S4E17: Cape May White Ale | Grants for Women in Business | Branding for Finance Professionals

Hey there, fellow hustlers and go-getters! Get ready to dive deep with Pam as she sips on a crisp Belgian white from Cape May Brewing Company. This episode is all about leveling up your game in business finance communication. But wait, there's more! Pam spills the beans on the latest SBA grants for women entrepreneurs – a must-know if you're in the biz.

Pam’s got the magic formula for standing out in finance: blend your personal values and personality with client relations. Whether you’re aiming to polish your financial skills or inject some serious mojo into your brand, this episode is packed with gems you don’t want to miss.

So, grab your favorite brew, settle in, and join Pam for top-notch advice and spirited chats. This is a goldmine for entrepreneurs, finance pros, and beer lovers alike. Don’t miss out – tune in and transform your approach today!

✅ 5 Key Lessons:

1. Adapt Your Communication Style: Tailor your communication to meet the needs and styles of your clients to ensure effective and enjoyable interactions. Understand their triggers and adapt accordingly.
2. Finance is Fun: Engage with financial aspects of your business positively. Transforming financial management into a fun and engaging activity can foster better relationships and outcomes.
3. Understand Momentum: Sync with your client's momentum and pacing. Don’t impose your speed or methods; instead, adapt to match their workflow for smoother cooperation.
4. Define Your Brand Uniquely: Identify your values and triggers. Craft a brand that aligns with your strengths and resonates with your ideal clients.
5. Respect Mutual Expertise: Maintain respect for your own financial expertise as well as the entrepreneurial drive of your clients. This ensures a balanced, productive working relationship.

📰 On this week's What's News: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sba-announces-30-million-grant-123000510.html?guccounter=1

Today's Brew🍺: Cape May Brewing Company, Cape May White 

About the Brewery: 
Back in 2011, Cape May Brewing Co. shook up the scene, putting New Jersey on the craft beer map. Today, they're a big name in the craft brewing world, known for top-notch brews.

They started small, delivering their first keg to a local beach bar. Now, their beers are served in hundreds of spots across New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. Their journey has made them a beloved name with consistently great brew

