I'm Val! Coach for creatives
like you who are ready to be healthier, happier and more empowered women who love the business you run, the people you serve and the life you live!
012: Profit First for Savers with Mara Kucirek
My guest today is Mara Kucirek, an online course specialist. After trying to switch to the Profit First method several times over the course of a few years, Mara finally committed to it and experienced a ton of benefits. If you’ve felt overwhelmed by the Profit Course method and don’t know how to make it work for you and your business, Mara’s story will inspire you to get started.
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this episode is brought to you by my Creative Income Cure Course.
Are you ready to say hello to growth and stability with your finances? The Creative Income Cure course is a Profit First backed online course + community for creatives so you can confidently manage your money, give yourself a raise and make the right financial decisions in your business.
Mara is an online course specialist, and she discovered the Profit First business model three years ago. She tried to implement it in her business several times but found it too complicated. Opening multiple bank accounts, keeping track of the bookkeeping, and splitting up money into percentages felt like it would make her life harder, not easier.
Once Mara read the Profit First book and committed to the business model, she realized it wasn’t as complicated as she thought it was. It’s normal to feel nervous about a new method that we’re unfamiliar with, so we can make it feel more complicated than it actually is.
Another reason that Mara was hesitant about implementing Profit First is the she didn’t know how to set her percentages, and she thought that once you chose them, you had to stick with them forever. She’s since realized that you can change your percentages when you need to. Her business has had periods of higher operational costs and seasons when she wanted to pay herself more. In order to do that, she simply changes her percentages and continues using the Profit First method.
At the beginning of her business, there weren’t many operational costs, so she paid herself 80% of the revenue. When she switched to the Profit First method, she cut her pay to 45% and set up a solid plan to save for taxes. From there, she started raising her income over time.
Mara’s experience illustrates that it’s okay to tweak the Profit First system to make it work for you. You don’t have to do it exactly as the book explains it. Additionally, Mara would try her percentages for a month and see how they felt, and then make changes as necessary. You can also adjust your methods until you find what works for you.
Mara was able to commit to the Profit First method when she adapted it to work for her. For example, the book recommends doing your profit first routine twice a month on the first and the fifteenth. Those days didn’t always work for Mara, so then she would get behind. She eventually started doing her routine every Friday instead, and it became much easier to maintain.
Doing her Profit First routine every week also felt more motivating for Mara. If she missed a week due to a holiday or vacation, she wouldn’t get that far behind since she had another check-in a week later.
The biggest thing that made Mara a believer in the Profit First method was the benefits she experienced around her first tax season since implementing Profit First. She used to have to pay for her taxes from her personal savings account. Once she made the switch, she had the money to pay her taxes in full from her tax account and didn’t have to touch her savings.
She even had money left over and was able to give herself a bonus, which she used to pay her accountant.
Another benefit of the Profit First method that Mara loves is how motivating it is to see her profits grow. She was able to use her profit account to take a maternity leave when she had a baby, which gave her a lot of peace and joy.
The Profit First method also gave Mara the ability to say no to clients that weren’t the right fit for her business. At the beginning of her business, she didn’t have the freedom to say no to people, but now she gets to be selective about who she works with.
When Mara started doing Profit First in 2021, she paid herself 45%. Her business made $5,000 in the first month, so she paid herself $2700. Today, she pays herself 65% and makes around $2000 per week.
It took Mara a few years to commit to the Profit First method because it felt too complicated and overwhelming to her. Her best advice now is to not be scared of it, especially when it comes to setting up multiple bank accounts. Not all banks will understand why you want to set up so many accounts, but keep looking until you find one that works with you.
Mara eventually went with a local credit union. You can also get started by splitting up your money on a spreadsheet while you figure out your banking situation.
Additionally, Relay is an online bank that works specifically with the Profit First method.
Create a Better Course Podcast
Mara’s website: https://marakucirek.com/
Review the Transcript:
Val: Okay, guys, we have Mara Kosarek here and she has a really fun story. This is going to really hit those of you who are maybe more on the saving side of things. Maybe not your typical overspender. I’m just excited for you to hear from her and her story and how Profit First has really changed her business.
So first, Mara, tell us what you do and then just give us a little peek into how you discovered Profit First. Thanks.
