Why Financial Literacy in Business Matters
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In this episode, I chat with Roxanne Alban, owner of Applied Financial Services, Inc., to explore the critical financial challenges businesses face and how to overcome them. Roxanne shares her journey from working in a domestic violence organization to becoming an entrepreneur helping nonprofits and businesses streamline their financial processes. She also provides actionable advice for business owners to gain control over their finances and highlights the importance of trust, understanding, and teamwork in her approach to financial management.
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Roxanne’s Journey to Entrepreneurship
Common Financial Pitfalls
Empowering Clients
Building a Resilient Financial Team
Personal Practices for Success
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Jonathan Mahrt: This is on the Flywheel, a podcast where each week we talk to entrepreneurs and professionals about the practical things they do to build and keep momentum in their personal and professional lives. Hello and welcome to on the Flywheel episode nine. I'm your host, Jonathan Mart of Flywheel Consulting. And today I'm privileged to have on the podcast Roxanne Albin of Applied Financial Services Incorporated got the name wrong the first time, but second, second time's the charm. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks for coming on today.
Roxanne Albin: Thank you, thank you for having me.
Jonathan Mahrt: So I always like to jump in and have guests just introduce themselves a little bit about what they do and kind of how they got to where they are today to give listeners a little bit of background for where they're coming from.
Roxanne Albin: Okay. So again, my name is Roxanne Albin and I'm the owner of Applied Financial Services Incorporated. We are in our seventh year of business, heading towards eight rapidly and we provide professional financial management and bookkeeping services. So that's a whole slew of services from everything from bookkeeping, payroll processing, month end close financial statements, and much, much, much more.
Jonathan Mahrt: That's awesome. So you've been in business almost eight years. I assume there was some kind of moment that caused you to decide to start your own business.
Roxanne Albin: Yes, I never actually thought I'd be self employed and I fell in love with helping more than one company. At one time. I was working at a domestic violence organization and was also had some side clients and we started selling off my services and really enjoyed helping multiple nonprofits and companies at the same time improve their practices.
Jonathan Mahrt: Okay, so you had basically your experience was in bookkeeping and then it kind of organically grew into helping other people. While you had your initial full time.
Roxanne Albin: Gig, it was bookkeeping. And then at the domestic violence organization, I was a director. So we started selling off my extra bandwidth to other.
Jonathan Mahrt: Oh, okay. So this was also a way to like so the nonprofit isn't having to shoulder the burden of your entire salary.
Roxanne Albin: Basically it was another way for them to get funds for unrestricted revenue.
Jonathan Mahrt: Gotcha. That's, that's really interesting. So I've heard you talk about then is that, that's also the inspiration because you, you seem to have a focus partially in your business on nonprofit clients and I assume that's kind of where that came, came out of.
Roxanne Albin: I've always, ever since I was a kid, I've always have wanted to help nonprofits. I just find that there's so many missions that are so valuable and I always say that I will not be able to touch every single mission that I would like to in my lifetime.
Jonathan Mahrt: So it's a way of giving you like some leverage basically for helping as many different kinds of causes as possible.
Roxanne Albin: It's a way of having my hands in many and helping clean them up.
Jonathan Mahrt: So I'm really interested in your business. We haven't had a chance to talk very much about it. What are some of the pitfalls and the common issues that you see people have in their businesses when it comes to finances?
Roxanne Albin: So one common problem is people relying on one person or one person that's not qualified to do what they call bookkeeping or accounting. If the person's not qualified or if the company doesn't have access to their own information, which unfortunately is more often than you'd think.
Jonathan Mahrt: When you say not accessing their information, you mean like someone has the login to QuickBooks and the owner of the company doesn't, or the file? Okay. Okay. Wow.
Roxanne Albin: Yes.
Jonathan Mahrt: I cannot imagine.
Roxanne Albin: And there's some people that just will not share it. And it's just, to me, it's shocking because it's part, part of the ownership of the organization. If, if they get audited or if that person falls off the face of the earth, then the company still has to have those records.
Jonathan Mahrt: Right.
Roxanne Albin: So.
