Podcast S1:E4 - Simplified Finance with Susie Jackson
You can connect with the incredible Susie over on Instagram or on her website!
Show notes:
Ellie: Welcome back. So I am super excited about today's guest. Susie and I have been following each other on Instagram for a really long time. And have been really good cheerleaders for each other in business. We have a lot of really overlapping ideals, but very different experiences and expertise.
it's interesting because. I live over here in Northern Ireland, which is technically part of the UK and Ireland. And she's moved from the UK to Mexico. So she's moved to North America and I've moved from North America.
Susie mentors, freelancers to help them figure out how much they should be charging. And how to raise their rates with clients so that they can earn a decent living, doing what they love.
And she is here today to talk to us about how to create simplified finance systems in our business. How to charge what we're worth. How to keep track of our financial health in our business. And how do I make sure that we're making money while maintaining all around wellbeing with our lives and our businesses.
So without further ado, let's talk to Susie.
Hi, we're so glad to have Susie here with us today. Susie, tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from? What are your preferred pronouns? And just any other tidbits you want to throw in!
Susie: Yeah. So thanks so much for having me here Ellie. This is super exciting. So I am British and I grew up in Gloucestershire in England. So Southwest near the Welsh border but my family is actually from the Northwest of England, like Manchester, Liverpool area. A few years ago, my partner got a job in the U.S. And I followed him over there to Connecticut. And we were there for a couple of years. And now we actually spend most of our time in Mexico, but my business is still based in the UK.
And I'm very clearly British. When you hear me speak. My preferred pronouns are she and her.
Ellie: Fantastic. So when did you start your business?
Susie: I started working freelance part-time or on my full-time job and early 2015. So, that kind of continued like that for most of the year. And then the end of that year, I handed in my notice at my job and took my business full-time. So I'm actually coming up to five years since I started my business, which is really exciting. Something I need to celebrate.
But my business has actually changed quite a lot since then. So when I started out, I was a Spanish to English, translator and copy editor. And I worked a lot with academic clients. And then last year I started mentoring another translater via a Facebook group. And I just really discovered that I love mentoring.
That's kind of where my business has gone since then. It's been probably a year and a half since I did that. And I think that after I took on a few more mentoring clients, I realized that finances and pricing were an area that I could really help people with, even though that's not what my background was in at all.
So I package that up into the program that I now offer. That's kind of where my business has gone. So it's definitely changed a lot since I started.
Ellie: Yeah, in my head, I guess I sort of assumed that you had two businesses. You had one that you were doing the translation and copy editing. And then this business for helping freelancers around their pricing and their money and those types of things.
Susie: Yeah, they have kind of evolved separately. I think that the translation and copy editing side. While I still do some projects in that business, it's definitely like winding down. I do much less in that area than I used to. So yeah, they are kind of separate, but I guess I just see it as like my business evolving. I think over time I've done, I've started doing less and less of the translation to more and more of the mentoring and that's just kind of how the business has gone, but yeah, technically it's two separate things.
Ellie: Oh, I can definitely relate, you know, going from being a VA. So just being like, I just do websites now. Whereas I was kind of doing websites anyway. And I kept that all under one business as one brand.
So, what do you love most about your business and your work?
Susie: I think that the absolute best thing for me is that I get to help really talented business owners to earn a decent living from their work. You know, so many of us started our own businesses because we love to provide a particular service. And because we want that flexibility of being self-employed, but I think that we don't have that background in business and finance and all that kind of thing.
And it can mean that we have a real mindset block around money and that is as a result, we end up massively undercharging. So I think, when I work with clients with mentees, I get to see this radical change. In how they approach pricing as they gain confidence. And that's just a massive honor for me.
That's the utmost thing that I could do in my business. I just love it so much.
Ellie: Oh, that's so cool. I think that's why so many of us are in business, right? Like that feeling of actually changing somebody's life, and for the better, and watching them thrive is just, it's so cool.
So what simple systems are you using to do business with ease?