Mara: Hi, everyone. I am an online course specialist. So basically, when someone wants to set up an online course or a digital product, I help them out, and they pay me to do it. That’s my entire business. I discovered Profit First about three years ago, and I actually discovered it multiple times. Of, I would try and then fail at it because it felt like a lot of work.
It’s not actually a lot of work, I wish. past me had known that,
but I knew it was this thing that everyone said you had to do in business. It sounded really complicated. I finally, like, read the book and realized it’s not complicated at all, started using it, and like everyone says, you magically, it’s not actual magic, but you have tax savings, and you can pay yourself, and your
business grows without just, like, guessing, which is amazing.
Val: Wild how that works, huh?
Mara: Yep, yep, it’s pretty amazing.
Val: Yeah. Great. Okay, so tell us a little bit about your hesitations. So, I know that you, didn’t you say you read the book four times?
Mara: I
started reading the book. I,
saying I fully read it would be kind of a lie because I don’t think I read the full thing until the very last time before I got consistent with Profit First. I don’t actually think you even need to read the book to implement Profit First, by the way.
That was a really big barrier to entry for me of like,
you have to read every chapter of the book.
And there’s parts of that book that are for like companies making over a million dollars, which I do not make over a million dollars. So I did
not need to even read those chapters, but it felt like I gotta read the book, there’s gonna be some magical secret tests before I can implement Profit First.
None of that is true, by the way.
Val: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So give us like just the, the raw, honest, what your first impressions were of profit first and what kind of held you back from actually committing.
Mara: It sounded really confusing to me at first. The multiple bank accounts thing of having a
different bank account for your owner pay, your operations, your taxes. That sounded very confusing to me, even though personally, I have a lot of individual bank accounts. Like, I have a vacation bank account, and I have a healthcare bank account.
So I don’t know
why I had this resistance with business, but it sounded like, first of all, setting all of these up was going to be really challenging and hard. It wasn’t, by the way. And then managing them all, I was like, this is so weird. I already. I don’t really like doing my bookkeeping, which, at this time, before I was using Profit First, I was kind of doing bookkeeping, I was logging my transactions, but I was doing the thing where I would do it every, like, four months, and then right
before tax season, when I had
Val: Mm
Mara: it off to my accountant, I
would, like, scramble to make sure it was all correct.
So it sounded like, okay, I already don’t like doing my bookkeeping. So I’m gonna add on this additional thing that’s gonna make my life even harder. And it just sounded really confusing. It’s like, I’ve gotta split the money up into percentages, and I don’t get to pay myself all of the money, which, At this time, my business was much smaller by the way, but I was saving like a couple hundred dollars every month for taxes, and then I was paying myself the rest.
And that felt great, and I started off as a freelancer, so I started off not making a ton of money, and so that’s, I just, kept the money I earned, and I didn’t have to pay a lot of taxes on it, and obviously that strategy does not work as your business grows,
and you need to have more tax savings, and you have operation costs, and you have to like register your LLC and pay them for that.
Val: Oh, yeah. Oh, man. So many things. There’s, yeah, I think that it’s very normal for people to feel, especially that the bank accounts are like overkill and that. It’s going to be very confusing and, and for anyone that needs to hear it from a bookkeeper, you can go back to episode one. I think it is with Madison, where she’s like, it literally adds like a couple seconds to your process, especially if you’re using a good app, you just kind of match the transaction.
So it’s, yeah, it’s one of those things that it. It seems, honestly, I think it’s because it’s unknown. It’s not normal. And anything that we don’t feel like we really understand, we kind of blow up in our head of how long it’s going to take or how complicated it’s going to be. I know I’m that way and it’s, I’ve heard that it’s part of being a perfectionist sometimes that if you don’t feel super confident in what this project is. And how you’re going to do it, that then you like just procrastinate and just don’t want to do it.
Mara: Which is exactly what I did. It felt like I didn’t know everything about it. It also felt confusing on How to pick your percentages, because there’s percentages recommended in the book, but if you actually start looking into how much should you save for taxes, people tell you, like, completely, totally different amounts.
You do, you can change your percentages at any point, by the way. That’s something I needed
to know that I did not realize. I thought you said it, and then you get in trouble if you’re not doing that forever. My percentages have changed over the years. Many, many times in my business, in both
directions, of there’s been seasons where I needed more operations costs, and there’s been seasons where I wanted to pay myself more, and so
I switched it up.