Jonathan Mahrt: Right. I couldn't, Yeah, I really couldn't imagine not having, you know, access to my own financials.
Roxanne Albin: Right.
Jonathan Mahrt: There's no way I would be okay with that. That's, that's crazy. But I think, and maybe you can speak to this. I think people are very. A lot of small and medium sized business owners are kind of intimidated by the financial side of their businesses sometimes. And so if they can just say, hey, you take care of it. And I worry about what I'm good at and you just tell me how things are going, that's great.
Roxanne Albin: True. And unfortunately, it's not just with small business owners. I find it with executive directors, I find it with CEOs, I find it with all levels where there's.
Jonathan Mahrt: It's really surprising to me, especially if someone's giving themselves or if they have the title of CEO, that's concerning because you assume that's an organization of some reasonable size at that point.
Roxanne Albin: Quite often when we start meeting with different directors or C levels, they do not understand how to read the financial statements. And there's a lot of shame for a lot of people that they don't know what to ask or they don't want to ask the question because they don't want to look like they don't. They don't want to show that they don't know the information. Right. That's one thing we do is we'll walk them through and we'll teach them how to read their financial statements or what we're seeing on them, because they're. All the financial statements are telling a story.
Jonathan Mahrt: Right. So do you. What was it gonna. So when you're. When you're helping folks, folks through it, you're actually. It's not just about cleaning up the books, but it's also helping them understand their numbers then.
Roxanne Albin: Absolutely. And it could be going through the financials with them on a monthly basis. We've had some clients where we work with them on quite a sizable, you know, one client was probably about 80 hours a week of our services. And we'll have a lot more touch points at that point. But quite often we're reading and reviewing the financials together with our clients and making sure they understand them before they go to their boards and so that they can best represent their company.
Jonathan Mahrt: Wow. I'm just really struck by that because I know on, like, lower levels, there's lots of people that don't understand how to read a financial statement, don't understand the numbers in their business. I mean, I say that's probably one of the number one things I run into is people don't really understand how to approach numbers, like, effectively in their business. Right. But I'm really surprised to hear it once again, like at the higher levels of it. But it's so interesting dealing with the idea of shame that you're like, you know, you should know it, but you don't know it. But because you feel like you're supposed to know it, you don't ask for. You don't ask for help, probably often till it's too late as well.
Roxanne Albin: That whole cycle is really part of my job where when we start with a client, there's a whole cycle that happens quite often where the highest level position will finally reach out to us. But they know that they've been having problems for a while, but they wait for a long time. Then there's some absolute cleanup that has to happen. And then whomever I'm meeting with could get very emotional. It's not unusual for them to start crying in our second meeting. And just.
Jonathan Mahrt: So you're also a therapist.
Roxanne Albin: It's like a confessional. I wish I, you know, I knew this was something I should have looked at. And then it's this whole cycle. It's pretty empowering. When you see them come through it.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah, I was going to say it has to be very rewarding to help them, like help navigate that entire process and get. And get things to a good place.
Roxanne Albin: And get to the other side of it.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah. So are you doing. So you're also. So you're providing like ongoing. Not only just high level financial advice and understanding your numbers, but also like ongoing bookkeeping services, like to keep the books clean. Right. On and on a go forward basis.
Roxanne Albin: Absolutely.
Jonathan Mahrt: Okay. Okay. So how often are you, Are you, how often are you getting, Are you getting clients then? Most of the time that are having issues already. Do you ever get clients that already are like looking pretty good or. Most of the time. Time it's like you're being called because things are a mess.
Roxanne Albin: Most of the time it's because there's a mess or since COVID A lot of it has been since the, like they'll have a single bookkeeper and that person has retired, has not shared the information. So usually there's a problem involved, but sometimes they are clean. It's quite surprising when they are. And it's. It's great.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah. That's awesome. So what's unique about you and your company? What do you think sets you guys apart from everyone else?
Roxanne Albin: So we take the team approach. So we are a team of nine currently. We always look to have capacity within our systems and we work collectively. So if one of our people is out on vacation or two or whatever, if somebody doesn't return to work, there's always somebody else that can pick up the job where the client doesn't have to feel an absence. We have our own oversight within our organization. So. And we also have the separation of duties because we have enough people. So we have.