Susie: There are quite a few different tools and things that I love to use in my business. I'm definitely a tech nerd in that sense. I like trying things out, but I would say the number one tool that use all the time, which I cannot live without is a project management tool called Clickup, which I know you're familiar with.
I couldn't imagine running my business without it now. I've been using it for over a year and initially it just helped me to stay on top of everything that I had going on. But I've since started outsourcing work to a couple of team members and it just makes all the processes so clear, like everyone just knows exactly what they need to do. And it's a massive life saver. It just cuts out so much of that back and forth about what needs to be done? It's it's brilliant.
Ellie: Yeah, I can definitely relate in my business. That's Asana and they're very similar tools. I would say click ups kind of like a sauna, but dialed a way up. It's intense, but absolutely amazing.
It is essential to have everything in one place and to have everybody communicating those things in one place. Especially when you're outsourcing, having all the processes and tasks kept in a silo kind of can make a world of difference as far as time and energy.
Susie: Yeah, definitely.
Ellie: So tell me a little bit about how you make finance simple in your business. And then we'll kind of get around and talk a little bit more about how you help others do the same.
Susie: I mean, I've always maintained that familiarity breeds confidence in finances as in many other areas as well. So I think for me, what's really key is just making sure that I check in with my finances on a regular basis. I have a weekly thing in my calendar where I go in and I just check, what's come in, what's going out, what have I got coming up in the budget? What business expenses am I expecting to have to pay over the next week? Any invoices, I need to pay things like that.
So just like once a week, making sure I go in and just keep on top of all of that stuff. Once a month, I do a full monthly review of the finances in my business. But equally I think there are so many tools out there that you can use that really just make managing your money simpler. So I know that you're a big fan of Freshbooks, right?
Ellie: Yes.
Susie: Accounting tools and invoicing tools are just a great way to take some of that burden off yourself. So yeah, I think that would be how I try to approach it. It's just like, keep it as simple as possible, but make sure that you are checking in with it frequently because that familiarity really just gives you confidence to be able to deal with any financial issues that come up and it takes away some of that kind of mindset block around money.
Beyond that, when I'm working with clients, I try to break things down just so that they can take small steps to become more confident about their finances. Through my mentoring program, I very much teach it as like, okay, first do this, then do this, then do this. And because it's small steps, it's just so much more manageable.
And I provide templates and spreadsheets. So literally I can just plug in the numbers and see what happens and it just makes it really easy. I'm definitely all about keeping things simple and breaking things down so that it's practical to apply. And it's not this scary, overwhelming thing.
Ellie: Yeah. I think that there's a lot of things around money. We tell ourselves different stories around money, and we all have different upbringings around money. There's a lot of mindset stuff. Sometimes it comes with money and it can feel, in a way that other mindset stuff doesn't, it can feel really visceral. I think money can, it can feel like really in your gut. And can sometimes be frightening as hell.
But. I think that for me as somebody who didn't have the, like, I was never taught really much about money. And so using Freshbooks for the last three years or so has been something where like, it's up on my dashboard. The second I log in, I cannot hide from my numbers. They are there in front of me.
My incomes, my expenses. My outstanding invoices are all there to greet me every single morning. And then I also use it to auto tracks, my expenses by connecting to my business bank account. Which means that usually a couple of times a week, I have to go in and reconcile transactions, which means I'm reminding myself about all these even recurring expenses that maybe I would forget about otherwise.
I also have my business bank account set up so that it just auto-deducts my taxes. And to a separate savings account, so that, little things like that make it really easy for me because I would be the type to normally get sort of panicked about money and I've gotten much, much better over the years.
But my natural inclination towards money is definitely to bury my head in the sand, which has taken a lot of training and practice to not do.
Susie: Yeah, I think I'm really lucky that my dad worked in banking for his whole working life. So, my upbringing was always very much about just like staying on top of your finances. I remember, when I left school and went to uni, he helped me put together a budget and I had all of that kind of training right from when I was young.
