Jul 9, 2024
Explore the intricacies of financial success in your voiceover business with our new series "Boss Money Talks," featuring special guest Danielle Famble. Discover how assembling a team of financial experts, like accountants and CPAs, can help you track expenses, handle taxes, and ensure consistent profitability. The BOSSES highlight the benefits of separating personal and business finances and the advantages of having ongoing relationships with professionals. They discuss the benefits of quarterly meetings to assess profit and tax liabilities and the complexities of running a business, including payroll and compliance. This episode is packed with actionable advice to help you build a reliable financial team and set a solid financial structure for your voiceover business.
00:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Hey boss listeners. Are you ready to turn your voiceover career
goals into achievements? With my personalized coaching and demo
production, I'm here to help you reach new milestones. You know
you're already part of a boss community that strives for the very
best. Let's elevate that. Your success is my next project. Find out
more at anganguzacom.
00:28 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level.
These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being
utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business
like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, anne
Ganguza.
00:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Hey, hey everyone, Welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host,
Anne Ganguza, and today I am so excited to start a new series
called Boss Money Talks with the one and only Danielle Famble. I am
so excited, Danielle, to have you on the show today to talk about
something so important to our businesses, and that's money.
Welcome, hey.
01:10 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
Anne, thank you so much for having me on. This is really
exciting.
01:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Oh, I have to say it is my honor to have you. When I interviewed
you and bosses if you didn't catch our last episode together I was
just blown away by your savviness financially and, of course, voice
actor and all that other good stuff. But it's very rare to find
someone who really is all about the financial aspects of things and
you're just right on top of everything. And I just was so excited
to ask you to create a series with me on this because I think it's
really important for the success of any boss out there for their
business.
01:47
So, kicking off the first episode, I thought maybe we should talk
about forming your team, because I recently spoke to my accountant
and she handles things for me and I absolutely love it and I said
it so many times across many, many episodes how important my
accountant is to me. I thought, wow, we really need to like go over
this again for any bosses that are out there really starting their
own business how important it is to get your finances in order. Do
you have a team of people that work with you? I mean, I know you
have background in finance, but do you have a team of people for
your business?
02:22 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
I do. I think it's really important to talk about having a team,
because as a solo entrepreneur, you want to do everything yourself,
and some things you could do yourself, but it's just better to have
an expert in that field. Oh, I so agree, and so, for me, I think I
am the expert in the business in voiceover, in what I do, and so I
want to bring in experts who are good at what they do so they can
help educate me on how I can run my business better, because the
main point of having a business is to create a profit, which is
more money coming in than goes out, and if someone can help you
exactly that's like kind of the basic, that's what we're doing here
and if you can have someone who can help you exactly.
03:03
That's like kind of the basic. That's what we're doing here, yeah,
and if you can have someone who can help you understand the profits
and the business and what to do with the money and how to handle
your taxes, all of that stuff, like having that team will help you
grow and scale your business.
03:19 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Yeah, and I think accounting isn't something that I love to do. I
mean, that's like one of my biggest reasons for when I got my
accountant was that. Not that I wasn't financially savvy, but it
certainly wasn't my main focus. I didn't go to school for it, and
so when I started my own business, I was like, oh my gosh, I have
to keep track of all of these things, like I'm spending money on
equipment, I'm spending money on coaching, I'm spending money on
demos, and God, I have to report this at the end of the year,
right, and it just.
03:46
I remember I didn't really have great record keeping in the first
year. Now, granted, I was doing it part time, but still I had to
account right for the money that I expensed and the money that came
in, even though it wasn't a whole lot. That first year, I wanted to
make sure I was taking advantage of the fact that I gave up the
corporate job. And now, all of a sudden, I've got to account for
things, because at the end of the year, uncle Sam is going to want
to know what I've been doing and when I waited too long to be very
organized in my expenses and accounting, I, at the end of the year
when I got ready for taxes. It was hell. It was just pure
hell.
