Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Introducing Mind The Business: Money Management to Keep You on the Right Track

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

Today, Nicole hands over the mic to money experts Jannese and Austin, who host the show “Mind the Business: Small Business Success Stories." In this episode of "Mind the Business," Austin and Jannese unpack how fellow biz owners can manage their finances, track cash flows and choose the best business accounts.

Money rehabbers, you get it. When you're trying to have it all, you end up doing a lot of juggling. You have to balance your work, your friends, and everything in between. So when it comes to your finances, the last thing you need is more juggling. That's where Bank of America steps in. With Bank of America, you can manage your banking, borrowing, and even investing all in one place. Their digital tools bring everything together under one roof, giving you a clear view of your finances whenever you need it. Plus, with Bank of America's wealth of expert guidance available at any time, you can feel confident that your

money is working as hard as you do. So why overcomplicate your money? Keep it simple with Bank of America, your one-stop shop for everything you need today and the goals you're working toward tomorrow. To get started, visit bofa.com slash newprosmedia. That's b-o-f-a dot com slash n-e-w pros p-r-o-s media. bfa.com slash newprosmedia. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. If you've turned your hobby into a jobby lately or stepped up your side hustle game, the day you get your first paycheck is a really big deal. You know, you've seen those restaurants or even at the dry cleaners, that first framed dollar the business ever made. Well, in the time of e-commerce, that frame is probably more emotional

than physical, but your first sale is a really big deal. But there is some truth to the mo' money, mo' problems line. As you might remember from my interview with the former auditor, if you're a business owner, you got to keep track of your receipts. And just to highlight that episode, you probably remember me freaking out about not having kept my own. So to hear a story about a business owner who is Supes organized, I'm handing the mic over to money experts, Janice and Austin, who host the show Mind the Business, Small Business Success Stories, which is a podcast by Intuit QuickBooks in collaboration with Ruby Studios. In this episode, you'll hear from Jessica Spalding, the founder and CEO

at Harlem Chocolate Factory, which is a biz that really hits home here on Money Rehab. Because fun fact, our producer Morgan, when she first moved to New York, she worked in a chocolate factory in Harlem. There is so much to learn in this episode. And I will say, just to be real, you're about to hear some disclaimers before the interview starts. But welcome to the world of finance. You got to hear a few disclaimers before you get to that good stuff. Just like you got to kiss a few frogs before you get to that prince. And Janice and Austin are royalty. They are pros after my own heart. They're all about sharing the mistakes they made so that you don't have to. If you're a business owner or you're thinking of starting one, you should definitely check out their pod. In the meantime, here's episode three. Running a business has

rewards and challenges, but with Intuit QuickBooks, you're never alone in your journey. Here's episode three. to help you keep track of it. Get a free guided setup if you sign up for QuickBooks Online today. An expert can guide you to set up your books for accurate bookkeeping. The views, information, or opinions expressed during this podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not represent those of Intuit QuickBooks or any of its cornerstone brands or employees. This podcast does not constitute financial, legal,

or other professional advice or services. No assurance is given that the info is comprehensive, accurate, or free of errors, and the information presented is for general information purposes only. Intuit QuickBooks does not have any responsibility for updating or revising any information presented. Listeners should verify statements before relying on them. Hey everyone, I'm Austin Hankwitz. And I'm Janice Torres. Welcome to Mind the Business, Small Business Success Stories, a podcast brought to you by iHeartRadio and Intuit QuickBooks.

In each episode, Austin and I chat with small business owners as they share their stories about the ups and downs of owning a small business. Plus, we'll learn from their experience about how you can help fortify and strengthen your own business. Now, Janice, I'm really excited about today's guest. But before we jump into that, I really want to understand the early days of running your business, right? I know the VC world pretty well. I made some mistakes early with my money. I'll happily admit that. But I want to learn more about your journey. So what was your journey like setting up the financial infrastructure of your business for the very first time?