So, that's always come naturally to me, in running a business. And as soon as I started my business, I set up a pension and everything like that. So I think right from the beginning, and I'm lucky that I've been on top of it all because I had that background, but, I definitely have seen in my students, my mentees, that it's so possible to overcome those mindset blocks. It's just a question of gaining that familiarity and just being disciplined about it and making sure that you go in and you look at things.
And, like I said, I tried to make it as easy as possible because if you have a template for an email that you can send to raise your rates with a client. It suddenly becomes way less scary to actually do it because you can just literally copy paste, tweak a little bit and then hit send, and there you go, you don't have to worry about what should you say and how should you word it and will it come across funny? And, I'm just all for making it as easy as possible to get over those blocks.
Ellie: Absolutely. Definitely. So tell us a little bit about your mentoring program. Tell us about Charge with Confidence.
Susie: It's a four week group mentoring program, which helps freelancers and service-based business owners who struggle with their prices basically. The whole idea is that we cover everything that goes into figuring out how much you should be charging for your services and that's you as an individual. So it's not like the average rate in your industry or the value to the client or anything like that. It's figuring out that number of how much you need to charge in order to cover all of your outgoings. So business expenses, personal outgoings, tax, pension contributions or whatever you want to do to save for retirement. All of those things. And then also thinking about. How much time do you actually have or want to be spending on paid client work. Because not 100% of our time is going to be able to be spent on paid work. Right? We have other things as business owners that we have to do.
So, we cover all of that stuff. And the calculations that we do are based on your specific circumstances. So it's really interesting because every single participant in the group comes out with a totally different answer at the end of it. And that's absolutely fine. Like there is definitely no one size fits all answer to pricing.
So I run that program for a group a couple of times a year. And then, the rest of the time when I'm not doing that, I work with clients one-to-one and that can either be going through that same program or it can be, working on an area that they particularly are struggling with, maybe not pricing, but something else to do with finances or getting that side of their business, all organized and working well.
Ellie: That's very cool. I think a lot of people could really use those swipe systems. Systems that will say, this is how I tell my clients that I'm raising my prices and I'm going to stay firm in it. A system for helping people to calculate how much they should be charging, because there are a lot of answers out there in the business world, and often they aren't the right one for your business.
You're totally right. That it is something so personal because everybody's circumstances are different and everyone's trying to save for their own goals.
So having somebody to mentor you through your own specific circumstances is a really cool opportunity .
Susie: Yeah, and it's so powerful. We get to two numbers by the end and it's, you know, as an absolute minimum, how much do you need to be charging for an hour of your time in order to cover everything that you're going to have going out, personally and in your business. But then we also come up with an aspirational number as well. So like thinking about your long term vision of where you want to get to, like, what would you be charging in order to make that? So it's very much have something to aim for and then have something that, you know, you absolutely can't accept less than. And, and I think that that's really powerful.
Ellie: Absolutely. And so you help people with a couple of different things. You help people through the fear and scariness of raising their prices. Can you tell us a little bit about how you help people do that?
Susie: Yeah. I mean, it totally depends on the client of course, and their circumstances. So, I was working with one one-to-one client a few months ago who had this real mindset block around raising her rates because previously, before she was running her own business, she was at a salaried position and she approached her boss about a raise and that raise was given. And then two months later she was fired.
So she had this major mindset block around actually raising her rates with our clients and especially her very first freelance client who she been working with for a couple of years. And who was definitely underpaying compared to some of her other clients. So with her, it was very much a case of talking through all of these things that were concerning her and really thinking about, okay, what's the absolute worst that could happen in this situation? Like if he says to you that he can't pay your new rates and he walks away from this working relationship, basically. Is that going to have a big financial impact on you month to month? And her answer was, well, no, not really, because he's not paying me that much anyway. And he takes up a lot of my time.