Jonathan Mahrt: So you can help kind of maintain some level of controls then on behalf of your clients.
Roxanne Albin: Exactly, yeah. And often controls that they can't have or that they don't have with a single person?
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah, it's, it's. It's hard if you're not a big business to have enough people to have proper controls in place because. Yeah. I mean, you're going to have people doing the AP and the AR and then.
Roxanne Albin: And the bank deposits.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah. And doing anything.
Roxanne Albin: Yes.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. In my family's business, like my dad is still the one that goes to the bank every week and drops the money off, you know, and so it's. And he signs every check. Right. Still very check based, which is, you know, challenging at times, but it's a great control. If you look at, if you have to look at every single, you know, check going out of your business, you know where your money's going. Right. It's pretty hard to like pull an over on someone if they're the ones paying attention and signing and reviewing the, you know, the backup with it every time. So I think the. I think that's really interesting being able to provide like a whole team behind people and giving businesses like. So basically you're giving them a full accounting department without having to have the overhead of a full accounting department, plus a little, probably a little bit of CFO as well. So I think that's great. What do you think? We've talked a little bit about it already. What do you think people get like wrong most often when they're dealing with their financials and stuff like that.
Roxanne Albin: Not looking at their financials?
Jonathan Mahrt: No. Just not looking at all.
Roxanne Albin: Yes. There's some clients that are used to, in their prior arrangement, look at them once a year or wouldn't look at the financials. I can't stress enough, even for, you know, mom and pop shop or an individual to look at your financials on a monthly basis and to really ask questions, poke holes in it.
Jonathan Mahrt: What do you guys. So it has to be. You're dealing with people's finances in their companies. It has to be a very. That's got to be. It's a very intimate look at someone's business. How do you navigate that dynamic?
Roxanne Albin: It's building trust. And so I usually start off with those relationships, have the tough conversations, extract, you know, where the pain points of where they're really at, what needs to be cleaned up, what issues they're facing. We have a client right now who's undergoing two, two year audit.
Jonathan Mahrt: We've had a, It's a long two year audit. That's a long time.
Roxanne Albin: We have another one. We had another one who was undergoing a massive sales tax audit.
Jonathan Mahrt: Wow.
Roxanne Albin: And they were digging into everything. And if that one was about two, three year period.
Jonathan Mahrt: Is this, what is this? Is this that a state level thing then for sales tax or is that.
Roxanne Albin: Yes.
Jonathan Mahrt: Okay, so there's a, there's a California auditor coming in and getting all up in your business.
Roxanne Albin: Yes. Well, we're used to dealing with audits because we do a lot of audit prep for, for our nonprofits.
Jonathan Mahrt: Okay, so are you working closely with CPAs or at least tax CPAs, at least very.
Roxanne Albin: We serve as the intermediary between our client and the cpa and often we'll prepare the schedules or we'll work through the whole entire list of what's required with our clients. Assign tasks of who's gonna do, you know, if the client's gonna do it, if we're gonna do it. And we'll make sure every single document gets to the auditor.
Jonathan Mahrt: Okay, well, that's nice because as someone who has helped deal with a few different kinds of audits in his life, it's great if you could farm that out to someone else because it's not very much fun.
Roxanne Albin: No, no, we thrive in that department.
Jonathan Mahrt: That's. That's good. It does make a difference. Anytime you're going through those kinds of things, to have someone that's used to navigating the process. Because being audited, whether of any kind, not just financial, is always intimidating. If you've never gone through it before because you don't know what to expect and you feel like you're being interrogated by the police, anything you say can and will be used against you.
Roxanne Albin: And it's really important to provide what they ask for and nothing more.
Jonathan Mahrt: There's an art to that.
Roxanne Albin: There is an art to that.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah.
Roxanne Albin: And with the 501C3 audits. So for the nonprofit organizations of making sure that they're supplying the exact information that's being requested. And I really try to stay. I stay within those parameters, not overshare.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah. That's dealing with an auditor 101 is only provide exactly what's required and no more and no less.
