to phase one, two, and three of business.

Now before we get too far along, I do wanna take a moment to properly introduce Caitlin so you can see for yourself and what a powerhouse she is and why we are so lucky to have her on the show today. Caitlin is founder and CEO of theory, planning partners, a boutique wealth creation firm for the top female entrepreneurs in the United States.

Before launching theory, planning partners. Her career began as an asset management with Putnam investments, but she spent the majority of her career at UBS financial services where she developed more than 300 financial plans for clients with assets ranging from 500,000 to 1 billion. Subsequently she became an advisor on private wealth management team that managed over 600 million in assets, under management for a few dozen.

She’s a certified financial planner, certified exit planning advisor and an accredited wealth management advisor. Wow. Talk about a financial trifecta. She lives in marble head, Massachusetts with her husband, Jake, their son, Russell, and is committed to helping more top women founders create wealth and live a more meaningful life with their money.

So without further ado, grab a beverage and something to take notes with. This is going to be an episode that will pay dividends. Welcome Kait.

Kaitlyn: Thank you, Lauren, what a kind introduction.

Lauren: thank you. I’m I’m so jazzed to have you on today because I see so often where business owners get in trouble with their wealth and finances.

And so I’m really excited to have you just dive into these, these three key points and, and set us up for more financial success. 

Kaitlyn: Yeah, so it’s definitely a passion of mine, as you mentioned. Did over 300 financial plans and a, a big chunk of those plans was for business owners. So it was, um, something that I saw over and over again in the marketplace that needed to be addressed.

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, I, I think probably the biggest thing I see is founders entrepreneurs kind of flying by the seat of their pants, where they see bill pay bill, or they don’t have a lot of, um, Strategy around their finances, whether it’s in their personal life or their business. And what’s that famous Warren buffet quote, uh, when the tide goes out, you’ll see, who’s been swimming naked.

Kaitlyn: yeah, that’s a great one. That’s a great one. Yeah. So 

Lauren: yeah, let’s dive in to, to financial plans. Tell us, tell us what, what you found, any tips you’ve got and, and how to really dive into the success of having a financial plan for your. Sure. Well, it’s funny that you brought 

Kaitlyn: up quotes by famous people because the one that I always think of is the Yogi Barra quote mm-hmm, where he says, if you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up someplace else.

Yes. And I think that’s a perfect summary of what I saw when it came to business owners, because you’re absolutely right. Lauren, I think, you know, by the nature of owning a business, A lot of it comes down to putting out fires and spending more time on the day to day and then service to the business rather than having the business be of service to you.

And so it’s very natural. When you first start a business, you’re really excited and you have this vision and most founders start businesses because they want flexibility and freedom and untapped earning potential. And so it starts out this way. [00:05:00] Where you’re creating this vehicle, that’s supposed to provide a lifestyle for you and you end up in service to the business.

And so really the main thing that tends to be lacking, what you hit on before is, is intention and context. And so those are the two things that we provide for our clients. And I can give you a little bit. Background as to why. Um, so when I was at UBS, as you mentioned, I worked with a lot of business owners who were in their fifties and sixties and they would come to us and they’d be really burned out and they’d be ready to exit their business in some form, whether it was liquidated or sell it or potentially a succession plan.

And one thing that I noticed over and over again is that they were very poorly prepared at this point in time. and they were also really run down and fatigued by what they were doing. And that’s not a position that you want to be in because typically what I would have to turn around and tell them, after I crunched the numbers was you can’t leave this business.

Either, because you’re not going to net enough from the sale to support a lifestyle that you’re accustomed to, um, which it, that typically happened the most, um, or you just can’t afford to walk away from it. And, and I ended up calling it the cash flow trap, where they were stuck in their business because they were dependent on the business for cash flow.

And so I felt that there was an opportunity there. And the other thing is, um, a lot of it goes back to the way. Wealth managers are paid. So when I was in wealth management, we got paid by, um, taking a percentage of the liquid assets that we managed. So for example, if you gave me a million dollars, I would charge you 1% to manage that million dollars.