Val: Yeah. So tell us a little bit about the paying yourself piece because I know that you’re Maybe not the norm. And as more of a natural saver, you were, you were paying yourself more than when you started Profit First. So talk me through a little bit of how that went. Yeah.
Mara: how it felt for me, because I really like keeping the money I earn to me that’s motivating, and pretty much my whole business strategy, which This isn’t the strategy that works forever, but early on it was just work more, more, more, and you make more money.
And then you get to keep more of that money. So I was paying myself pretty much all of my money. I was saving some of it for taxes, but I didn’t have a lot of operations costs. Typically, I would get this like pot of money at the end of the month after I had invoiced everyone. And I would pay myself 80 percent of it, honestly, if not more.
And so to read the book and see that you’re supposed to be paying yourself 50% was so intimidating to me. That felt like a huge step backwards. It felt silly to why would I keep money in my business bank account when I could just put it in my personal bank account and I would still have an emergency fund.
I could be saving for some of the things that feel a little closer. Like I can save for retirement. I can save to go on a vacation. If it’s just sitting in my business bank account, it kind of felt like a waste to me. So I was just paying myself pretty much everything that came. into my business. So it meant taking a pay cut.
And when I first started Profit First, I started at 45 percent paying myself and that was because I had some tax payments I needed to catch up on because I wasn’t being strategic about taxes and my business started growing more and more, which meant I needed to get, like, very clear about what I was saving for taxes.
And then I also had like some additional operations expenses. It was basically just a mess when it started out. So I started with lower percentages and then slowly worked up to paying myself more.
Val: do you feel like it was hard to commit to the 45 percent when you knew you were taking a pay cut or what helped you to kind of push past that sadness?
Mara: It was sadness, by the way, and it was really hard. I think I’ve mentioned already that I kind of started Profit First a few times, and I would do it like once or twice, and then I would fall off the wagon and not do it. And I was like This is for people who don’t know how to handle money. Because I didn’t have a problem with not having money, I just wasn’t, like, following the system, and I was kind of chaotically saving money.
So the way I got over it was treating it like an experiment of, okay, let’s just try this for a month, see what happens. I will be open to, does this make me less stressed out? Do I feel like this is easier? And It was, by the way, like it completely was, but for me, I think I was afraid of the commitment, and so I just said, okay, I’m going to try this for a month, and then I’ll reevaluate, and if I don’t like it, then that’s totally okay.
Val: Mm hmm. Yeah. And I think that is something that is really good for people to hear that you can kind of dip your toes in, even, even to a lesser extent. So even in the book and almost any time he’s interviewed, Mike is interviewed, like on a podcast, he always says, you can at least at minimum put 1 percent into a profit.
Right. Account, like that can be your baby step and the way that, the way that I teach it in the course is definitely like here’s the full system and here’s how you can implement the full thing, but I do think some people need to scale it back and take a little step or I love like what you said that you just tested it out for a month.
And that’s okay. It’s okay to do that. And it’s also okay to tweak the system for you. That’s something else that I think people are often surprised to find out is that Mike is totally like, Hey, it can’t be one size fits all. So please tweak it and customize it to fit your business and your industry. And that’s why he has.
So many supplemental books that are like for specific industries and where people have had to like change his original process a little bit to make it really work. And so that’s a good word that hopefully people can maybe breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief with that. So tell me a little bit more about like the starting and stopping a few times.
Like what What were those circumstances? What made you start and then stop and then start again?
Mara: It really all boiled down to, I thought I had to do it exactly, exactly, exactly like it is in the book. And When it was successful for me is when I started adapting it to fit my needs. So one thing that was a huge pitfall for me was it’s recommended you do your profit first routine twice a month, basically.
I think it’s like the first and the fifteenth. In my business, the first and the fifteenth look very different some months. Like some months, that’s a Saturday. Some months, I have a bunch of client webinars I’m attending. So what kept happening I would like miss the magical day, the 15th would be some day where I was stacked with podcast interviews or client work and I wouldn’t do it and I would feel like a failure.
And of course, what you should do when you fail at something is just never do it again. Never look at it again. At least that’s what my brain told me. And so that happened a couple of times until I realized what would be way easier for me is doing it every Friday. And that’s, um, That’s still what I do, by the way.