Transcript

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You know, that was the most painful meeting I've ever been through. You know, this sucks. I can't believe this is what I'm paying for. And I said, okay, great, I wanted to hear all that. Now tell me exactly what the things were that hit your triggers. And she did. She outlined those for me. And the next time I adapted to her communication style, which is very different than mine, which is fine. And when I adapted to her communication style, the feedback after that meeting the next week was very simple. Hey, I'm Pam Pryor, and this is the Cash Flow podcast. We're going to talk about everything related to money in your business. Without further ado, let's hop right in. Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Cash Flow podcast. This week we've got a real adventure for you. In the brews segment, we're going to crack open a can from Kate Cape May brewing in New Jersey. In the what's news section, we have heard about some new monies that are being made available by the spa for women business owners. So we've got that. And then finally, in our bucks tale section, we're going to talk about crafting a unique brand for your if you're a finance professional. But this is also something that you'll want to hear even if you're not a finance entrepreneur. But you're just an entrepreneur. Because how finance people craft their brand is going to matter to you. So stay tuned. Let's learn all about it. And we will start, as always, with cracking open art brew. Okay, welcome back. We are here from Cape May Brewing Company. This is another local for us because it's right over at the shore. We call Jersey the shore. I guess you might know that from the old tv show. But down the shore, Cape May Brewing Company, let me tell you a little bit about this company. They were founded in 2011, and what I love about them is their very first keg was hand delivered and rolled into a local beach bar. And that's where they sold their first real keg of beer. And since then, they've expanded into hundreds of outlets in New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania. And that's where I picked this can up. And this today is a belgian white. It's called Cape May White. And there's a nice picture of jaws there on the front with jaws teeth, which I'm sure you saw in the intro picture. And it's a belgian white. It's got an abv of 5.2% alcohol by volume there. And it is wheat ale, of course, because it's a belgian wheat and the tones. Its profile says coriander and orange peel, both of which I like, as you know, long as it's not too orangey, that can get a little tricky. So we are going to give this a shot and see what the PBKPi is for it. So, on the can, it says New Jersey proud. Oh, let me read the profile. Brewed with orange and lemon peels, coriander, grains of paradise, and our favorite belgian whit beer or vit beer. Yeast. Fruity esters up front, with an easy drinking finish, yields a traditional belgian style wheat ale brewed in the heart of the east coast. So there we go. There's that sound we all love. And it does say crisp and clear, which is two things I like. Although I don't know that I've ever seen a clear wheat beer. So let's see. It is reasonably clear. Let's see if I'm making up that clear word. Crisp, clean, and alluring. So not necessarily clear. All right, let's see what we got here. Definitely smells like a wheat beer. You got the orange, you got the little bit of lemon. I hope it's not too fruity. Let's see. I really like that. It's a really pleasant smell. This is my wheat glass, by the way. I don't know if you can see it from here, but there's little etchings of wheat on this glass. I have broken the other five, but this is the remaining survivor, our 6th ones. Let's see what we got here. Okay. It's very thin to me, and it's definitely got a. The fruit taste, the lemon and the orange. And it sits way up front in your mouth. It's literally sitting on the roof of my mouth. That taste. Now it's settled down a little bit, and it's becoming more of a beery taste on my tongue at this point. So it starts with a lot of fruit, ends with a kind of a pilsnery flat. Not flat bad flat, but just sort of, you know, that pilsnery taste on the tongue. Let me make sure I meant that. Hang on. Yeah, same thing. Okay, so that is a good Belgian. It's a little lighter, I guess, in taste, not in appearance, but in taste. It's got a little more of a. Gosh, I hate to say this, but a light beer taste, like a miller light type feel to it, than sort of a wheat beer. Like, what's the one I know and love? The belgian white. No, it's a belgian white. That's famous, everybody. Nope. Drawing a complete blanket white, white moon. White, blue moon. Thank you. Blue moon. Belgian white beer. And this is a lot lighter than that in taste. I would give this one on our PBKI scale, and just to remind you of how we're defining this. So one is a hell no, never going to drink it again. Two is sippable, three is if you gave it to me, I'd definitely drink it. Four is if I saw it on menu, I'd order it for sure. And five is, I'm hunting this thing down. I'm going to find it and drink it. I would give this one. I would give this one a two. For me, it's two, it's sippable. And again, I think it's probably a perfectly good white belgian ale. And it's just not exactly my style because of the heavy fruit flavor and the sort of light beer taste to it. So that's my assessment. That said, it's a local brewing company, and I love their story. And I'm going to go see what else they have out there from Cape May, and we'll be back here with that as soon as I find it. All right. And I'm going to put this down here, and we're going to jump into our news, which is all about more money for women. So be sure and stay with us after this quick break. Hey, and in our what's news section, good news for women today of all types of entrepreneurs. So the SBA has generated, and it's now been approved, a new grant of $30 million for what are called wbcs. And those are officially women's business centers. It's a network of centers that have physical locations in the 50 states. There are 152 of them. And their job is to be accessible to women business owners for all sorts of things, like SBA loans, like, how do I set my books up? Do I have to file for an LLC? All of those questions these women's business centers answer, they have professionals in them who answer