Roxanne Albin: Exactly.
Jonathan Mahrt: And if anything, err towards less because you could always give them more. But once you give them too much, you can't take it back.
Roxanne Albin: They can't unsee it.
Jonathan Mahrt: So I want to jump into a little bit of the kind of the things about your. In your personal life that you feel like make you successful. One question I like to ask people is do you consider yourself a morning person or a night person?
Roxanne Albin: Definitely a morning person.
Jonathan Mahrt: Okay. Is there any. Do you have anything in particular that you like to do as a part of kind of your morning routine to set yourself up for success for the day?
Roxanne Albin: Yes. As you know, I have a farm, so I get to hear the roosters go off in the morning.
Jonathan Mahrt: Oh, so you have nature's alarm clock then.
Roxanne Albin: Yes. Three of them that compete with each other.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah.
Roxanne Albin: And to set myself up for success, it often includes a self care routine. I love my first cup of coffee in the morning and then I go into a routine of meditation and prayer and doing some writing and really reflecting on what I want the day to be. Really getting into Calendaring and looking at what slots are available and mapping out what's most important to do throughout the day.
Jonathan Mahrt: I think there's a couple things I want to jump into there that I think are interesting. One is coffee. How do you like your coffee? How do you prepare your coffee? And just out of curiosity, I like.
Roxanne Albin: It strong and I like it with my creamer.
Jonathan Mahrt: Fair enough.
Roxanne Albin: My sugar free creamer, but I like it strong.
Jonathan Mahrt: Are you doing just a standard drip coffee in the morning?
Roxanne Albin: Yeah.
Jonathan Mahrt: My wife is Puerto Rican and they make. And she's from Miami, and so they make Cuban coffee, which, if you've never had it, is very strong and very sweet. So we'll have to find a way to get you some Cuban coffee. Sometimes it sounds like it might be right up your alley. So the other thing I want to talk about is getting into the kind of journaling aspect of it. Are you journaling just. Oh, I'm assuming you're journaling because you said writing. That's my assumption. Is there a method to it or is it just kind of a free write thing?
Roxanne Albin: Free write.
Jonathan Mahrt: Okay. And you just. Do you have any goals for how much you're writing or. It's just kind of like, get some. Get stuff out of my brain and so I can kind of be fresh for the day.
Roxanne Albin: It's mostly getting stuff out of my brain. If, let's say, if I am waking up and I've been dealing with some stress, it's a great reliever to getting the stress down on paper. And often after I write, it's like taking the air out of the balloon.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah. Yeah. I find. I find kind of just journaling like that, free writing to be very cathartic and very clarifying myself. Especially when there's a lot going on in my brain. Just like putting it on paper. It's like, then especially if there's a problem or a tough choice I'm trying to work through, it's like the answer kind of just like jumps off the page after I, you know, as I spend time. Just like. It's very clarifying.
Roxanne Albin: Mm. And it's also, if I find that I'm really feeling overwhelmed, then I'll just rewrite a list of everything in and I'll put it in different sections from my personal. From business farm. If there's certain things that absolutely must get done that are just nagging in my brain, I'll just write it down. And I find once I write something down, I'm much more likely to do it.
Jonathan Mahrt: It sticks. Do you have any Other kind of task management or project management system or is it printing? That's just all. Write it down on a piece of paper, cross things off.
Roxanne Albin: That and my calendar. I live by my calendar.
Jonathan Mahrt: Okay. That was the other thing I wanted to jump into. Cause you talked about looking for slots and stuff. Do you time block or what do you think is unique about your approach to managing your life in your calendar?
Roxanne Albin: For me, it's really important to manage it by. I just did this last night where I created a whole schedule of my recurring tasks. I always am wondering, why does it feel like there's not enough time when I put it all down on one week of everything that we need to do from feeding to getting ready feeding animals to getting ready in the morning to my morning practice. And it was quite shocking when I looked at it and saw how little white space is on the page. It's alarming.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah. I think being honest a. I think it's very clarifying to write everything down, especially when it comes everything that you have to do, especially recurring things. Right. And then being. Also learning to be honest with yourself about how long things actually take. I think it's very. I know that this is a trap that I've gotten not as bad about now, but it's easy to fall into. It's like over committing to things. Because you think you can squeeze everything in.