So that kind of gave her that confidence to say, " Well, yeah. Actually, if he does walk away, it's not going to be the end of the world and I'll have more time to find other clients. So it's talking through issues like that and really just getting that confidence to just go ahead and do it, you know, working through those, those mindset blocks.
Ellie: Yeah, something I like to talk about quite often - I've experienced all those fears, right. So when I was a virtual assistant, I think my starting rate. And I'm very, just open about these, not everyone's super open about numbers, but, was about 17 pounds an hour.
And now I don't work on an hourly rate anymore. But I think that technical, hourly rate that I have right now listed that I don't really use is 35. So it's double that three years later. And I honestly kind of want to put that hourly rate is still higher. But what I would like to say is that over all of those jumps, I did lots of raising my hourly rate for like two to three pounds, you know, every six months or something for my first couple of years in business.
And every time I did it, I got better clients. The clients that I have that are willing to pay those higher rates are better quality clients. They treat me with more respect. They value my insights and opinions more. They treat my time with more worth and more respect. And I've never once regretted raising my prices.
Susie: I totally agree. My experience spending exactly the same. I think my. I mean when I started. It's my business. I was, as I said before, I was working, part-time alongside my full-time job. So it wasn't like I needed to, and my full salary from my business. And I had no idea what to charge, literally, no idea. And so.
I was like, well, you know, minimum wage sounds. Okay. So I just basically based all my pricing on like six pounds, 50 an hour or whatever it was in the UK at that point. And obviously the clients that I got, like there was one client that I ended up working with for the first couple of years, my business. And he gave me a lot of work, but he could eat.
You know, when I then needed to raise my rates, he just couldn't afford to pay them. and I had other clients who. As you say, they just didn't really appreciate my time or my skills. I think they just saw it as like a cheap way to get the work done. Whereas, you know, now I'm, I'm not gonna lie. My.
My hourly rate now is 50 pounds an hour. So like the jump there has been massive over the five years. And. I have such a good working relationship with all of the clients that I work with now in translation and copy editing, you know, like they come back to me again and again. and they really value what I can bring to their academic papers. That's just the kind of relationship we have. So I totally agree with you.
It definitely isn't a negative thing to raise your rates.
Ellie: So another thing that I've noticed, you talking a lot about it on social media, and I think this is something that entrepreneurs, especially solo entrepreneurs and freelancers do not do enough or think about enough is pensions. Can you tell me a little bit? Cause I, even me, like, I am completely clueless.
Now Paul's my situation's slightly different. Well, probably not that different from yours, but we are living this dual country existence, and we don't know where we're going to retire. So instead we're working on investments and it sort of works similarly, but as far as pensions go, I'm actually relatively clueless. And Americans call them a 401k typically. So do you want to talk a little bit about how that works for solo entrepreneurs and freelancers?
Susie: Yeah I can speak a little bit about the system in the UK. I don't really have that much experience of pensions and other countries, but I can definitely talk a bit about that. So I think a lot of us don't think about saving for retirement until it's way too late.
If we're in a salary position, we would naturally be paying in, in most countries, you know, we are naturally added to a pension scheme when we're in in a job and our employer contributes too. And then we go freelance and they were kinda like, Oh yeah, no, That's not a thing for freelancers. So we just don't think about it. But there are schemes out there that are designed specifically for freelancers. So, there are some companies in the UK that offer freelance pensions.
But then there were also, investment companies and things like that who offered this kind of pension concept. But they offer lots of different offerings. It's not just that they offer pensions for freelances. So I'm with one of those and I have a self-invested personal pension. Which basically anyone could set it up.
It's just a private pension scheme that isn't through an employer and the whole idea with that is that I pay money in when ever I want to basically there's no requirement on me to pay in a certain amount every month or anything like that, so that it's totally voluntary and whatever I pay in the government gives me tax relief on. So, because I'm putting it into a pension scheme and I'm not going to be able to draw that until I retire. It's kind of like the government's rewarding me for doing that.