them well. These are also individual, not for profits that are owned by women. So what the SBA has now done is they've granted $30 million to really expand not just the actual footprint, but the virtual footprint of these women's business centers. And they are going to be providing extra money for new business, women's business centers that are going to focus on both federal contracting or childcare. So those are two areas where they really want to put a lot of money. And then, in addition, they're adding a virtual women's business center option. So what this basically means is if you want to open one of these centers, it's a not for profit. Now, that doesn't mean you can't be paid a salary, but it's a not for profit business that you have to open. That would be where you would call yourself a women's business center, and you would then apply for some of this funding to actually get it started and moving in your area. And these have been existing forever, I found out, which I didn't know until Francis brought me this article today. Like I said, they're in all 50 states. And now you can actually set one up if you want to provide virtual counseling and help and advice for women business owners as well. Particularly if you are going to focus on businesses in federal contracting or businesses that are handling childcare, which is just great. The other little fact I picked up from this that I really liked was that there are 33 million small businesses today in the US. 33 million small businesses. So women entrepreneurs are becoming a bigger and bigger thing, which is wonderful. And this is an SBA program that is focused very much on women, who often, quite frankly, have not had the same access to money and information as men in the past. And it's getting much better. But this is going to completely raise the game for them. So if you want to start a not for profit that is a women's business center, you are eligible for$150,000 grant from the SBA for exactly that work. So anyway, and that's a grant, that's not a loan. So important to know that if that's something that you've been thinking about doing and serving other people businesses. I don't know what all the other detailed requirements are, but I definitely thought that was really important. They're putting $30 million out there in the world up for grabs for people who want to help women business owners in this particular way. So, wanted to share that. And interestingly, in our next segment, we're going to talk a little bit about branding for financial professionals. So it touches on branding for everyone, including if you want to set up one of these women's business networks. So stay tuned to talk about branding and your own unique brand. As a finance professional or as the finance professional you hire today, I really want to talk about crafting a brand for finance professionals. So whether you're a bookkeeper, a controller, a CFO, and quite frankly, whether you're in corporate or whether you're doing work for entrepreneurs individually, it makes such a difference to craft your own brand. And the way to think about this is there are thousands of people out there doing bookkeeping, there are thousands of people out there doing controller work, thousands doing CFO work. What you want to do if you want to stand out either in corporate or as a business leader in your own business, to drive, drive revenue, is you need to have a very unique brand. And this I learned, not the hard way, I just learned it over time. It just kind of came naturally. So I've always kind of had a brand just because I have a personality that's kind of hard to miss. I don't hide things well. And like, that's all part of it. I, like I've said to somebody, so my brand is I'm either going to walk into a room and take full command of it or I'm going to trip and fall on my face. And either one is okay. And both have happened many times. So I kind of built off of that. And to give you a sense of what I'm talking about in our brand, I just wrote down a few things that I've never officially said, oh, this is my brand. But what I think kind of comes across when I work with people. So the first is certainly the depth and breadth of experience that, you know, you kind of can't replace that. If you've got it, you've got it and you have confidence in your knowledge so that you can. I can definitely express things with confidence because I know what works and what doesn't work for entrepreneurs and small business owners and corporations, but also open to learning. Right. So one of the things since I became an entrepreneur, I don't know if this has happened to you as a finance professional or any entrepreneur is most of my deep learning about myself has been since I've become an entrepreneur. Because you really do learn very much about how you deal with failure, how you deal with success, how you deal with employees when they're your employees, as opposed to being a team leader in a corporation. There's been so much self learning that I need to exude the confidence, but also the fact that I'm open to learn almost every day. So the second big thing for me is that finance is fun. And by that I mean, as far as my brand goes, yes, I have fun anytime I'm working with numbers or financial strategy or even in a spreadsheet. That's just something I enjoy. But the point of that statement, finance is fun, is that we as part of our brand, are working to help entrepreneurs gain that relationship with their finances, where it's a fun and engaging thing for them, as opposed to, oh, you know, I hate this, or I'm such a failure, or nobody has a worse money story than I do, or all of those crazy, stupid stories we tell ourselves. My whole pitch or my whole focus when working with clients, talking on stages, writing books, you name it, is, this needs to be fun. It's such a critical part of your life that ignoring it will hurt you. Being too anal retentive about it will hurt you. Having fun with it will make it something that really becomes a part of your breathing in a way that is not, that is helpful to you and not something that's like, offensive as the finance thing or the money thing. So finance is fun is our second thing. Our third thing is all about momentum and with our brand. What I say is, when we work with entrepreneurs, the first thing we do is run alongside them for a little while to feel their momentum out. Because our job as finance professionals with my