I'm so glad you brought this up, Austin, because as someone who teaches folks how to start a small business, I teach them from a place of I made all the mistakes, so don't do any of this. And mistake number one was me not having any idea what was happening financially in my business until tax time and then getting a huge tax bill because I didn't know anything about quarterly estimated payments. I didn't know what my cash flow situation was looking like. I didn't know where my expenses were. And so every year it was like the always say, saved my sanity. And my accountant, when I hired her, she said, if you don't use QuickBooks, we can't work together because they're the gold standard for

accounting software. Plus they have so many other features like business accounts, invoicing, payroll, et cetera. She's like, we're not going to do this unless you're on board with this system. And I totally get it because it's just a robust software that's tracking everything that's happening in your business. I'm curious what your experience was like, Austin. Yeah, right there with you. I think the tracking everything in your business is special because I was the person that in the beginning was like, oh, the smallest expense, the smallest subscription, anything I can think of, oh, that's a business expense. That's a business expense. And soon enough, I started having subscriptions to every newsletter you can imagine. I had subscriptions to so many different softwares that I thought

were going to help me build my business. And it took me a little bit of looking at what I was spending because obviously inside of QuickBooks, you get to see the cash flow out every month. And so I'm like, dang, I really spent that much more this month than I did two months ago. What's going on? And for me, that was reconciling those expenses, seeing do I really need this? So I think in the beginning, one of the biggest money mistakes I made was just overindulging on what I thought could be a business expense or what should help me build my business. And then the second thing to kind of piggyback off your taxes here, the payroll stuff. I did not set myself up for payroll as soon as I should have. It was really hard for me to understand that, you know, I'm not just the entrepreneur co-founder of this business. I am also an employee, which

means I need to be taking a payroll. I need to be paying taxes. I need to be setting aside money for my 401k and my health insurance and things of that nature. Right. And so it was just such an eye-opening moment. Once my accountant who also uses QuickBooks sat me down, I was like, all right, Austin, you guys are at this point where, and I have a co-founder, his name's Christian. And he's like, you guys are at this point where y'all definitely should not just be doing this little 1099 stuff anymore. Like, why have you guys not set up payroll? And it's like, because I don't know.

One thing that I also love about the platform is that you have an option to work with an expert. And a lot of small business owners try to DIY their way to success. And at some point we realize we're in over our heads. And things like recommending making the election for S-Corp so that you do start paying yourself. Those are all things that an expert can work with you on. So it's definitely good always to think about where are you maybe just not sufficiently educated in a specific area when it comes to business finances and then finding the people that can support you on your journey. But enough about us. Let's go ahead and introduce our guest. Jessica Spaulding grew up in an anti-sugar home, but there was one exception to this rule,

chocolate, not just any chocolate. Her mother knew the higher the quality, the lower the sugar and the better the flavor. They would attend every chocolate show and learn about chocolate from around the world but could never find anything that reflected her culture. So she tempered her first batch of chocolate at 10 years old and dreamed of owning her own shop one day. That dream would manifest itself into the Harlem Chocolate Factory. Although being a chocolatier wasn't a supported career path, she never gave up on her dream. Merging her passion for chocolate with her love of Harlem, she created a unique experience she wants to share with everyone. Jessica, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you for having me.

So excited to have you here. First and foremost, how did you come up with the idea for Harlem Chocolate Factory? up with the idea for Harlem Chocolate Factory? I think the idea for the company came up with me. No, you've already said it. I've been going to chocolate shows since I was a little kid, and I was immersed in this thing I had been looking forward to for the entire year. But as you start to get older and go to them, I'm experiencing cultures and understanding what cultural experiences are and never seeing anything that reflected what I felt like my culture was as a Black woman and African-American woman in this country. And as you get older and you find out 70, 80 percent of the chocolate on this earth is from countries in Africa, you start to like wonder why there's not more cultural representation. And that's literally how I came up with the concept. So as it relates to Harlem Chocolate Factory, walk me through sort of step by step as to one, how you got $15,000. And then two, once you got the money, what were you doing with it, right? How

did you decide the first couple of things to spend the money on? Yeah. So that was a part of the New York Public Library's business plan competition, which we won. I wanted to find a way to let people know about Harlem Chocolate Factory, but then also to set myself up to have something sustainable. So as a part of the business plan competition, there were like little things you were doing to legitimize that you were going to actually do in the use of funds, right?