And so I would make $10,000 off of managing that for you. And what that does is that puts a focus for wealth managers to. Go after liquid assets. And the one thing that business owners don’t tend to have a lot of is liquid assets. Mm-hmm , that’s because 80% of their net worth or more is wrapped up in the value of their business.

Wow. So the other thing that would happen is that business owners were neglected by the wealth management industry and had missed out on decades of wealth building advice. If someone started a business in their twenties and came to me in their sixties, they would’ve missed. Potentially 40 years of wealth building opportunities, just because of the way that financial advisors were paid.

So that was a big motivator for me to start theory. And one of our biggest differentiators is that we charge a flat fee. So we do not charge an asset center management fee, cuz I felt that one of the main flaws was stemming from that problem. 

Lauren: Wow. Wow. I just got goosebumps I mean, oh that, that definitely.

I mean, I think you hit on so many key things there, you know, if you’re missing out on wealth, building the cash flow, crunch, being a slave to your business. So how does that, how does that all relate back to having a financial plan? Like, is it something that you can create, um, at any time? Is it something that you need a wealth manager to create?

Like, are there steps that someone can take? Let’s say you don’t have a wealth manager. Obviously, it sounds like that’s the best course of action is to have somebody who, you know, just like in teams, we hire experts in certain areas, having a wealth manager on your team to help you build wealth is obviously the best scenario here.

But let’s say you haven’t quite reached that point. Is there, is there anything you can do as a business owner now to create just even a few advantages to your financial. Yeah, 

Kaitlyn: that’s a great question. So I would say for context, let’s break it up into three phases. So there’s gonna be phase one, which is I’ve just started my business.

Not even sure I can pay myself yet really getting up and running, figuring out where I fit in the market, what my niche is, you know, like all of those questions where you’re really just, like you said, flying by the seat of your pants. So that’s phase one. Mm-hmm . and I think at that point in time, you, and by the way, you can thanks to the internet, get access to pretty amazing tools at your disposal at any time.

So like, if you’re in that phase one where you really can’t afford to hire a financial success team, but you want some semblance of guidance, then I would Google like a retirement calculator. There are thousands of them online. And I would just say, you know, for example, I’m 30 years old. I want to retire by 50 and by retire.

I, I think it’s kind of an old word that goes with kind of that like factory type thinking, like you work till 65 and then you die at 70 mm-hmm what retirement really means is you’ve replaced your income from a job with the nest egg that you’ve built. So retirement and financial independence are synonymous.

It’s essentially, you don’t have to work to support your lifestyle anymore. So rather than saying retirement, let’s say financial independence. So if I’m 30 and I want to be financially independent by 50 and I have $50,000 saved in the bank. I can go into a retirement calculator that I find on Google and say, okay, my current age is 30.

I wanna retire by 50. I’m starting with $50,000. And then usually it’ll crunch the numbers for you and say, okay, if that’s your, oh, and, and how much you wanna live off of. So if you’re used to living off of a hundred thousand dollars, That calculator will spit out a number. Like if that’s your goal, you should be saving, you know, $5,000 a month, for example.

So if you’re in phase one and you just want goal posts to aim for mm-hmm, a retirement calculator on Google is a great place to start, and that’s gonna give you some semblance of. Direction, because again, the most important thing that we’re talking about here is intention. And when you’re a business owner, you can get shiny object syndrome and putting out the fire syndrome, like just every day.

If, if you don’t pay attention to pulling yourself out and, and really getting a high level overview. So I would say for people that are in phase one that are just starting out, just starting to build a business, that’s a great. And phase two is really when you have recurring revenue, you kind of know your place in the market.

You’re starting to get into maybe like 250 to a million dollars in revenue. And now you’re starting to decide, okay, like this thing is taking shape and this is when people started. Get into the question of, am I building a lifestyle business or am I building an enterprise business? Mmm. And so by that, I mean, when I say, are you building an enterprise business?