So even if you don't add enough to pay any tax at all in the year, they will give you tax relief on up to, I think it's 2,880 pounds worth of contributions. So you put that in and they make it up to 3,600. so even if you don't earn enough to pay any tax at all, it's worth putting that much into a pension because you get this free 720 pounds a year from the government but then obviously if you're earning enough to be paying tax in the UK as well, then they'll add more based on the amount of tax that you're due to pay each year anyway, as well. So, it's kind of like free money if you're willing and able to contribute to a pension.
What happens with that money when you put it in, is that it gets invested into stocks and shares basically. But the good thing with it is that you don't need to know anything about those things. There are people within the companies that offer these pensions who manage that for you, manage your investments. So literally all you have to do is put the money in and then wait until you retire. And in theory, the value of those investments goes up.
Hopefully, quite substantially over time and significantly more than they would if you were just leaving that money in a bank account and getting minimal interest. So that's the idea with that, but I totally agree that if you move around countries a lot, it's complicated.
Ellie: And I've seen advertisements for apps or websites that are specific to freelancers there are options, but you're right. It does get a little more messy. You have to be a little more discerning in picking what you're using .
You're investing in the UK because your business is based in the UK and your pension is based in the UK. So even though you're living out of the country and it will work for you in that way, but if you don't necessarily know where you're going to end up in near in your later years, that can be a little more complicated.
Susie: Yeah, definitely. AB typically you can only contribute to a pension and a country where you are tax resident. So if, you know, for example, that you're going to be moving around a lot and going to be becoming a tax resident in lots of different places over the years, then I think it's something that you need to think really carefully about before actually doing. I think though the key is just to make sure that you're putting money aside for this purpose, even if you're not actually investing it into a pension scheme. So, obviously that has benefits, but the cons of it are that you definitely can't draw that money until you retire. So if there's any chance at all that you're going to need the money, then you might want to look at other more flexible options. So as you've said, you know, investing that yourself in the stock market or, however you want to.
I also know that some of my mentees invest in property instead of putting that money into a pension. So the money that they would be paying into a pension, they set aside until they've got enough for a deposit on an apartment or a house or whatever. They use that to pay the deposit and then they rent out the property. So the money that they're getting back in rent covers the mortgage payments.
And then if at any point in the future, they decide they actually really need that money. They can sell the property. Albeit not immediately probably, but, you know, that's just another approach.
And with all of these things, there are pros and cons. With the property option , that's kind of like an extra business you're having to run. So it just depends how much involvement you want to have in this, or whether you literally want to just like pay into a pension of forget about it until you're 65 or 75 or 85, or however old we'll have to be by the time we retire.
Ellie: Thank you for sharing all that information. I think it'll be really useful for people to have a think about the different ways that they can really be saving for not working forever. Because none of us can do that as much as I think it's sort of different when we're running our businesses. And we actually liked what we do. We're really passionate about it, typically. We still like probably won't be doing it when we're 80. So having a think through that.
What does a normal week look like for somebody who's kind of practicing some of these simplified finance systems in their business
Susie: Well, as I said before, I have a weekly finance date where I go in and just check everything, make sure that it's all, under control and I know what's coming up and all of that. So that's kind of a once a week thing, but I think really you don't have to over-complicate it. So it's not a question of always, having your banking open and constantly thinking about finances, like that's absolutely not necessary when you're running a business. This is a part of running a business, but it's definitely not like what you should be spending all your time worrying about. So in terms of what a normal working day looks like for me, I would say that totally depends on the day. So I try to theme my days and batch tasks around those themes. So for me, Mondays and Fridays of mentoring.
So if I'm running my group program, all of the sessions will be on Mondays and Fridays. Also all of my one-to-one calls with clients, then Tuesdays are for content, Thurdays are for business development, admin strategy, all of that kind of thing. So on a Thursday, that's when I do my finance date.
And then Wednesdays, I generally try to take off from my business. So that's just kind of a structure that I found works for me. I'm generally a morning person. So I like to wake up early and get going. And then by the end of the day, I'm like definitely flagging after lunch I'm pretty useless.