Like, I'm going to spend $2,500 on this and that's going to be in equipment and supplies and $2,500 is going to be on marketing. So I think by the time we were all said and done, like 50% of it went to just setting us up to produce. Probably 25% went to setting up the business. So like getting our website to be an actual website, like I had kind of coded something, but we needed now a payment system and we needed stuff for people to be able to order and filing the actual LLC and going through that part. I got a lot of subsidized help because I had turned to a lot of nonprofits to just help me

in receiving like free accounting, free legal. And I wanted to keep like 5,000 in reserve and it wound up coming in handy very quickly. Because by the end of that first year, we got an order for like 250 six count boxes that were going to Sam Adams for their media kits. And so we needed a whole bunch of money to get that order done and processed. That's how the money got split up. And I hope you don't mind, but I kind of want to rewind for a second because you were talking about these nonprofits that you kind of leaned into that really helped you pull together the accounting, the legal things of that nature. And I'm sure there's some people listening right now that might be in your shoes as you were when you were still kind of figuring it all out. How did you find those

nonprofits, right? How were you so resourceful and what were you pulling on to find these different resources to help you move forward in your business? 100% the library. There were a group of women at the library that I was going to. They kind of rallied around me and they had so many different resources and so many different like reference points. So like all of my initial marketing analysis was done at the library. I can't afford a $5,000 research report. You know, like those reports cost money. And a lot of times they're available for free through your local library. And the only resourcefulness was like getting out of my own comfort zone to be able to really lean on them and ask for help. The only way to do it is with the assistance of other people. Okay. So back to sort of the discussion here, right? You got the money, you're spending it here and there. You're trying to figure out what's going on.

What maybe software tools, resources were you using to help make sure that you didn't overspend, that you were analyzing the data, that you were figuring out this money coming out, this money coming in? When I started in the business plan competition, they had given us like a whole bunch of access to spreadsheets, right? Where you were supposed to manage your cost of goods, manage all these things and the stress. So when I went to this nonprofit called Start Small, Think Big, they offered free legal help and free accounting. they offered free legal help and free accounting. And I got an accountant that used to work for the IRS and she set me up on QuickBooks and explained to me reporting. She broke down like the chart of accounts and set me up in such a good way that we didn't hire accountants until this year. Not to say we didn't need it,

but we couldn't afford it. And QuickBooks kind of worked as our adjunct CFO during this time because I was able to really understand like, okay, when we buy from this vendor, it's packaging, but it's not necessarily packaging that's a part of our cost of goods. It's a part of our operations, right? Like where do you put shopping bags? And those are the things that people don't start to understand about how to set themselves up financially to be able to get an accurate identification about how profitable you are. And do you need to scale in terms of volume or do you need to cut your costs in terms of operation? And while we weren't profitable that year, the next year we definitely were,

and we've maintained profitability throughout our time. Having that data is so important. So I'm curious, did it play into your decision in 2018 to open your flagship location? How did you make the decision financially that it was the right time for a brick and mortar? Man, I did the cardinal sin of what you should never do. And I'm going to be like completely transparent here. I let a sale dictate to me what my next move was going to be. And then I let a market that was a little inhospitable to me scaling dictate which step was next. So I'll break that down very plainly to you. We had went to the fancy food show and got in the list of the top 10 things. And I was like,

of the top 10 things. And I was like, oh my God, it's going to be our big break. And we got this like six figure order and we were trying to find space to fulfill the order and just genuinely, honestly couldn't find it. We were supposed to get space and that deal fell through after a very lengthy stringing along, which was another mistake I made. I allowed

myself to move forward without paperwork on a deal and do not ever do that. Yes, there are good faith handshakes and everything. But the day before we were supposed to sign the lease, they kind of told me that they weren't going to give me the space. No kidding. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So I was devastated, but then there wasn't a lot of time for devastation because I had equipment on the way from Italy, which can happen to a lot of entrepreneurs. So that pushed me toward finding this space because after I had such a short amount of time between when that equipment was coming and when we were supposed to have the order ready, but it was like, it took us over a year to build out because we weren't necessarily ready for a change in business model. I had put having a store in a retail space after building a production facility.