It’s way quicker for me to do it once a week. There’s way less transactions to look through. There’s way less money to deal with. And I get paid twice as often, which to me is very motivating to be like, okay, I want to do the work in my business. I want to follow up on invoices. I want to connect with new clients so I can make more money on Friday.
When it, like, gets abstract where you’re not doing it until the end of the month, I For me, personally, I kind of lose, like, sight of the motivation and the goal.
Val: yeah. I can totally see that. And I think another situation that is very common where people do it weekly, our product businesses, because especially if they’re a brick and mortar and like a lot is happening, I think weekly is helpful in that instance. And honestly. You just don’t want to do more than weekly.
I think that’s kind of like the most frequent you would want to do, and there’s nothing wrong with doing that as long as you’re keeping up with it. And the other nice thing about weekly, which could kind of, you could kind of go too far on this, but if you miss a week, it’s, you know, it’s not that long until you do it
Mara: Yes, which I have found really helpful, because I do have weeks where I’m on vacation, and I don’t do it, which is totally, I say I do it weekly, and I didn’t do it the week of Christmas, I didn’t do it the week of my birthday, but it was completely fine. And when I say I didn’t do profit first, it’s part of a larger financial routine for me, so I also pay off my business credit cards, I pay any contractors I work with, and I love that I’m in a position where it, I know I’m never going to miss a credit card payment because I’m always checking in on it.
So if I miss one week, I’m going to do it the next week because it’s, it’s part of the routine. Mm hmm. Yeah. And I think that is so important to have a routine. And I really think for a lot of creatives especially, we need to have a written routine. And so that’s something that I really push hard at the end of my course. If you do the homework, you come out with a Google Doc. That has exactly like this day I do this, this day I do this.
Val: These are the links to like, if there’s any spreadsheets they use. And I think that in business in general, we just don’t document enough and we really need to know what we’re doing, when we’re doing it. And that doesn’t make you a less of a business owner. Like we just need to help ourselves out.
Mara: It does feel like you’re less of a business owner, but it’s so true, because I literally have a checklist of what my weekly financial routine is. I’m the one that made it, so why do I need the checklist to remember? But I do, and there’s a difference between their CEO, Mara, and sometimes I have to be employee Mara, who just like, Gets the work done, and I just pretend you’re paying yourself to do this thing and pretend like you’re not the boss.
And having those two different hats really helps me because CEO Mara gets, like, really bogged down in big decisions, where employee Mara will just do the financial routine and be done so she can be done working on Friday.
Val: Oh yeah. I do like that kind of weekly. the, the cadence that you have and that it affects your, I want to get paid more on Friday. And so that pushes you. That’s great. And it’s, I think this is just a testament to knowing yourself and paying attention to yourself and how you feel in your business at different times in your business.
And so just to kind of even give the flip side, if I had to do it weekly, I would want to die. Okay. Because I am such a creative that I don’t want to be in the numbers all the time. And, and I also, then I think I would have a hard time keeping up with it, but then I would keep putting it off and I’m not sure if I would do it even monthly.
You know, like, I think just knowing your personality and sometimes it’s just trial and error, testing it out, seeing how it goes and then making a change. And I like how you said earlier too, that you can change your percentages, you can change your routine. Like it does not have to be the first time you set it up.
It’s just perfect. It evolves.
Mara: So much of my Profit First routine has changed in the last three years.
But for
some reason, I didn’t know you were allowed to do that. Like, that you can change, you can change your percentages at any point. I have had weeks
where, and I have a, I have a spreadsheet where I write in all of my money, like, transfers.
So I put how much money is in the main account, and then I put all of the transfers. The amounts that I separate it out into. So that way if I make a mistake, it’s way easier for me to go back and be like, Wait, why did I put 3, 000 into my profit account? I was supposed to pay myself that? Cause I do every once in a while, I click the wrong account.
I am a human.
So it’s really nice to like, have that spreadsheet where I can see it all. But my point is that I have a notes section and sometimes in there I write like, I had a really big, like, Website hosting expense or something. So instead of my
operations being 12%, which is typically what it is, it was 14 this week.
And no, you don’t get in trouble if you do that, by the
way. No one is mad. The IRS at the end of the year, they don’t, they’re not checking up on
any of this stuff. So it’s completely okay
to
do that.
Val: Right. Yeah. And I also, I love that your number is 12%. I feel like that is so, so low and which in like an inspiring way, like you are running a six figure business. beyond six figures, right?