I mean, are you building a business to sell it? Is that going to be an asset on your balance sheet? Because that too is gonna go towards your financial independence number someday when you go to sell it, anything that’s not being built to sell would be considered a lifestyle business. . And so there are differences here because if you’re building a lifestyle business, then you need to be very cognizant of the cash flow that you’re taking from that business and make sure that you start building your financial independence away from the company, because you’re not gonna have an asset to sell.

Mm. Does that make sense? Yeah. I’ll stop. Stop here for a second. If I’m overwhelming. 

Lauren: no, no, this is great. And I, and I know in a, like a smidgen of time, we’re gonna dive deeper into the difference between lifestyle and enterprise. So I think it was perfectly touched on in this moment. Yeah, that makes, that makes perfect sense.

And personally, I’ve never really thought about it in those two. Ways. So, yeah. Keep going. I’m I’m enthralled. This is great. This is great. 

Kaitlyn: okay. So at some point in time, like you’ve, you’ve become successful enough that that’s gonna become pretty clear. And with an enterprise business comes hiring teams, which is where someone like you comes in.

Because if you’re gonna build a business to sell it, you have to build something that can stand on its own. That’s attractive to a buyer that would wanna come in and purchase that from you. So that’s where we start steering into two different paths. And so if you’re building an enterprise business, you really wanna focus on building a best in class business.

And so you wanna be aware of what’s the value of that company. What’s driving the value of that company and how can we improve the value of that company and make sure that you’re on track for meeting. Personal goals, cuz again, I’ll give you another example. So I have a client who I have a client who wants to retire in 10 years and she wants to be able to spend $250,000 a year.

So I told her yesterday you’re going to need 11 and a half million dollars by the time you’re 50. So there’s two ways that she can go about that. She can either build her company and sell it for 15 and a half million. Minus taxes is gonna give her the 11 and a half, or she can start saving $38,000 a month.

So if you’re in that lifestyle bucket where you’re in business development, you’re in service delivery, you are reaping all of the profit, all of the benefit of being a lifestyle business. Then you’re gonna take that other route. You’re gonna take the $38,000 a month route, but you need to have that number when you’re 40 versus when you’re 50, because.

You will have missed out on 10 years of compound interest, if that makes sense. Mm. Yeah. So having these goal posts to work towards, so when you start to get into that maturity of a business where you’re like, I know what I do, I know what I want. I wanna build a team or I don’t wanna build a team. That’s when you need to decide which direction I’m taking.

And by the way, it could be a combination of the tail. So you could save. $20,000 a month and sell the company for $5 million and arrive at the same place. And so that’s really like where my work starts to come in, because now it’s not just a retirement calculator. Now it’s much more complicated. And so I would say in phase two is when you wanna start to build your financial success team is what I call it.

And so people that you want on your financial success team are a financial planner. Mm-hmm, a CFO. A tax Strat, an accountant who also acts as a tax strategist, and we kind of push our, push our clients to make sure that they have [00:16:00] an, a proactive tax strategist. Um, you want an insurance agent because you want someone making sure that you’re protected.

The company is protected. Things like disability policies, life insurance policies, but also cybersecurity, like things that are gonna add to the value of the company. And then if, and when we get there an estate planning attorney, if it starts turning into a more complex business, which takes us into phase three.

So phase two is I’m deciding whether I’m lifestyle or enterprise. And then I would say phase three is like the ultimate maturity of a business where. I’ve chosen the enterprise route. I’m running probably a multi seven or eight figure business at this point. And I need to start to make decisions that would make this attractive to a buyer in phase two and three.

The things well, actually in all three phases, um, the three things that are always changing at any given time are your personal life, your business, and the tax landscape mm-hmm or federal legislation. So. That’s a lot to manage, right? 

Lauren: mm-hmm yes. 

Kaitlyn: That’s why this is a full-time job for us. So my team one, once clients start getting into that into the seven and eight figures, they don’t have the bandwidth to play the quarterback between their financial success team.

So that’s where we come in and do that for them. And by the way, like, Even companies that I used to work with at UBS companies that had 80 million revenue, 240 million revenue still didn’t have effective communication amongst their financial success team. And, and that’s, that’s really the most essential thing, whether you have, you know, a 2 million business or a 200 million business.