So, that's typically what a week looks like for me, but yeah, it definitely don't. Over-complicate the finances and think that you need to be like constantly monitoring everything. Like, no, that's not what we want to be doing. That's just gonna cause stress.
Ellie: In my case, about once a week, I go and make sure that all of my transactions are reconciled and Freshbooks which literally just means matching them up my expenses and the income. And it does most of that automatically for me. I just have to say yes, you are correct. Click a little fun button.
And take a look at what income I have outstanding. So, I work on a 50% up front, 50% upon completion basis. So knowing what income I have as I'm wrapping up projects.
because there's always this balance of how much work can I take on versus how much money do I need? And that's where the pricing comes in, that you deal with a lot, but also kind of being mindful of like, okay, I have this many projects on. I have this much money in the bank. If like, I just have had to, if I need to buy a new laptop, how am I managing that?
So those kinds of things, keeping that on of the top of your head. I'm not in my accounting every single day, well, I am in my accounting software every single day, but that's not because I check my money every day. It's because I use it for everything. I use it for time tracking. I use it for project management. I track my assistant's time and see what he's up to in there.
I don't do a whole lot, on a week-to-week basis, but I do like to make sure that I'm checking in. And then once a month I'd go in and do a more thorough, like you would, check through everything.
Tell me what your biggest win in business has been so far.
Susie: I think I would have to say when I run charge with confidence for the first time in June. This year, so 2020. Up until then, I'd only worked with clients one-to-one and my mentoring businesses was still just getting going and then the pandemic happened and lockdowns were coming in loads of different countries. And I pretty much panicked and thought that no one would have the money to pay for mentoring. And it wouldn't be a priority in all of this.
And I remember lying in bed and suddenly getting this idea for a mentoring program that just kinda came to me. And I had to grab this notebook and just write down a load of stuff in the dark. The next day, when I looked at it, my handwriting was terrible, but literally got all those ideas down while they were fresh in my mind. And I even came up with the name for the program that night. I was just like in the zone thinking about this.
And then a month later I launched it and I got 12 amazing participants who took part in that very first cohort. And it's intended to be for a small group and I knew I needed at that point 4 to make it viable.
My aim was 10, so it totally exceeded my expectations getting 12. And I was just so amazed that all these people had put their trust in me and it was during the pandemic. And I was just like, ah, this is amazing. So then they started seeing these brilliant results from the program too. And that just really just validated the whole idea. So that's probably my biggest win so far, but I'm also a big advocate of expressing gratitude for small wins too. So I think those happen all the time, you know, it could be a message from a mentee telling me about their own wins or an email from an email subscriber or a message from an Instagram follower telling me that they find my content valuable. Or, being invited to speak on podcasts like this. Like there are so many things that, you know, that list of wins is endless, really.
And it's just the question of celebrating them and being positive.
Ellie: I love that I would be somebody who fails to sometimes celebrate the smaller wins or the bigger ones sometimes. I'm the person who, the second I get an idea. I'm like, why is it a done already?
So I love the idea of taking the time to celebrate all the wins. As entrepreneurs, we work hard and it's good to remember that it's about the journey and not just about the end game.
So what has been your biggest mistake or learning experience in your business?
Susie: I think this is related to my biggest win. I would say the biggest learning experience came when I then ran the program for the second time.
So it was only three months after the first. And I think because it had gone so well that first time I think I really didn't just. Do enough during the launch when I was promoting it.
parts of me felt like not much time had passed since I'd run it before. So, my audience probably already knew enough about the program to be able to make a decision. So I don't think I talked about it enough or gave enough kind of basic information about what the program actually was. ended up with five participants at that time. And that felt really disappointing when I found out I was not going to have five participants because I'd had 12 the first time. So I was like, Oh, you know, that's not great.
