"I don't understand why there's nothing left over for me." That's what Tiffany told me when we first sat down together. She was a single mom, and almost every month, by the time her team was paid, there was nothing left for her at all. She'd been pulling from her own savings just to cover her personal expenses, month after month. She knew something had to change. She just didn't know what.

Tiffany ran a compliance business, and her team did excellent work helping her clients stay compliant with the regulations that governed their industries. She billed hourly, marking her team's rate up by a small percentage, enough to feel fair, enough to cover what she was paying them and a little more. She wanted to be fair to her clients too, she never wanted to overcharge for the value they were receiving. What she didn't understand yet was the full picture underneath her own business.

Tiffany was the one bringing in every new client. She handled the sales conversations, the marketing, the relationship building that got compliance work in the door in the first place. She managed her team day to day, made sure their work was accurate, stayed on top of the regulations that governed their clients' industries so her team always knew what they were working toward. None of that time was ever built into what she charged. She billed hourly for her team's work, in arrears, meaning she paid her team first and waited to be paid herself after the invoice went out and the client eventually paid it.

This is such a common blind spot, and it's an honest one. A lot of business owners think if they mark their team's rate up by twenty percent or so, they're making money. What they forget to do, or never learned to do in the first place, is look at the entire picture, their own time spent selling, marketing, and managing the very team whose hours they're billing for.

Like so many of the women I work with, Tiffany had been afraid to really look at her financial information, afraid of what it might confirm about a business she'd worked so hard to build. When she finally was no longer afraid to look, she could see clearly, for the first time, all the expenses that went along with running her business. That's when it became obvious why she could never pay herself anything. She wasn't just underpricing her team's work slightly. She was in the red every single month, and the reason had nothing to do with how hard she was working. It had everything to do with the fact that her own time, selling, marketing, managing her team, had never once been accounted for in what she charged.

We rebuilt how she charged for her services entirely. Instead of hourly billing paid in arrears, we created a flat fee for her service, structured around a 50% deposit upfront, with the remaining balance billed as a monthly retainer. This meant Tiffany was no longer paying her team and waiting to see what, if anything, was left for her. It also solved something else Tiffany hadn't even flagged as a problem, since compliance work often depends on clients gathering and providing their own information before the work can even begin, the deposit structure gave her clients a reason to move that process along too, instead of leaving Tiffany's team waiting indefinitely to start.

Tiffany finally had a business that paid her, consistently, every single month. She stopped pulling from her savings. As a single mom, that wasn't just a business win, it was breathing room she hadn't had in a long time.

This is exactly why I hold a free event every single month called Where Is All My Money Going. Tiffany's turning point wasn't a new client or a busier month, it was finally being willing to look, and finally understanding what she was looking at. That's the kind of clarity I want every financially phobic woman who walks into that free hour to walk away with.

Because here's what I know for certain. The answers are always there, waiting in the financial information, whenever you're ready to look. If you're afraid you're missing something in your business, or you know it's finally time to start understanding your financial information, come join me at my next Where Is All My Money Going. https://www.audreyfaustconsulting.com/money.