I’m the founder of Fresh Eyes Financial Coaching.
I live in Townville with my partner Jason, my 10yo puppy Ava and have a garden full of flowers, fruit and veggies. I love red wine, coffee, karaoke and getting out in nature!
I have spent the past 20+ years gaining multi-industry experience across manufacturing, mining and service-based businesses combining my love of finance, psychology, marketing, systems and automation. During this time, I have been fortunate enough to be involved extensively in all commercial aspects of business from tender and contracts to ongoing management, constantly pivoting to ensure our profitability was always as secure as possible.
My specialist skills therefore extend from pricing to financial modelling, contract management to business improvement all the while being based around financial management and risk mitigation. At uni where I did a Bachelor of Commerce, I was the girl who padded her entire degree with psychology & marketing subjects and my post-grad degree (CPA) with systems/IT subjects. Thus combining my love of finance, psychology, marketing, systems and automation and you could wonder why it’s taken me so long to start it! My business has become a haven for all of this & I am having a ball building & evolving my little business!
What has been the most challenging aspect of being a business owner?
I’ve always been told I’ve got the gift of the gab, but we all know talking about a topic and standing and selling ‘your’ business to an audience are two different things. Thus ultimately the most challenging part for me was actually starting this business (that has been in my head for a few years) and getting out from the familiarity of my office to do so. I must say though, the hardest marketing of all was the first ‘post’ declaring my business! After that it’s been fun and exciting!
What is a fun fact about yourself?
At 15 years old, having only ever worked on my parents’ cattle property (on holidays from boarding school) I did two different work experience stints – one at an accountants and one at a vet! I now go to that same vet clinic with my furbaby Ava – call out to Dr Allie @ Palms Vet Bayside! As a side note by the time you are reading this I’ll be the proud new mum to a Golden Retriever Puppy! I’m SO excited and I’m sure Ava will be a doting fur-mumma – although I predict needing to provide some timeout (for both!)!
What is the best piece of career advice you ever received?
As a reformed/reforming perfectionist the best advice was “Don’t wait til you are ready. Don’t wait til things are perfect. Just start.”
I think many people can relate to that. We have skills in our chosen industry but in small business you are doing – or responsible for – everything from marketing to finance. Many are an expert in one area but doing them all is often overwhelming.
That’s when it’s important to get good people around you for the areas where you lack – but don’t allow yourself to wait til things are ‘perfect’ because you will never start!
What is next for your business?
I have a few plans as you can imagine!
I’m building my base business of Annual, Quarterly and Monthly Finance Reviews, helping the cafes, restaurants, beauticians, tradies, copywriters etc of the world understand their numbers, build strong goals, budgets and business plans and scale their businesses (if they want to!) into 2023!
Between this I’m also building mini-courses (watch this space) so that business owners can seek bite-sized pieces of financial wisdom & templates they can apply to their business in niche areas.
The other exciting phase I’m working on is the automation piece. We have so many programs these days which can allow a solo operator to scale their business through automation; this is an area I am focussing on to allow businesses to scale without the staff (which everyone is struggling to secure anyhow – am I right?)! The options available can be overwhelming but the possibilities are incredible. What better way to improve your financial well-being than to spend your time in your zone of genius and automate the rest!
Image: Rosana Kersh