Roxanne Albin: Absolutely.
Jonathan Mahrt: You know, and now when I get into that situation or I'm looking at my count, I'm like, I know how I'm gonna feel on that day if I put this there because it's gonna fail. It just won't work.
Roxanne Albin: I know it seeing it. And I put a bunch of color coding for different things for personal or work, recurring appointments, et cetera. And just seeing how little white space. So white space was anything that didn't have a particular recurring event in it was a real shocking look at how little wiggle room I have. So I'm always thinking that I have to remain so flexible. Well, I do have to remain flexible. Yet if I move those things, it's just going to, you know, bombard the rest of the schedule.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah, yeah.
Roxanne Albin: That's cause a domino effect.
Jonathan Mahrt: I think two things come to mind for me about that that I think about. One is sounds like you're kind of doing is time blocking where you're creating, you know, you're blocking off chunks of time for specific things. Right. Obviously it sounds like you're doing that a little bit more literally. And literally at this time of the day, I have to go. You Know, feed the animals or whatever. Right. But I think the other thing is that's related to time blocking is making sure that you have, I gotta imagine, making sure you have enough time to, like, think about your business, work on your business, have time to, like, be creative where you don't, or just get work done. You know, get deep work done, not just, you know, checking boxes, but actually being able to think and concentrate. Do you find time to schedule those things in as well?
Roxanne Albin: With looking at the schedule that I created yesterday, I could see when I have available time, because I always want to make sure that I'm available to my employees to answer questions or to clients, if clients need to meet, of course. So definitely I could see when those best times would be for that to happen. For sure.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah. So I think one interesting question that I'd like to ask is, do you have a particular belief or behavior that you feel like had a major impact on your life?
Roxanne Albin: Do I have a major belief?
Jonathan Mahrt: Well, not necessarily major, but just a belief like, you know, perspective on something that you feel like, maybe even in the context of your business or your approach to business, or maybe your business philosophy that you feel like helps make you successful.
Roxanne Albin: I think one of the best things I could do is be a good listener, and that's to when someone's calling and they're having an issue. If someone's undergoing an audit and they're freaking out, if an employee is having an issue, if an employee is having a personal issue, that all is. To me, it's all relevant. If the client is feeling, you know, lousy because they don't know the information, just to be able to reassure them and to listen to them of whatever they're. Wherever they're at in the process, and to be able to be there as another human. I think a lot of businesses focus on business, which. Great. Okay. That's great for the bottom line. Wonderful. Where's the human component? I mean, our employees are our largest asset, and they deserve to be cultivated and treated respectfully and taken good care of.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah, I think it is easy to lose sight of kind of the golden rule when you have people that work for you is that, you know, treat people how you want to be treated. If you were an employee, like, would you be telling them no about this particular thing or that you can't do that, or would you be brushing that concern off if you were in their shoes? I think it's easy to become calloused a little bit when you're running a business. And so I think that's good to be. I like that it, you know, that idea of. Of making sure to listen, taking the time to listen to people because I think that's an experience I've had in the past where I've had it with experience, got better at. But I had to catch myself at was my gut reaction to what someone is telling me is to dismiss it and say that it's ridiculous. But regardless of if I think it's objectively ridiculous or not, it's impactful to that person. And so I need to take the time to listen and. And understand what their concern is and help address it.
Roxanne Albin: And I find that a lot of the case where people are so worried about their employers knowing about their personal situations. Well, sure, there's a whole reason of why employers don't do that, but there's some. You could really help an employee walk through something. Maybe they need to take some time off because they've. They're going through a divorce, maybe they're having struggles with their newborn baby, maybe whatever it is. But just being able to talk to them or let them talk to you and tell you what's really going on, you can help them navigate through those situations.
Jonathan Mahrt: You find, like, sometimes people don't want to tell you things about what's going on in their personal life, even when clearly something is going on and affecting.