But I will say having an analysis of what was working is what kept us open, right? Like it was a struggle, a dramatic and drastic struggle because now this space required my full attention. So I wasn't able to work anymore. So I was constantly watching my cost of goods and my operating expenses, but it didn't make it any less difficult. So as someone who went through the ups and downs of trying to find a retail space for you to produce this large sale, what's like the actual way it's supposed to happen? I can't say in terms of normal because business is like children. You know what I'm saying? Like every child is different, but we can say ideal. If I had any piece of advice for someone looking

for a space, it would be think about what you actually need to make your sale. Everyone immediately assumes retail. You may not necessarily need that because people drastically undercount how expensive and also difficult and time-consuming dealing with direct-to-consumer. And now, like, retailing to stores has its own difficulties because now you have to create a marketing machine. You're just choosing your heart, but you got to understand the financial ramifications of taking on that cost for yourself.

If you want to get into Target and you're like, well, we're not ready for that, so we're going to open our own store. Take that from your brain. There's no way you're going to tell me that you're not ready for Target, so I'm going to open my own retail shop. If you are not ready for that, I urge you to reconsider how ready you may specifically be to own your own retail shop. What wound up happening with us, because we were so ill-prepared for a specific retail scenario, we were consumed with our consumers. The power of a dollar walking into your face is very hard to deny. And unless you go in with the, this retail space is just here to be here and our actual goal is scaling our production, that is very, very different than just like, no, we're going to open a retail space in addition to this other thing we're trying to do at the same time. Because of how time consuming and thoughtful you have to be about your brand with that at the same time. It's not impossible.

You just have to be intentional. Coming up on Mind the Business, small business success stories. the business, small business success stories. We want to have this plethora of options because we feel like we are offering our customers something different. The reality is, is you're just cannibalizing your sales. We'll be right back after the break. Being your own boss feels amazing, right? You get to decide when to work harder and when to work smarter. And there's nothing smarter than letting Intuit QuickBooks do the work for you. With QuickBooks, you can easily track your business expenses and profitability in one place, forecast cash flow, and stay organized for tax season year round.

QuickBooks empowers business owners to make informed decisions without all the manual hassle. There will always be hurdles in running a business, but with QuickBooks, you will tackle them with confidence. Get a free guided setup if you sign up for QuickBooks Online today. A QuickBooks expert can walk you through connecting your bank accounts, automating tasks you perform the most, and learning best practices. Welcome back to Mind the Business, small business success stories brought to you by iHeartRadio and Intuit QuickBooks. So I imagine you as a retail business owner, you're confronted by the pandemic and that requires some pivoting. So how did the pandemic actually affect your business operations and what did you change about your strategy? It was the ultimate gut punch, but it also made me recognize where we were going terribly wrong. Our customers dictated what we had. Previously, when we were working out

of the incubator, for clarification, we only had like three products, but in the store, it's a little different. People are coming in and they now have the things that they like. I love y'all, but I want turtles. Y'all got something with caramel. Y'all got something with nuts. Y'all got something with this. Y'all got something with that. And now that we are relying on those people coming back, we have to fill that.

And when the pandemic shut us down, we had gone from those three SKUs to upwards, I would say of like 45. Yeah, that's quite a leap. Wow. Because everybody and their mother coming in about the things that they specifically want. So just want to jump in here for a second. For the person listening right now who's thinking about starting their business, they don't yet know what a SKU is. What is a SKU, Jessica? It is just an individual product that you make, right? So it's that specific color, size, and quantity of whatever item that you are ordering. It's that unique item number.

According to Google, it's stock keeping unit. There you go. I did not know that either. Professor Google strikes again. Yeah, right. So we got to come back to my homegirl QuickBooks. So we were always doing analysis around our costs. We were not doing analysis around our sales. We were looking at the sections, right? Like this is how much we're doing in corporate. that the sections, right? Like this is how much we're doing in corporate. This is how much we're doing in retail, but not per item. So we sitting down, we ain't got nothing to do, right? Cause it was supposed to be two weeks. And then we started looking because we're like, all right,

if we're going to open back up, there's no way that now not having any staff, not having any, you know, it being a little bit dicey to bring people in to help me. It was like, we got to reduce how much stuff we're making. And I mean, everything we have sells out. So there's a mental kind of thing where you feel like, all right, we always sell it now. So we are clearly making money from it. And we started analyzing. We have this one SKU that sells out all the time.