Mara: Yeah, yeah, so in case people are curious for context last year. I made a hundred and thirteen thousand dollars I had a baby last year. So last year was actually lower for me. The previous year was about 140 So yes over six figures I don’t know that my business should always be that lean Val and I were talking about this before the call and I was like, I think my biggest self sabotage is I just want to do all of the work in my business and spend as little money as possible, which served me very well to about the six figure mark, and now I’m realizing I’m in this scaling phase where the answer isn’t Mara just constantly works all the time.
That’s a great strategy, like to get off the ground, does not work when you’re like years down the road and scaling.
Val: Yeah. Totally. So I would love to kind of transition now to the, the point when you started to believe you, you started to see, you test it out for a month. You started to see the results. Tell us a little bit more about that experience and what you think really made you a believer in profit first.
Mara: There’s a few different things, and so I started at the beginning of the year doing Profit First, and this was in 2021 when I started, so this was a while ago. And what really made me a believer, honestly, was tax season.
I am a saver. I’ve never had, like, a weird issue where I didn’t have enough money for taxes, but I have had a lot of times where it stung.
I had to take money out of savings. It was bad. a bigger amount than I expected. So doing it from January to April, going through tax season, and so previous tax seasons what happened was I had no idea how much I was going to pay in taxes. Absolutely no
idea. My accountant would tell me, And I would pay it, sometimes it would be out of like, personal savings, or I’d have to like, catch up and save more money in my business.
So the year I started Profit First, I had money to fully pay the taxes that I owed. I had money left over, so I got a bonus.
And I used that money to pay my accountant for the year, all just from my tax account. So it
wasn’t even coming out of my operations account.
And that was huge for me. And
The other thing is seeing my profit account grow is so motivating.
Like, at first it felt like a waste of money to just, I’m just like, what is this? You put money into an account and then you never use it? That, like, shouldn’t I be investing that money? Shouldn’t I be saving it for retirement? Why do I want it in a business bank account? But it has been so motivating to see my profit grow.
And then there have been times I’ve used part of my profit for really big things in my business. So to like do a course that I really wanted to do, or the big one was I used part of my profit account for my maternity leave when I had a baby. And that was huge to
take time off and be like, it’s okay.
There, there’s money there. And literally you saved the money Mara for something like this. That gave me so much peace when I was on maternity leave, because I, I love money. I get very stressed out if it’s not coming in. I’m constantly convinced every client is gonna fire me, even though no client has ever fired me, by the way.
That has literally never happened to me.
But I just like have all these weird mindset fears that, like, business is gonna be terrible the next day. So knowing that there’s a pot of money, literally for whatever happens, made me a believer.
Val: Mm hmm. Oh, yeah. I cannot put, like, you can’t put a dollar amount on the peace of mind. That profit first brings
Mara: It’s huge.
Val: it is, and I think that especially for creatives, we, I think are underestimating how much stress is affecting our creativity and especially with money. If you are constantly feeling like you need more and there’s not going to be enough or you’re worried, that is staying.
In your brain and affecting your ability to be creative and to enjoy your business. And it’s just really sad.
Mara: I, a really big thing that Profit First also gave me is the ability to say no to certain clients. So I work in online courses, almost all of the clients I work with are like really incredible, amazing people who, they like wrote a cookbook, and now they’re teaching a course about how to do that. Every once in a while, there is a situation that is kind of sketchy.
That’s what I’m going to say. I’ve had some weird client situations where I am working on a course and they want to change testimonials. They want to lie about, like, their income. I once had a client who, she had a course about how to make money. This is like the cheesy everyone’s doing it on Instagram thing.
She had a course about how to make more money and she one time had made 60, 000 in a month. One time. In one month. But she took that number And she multiplied 60, 000 by 12, and she made a course about how to make half a million dollars in a year. She never made half a million dollars in a year! So my point is, Prophetverse gave me permission to stop taking on people like that, which now I’m really careful about.
I want to work with course creators who have something really cool to teach, and we’re doing it authentically. And then there have been a couple of times where I’ve stopped working with someone because it no longer felt good. And in the very beginning of my business, I didn’t feel like I could do that.
I didn’t feel like I could say
no to people. And now I get to pick and choose, which is great. Really cool when you’re able to do that
in your business and you know it’s going to be okay because you have money that’s there for if you need to tell someone no, or you can’t invoice, or money’s not coming in, whatever the reason is.