04:23 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
No one wants that. Like two or three months or two or three weeks
I've been there of like just the worst possible aches in your
stomach because you're like, oh no, in, like March or April, it's
just horrible.
04:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
It's like oh God, tax season, it's here. I got to do this. I got to
do this and I was using oh gosh, back in the day, I was using
QuickBooks, but on desktop, and so it was like I want to talk about
like 15 years ago, and it just was like one of those things where,
like God, I got to enter another transaction.
04:55
It was just one of those things that just became very tedious and I
was like I really don't like this. And ultimately I was very
fortunate to have a recommendation for an accountant that could
work with me. And that first year because again it was so long ago
QuickBooks wasn't online or anything and, as a matter of fact,
there was that whole stigma of you don't want to do anything
financial online because it's scary and your security and that kind
of thing. But how lucky are bosses in this day and age you know
what I mean to kind of have that advantage that now things are so
much more secure. Now you might say, well, is it really secure? But
I have to say it's a whole lot more secure than it used to be, or
at least I was always comfortable.
05:37
I remember in the 90s paying my bills online and I was one of the
few people to do that. I mean, in the beginning I was just like,
look at some point, you just have to trust the technology at some
point and it's so much easier to pay things online. When I got my
accountant for my business here, it was like magic. It was like we
would meet once a week and she got to know my business and she got
to know, like, what sorts of things were expenses, what sorts of
things were income, and especially important was separating those
expenses so that it wasn't all I had one account. I mean, I think
when we talked before in our past episode we talked about how
important it was to have a business account. Talk to us a little
bit again about business accounts and what's important about
that.
06:20 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
The most important, especially when it comes to taxes, but really
just for simplicity, is to be able to separate your personal life
from your business life. Your personal life, hopefully, is affected
by your business life, as in your business, pays you to do the job
that you do for your business. But keeping them separate is going
to be very helpful, especially when it comes to taxes, and it will
be easier for your financial team, as you build it, to be able to
say okay, this is tax, this is business and this is personal.
Here's how we keep them separate. There may be tax implications.
You may be able to write certain things off if it's business,
whereas if it's personal you can't. So it's helping you, but it's
also helping your team keeping everything separate.
07:07
It's like legally, you kind of have to. I mean, imagine if, like
any major corporation, the CEO of that corporation is just like
swiping their own personal credit or debit card, Like you've got to
treat your business, no matter the size or the scale of it, the way
that other businesses are treated because they are taxed similarly.
So this isn't necessarily just about business practices, but for
me, with money, all of it I think about is like, come April 15th or
come like the quarterly tax period. How can I set myself up for
success now so I'm not feeling crunched and stressed for a couple
of weeks during tax time when my CPA is probably not as available
to me because they've got other people to work with? So keeping it
separate will help you with bookkeeping. It will help you with,
like the way that you think about your business and personal, how
you can pay certain bills on time. Just keep it two separate
accounts one for your personal and one in your business
name.
08:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Sure, now question for you. Now my I guess I would call her my
bookkeeper. She also does my taxes, so I don't know if yours is one
in the same, but what I found to be super helpful and convenient is
that I literally just have her on retainer. She does everything for
me, and what is wonderful is that now we use QuickBooks online and
so literally we can have a meeting and the two of us can be on the
phone talking on a weekly basis or whenever I need to meet with her
regarding okay, what is this? Is this a new category or is this an
expense? And she pretty much knows my business because she's been
doing this for me for about 10 years, so she pretty much knows
what's going on and it makes it so easy. I cannot tell you that
this year at tax time and the last few years really have been like
oh yeah, hey, oh, it's April. What do you need from me for the
taxes? Do you need anything specific? Because she also does our
personal taxes as well as my business taxes.
09:07
And so in reality, like we barely have to do anything except send
her the paperwork that we get and boom, she's done, I mean, and
it's so stress free, I don't ever have to worry, she's got a good
handle as to where I am. The other thing is that she's got a good
handle as to where I am at any given point during the year, like
how am I doing profit wise, how am I doing compared to last year?