And I believe that part of the reason for that drop in numbers was the timing because September, 2020 was when all the schools are going back and, after months and months of homeschooling and lots of countries, and it was just a stressful time. So I do think that was an element of it, but two of the five participants signed up on the very last day of enrollment. And one of those was after a lengthy conversation with me in the Instagram DMs, and the other one was after a personal recommendation from one of my former participants.
So I think I have to recognize that I could have done much more during that launch, to really get higher numbers. But then having said that five, turned out to be a lovely number. The group was really engaged and we just had a great time over the four weeks. So I have to recognize that I loved running the program both times, even though the experiences were very different.
And sometimes doing less can still result in great outcomes. So I'm trying to kind of lean into that a bit more.
Ellie: And I think that those are the learning experiences. It's what entrepreneurship is all about. I've done a couple of launches and sort of hated them all. Um, sort of kidding because obviously I'm launching now. But what I found is that when I've tried to do group programs or product launches, it's never really sat right with me. And I think it's because I haven't found that thing that's really, for me. The thing that really fits for both me and my audience.
But I've tried it. I've tinkered with it. And It's all been a really good learning experience. And do you know when I do find the thing that I really want to launch and there's some product or program that really fits and iIfeel really passionate about then I'll have all of those learning experiences, failures in some cases, to back me up to make me that much more competent and ready
Susie: Yeah, the key is, is always reflecting, on what you've experienced and what you can learn from it. I think definitely.
Ellie: Absolutely. I think one of the biggest and scariest things I've ever done is after a flopped or smaller launch going out and asking people like why they didn't sign up. And that is getting that feedback both in the early stages of creating something.
You know, Is this something that you're interested in? How does this work? How does the pricing look? Those kinds of things. And obviously taking all that feedback with the a grain of salt.
But then also on the other end you would do the same thing. Like, why didn't you sign up? Or how did you like it if they did sign up? Et cetera, and then taking all of that feedback with a grain of salt as well.
Susie: Yeah, it can be really scary to do. Especially when something hasn't worked. To reach out to people and ask them why they didn't buy it is it can be terrifying. But I did some market research calls a few months ago, and I think I gained so much from those conversations. That it really impressed upon me the value of actually speaking to people rather than just always sending out a form with questions because when you keep it open-ended and you allow people to just literally say what they're thinking, even if it doesn't fit into the box that you've given them.
You can gain so much from that.
Ellie: Yeah, absolutely. And it can sometimes feel more vulnerable than sending out a form wood, but it's so, so valuable for your business. In the long run. I had a gal that I used to follow. And she would do this thing where she would in her email newsletter, be like, I'm looking for somebody in this category. So maybe solo entrepreneurs or virtual assistants or whatever.
And if you are willing to give me a 15 minute call. I'll send you a Starbucks. So for the $5 or whatever, because she's American. For a Starbucks and then she would get 10 people or whatever, and it would cost her $50, but then she got all of that good information. So that when she was creating her program, she knew exactly who she was speaking to.
Susie: Yeah, I like that idea.
Ellie: Susie. Thank you so much for coming in and sharing all of your financial wisdom and experience with us. It's going to be really valuable for so many listeners. Tell us, where can people find you?
Susie: My main hangout online is Instagram. Definitely. So I am the dot organized freelancer, and that's organized with a Z, even though I am British because the one with the S was taken when I set up my Instagram account. So there we go.
So that's kind of the main place that I like to connect with people. I also have a website with a blog and lots of free resources, all around finances. So people can check that out. They go to www.susie jackson.co.uk. And I also have a, an email newsletter that people can sign up to, to get weekly emails with resources to support you in running your business.
Thank you so much for having me on, it's been a real pleasure to chat to you.
Ellie: Thank you, Susie. It's been so good. And as I was saying in the intro there, Susie and I met on Instagram and we've been friends online for a little while now but we've never met each other in real life. Her resources, her posts and her tools around finance are really insightful and helpful. So, if you're looking to learn a bit more about her and her work, you should definitely follow her on social media. And check out her blog because she has so much more knowledge to share with you
Susie: Thank you Ellie