And again, I think a lot of the problem goes back to the way that people are paid. No, one’s really motivated to. Take the reins and quarterback that team for anybody mm-hmm . And so it ends up falling on the business owner who usually has the least amount of time and the least capability to be running that team.

Yeah. Yeah. I actually, 

Lauren: um, wanna talk a little bit more about a financial success team, because I actually saw this play out in our, in our family business quite recently, actually. So, um, I think that. A lot of my clients, other entrepreneurs, we, you know, we started a business to your point because we wanted more freedom, untapped earning potential flexibility, etc.

And then suddenly we find ourselves in this like constant reactive mode because we don’t know better. And so like a great example of that. I’m not a tax expert. We had a C we have a CPA that works for us, but to your point, he was not proactive. So we got a letter from the state of California saying we owe almost a million dollars in back taxes.

And we’re like, what, like, number one, we’re not a California corporation. This is like highly, highly inflated. Like the, the revenue that they pulled was not even close to. Right. And we pay sales tax because we do, um, for this family business, you know, we, we operate out of, um, like part horse shows. So it’s a mobile thing.

Anyway, long story short it so clearly showed me. Because we talked to other entrepreneurs that have similar businesses and we said, are you paying like taxes? Have you been filing this form? And they’re not filing the form. And so we didn’t think we needed to file the form and our, our CPA instead of giving us proactive tax advice.

Basically, what we found out is several years ago, he asked my dad, do you want me to pay this? And dad’s like, I don’t know. I, I guess not, I don’t do. We need to. And so there wasn’t a lot of skin in the game for our CPA to make sure our butts were covered. And so now we’re in a situation where we’re fighting the state of California.

And if for some reason we lose, then we have to pay penalties in interest, plus the money. That to be honest, we haven’t budgeted for. And so, like, I see the value of having a financial success team earlier rather than later as being so beneficial. And that also makes me think about like, like how early is too early or is this something you need to have before you really need it kind of like you pay insurance on your house.

Kaitlyn: Not because you want to, but because in case shit hits the fan, um, That you have that safety net. Yes. I, I think that’s a great point. I mean, it’s, it’s easy to think, like when you’re running a multimillion dollar business, of course I need this mm-hmm . Um, but that’s a great question about when’s the earliest that I start considering a financial success team, and I would say.

An outsource CFO can be of tremendous value to you as early as a hundred thousand dollars in revenue. Because yes, because I’ve seen some phenomenal CFOs who have been able to point out the profitability or lack of profitability in certain programs. Um, especially if you have a CFO who is a CPA, I think that that’s absolutely worth investing in because you want your.

I forgot to mention bookkeeper too, but you want your CFO, your CPA and your bookkeeper to all be in constant communication. Mm-hmm . And so if that can all be under one roof, that’s gonna help you avoid situations. Like you’re talking about, which aren’t just for people who are running multimillion dollar, um, companies, you know, it’s like all of this, whether you’re at a hundred thousand dollars or a hundred million comes down to communication.

And so. Um, but yes, I mean, I’ve seen, I’m taking on a client right now where she hired a CFO. She had $40,000 months and they brought her up to [00:22:00] $500,000 months. 

Lauren: Wow. The CFO did. 

Kaitlyn: Yeah. Just by providing the right advice. And I would say specifically for female entrepreneurs, this is where I have a little bit of trouble, especially with the online industry, because female entrepreneurs will play handover Fest for coaches.

But they won’t pay for advisors and advisors are the people that are gonna give you advice, give you direction. That’s really gonna affect your bottom line. And I don’t think female entrepreneurs talk about the hard numbers like they should. They talk about the soft side of things they talk about, you know, like manifesting and all that stuff.

And of course, yes, there’s a place for it. We all need to be in a men mentally healthy space. You know, emotionally, mentally, spiritually to be able to run a successful company, but we also need to take a look at the hard numbers. And if that’s not your strength, then I would highly recommend hiring a CFO.