We,
Val: could talk about that all day. We. We need to know when enough is enough and we need to understand our numbers so that we can make the right decisions for our business and I think that that is what Profit First does for us and especially with the bank accounts like for you to actually know and, and I go, Maybe to an extreme.
I don’t know. I think it’s a great extreme on the business Accounts because I have I have accounts for I have an account for client gifts. I have an account for equipment upgrades and I have an account for my annual expenses like I have so much clarity about Like how much money I have set aside for certain things that it is You It keeps me from making really dumb decisions.
Mara: it’s true though, because I’ve started
to do more of that and I love it. Like, I have a virtual assistant. And so recently I was like, I want to give her a raise. She’s been amazing. She, Like really takes initiative on some tasks And so like I kind of separated out my operations account into different things of how much is it for her?
How much is it for like other things and it’s it’s really helpful to have that clarity And it’s also really motivating to be like, oh cool I can spend money on like something really cool for my business and if you’re paying someone who Like you really want to support that also is really fun and motivating to
be like Oh, I get to share some of this money with someone else
Val: Oh yeah. Seriously. And I think especially for the savers and I would say the over savers, maybe I think profit first really helps you to see what you could be doing with your money. And just to clarify too, for everyone, I don’t think. Personally, and I’m pretty sure Mike would not say that you need to stay at his recommended salary percentages or owner’s comp.
He, he tells stories even of people who have increased that amount. And so see it, see it as a starting point. It’s like, hopefully you can get pretty close to at least 50%, but it, it, you might need to start at 30 and work up to 40. And like, it might take some time for you to get there, but it’s okay for you to pay yourself more.
It’s just not okay for your business expenses to be like 90%. Like that’s really, that’s the main category that. He wants you to rein in because that’s usually for the average entrepreneur. That’s the category that we’re overspending in. And so it’s good, I think, for savers to know that profit first can help you to spend.
Actually, but also it can just give you clarity and a format for saving intentionally, not just saving because you’re scared or, you know. So is there anything else with profit first that as a natural saver you feel like was really helpful for you or gave you perspective? Mm hmm.
Mara: up my percentages was really helpful, so I have a recurring task on my calendar that every quarter I review my percentages and just make sure they’re still on track because they’ve been tweaked over the years. I mentioned I started paying myself 45. I’m now at 65, which is huge. Like, I really like paying myself the money I earn in my business.
Val: Yeah.
Mara: and in case people are curious, I do 65 percent of all the money I make, I keep. I pay myself, personally. 20 percent is for taxes, which for some people might be low, high, that depends where you live. There’s so much that
goes into it. And I have, I have gone up and down on the tax thing many times. And then I do 3 percent profit right now, which is kind of low.
That’s actually lower than I think Mike recommends in the book. But my profit account has like grown to a good point where it just felt like I want to pay myself more so I can save for college for my daughter and like do, do other things that aren’t related to my business. And then I do 12 percent operations.
And again, I’ve had seasons where operations was like 25%. I have
had seasons where I said my operations was 15 percent and then that account got really big. And that’s actually how I hired my virtual assistant of I was like, Oh, I don’t think this is how people scale businesses, of never investing in anything ever.
Val: Yeah.
Mara: So I realized that was ballooning a little too much, and I realized I had some fears around hiring that I couldn’t afford it.
When literally, like, I looked at my numbers and I could 100 percent afford it. Like, in
fact, it was probably more expensive to not hire because of all the money I was leaving on the table.
So, knowing that, like, it is completely okay if those things shift has
Val: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. So let’s, let’s get into some of the like real numbers, the transparency part of the show. Tell us, you know, we’ve got kind of the basics and the framework, but tell us some of the real numbers of what you were paying yourself before Profit First, which for you is actually higher than it, like when you first started Profit First and then how that has progressed over time.
Mara: Yeah, so I love talking real numbers, and I have a spreadsheet for every year where I put in all of my numbers. So when I very first started Profitverse, so this was January 15th, 2021, is my, the very first time I put it on my spreadsheet. I had tried it before. But I was paying myself 45%. So my first transfer was 2014, which probably sounds like a lot to some people, but that month I made about 5, 000 and so I only paid myself, so I did two transfers and it looks like I paid myself like 2, 700 ish of that money.