Roxanne Albin: Their work life generally. Not with me. I'm pretty. I'm pretty approachable. My employees know that I want them to be able to talk to me so that I can help them navigate if that's what they need. So that's not my experience. I have heard that with others.
Jonathan Mahrt: Interesting. Yeah. I feel like that's one of those things where it's. I always tell people I'd much rather you just come and talk to me about something. And I'm sorry if I didn't. And I think, you know, I. That was definitely. I'm a person that is easy to come off a little bit intimidating because of my size and stuff like that. And. And when you're in a hurry and trying to get something done, people don't want to, like, stop you to talk all the time. But I was always. What I try and tell people is, hey, let's, let's stop. And I much rather know what's going on and help figure this out with you.
Roxanne Albin: Exactly.
Jonathan Mahrt: Especially when it's a good employee that I'd like to keep. Like, we can be flexible assuming it's within reason, but let's sit down and talk about it. I can't help you don't come and don't. I don't want you to come talk to me when it's already a disaster. Let's talk about it. Let's be proactive in that conversation. So I think that's. I think that's really a great kind of approach to working with people. So you're eight years into your business. What are some of the challenges and struggles that you've overcome in those eight years?
Roxanne Albin: Covid, Hiring, having the right staff, finding people that want to work.
Jonathan Mahrt: My understanding is that for finding bookkeepers, because I assume that's kind of your primary, rough kind of person you're looking for is hard right now. A lot of people have retired and not a lot of people have replaced them. Or the people that are there know how to put numbers into the system, but they don't really understand what they're doing. Is that your experience?
Roxanne Albin: Well, fortunately, a lot of our team has been there for over three years or so. And I do have to say, during COVID it opened up my eyes to hiring remote. We all went remote. So hiring remote workers. And so we have one, our senior accountant who's from Missouri.
Jonathan Mahrt: Oh, really?
Roxanne Albin: Oh, no. Excuse me. Oh, that was a faux pas.
Jonathan Mahrt: Michigan, from California. It's all the same, right?
Roxanne Albin: Starts with an M. It has an I. Yeah. Yes. But she, she's phenomenal.
Jonathan Mahrt: So did you just post like, how did you find that person all the way on the other side of the country?
Roxanne Albin: Posted on. Indeed. And really interviewed. People listened for. Just like when I have somebody sitting in front of me, I'm listening for their answers. I'm listening for their experience, checking their references, talking to the references and asking specific questions about their capabilities. And she's a fabulous fit.
Jonathan Mahrt: So how do you. I mean, I think lots of people have to be interested in that because it is hard sometimes. Unemployment, not that it's. It's generally low everywhere, but particularly here is. Is very low. And so maybe that is the right fit for some people's businesses if they're struggling to find someone in the area, is to hire a remote person. How has that experience been going from working in person to working remote? And what are some of the challenges you've had or. And some of the good things that have come from it?
Roxanne Albin: Well, we had a 3,000 square foot office. I loved it. It was great having everybody in the same location. Naturally, with COVID that changed and I found ourselves for quite a while with just two of us in the office in a 3,000 square foot office.
Jonathan Mahrt: During COVID that's a lot of overhead with very little utilization.
Roxanne Albin: Yes. And I had just. I believe I had just. Just right before COVID renewed my copier lease and had this gargantua, you know, copier. All the things that go into it. The overhead for running an office is insane. I find that. So how we deal with it is we have morning meetings and we meet by zoom. It's nice to be able to see everybody's face. There is an expectation to be there on time, and we share about what we're working on, and we can have conversations, we can ask people how you're doing and things like that. So the benefits have been the massive drop in overhead expenses.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah. And what are some of the challenges you've had in navigating? You're not bumping into people every day. So I assume you have to be much more intentional about. Like you said, you have the morning meeting, and if there's anything else that you do to, like, check in with people, communicate, make sure you know what's going on. And also the aspect. Kind of the aspect of like, team building and camaraderie has to be, I would assume, is more difficult as well.