So for theory, women that are coming to us who are crossing over into that multi seven figures, if they don’t have a CFO, yet, I say you need to hire a CFO first because that’s the person that we’re gonna work with. I think what I found over the last two years, You know, I tried working with women that were in the multi six figures and yes, they were making more money than they’ve ever made before, but they weren’t running a financially healthy company.

And there’s only so much I can do for someone whose company is drowning financially. You know, like what, what good is that if it’s not especially right now where we’re likely headed into a recession, a company that doesn’t have a healthy balance sheet is gonna have a hard time making it through. Um, making it through a recession.

So a CFO is gonna help you prepare for situations like this, having three months to six months of cash on hand, having conversations about where you can cut expenses or where you’re overpaying for advertising or marketing, having conversations about who should be the right hire. And also like being able to bring someone like you and Lauren.

Where do we need a specialist to come in because a CFO can’t do everything right? Mm-hmm like, they’ll, they’ll, they’ll give you the high level guidance in terms of numbers. But you know, this is where it’s like having someone like you come in to help build out a team over the long term is, will pay dividends, like you said before.

Yeah. Um, because hiring the wrong people as, as I’m sure, you know, incredibly expensive. 

Lauren: Incredibly expensive. I’m still, I’m still reeling that you broke my brain, that a CFO came in . I mean, I know how valuable they are, but he came in or she came in $40,000 months to half a million dollar months from. Like the financial advice that came from a CFO, which I think is just so powerful.

Obviously this is probably the exception, not the norm, but maybe, maybe that is a hidden gold mine, which actually makes me ask the question of, I think I see a lot of entrepreneurs who think that because they have a bookkeeper they’re covered. So tell me a little bit more about your perspective of bookkeeper, accountant, CFO, and like the roles that they play.

In a business and your financial success team. So I would 

Kaitlyn: define a bookkeeper as more of like a compliance role, making sure that you’re falling in line with everything. And that everything’s organized, especially like if you are building a company to sell it, having organized financials is a must.

Um, the CFO and the accountant. This is, this is where. Having discretion and doing your research can make a big difference. Um, because I think that a CFO can provide strategy and strategy is what’s gonna help you grow. So compliance will keep you safe and organized, but strategy is what’s gonna help you grow.

Same thing with an accountant. There are a lot of accountants that are backward facing that are just number crutching. You want an accountant? That’s more of like a strategist. That can not only say like, this is your projected tax, but this is your projected tax. And here’s how we can save on taxes. No, my one caveat with that is there’s a lot of stuff again on the online world where tax strategists talk about all these mechanisms, where they can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars per year that may or may not be in your best interest long term.

So that’s where I would come in and say, Yes, bringing someone’s salary down to $20,000, of course is gonna save them taxes, but that’s also gonna hinder their ability to max out their 401k, for example. So is that really in their best interest, long term? No. Which is why you need all these people communicating, because the only goal that really matters is the goal of the business owner.

Long term mm-hmm mm-hmm and paying taxes is just a byproduct of being successful. So it’s almost like you’re cutting off your nose despite your face. Yes. You’re saving a ton on taxes, but you’re also not putting anything towards your own financial independence. And so is that really helping you? It might feel like it in the short term, but not necessarily in the long term.

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. It’s definitely a much longer. More complex game than I think anybody really understands. I mean, this has been so illuminating. And I think the other part that I wanna touch on is you were talking about businesses that are unhealthy and you know, where they don’t have the cash flow and how to survive a recession.

So let’s say you have a business that I don’t know, I’m gonna make up a scenario. Let’s say. $500,000 a year is what they normally do, but their expenses are like $400,000 a year. And they have very small margins, very small cash flow, like when is a business so unhealthy that it doesn’t make sense. And maybe you don’t know the answer to this.

It doesn’t make sense to continue keeping the business, but it actually makes more sense to either shift it or close it or. I don’t know, like, how do you even determine if you have an unhealthy business when to resuscitate it or when to call time of death? Um, cuz I think that that’s something, the reason I ask that is because between what happened in 2020 and now facing another recession.

Like, I think there are some business owners out there that are saying like, gosh, our cash flow is not where it should be. Like, it’s a struggle. Like when do we, when do we push through and like rejig things. And when do we say like, okay, this is, this is probably not something that’s gonna survive the long term.