I mean, literally in minutes. When we had them online, they were selling out all the time. Don't be shy. What's the SKU? Let me hear what I need to start making from a chocolate perspective. Listen, let me tell you something. But don't ask me for it because I ain't got it. You're going to wait until we scale up.

It is our chocolate turtles. Okay. Boom. That's what it is. I ain't mad. You it because I ain't got it. You're going to wait until we scale up. It is our chocolate turtles. Okay. Boom. That's what it is. I ain't mad. You know what I'm saying? But it was almost a two to maybe three day production process. And the yield was around 120 turtles at a time.

And they could sell out in a day. And over the course of the three years that we had those turtles, we made $15,000 or $20,000 in turtle sales. Now for some entrepreneurs, oh, okay, that's great for one. Okay, let's break that down. 15, 20,000 over the course of honestly, maybe two years. So that's $10,000 a year. We're going to put it all the way up to the top. Two years, $10,000 a year per month. 800. Yeah. We talking about less than a thousand dollars a month. And is that factoring in like labor and all that stuff? like the money you're paying folks to make those things. Right. And so once we take out the margin,

we are talking about maybe $500 a month. Yeah. $500 for a month for an item that takes three days of the production schedule. If we have seven days to work with, 30% of our time to make $500. That is such, you've been dropping gems, Jessica. I mean, truly, this whole conversation has been amazing. But that I think is so important for the entrepreneur listening right now who's trying to scale that business. You've sort of realized like, from a scaling perspective, this part isn't

helping me scale the top line. I mean, I'm, you know, 30% of my time is going into making, I don't know how much money you do, but call it $10,000 a year. I would imagine Harlem Chocolate Factory is doing much more than $10,000 a year. But for the person listening right now, what was the big realization that was like, okay, wait, so 30% of my time is going here. How does that now affect what you're doing? Did you change anything? Are you now focusing on different SKUs? Absolutely. It don't take long for me to tell myself I'm doing something stupid. All right. Yes, entrepreneurship is difficult, but there was a level of hardness to like what was going on that I felt like, okay, maybe we're hitting our heads against the wall. And so it's how I develop those equations. How much time do I have? How much time am I spending on a certain product?

And how much does that product make? And we realized 95 to 96% of our money was made between two product lines. It was chocolate bars and truffles and bonbons. Everything else went. That reminds me here, Jessica, of the 80-20 rule, right? 80% of your money comes from 20% of your products. Yeah. And the thing is, I think that small business owners wait too long to think about scaling. You need to have a timeline on identifying what your hero product is.

You cannot keep throwing things out the wall and saying like, okay, well, this didn't pop and that didn't pop. And that, you know, as soon as something doesn't necessarily sell and scale to millions and millions and millions, people are just stuck in that creative rut. I tell entrepreneurs all the time that creativity is the enemy of entrepreneurship at times. Don't just keep all your creativity on product development. It may need to be your sales and your marketing plan that needs that creativity. But we get stuck on the product and developing all these different kinds of products

and like, okay, that one product didn't sell. So we're going to move on and make another product. No, take a time. If it's a year, if it's six months, which one of those five products that you make up, which one of those moved the furthest? All right, boom. Two of them did? I don't care if it was $1,000 or more sales than the other two. Stick on those. But we want to have this plethora of options because we feel like we are offering our customers something different. The reality is, is you're

just cannibalizing your sales. That part right there. Yeah, that's it. That's a gem right there. You know, next time, Jessica, just at me, OK, because you're literally describing the first like seven years of my journey as an entrepreneur. Yo, I literally did that all the time. We used to do pop ups. This was another thing, yo,-ups. This helped us with deciding that we were going to go into retail. It felt cheap because I didn't have to pay staff, right? It was me. There was somebody that loved me there working for the day. But the table rental, getting to the pop-up, the time that it took to create the products for the pop-up, it took to create the products for the pop-up. I was paying for absolutely every single thing. The pop-up profitability was at honestly like less than 20%. So I'm like, the product's got 70% margins and I'm only making 20% and some zero. At the end, all in to rent all those tables and do

all those pop-ups and get to all those pop-ups and get the products for all those pop-ups. We were literally spending probably around $4,500 a month. So I'm like, okay, that's how I knew I was able to afford the shop. Yeah. Jessica, this conversation has been so full of gems. I know folks are going to get so much value added information here. I wanted you to tell us what's next for Harlem Chocolate Factory and where we can find you. Definitely follow us on all the social media signups for our newsletter.