brand is that we are going to adapt. We're going to identify what you need from a financial standpoint, but then we're going to adapt its delivery and its implementation for you to your momentum, to that entrepreneur's momentum. So momentum is a very big part of our brand because so many people, so many entrepreneurs, by the time we talk to them, have said, I had so much trouble with such and such a CFO because he or she just said, hey, this is the way you do it. And, you know, I kind of ran smack up against that and just got sick of hearing no all the time. Well, our sort of mantra for this momentum question or momentum brand, what's the word I'm looking for? Attribute is to say lead with yes, okay? So I don't care, whatever any idea an entrepreneur has, and you as a bookkeeper or a finance professional will be like, oh, that's crazy, or we can never account for that. Or the IR's is going to hunt you down. I would pause on that and say, okay, I've heard what you're saying. Tell me a little bit more and we'll ask some more questions to find out what's the real intent behind the very specific things somebody has said they want to do. And I will tell you that every single time when I take a pause and do that, we end up finding out that there is a way to say yes to what that entrepreneur's real intent is there. No, we might not book your dog wash as a business expense, but we might say, okay, so really what you're saying is there are costs associated to taking care of your household when you have to be away on a business trip. Oh, okay. Yeah, we may be able to do some of that as deductible business expenses. This is not tax advice. I'm just giving an example here. Or somebody might. An entrepreneur might say, oh, I want to open three more businesses. And when you do the math in your head, it, like, doesn't make sense for them to all be individual businesses. It might just be one business with three lines of business. So you don't want to lead with, no, you can't open three more businesses. That would be dumb. You open with, okay, tell me a little bit more about those businesses. What is it you want to do with them? Do they have anything to do with each other? Ask a bunch of questions, and then you say, yeah, sure, we will open them. Here's what you do. You open one company and you have three dbas, or doing business as names, but it's basically feeling out each, the momentum of each one of your clients and making sure that you're running with them, not against them or setting up a brick wall against them. So that's our third point, is momentum. The fourth is kind of tied to the third. But it's about communication. What you want to do is communicate in their style. I have a great story from one of my very first clients and actual first client and mentor, Angela Lauria, who also is the owner of Difference Press, who's published both my books. But the very first time is way back, right when I started back in 2016, I sat down with her to review her financials with her. She basically, I'll say this nicely, said, you know, that was the most painful meeting I've ever been through. You know, this sucks. I can't believe this is what I'm paying for. And I said, okay, great. I wanted to hear all that. Now tell me exactly what the things were that hit your triggers. And she did. She outlined those for me. And the next time, I adapted to her communication style, which is very different than mine, which is fine. And when I adapted to her communication style, the feedback after that meeting the next week was very simply. That was the best hour I've spent in my business in the last year, because I was able to convey all the information. It was the same information I'd conveyed a week ago, but it was different. I adapted the presentation to her style. So that is the fourth thing that we are in our brand. We communicate the way our client communicates, not the way we want to communicate. And then finally, the last piece, and every single finance professional should be here. Excuse me, is own your expertise. There are times when ultimately you're going to have to call your client's attention to something, and you need to be very confident that you are to be listened to when that's the case. But what I would challenge you to is that that own your expertise is embedded in the other four values for us. It's not what we lead with. So I don't walk into a room kind of going, I know what we need to do, and I'm the boss here. Tell me what you think and I'm going to set it up for you. It's not that at all. Instead, what it is is we note that we want finance to have fun, finance to be fun. We note that we're learning about their momentum and how to communicate with them, etcetera. But then if there's a point where somebody goes, oh, well, it should take you five minutes to do such and such. And you know that what's being requested is really a bigger task than that. It's going to have a lot more tentacles with it. Your job is to say, hey, I know this sounds easy from your perspective, but let me kind of explain the process and why this might be a little bit of a tougher thing to get and take a little longer than you think. That's an example of what that means. By owning your expertise, don't be bullied into things that an entrepreneur thinks should be a snap of a finger, so you commit to do it, and a snap of a finger, because entrepreneurs need to understand that like everything else in their business, there is work involved. They've chosen to have you do the work potentially, which is great, but make sure that work is respected. Make sure that the time and effort and education and energy that you put into that work is highly respected by the entrepreneurs that you serve, just the way you respect them. That respect needs to be mutual. So that's sort of our mantra of values that we've built into our brand. And the thing about that is that brand makes us exactly right for some entrepreneurs and exactly wrong for a bunch of other entrepreneurs. But it's my way of niching down because I got all this advice that I'm sure you have as a finance professional. If you're an entrepreneur, there's been, you got a niche down, you got to do a particular industry. You know, I only do bookkeeping for retail outlets. I only do CFO work for e commerce stores. I only do controller work for coaches. And I refused to do that. I never quite understood why I refused to do it, but that was advice that I got from a lot of really smart people. And my intuition, my gut was saying, nope, that's not me. And that's because I then realized that I do niche down, but I niche down on people that my brand is right for and that's personality based and that's drive based and that's communication style. It has nothing to do with what industry they're in. But if you think about this now, once somebody knows this about us and our brand, then they know if I'm the right fit for them or not. But I put my brand square squarely in the middle of the target and say, this is who I am. And if this is who you want, I am the right person. If this is not who you want, I am not the right person. And people get to learn what my triggers are, what my things are that I love and get fired up about as all part of our brand. So they'll know, am I the right person or not. But then I always had trouble with niching down too closely. But somebody told me once, and I think it's great advice, is that, yeah, you're going to target that bullseye on the big target, but other people are going to see and be interested in it. And it's not just the people in that tiny little circle that are going to hear from you. They will hear from you in a way that makes you incredibly appealing to them because you've really nailed your targeting. But others in the outer circles here as well, and some of them that might be interested in that are going to come find you. So the two big messages here to me are defining your brand uniquely as a finance professional. And if you ask kind of, how do I do that? The steps I would take are making a list. And the first question you want to ask yourself is, what about this job? Do I love doing? What pieces do I absolutely love doing? What pieces do I absolutely hate doing? Just to get to know yourself a little bit, kind of on paper. And then finally, one of the ways, if that's a little tougher to answer, I do. Okay, who are my favorite clients and why do I love working with them? Okay. And the harder one, what's been my toughest engagement? And why did I struggle with it or hate it or get tired from it or not get paid enough from it or whatever it was with all of that information, what you're going to pull out of that is your values and your triggers, both of which are equally important. We have values that we know. We want to only work with people who really share some of those main values with us. I don't want to work with somebody who doesn't want to have fun. It's just not going to work. But what are our triggers? There are certain personality types. There are certain words out of people's mouths that will trigger the piss out of me. And when that happens, I become a monster to them. So what are those things? And how do I brand myself so that anybody's going to hit my triggers knows to steer clear. And anybody who I'm going to make feel like that protected friend in the foxhole, fun loving. I got your back, but we're going to have fun at this. Entrepreneur will find me, seek me out and get comfort from that, and want to talk further. The way you do that is with those questions, it helps to identify your values. It helps to identify your triggers. And your brand lies squarely where your values are and away from those triggers. The second thing I want to address is you as an entrepreneur. Don't just hire bookkeeping and controllership and accounting and analysis and Cfoing is not just a commodity. Now, I'll grant you I'm biased, but I'm also right about this. It is not just a commodity. Having the wrong bookkeeper, having the wrong CFO can drive you crazy as an entrepreneur. And that makes for noise and confusion in your head all the time. If you're not comfortable about your money, there's a gray cloud hovering over your head that literally infiltrates everything you do, from sales calls to dealing with your employees, to dealing with your clients, to dealing with your puppies who are all around me today. And if you find somebody that makes that more irritating for you as your finance professional, well, you're kind of. You're kind of walking into a quagmire. And if you think of these things as just a commodity, I'm just paying for accounting. It's not an investment in something that's going to help me run my business, help me increase the value of my business, help me get more time and energy in my business so that I don't have to feel strapped by these things. If you're thinking about it that way, you want to recognize that this isn't a commodity finance work. You need to find the person, the CFO, the controller, the bookkeeper that has the values and the brand that does work for you, and it should step up and make you feel like, okay, that is exactly how I want to deal with my finances. That's where I want to be with this. And that's the kind of person I want to be working with. So even though I've pointed this conversation at finance professionals, to tell them to think about their brand in terms of value and triggers and experience as an entrepreneur who's not a finance professional, when you're picking one, what I suggest is that you think about the fact that you want one with the personality, values and alignment with your own momentum, the same way that you want it in anything else that you get a marketing person or a salesperson, you have every right to that in your business. You have every right to know and understand your finances in a way that makes sense to you. So don't stop with the first bookkeeper that crosses your path or the first CFO out of corporate who calls you and says I'm the best thing since sliced bread. Poke a little bit in that interview process and see if you really jive with them. So messaging to every finance professional out there, you need to have and own your own unique brand. And hopefully I've given you an example here that you can kind of pull from and ask yourself your own questions to see what your brand is. I would love to hear your comments, questions and suggestions in in the notes or comments below, so please, please leave them like this podcast? Subscribe to it if you've enjoyed or learned something today. We want to keep cash flow on the air for everybody and I've enjoyed talking to you all this week and we'll see you next week. Cheers. Thanks so much for watching the cash Flow podcast with us. We want to bring more and more of this to you. So please like share, subscribe comment so that we can keep bringing more of this content to.