Kaitlyn: That’s a great question. So that all comes back to my world, which is your personal goals, right? Mm-hmm like, what are we trying to achieve? And, um, it’s funny that you bring this up because I just. And I would say, this is a con to answer your question. This is a conversation that I have in tandem with your CFO mm-hmm

So we have a client where I had her get evaluation done because she wants to build her company to sell it. And even though it’s fairly new, it’s less than three years old. I want her to have an understanding of what she’s currently built and what she would need to do to position it, to sell it in five years.

Because I think you hear a lot of stuff on the internet where it’s. It it’s just out of touch with reality, with what it takes to build a business, to sell it. It takes years to build a business to sell mm-hmm and it was great to have both of us on there because, um, the CFO, well, the CFO was on there and then also the valuation specialist was on there.

So we’re all looking at the numbers together. And I said to her, I know you have these other goals. Like I know that you wanna build a real estate portfolio. So is it worth your time to start this third business to build it, build it, to sell it, or is it worth your time to stick with this highly profitable lifestyle business, build up your personal cash reserve and start diversifying into real estate.

And she didn’t realize until we started looking into the numbers. How much time of her own was being pulled into this BU business that she was looking to build to sell. And she was like, I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t know if I wanna continue in this direction, but the alternative would’ve been her not having that conversation at all in five years from now, potentially being very far off from where it is that she wants to be.

Lauren: Personally, yeah. I mean, these are such important questions. And I know, you know, when I started my business, gosh, over a decade ago, this was not something any I knew about. And I know there are successful entrepreneurs out there that. You know, might have compartmentalized their wealth and have somebody managing their wealth on one side, but not really managing the wealth and health of their finances in their business.

And so what I love so much about what you’re doing with theory is you’re really merging them. It’s not an either or conversation. It’s like, how can I make sure that like the business goals and my goals are the same and working in the same direction and like creating this symbiotic relationship.

Because I, I know for me for, for some time, like in the early days, you know, trying to pay myself or figure out how, like all the moving pieces went together, it almost seemed easier to compartmentalize than like to actually create the strategy until I knew better. And then of course, once you know, better than you can do better, but I feel like the reason why I wanted to have you on this podcast and talk about this is.

So many entrepreneurs don’t know better, cuz like we have so many new entrepreneurs in the past decade. Like it’s now like the thi the thing to do is to build a business, which is great. And if you don’t know what you don’t know, then to your point, you can end up so off course. And so that’s what I love about how you approach finances.

And like, honestly, I didn’t, I mean, I knew you had a financial. I knew business owners should have a financial success team, but I didn’t understand how many people were actually on it. I thought it was a CFO and accountant and a tax person, but like to have those other components, like 

Kaitlyn: that’s huge. Yeah.

And I, I will say as far as I know, I’m the only one. Doing it this way. Um, because again, when I was at UBS, we really couldn’t speak to the business. It was just either an asset on the balance sheet, if at all. Or I heard this really recently, actually, when talking to a business owner, he said, oh my financial advisor, she just puts the value of the business at zero.

And I was like, oh, that is a huge mistake. This gentleman is running a business. That’s now worth about $9 million. So he could be severely underinsured. Like he should probably have an umbrella policy. That’s covering the fact that he has a 9 million business, but the fact that the financial advisor is treating it as worth zero means that he has a ton of liability exposure personally.

So, oh my gosh. There’s like that whole other side of things that doesn’t even have to do with the business, which is like, how buttoned up is your, is your personal side of things in terms of protection and estate planning and all that kind of stuff. And so that’s, we really take a, when I say we take a holistic approach to the business owner balance sheet, I truly mean a holistic approach.

And so in most cases, when I’m looking at a business owner balance sheet, Like we said before, 80% of their net worth is gonna be wrapped up in their business. So of course, we’re gonna spend the majority of our time on their largest asset, which is going to be the business, but there are all these other things that need to be considered as well.