Roxanne Albin: It can be. Some of the challenges have been people that we've hired that I think they were probably working more than one job at the same time and not. Not being where they're supposed to be. So. But you could see that. You could see the activity of when they're there, when they're not there, just by responsiveness. People that I really had high hopes for, but then all of a sudden, they vanish.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah.
Roxanne Albin: Missing for the whole day.
Jonathan Mahrt: Really?
Roxanne Albin: Yeah.
Jonathan Mahrt: Wow. I think it's interesting. So they're just. I don't. Are you familiar with Reddit? A little bit, yeah. So it's kind of lack of a better term. It's an online forum. Right. Where people post about anything. And there is a part of Reddit where they. People call it being overemployed and they brag about how many jobs they have. And so it's a very real thing. Except some of these people are doing it at, like, tech companies. Like, they'll have a job at Microsoft and Facebook, and they'll be making, you know, five or six hundred thousand dollars a year between the two jobs. Crazy. And they get away with it. I. At least the people on there say they're getting away with it. Now, do the people that get caught go on there and say, I got caught? Probably not, but it's. It's. I couldn't imagine doing that, you know, especially if you're like, fully engaged in, like something's going wrong there. If you're. If one job is not enough to keep you. Keep you engaged enough that you have time to go do a whole other job, like something's going. Management of that company is off.
Roxanne Albin: Right? Well, the staff that, the. The people that we had hired that did this were definitely, I look at compensating fairly, of course, and giving benefits and giving everybody the benefit of the doubt. But they. They didn't have the time to be doing this, so they just. It. I think they took advantage of the whole situation.
Jonathan Mahrt: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, I mean, that's what it's all predicated on, is that you can't. You don't see me every day. You don't know what I'm doing. I can say I'm working. And you can get. I mean, even if you get caught, you can probably get away with it for a while, you know, especially. It's not that hard to, like, fire people. And they make it. People. Bad employers have then made it difficult for good employers to be able to fire people when they need to fire them, you know. So I think we are getting close to the end of our conversation here. So I want to ask you, I just have one little bonus question I want to ask, is if you could put one thing on the side of a billboard next to a freeway that you wanted just the world to know, general advice for the world that you think would help people, what would it be?
Roxanne Albin: Breathe.
Jonathan Mahrt: Okay. Probably good if you're stuck in traffic, too.
Roxanne Albin: It's good in a lot of different situations. Sometimes we just need to take a big, big, deep breath. Maybe we're looking at a number that we're not happy with. You know, we could take a deep breath and just look at. Okay, this is a situation right now. What can I do about it? Let's move forward and put one foot in front of the other. And I think sometimes we're just all taking ourselves or others far too seriously. And, you know, life is meant to be enjoyed, not endured.
Jonathan Mahrt: That's another good one for the side of a billboard. I like that a lot. Life is meant to be enjoyed, not endured. I think that's a good man. If that is how you feel about your life, then you probably need to look at what you can change, because that's not a way to live, for sure.
Roxanne Albin: No, not the way I want to live, that's for sure.
Jonathan Mahrt: Do you think you mentioned that you meditate earlier? You think that's also kind of predicated on that practice as well. Influenced by that.
Roxanne Albin: It definitely helps me. I have a very active brain, active mind, and it really helps calm things down for me. It's very easy for me to fall out of the practice of doing it, but I use a free application Insight Timer, and they have all sorts of guided meditations. I do one in the morning and one at night. And. And it's just. It's just a really nice way to.
Jonathan Mahrt: Start the day and to breathe after my coffee. After the coffee, caffeine and meditation. Well, Roxanne, it's been a pleasure having you on the podcast. Before we go, I'd like you, if there please plug anything you'd like to plug, website for your business, wherever you like. Where can people find you?
Roxanne Albin: Okay, so our website is www.appliedfinancialservices with an S@the end.com.
Jonathan Mahrt: Okay, awesome. I'm surprised that that domain was available. So that's a good one. And you can find this podcast wherever in your podcast player or source of choice. Once again, I'm Jonathan Mart with Flywheel Consulting, and thank you and have a great day.
Roxanne Albin: Thank you.