Our goal is to just grow, right? We are now finally looking for a real life production space. And you can find us at HarlemChocolateFactory.com. You'll see us in stores very soon and maybe in places where you take flights. So that's because that's not violating it. You know, I'm just saying, like, maybe if you was going to go get on a flight and you was at a place that has planes. Might start with

an A of some sort. It might. It just might. It just might. I don't know. Jessica, this is so fun. You're awesome. Thank you. This has been such a great episode. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for being here. That was such an incredible conversation with Jessica. Janice, tell me what stuck out with you

the most about that conversation? Well, first and foremost, I definitely need the truffles in my life and I need to make my way to Harlem to go and get some of those because I am starving now after this conversation. But for me, I think Jessica was just so transparent in the fact that entrepreneurship is messy. It's ugly. You're going to make mistakes, especially if you're doing this for the first time. You don't have a circle of people around you. So how about you, Austin? What did you take away? I think for me, it was like understanding and I'm sort of going through this myself. Right. So it really resonates with me is it takes one side of you as a business owner to start

a business, but then it takes a completely different side of you to scale that business, right? You can get that $15,000 check. You can win the contest. You can buy the equipment. You can get your first couple of customers, but it's a completely different gameplay now to say, wait, what SKUs are actually working for me, right? How do I double down on what's working?

Are these pop-up shops really worth it, right? Everything that she was talking about as it relates to scaling her business, like those are so, so, so important. Absolutely. I really loved the idea that as you grow, you have to let go, which is one thing that she really emphasized on when she said, you know, all of these SKUs were in demand by customers, but were they actually a good use of my time as a business owner? And you kind of got to get ruthless. You got to take your feelings out of, oh, well, I invested so much time and energy and money into launching this product. And maybe it's just not

serving you. And that's okay. Entrepreneurship is really about not just making good decisions, but making sustainable decisions as a business owner that are going to help you in the long run. And sometimes that means doing less, not more. And I think just want to call this out too, is she did that handshake deal, right? With the storefront owner and turned out to be a bad deal and it didn't work in her favor. And so contracts, get it written, get it written, get it signed, get it figured out. You know, I'm not here to say that there are people out there to cheat you or lie or steal from you, but man, that piece of paper sure feels a lot better than someone's handshake. Absolutely. Well, that's it for today's episode. You can find me on social

media at YoQuieroDineroPodcast. And you can find me at Austin Hankwitz. You can follow Intuit QuickBooks on all social media at QuickBooks. To get the tools you need to start, run, and grow your business, head to QuickBooks.com today. Join us for the next episode on Thursday, May 11th. We're talking with Emily Doyle and May Kwok about their company, Dune Suncare, and how they managed to make their burgeoning brand into a successful business in under three years. You won't want to miss that one. So don't forget to follow, rate, and review this show wherever you listen to podcasts so you can stay up to date on our future episodes. And check out our show notes for more info from this episode about money management. And a huge thank you to our guest, Jessica Spaulding. This podcast is a production of iHeartRadio and Intuit QuickBooks. Our executive producer is Molly Socha. Our supervising producer is Nakia Swinton, and our writer is Tyree Rush.

Our head of post-production is James Foster. See you next time. Running a business has rewards and challenges, but with Intuit QuickBooks, you're never alone in your journey. QuickBooks understands the unique challenges of managing your own business, offering a suite of business tools to meet your specific needs.

You work hard for your money and QuickBooks will work harder to help you keep track of it. Get a free guided setup if you sign up for QuickBooks online today. An expert can guide you to set up your books for accurate bookkeeping.