And so, like you said, they don’t know what they don’t know. It’s only from experience that I know. To raise my hand and say, you should not be trading a 9 million business. Like it’s zero because , yeah. It really opened you up to some huge problems. Wow. But the financial advisor doesn’t know any better either because she’s only focused on, um, are you maxing out your set every year?

And she’s not really concerned with anything beyond that because she only gets paid based on the assets that are in the SEP. 

Lauren: Mm. Wow. I mean, I, gosh, I could talk to you about this for like hours since I’m I’m so like, it’s just, I think the reason, so we’ve been friends for, for a while now, but I think the reason why we jam so much about these things is cuz my approach to operations and team as interim COO in some companies and your approach to wealth management is proactive instead of reactive.

And it seems. So much of what you’re saying is so easily adjustable or like doable, if you know what you know. Yes. But if you don’t, then you’re just like flying blind, hoping that, you know, you’re like, I’d love to go to Paris, but you’re like, I don’t know where we are. We could be like headed to Antarctica um, and like, I think that there’s so much to be said of, you know, even lifestyle versus enterprise.

I mean, I know a lot of people that are quite happy. To have a lifestyle business and don’t wanna sell mm-hmm and then vice versa. And so I just, I love our holistic approaches to business. And I think that what you’ve touched on today is so valuable. And like, if, for me, and I hope anybody that’s listening this.

I hope you can see that it’s, it’s not unattainable and it’s not difficult, but it takes a conscious effort to set yourself up for not only financial success for yourself, but your business. And you have to be willing to have the tough conversations. And to your point, I love as female entrepreneurs, but you cannot run a business on emotion.

right. You have to run it on numbers and you have to, like, data’s not sexy, but. Like, it’s gonna keep you out of trouble. And if you’re too afraid to, you know, go to the doctor and get a checkup to see, like, if you’re healthy or not, then you might just be running around, um, with an, with a concentrated risk you don’t even know about.

Kaitlyn: Yeah, exactly. And one, one other thing that I wanna say is I think certain things get glorified. In social media, like building a multimillion dollar business or having a team of 10. And, and one thing I wanna say from our side of things is you can run $150,000 lifestyle business, and you can sell a $10 million business and get to the same place.

Hmm. It just depends on how you wanna get there and how disciplined you are. So one is not better than the other. You just need to know which route you wanna take. And so that information earlier you have that information, the better. Lauren: I love that. I love that so much. Wow. Holy crowd, like this episode has been chock full of amazing financial takeaways.

I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna go back and listen to this to squeeze even more juice out of it. And, and, you know, we talk all the time, but. My advice to anyone that’s listening is to like, really think about your business. And is it set up to reach your goals? Is it like, are you, are you exposed or not?

And to reach out to Caitlin. So I know people can follow you on Instagram at the theory planning or at sorry, at theory planning partners. Um, but how else can they get, um, how else can they get in touch with you? Find out more work with you? Cause what you’re doing. Majorly impactful for businesses and I can’t wait to see you help more entrepreneurs.

Kaitlyn: Oh, thanks Lauren. Well, certainly, um, you can feel free to go to my website. It’s very simple, but it’s theory, planning.com and there’s a link on there if you’d ever like to book time with me. And I’m also on LinkedIn as well at Kaitlyn Carlson.

Lauren: Amazing. Amazing. Well, thank you again so much for coming and talking to me about all these things.

I mean, I just so many golden nuggets. So, you know, really just seeing how all the puzzle pieces move together and the different phases of business. And I really think one of my biggest takeaways is this financial success team. Like I’m always in for hiring experts. And even, I didn’t know what I didn’t know about who you should actually have on your financial success team.

I thought having a CPA and accountant was, we were good, but now, now we get to go evaluate that and, and find more strategic partners. Well, I’d be happy to help you with that. Yes, you, you you’re already on, on the list. My friends . Um, yeah. Awesome. Well, all right, everyone, that’s it. For this week’s episode, I’d love to hear from you and your biggest takeaways.

So make sure you’re following along. Tag me on Instagram at its Lauren Goldstein or LinkedIn, or wherever you hang out on the interwebs. Thank you so much for listing and we’ll see you next week.

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