And she can generate reports and so she can really keep me up to
date on what's happening in my business. And then I can say, all
right, maybe I need to cut back here or I need to invest more here,
and so it's really so helpful. And for me then she is the one
person I guess you would say on my team that handles pretty much
everything. But let's talk about creating a team. Who do you feel
is necessary to have on a team to set yourself up for financial
success in your business?
09:56 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
I think this is a situation where you can expect to grow as you go.
So I would say the first person to add into your financial team,
your money team, is a CPA or some sort of accountant who is going
to be helping you specifically when it comes to your taxes. But you
made a really good point because you have an ongoing relationship
with your accountant and for me in the past I would only go to my
tax person when it was time to do my taxes once a year.
10:27
But if you can plan to have an ongoing relationship and I also have
my accountant team on retainer so they know where I am throughout
the course of the year we have quarterly meetings where they give
me quarterly reports on where's the profit, what is my potential
tax liability as of that time of the year, as of that quarter. So,
looking past just April 15th and saying, okay, this is a
relationship that I'm going to have with a person ongoing For me. I
didn't realize that in the beginning and that's something that I've
more recently figured out. So I would say to bosses out there make
sure that the relationship that you have with your accountant is
not a once a year relationship.
11:11
This needs to be an ongoing relationship throughout the course of
the year, because then they can help you with tax planning and if
you're forecasting for what's happening in the future, then you
won't feel so shocked. I've been there. You won't feel so shocked
when it's time to write that check or maybe you get a
refund.
11:30 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I mean hallelujah if you do Absolutely, and you know what else too
is that a lot of times I'm shocked by the state of California and
taxes. But you know, that's just a whole other issue that has
nothing to do with my lack of preparation for it. But anyways, the
other thing too depending on the type of business, if you have a
DBA or you know an LLC or an S-corp which I do I also have to pay
myself, and so I have to do that on a regular basis, and so she
takes care of that as well.
11:57
For me, she took care of the registering of it, and anytime I get a
letter from the IRS or from and which happens a lot with this
S-Corp because, they're either keeping me up to date on the newest
things that are happening or maybe, for whatever reason from two
years ago, they always seem to find, like you owe us $1.30. And I'm
like, really, like you couldn't tell me that like $1.30. And the
funny thing is is that my accountant has always been so. On top of
it, she's like, no, actually, no, we paid that and so she will take
care of all of that for me. I'll just have to like scan the
paperwork that gets sent to me directly because my business is here
at this address, and then I'll say, ok, what do I need to do? And
she literally will say, ok, here we need to go to the IRS and we
need to file this or do that, and it's more than just what you
owe.
12:42
I'm talking about all the paperwork that needs to be filed for
running an S-Corp for me in the state of California and as well, as
she pays me so that, again, I'm not surprised at the end of the
year and as a matter of fact, I've not been surprised really. I've
been surprised when I actually got more refund than I thought,
which is great, but I've never been like, oh God, I have to pay
money, which always makes my stomach twist and knots, because we've
planned so well. And a lot of times she's up on the laws, right,
because that's what she does, right. This is why I'm like why try
to do it yourself? She's up on all the laws and so she'll say okay,
so this year or now they've introduced something new where you can
expense so much of your mileage or so much of your medical
expenses, and so she's up on all those things, and that way we can
take full advantage, because who wants to pay more taxes if you
don't have to? That's all I have to say.
13:35 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
Exactly, and it's not even just about taxes as well. You go back to
what you're talking about being an S-corp. I didn't know when it
was the right time for me to be an S-corp. And so getting that
information, if you can find in your accountant, your CPA, whomever
you're working with, find someone who has the heart of a teacher.
Dave Ramsey says that. And find somebody who can help educate you,
because I wasn't trying to work with someone who just I handed
things over.
14:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Right, especially your financial data. I mean that is personal and
sensitive right and it's got to be a. I think you have to have a
special relationship with your accountant.