And so that felt like a steep drop off, honestly, because in the past I was, any, pretty much anything I was invoicing I was paying myself and like I said I was saving like a couple of hundred dollars for taxes. and then recently, let me switch over to like my current spreadsheet for this year because I just did my profit.
first routine recently. And literally what I do is I log into my business account on Friday. 65 percent of the money that is in like my main, I call it money in, it’s not called that in the book, but I labeled it money in. So I remember
like this is where the money goes in
and then that’s like that’s the pot you split it all up.
Um, so I split up 65 percent of that and I do this weekly now. I did not in the beginning and that’s as we talked about how I had a lot of weeks where I skipped.
So I paid myself 2, 000 just for the week last Friday. So that’s, I
had never thought about it like that, but that’s kind of amazing of like my first transfer, which was covering almost an entire month, is now like my weekly pay.
Val: Yeah, that’s
Mara: Yeah, that’s huge. And then I saved my money for profit, and My operations account, and, and all of, all of that stuff. And I recently paid my taxes as well, so my balance on that account is looking a little sad right now. But, you know, it’s gonna, it’s gonna build back up.
Val: But it’s accurate. It might not be what it was, but it’s the perfect amount because you know your percentage.
Mara: Yep. Yeah, exactly.
And it took me a while to tweak it, but again, this year I was able to pay all of my taxes.
And I paid estimated taxes and did all of that.
And I paid my accountant, and I’m currently also doing an S Corp analysis, so if people don’t like know LLC versus S Corp.
I was able to pay for that fanciness because typically you work with an accountant and they help you decide is it going to save you money to become an S Corp,
so I also paid for that out of my tax account this year too, so
that was cool if I was like, oh, I’m not just paying taxes, it’s anything tax related that is starting to come out of that account, which feels
really good because then that is not you.
in my operations
account and getting really expensive there.
Val: Right. Yeah. And just, I think for everyone listening, I think it’s helpful to know that really all of these things come down to, to, working the numbers around the way you want it to work. So personally, I pay for my tax accountant out of my OPEX, but I do also always have money left over from my tax savings because I prefer to over save.
And I like that I get a bonus around tax time and that gives me incentive and excitement to do my taxes because I know that’s, that’s going to be coming and if things ever change, if we somehow estimate something wrong, I would way rather be on the safe side with that. I haven’t stressed about taxes in so many years.
I don’t even remember like what that feels
Mara: Yeah,
I don’t either, honestly, because typically when I do my profit first routine, taxes is actually the first amount I take out. So that’s
like the first I say, okay, there’s 3, 000 or whatever in this account. And for me it varies week to week because I invoice a lot on the first, but I do have like other random things that come up throughout the month.
If I get affiliate income, I do coaching calls. So it’s not like always the same amount of money that I’m splitting up. Sometimes it’s a very small amount of money. Like I’ve done profit first, and there was 250 that like I needed to split up, which felt weird.
And then I, and then I also have seasons where, I was, I was out of office or something for a week, and I didn’t do it.
And then I’m
like, oh, I’m getting paid a lot. And it’s not actually that much, it’s just that I didn’t do,
I didn’t do my normal routine. .
Val: Yeah. Totally. Give us just like your best, been doing this for a while, had all the doubts and have made a lot of changes over the years. Like give us your best pitch for somebody who is. Just hesitant or afraid of either the complexity of it that’s not actually complex or, you know, just what would you say?
Mara: I think my best advice is to not be scared of the bank account thing. That was a real thing that held me back, and I don’t know why. I just was like, this is going to be so complicated, setting up multiple bank accounts. Like, I don’t
even know how to do that. I’m going to have to talk to someone on the phone.
It’s going to be terrible. And when I started Profit First, I was in kind of this messy position in my business, which I think realistically most of us go through this phase where, like, we have a bank account that is just for our business, but maybe it’s not technically a bank account. Like, or a business bank account is what I’m saying.
Because when I very first, like, started earning more money in my business, and I was like, whoa, things need to be separate. I Opening an actual business account sounds like really confusing. I just used, like, my maiden name bank account for a little bit. Now that is, like, technically not the way you’re supposed to do it, but it helped me get started.
And then I just find some local credit unions or talk to your current bank and just ask them, Hey, I want to have a couple of different checking accounts for profit first. Can you help me set that up? It’s really easy.
And I had a couple of banks that were kind of confused by that when I first was talking to them.
And then the third one I called, which I used a local credit union. I liked the ability to Go in in person if I needed to. I don’t actually ever do that now that I think about it. But I like the
idea that I could. And the third bank was like, of course we know what profit first is. You can have as many accounts as you want.
You can have a nickname for all of them. You can do
different transfers, because some banks are like, you can only transfer money like so many times between your multiple checking accounts.
So my point is, if you It’s not that complicated, and if the first bank or the bank you are currently banking with isn’t, is confused by it, it’s okay to ask another one.
Because you will find, there are so many banks now, which, I have a
blog post that, it talks about Profit First, and I mention the bank thing. And people find it because they Google Profit First banks, and that’s not even like really what I talk about in the post, but I mention it.
And so like, these exist.
These are out
there, people are searching for them, there are plenty of them. There are way more nowadays than there were like in 2020. So many different options, so don’t be confused by the bank accounts. It’s not, it’s not that hard, and you can start also with just like a spreadsheet if you want to. Like, split up your money on a spreadsheet while you work on the bank thing, because it’s, it is kind of intimidating to call a bank and be like, hey, can I have a new account and I want to do this fancy thing?
Val: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and there’s also Relay, which is an online bank that works specifically with ProfitFirst. Like they are the ProfitFirst bank. And um, I just switched to them recently and it was not difficult and I,
Mara: love Relay, by the way. Like, I have to say, I also just switched to them because I was using a local credit union in Orlando, Florida. I moved to Tampa and finally switched to Relay. I cannot say, like, enough amazing things about it, and they truly integrate with Profit First beautifully that I’m, like, saving so much time every week now.
Yeah. Yeah,
Val: Yeah. So definitely don’t let the bank accounts keep you back because. That is like, that’s the thing that I do tell people. If you don’t do the bank accounts, and I don’t know how many times I’ve said this on the podcast a lot, but you probably won’t follow it through. Like it’s the magic is in the bank accounts and it is not that scary and you will not regret having them.
I don’t think,
Mara: cool to see the bank accounts, like, the different ones. Like, I really like seeing my profit account now when I log in, and I like seeing, oh, what’s in operations, and I’m at the point where typically there’s something in operations. I did go through seasons where I was like, oh, I spent everything in operations.
There’s nothing in there anymore.
Val: totally. Okay. So tell us, give us just the rundown of what your services are, what your offerings are and where we can find you. Okay.
Mara: Yes, absolutely. So I help people with online courses and a lot of passive income products. The best spot to find me is, I have a podcast called Create a Better Course. And I talk about online courses, but I talk about a ton of the money stuff, especially having um, My first baby this year and things like how did I save for maternity leave?
How much time did I take off? If you go to my website, which I’m sure Val will put in the show notes My last name is impossible to spell Thanks to my husband. It’s Kiseric, but just go click the link. That’s always what I tell people But I also publish monthly income reports where I share exactly how much money I made that month, which is a really good way to get accountable, by the way.
People are like, these are so fun to read, and I’m like, well, thanks for being my accountability coach, because when you read it, it forces me to write another one. But I write
income reports about how much money I made, how much money I spent, and then I also share what my goals are for the upcoming months, so like what I’m working on in my business.
And then the, like, intimidating part is I share how the goals I set last month went, so like, This month I just wrote an income report and there were a couple of things on my list of goals that I had to be like, I did not actually do that. I had a six month old baby and tried to survive life and
not every single thing happened
on my list.
Which
is totally okay.
Val: totally okay. That’s right. Okay. Well, definitely guys, go follow her. All the links will be in the show notes and especially, yeah, get on her email list. I also enjoy the income reports and just, yeah. I think we’re all just nosy. We want to know.
Mara: well I am too and that’s why I started writing them because I find it so interesting to read other people’s. But most people are like. making six figures a month. I do not make six figures a month,
by the way. And I’m a service based business, so like,
I have some passive income. If you read my income reports, you can see that.
But most of the money is from me doing work, and then someone pays me for that work.
Val: Which is refreshing. It is nice to see real life numbers from very normal people, normal businesses, which is a big part of my heart behind this podcast. So thank you for just being transparent with us and sharing the raw, real reality of how implementing profit first went for you. I think it’s going to be really encouraging for people.
Mara: Thank you so much for having me.
Val: Of course.
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