14:13 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
To be honest, yeah, and personally I'm curious because I love money
and numbers and talking about this and also I love my business. I
love what I do and profit is a huge part of my business, or at
least even the income, the money that's coming in, is a huge part
of my business. So I want to understand it. Sure, I want someone
who can teach me how to think about things, what I need to know
going forward, that informs what decisions that I make, what
conferences am I going to budget for? How am I paying myself? All
of those things as part of an education, so that person isn't just
telling you what to do. You are working with them and then you can
direct them with your business goals and ideas and they can help
support them with your business goals and ideas and they can help
support you with what they know.
14:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Which I love.
14:56 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
It's a huge part of the money team and for me. You said that your
accountant and bookkeeper are one and the same. Mine are two
completely separate people.
15:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Oh, okay.
15:04 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
Okay, so the accountant does just the taxes and tax planning which
we have our quarterly meeting, and then the bookkeeper is a
completely separate person who does work at the accountant's office
and they do my monthly profit and loss reports and send that to me
Any day-to-day. They have access to my QuickBooks so they're seeing
everything that I'm seeing basically. So they're kind of a
different point of contact and I appreciate the separation because
my bookkeeper is an expert in the bookkeeping aspect. So if I have
questions I go to that person, if I have questions about taxes I go
to this person. I like that separation but it doesn't have to be
that way, it just happens to be that way.
15:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Yeah, no, and I agree, I feel like mine is a very unique case
because she did our taxes before, but she always did her taxes.
First I didn't have her as my ongoing accountant forever. I used to
just go to her once a year and then I realized we developed a
relationship and I realized I was like God, I hate entering, I hate
having to do this every month. She goes. Well, I can do it for you.
And I was like oh, yes, please.
16:08
So I think also, what's wonderful is isn't it nice that now we have
things that like, especially in our business, our income comes in
electronically and that can be filtered right into, so I don't have
to manually like oh, I wrote a check, I don't have to manually
enter it into QuickBooks like I had to do 10 years ago, 15 years
ago, right, oh, I have a checkbook. Who writes checks anymore? I
mean, I still have a checkbook and I do have to write checks every
once in a while, but I mean, gosh, it's so nice that if I get a
client payment that comes in via PayPal and I think it could be a
whole separate other episode was what are your methods of payment?
Because you got to make it easy right and what's important to know
about that. But PayPal, Stripe, Wix, backend payments, QuickBooks
allows payments, so I have lots of different banks
16:57
right. These are considered banks, right. Paypal's considered a
bank, stripe's considered a bank, and so the fact that QuickBooks
can integrate these in automatically it doesn't do it perfectly,
but the fact is is if I get something that comes into my PayPal,
simultaneously, it is fused into my online QuickBooks account,
which is nice, so I don't have to enter things in and again, like I
don't, but she does, and she'll make sure that it's categorized
properly, because sometimes it tries to automatically categorize
and it doesn't work right, but she's on top of the categories and
making sure that. Then I know, oh gosh, I'm spending a whole lot of
money on subscriptions or whatever. That In a lot of ways because
the manual method was tedious.
17:40 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
It's super tedious. And imagine throwing into that someone pays you
personally instead of paying your business. How much that like
throws a wrench in the whole bookkeeping plans and everything else,
which is why it is important to start with the separation of
business and personal accounts. It's enough, you know, just the
bookkeeping itself for your business is enough. Then adding in
additional things to have to add and subtract, and forgot that I
have this card. I use my credit card for everything personal
business. It makes it really difficult down the line, especially as
you grow your business. So, yeah, it's great to have everything
electronically, it's great to be able to be paid in multiple
different bank accounts or different accounts, but keeping it all
under the umbrella of your business, separate from you personally,
is really, I would say, like the baseline.
18:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
And I think the simpler the better. But then again, for me and
anybody that knows me, I have multiple departments of my business,
or multiple businesses really. I'm not just Ann Gengu's, I'm not
just VO Boss that's one of my brands and then I'm also Ann Gengu's
of Voice Productions and I'm also VO Peeps, and so I've got really
kind of three different streams of business that come in. And you
know, of course I'm always looking for more streams of income. And
so you know, of course I'm always looking for more streams of
income. And so you know, I think if you can keep it simple, I'll
take income any way you can throw it at me, but for my accountant
I've got to make sure that it's organized and easy. So the more
that I diversify my business and again I'm thinking of diversifying
yet again for another brand, just because I like to keep it
interesting. So I've got another brand coming up, but I'll discuss
that later. Got another brand coming up, but I'll discuss that
later and so I want to try to make it as simple as possible for my
accountant but yet still allow clients to pay me in a number of
different ways.
19:26
I will make mention that I had my one business account, which I had
to, actually had to change over to a new business account, and the
reason why is because I changed my name. I originally was a DBA
under and speak and then when I went and I created the S Corp, I
became Ann Genguza Voice Production, just changed the name. But
because I did that, all of a sudden it became like a thing with my
bank that said, hey, who's this? Ann Genguza Voice Production. So
because I didn't have the two registered at once, I didn't go back
in DBA and add it in. They registered at once. I didn't go back and
DBA and add it in.
20:04
They then said my business account was not valid under the name and
speak. So I had to open up a new business account. And so it amazed
me just how tied in that one business account was to everything
that I did, to my PayPal, to my Stripe, to my website here, pay me.
Everything would go on my Venmo, all my Bank of America was tied
into that account. Or my cards, my debit cards, were all tied into
that one business account, and transitioning it over became like
oof. That's an event. As a matter of fact, I still haven't
completely transitioned over and completely closed the old account,
so I still have money coming into two accounts. Now it's even more
important that I have a team or I have people really watching both
accounts.
20:44 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
Oh yeah for sure your new business is being treated as a new
business, even though it's not.
20:50
It's the same business under a different name.
20:52
But that kind of tells you why it's so important to really start
and plan it, to create almost the foundation for how you're going
to be separating your accounts, the names, how you're getting paid,
what's being paid in taxes, who's going to be your team to oversee
all of that. Really setting up the structural foundation of the
financial components of your business how that's run is really
important. The unfortunate thing is it really is tedious and
time-consuming when you're in the process that you're in. But you
only have to do it once and you learn the process so that you know
what to do in the future. I just recently purchased a rental house
in my home state of Texas and I was speaking to my accountant about
like I've never done this before, what do I do, and she said oh
well, you just treat it like you treat your other business. And for
me, having the experience of doing this with my business my
voiceover business has actually taught me what I can do. To copy
paste the principle the idea, so once you get this.
21:54
Once you understand how you're working your business and creating
the structure for your business and the team that you need to help
you, you can actually take that knowledge and just copy and paste
it to whatever the next thing or the next industry is, which is
really pretty great.
22:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
I love that. So, in addition to, let's say, your bookkeeper and
your accountant that does taxes, is there any other member of your
team or anything else that you can recommend for bosses? And also
I'm sure the bosses are like oh my God, I'm not even making money
at voiceover, how am I going to afford? Right, I want to address
that as well.
22:28 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
Right. So, like I said, this is a grow as you go situation. I did
not start by having a CPA and a bookkeeper, and you know the other
members of my team, which I'll talk about in a second. So I would
say, start with what do you need in the moment. If what you need in
the moment is an accountant, which I would say everybody's got to
pay taxes, so I would start there is having an accountant. Maybe
it's not somebody that you have on retainer, but it is someone that
you can maybe check in with once or twice a year outside of tax
time, so that you can make sure that you are educated on what you
need to be doing to prepare yourself for tax time. I would start
there if you can, and then, if you can, grow to having that person
be more of a person that you work with on an ongoing basis. That
will definitely help you as you grow. Bookkeeping is something that
I think you should understand how to do on your own.
23:24
Oh, I agree, I think you should educate yourself first, you should
definitely educate yourself, but eventually it's something that you
might want to outsource to someone else. For me, my metric is do I
like doing it? Am I good at doing it? If the answer to both of
those things is no, I will find someone I like that. That is their
gift.
23:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Shop around. I mean, it's got to be somebody you trust. Again, your
financial life is, I think, very personal and people want to be
very secure about it. So it does take a special relationship, I
think, with a person that you trust, with your numbers and your
bank accounts.
23:59 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
And you might need to, yeah, shop around. You might need to work
with multiple people.
24:08
The CPA that I'm with now is not the CPA I was with two years ago,
and so this is still a relatively new relationship that she and I
that we're cultivating, even with this bookkeeper. So there's a lot
to learn, but you need to learn about it from a person who, like I
said, has that heart of a teacher who wants to help educate you.
That's how I would take it, and that's actually what I did was at
first, I was working with someone who was just doing taxes and it
was up to me and I was clearly not up for the job of bookkeeping,
which is why I had those three weeks of panic in late March
early.
24:42 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
April.
24:43 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
But you can grow as you go and find the people who can help educate
you. Now I also have I think we talked about this in our past
episode but I have an assistant who for the day-to-day applications
in my business making sure invoices are sent, making sure they are
paid, making sure they're marked as paid, not only in QuickBooks,
which she and I do together, but also making sure that there are no
outstanding invoices like that kind of day-to-day thing.
25:12
Some people have a bookkeeper do it, I do it with my assistant and,
to give her credit, she's really the one who's like more on that
day-to-day in terms of data entry and things like that. Obviously,
it's something that not every VO boss is going to have an assistant
at whatever stage in their business. It took me a while to get to
that point, but I have found it helpful because then it's like one
less thing that I'm doing in terms of the day-to-day touch points.
That I'm doing in terms of the day-to-day touch points. And then,
finally, I work with a financial advisor, because I wanted to work
with someone who could help me understand my finances as a whole as
a business owner and personally, and what's great is that I will
have quarterly meetings with the financial advisor, the bookkeeper,
the CPA and myself.
26:00
we are all on a big like money call quarterly.
26:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
And.
26:03 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
I have monthly meetings with my financial advisor about my personal
goals with money and also, you know, with the business, and she can
give me feedback. Like one of the things she said to me was hey, if
you don't understand something in these meetings, I would love to
see you show a little bit more courage and ask if you don't
understand, because while I say yeah, I have the heart of a
teacher.
26:27 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Sometimes I don't even know what to ask, and so I just you shake
your head and go okay, uh-huh yeah sometimes you're just like okay,
yeah. I get it uh-huh and I'm like I have no idea. I have no idea
where they're going with that yeah.
26:38 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
But it's totally okay, even as the boss, the VO boss, to not
understand, and that's why you're relying on these
people.
26:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Absolutely.
26:53 - Danielle Famble (Co-host)
But really, truly like lean into your curiosity and understand,
because these people that you're working with like I said, the ones
I'm working with now, I wasn't working with two years ago. You may
work with a new team at some point, and so you want to go in with a
level of armed with the knowledge about how your business is run
and what your goals are for your business, so that you can direct
your team instead of them telling you what to do, because you are
the boss, absolutely, and what a wonderful note to end
on.
27:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Yeah, you are the boss and so, yeah, you need to educate yourself
so that you can direct these people with your financial aspect of
your business, which is so very important and so very close to our
hearts as we run our successful businesses. So I manifest that,
danielle, thank you so much. I could go on and on and on. Now I
just thought like a hundred other questions which I'm going to ask
you in our next episodes. But, bosses, stay tuned for this brand
new series called Boss Money Talks with Danielle Fanville. I am so,
so happy you were here today, danielle. Thank you so much for
sharing your wisdom and knowledge. Bosses, I'm giving a great big
shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl. You, too, can connect and network
like bosses. Find out more at ipdtlcom. All right, have an amazing
week and we'll see you next week. Bye, thanks, y'all.
28:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host)
Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host,
anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for
our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content,
industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock
your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission.
Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL.