Money Matters: Overcoming Financial Challenges in Business

Money Matters: Overcoming Financial Challenges in Business

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Can you save a sinking business ship?

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In episode 10 of the C-Suite Chicks podcast, Ashlie Marshall and Whitney Ramirez share their journey through financial hardship and the strategies that helped them turn their business around. This episode is a treasure trove of insights, blending personal anecdotes with professional wisdom, making it a must-listen for anyone navigating the choppy waters of business finance.

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Ashlie opens the episode by recounting the challenges they faced over the past year and a half. Their company was on the brink of financial ruin, and the pressure was immense. As she puts it, they had to figure out how to "take this nearly sinking ship financially and sustain the business and then grow the business." This set the stage for an episode filled with practical advice and heartfelt stories.

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After the initial greetings and some light-hearted discussion about their July 4th plans, Ashlie and Whitney dive into the main topic: financial adversity in business. Whitney shares that at her new house by the river, her family will enjoy the local fireworks, a stark contrast to the financial fireworks they had been navigating in their professional lives.

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The conversation shifts to recognizing when clients are facing financial difficulties. As a digital marketing agency, they noticed that marketing budgets are often the first to be cut during tough times. This trend was a clear indicator of the broader financial struggles their clients were experiencing. Whitney emphasizes the importance of being attuned to these signals and leveraging their marketing expertise to help both their clients and their own business.

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One of the key takeaways from this episode is the importance of sales and marketing in overcoming financial challenges. Whitney and Ashlie stress that investing in these areas can create a pipeline of opportunities, essential for sustaining and growing a business. They highlight the role of tools like ZoomInfo in transforming their sales strategy. Whitney explains how ZoomInfo allowed her to function as an entire sales team, significantly boosting their outreach and results. This investment paid off multiple times over, proving the value of strategic spending even in tight financial situations.

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Ashlie and Whitney also discuss the sacrifices they made to keep their business afloat. They had to make tough decisions, including downsizing their team. However, they approached this with compassion and transparency, ensuring that their employees understood the situation and had options. This humane approach not only maintained morale but also reinforced the strong culture within their company.

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Another critical aspect they touch on is the need for structured financial maintenance. Ashlie describes the meticulous process of separating their financials in QuickBooks and moving away from credit card reliance. Running the company on cash helped solidify their financial standing and provided a clearer picture of their true expenses and needs.

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Throughout the episode, the theme of long-term strategic planning versus short-term fixes emerges repeatedly. Ashlie and Whitney emphasize the importance of focusing on sustainable growth and making informed, strategic decisions rather than reactionary ones. They share how they balanced immediate needs with future goals, ensuring that their business could not only survive but thrive.

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As the episode wraps up, Whitney offers a piece of advice: focus on getting a little bit better every day. This incremental improvement, she believes, adds up over time and can lead to significant progress. Episode 10 of the C-Suite Chicks podcast is a powerful reminder that even in the face of financial adversity, with the right strategies and mindset, businesses can navigate through and emerge stronger. 

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Ashlie Marshall (00:00):

What I experienced while we were going through the last year and a half was understanding how are we going to take this nearly sinking ship financially and sustain the business and then grow the business?

Whitney Ramirez (00:22):

Hello.

Ashlie Marshall (00:23):

Hey y'all. Welcome back to the C-Suite Chicks rocking and rolling here the day before July 4th. Hope everybody's going to have a safe holiday.

Whitney Ramirez (00:34):

What are you doing for July 4th?

Ashlie Marshall (00:41):

Not much. We might do some grilling and my children are obsessed with fireworks, so my father will go spend a hundred bucks, hundreds of dollars on stupid fireworks for them and we'll pop them and they'll be happy and we'll move on. Go to bed. What about you? What's going on?

Whitney Ramirez (01:01):

Well, at my new house we're right on the river and usually over the river is where a majority of the fireworks in Tulsa are happening, so exciting and quick trips hosting like a freedom festival too. And my cousin from Dallas is in town. Perfect. And she has a 2-year-old.

Ashlie Marshall (01:23):

Oh, that's even better. Your little guys are going to have the best time.

Whitney Ramirez (01:27):

I know. They'll be fun

Ashlie Marshall (01:28):

And very little work for you. Just go enjoy and come home. That's the best.

Whitney Ramirez (01:34):

Exactly.

Ashlie Marshall (01:35):

No sweeping the street

Whitney Ramirez (01:40):

Or buying hundreds of dollars worth of fireworks. Absolutely not.

Ashlie Marshall (01:44):

Honestly, I don't spend any money. My dad goes all out for the grandkids and they only get to do it twice a year, so I don't argue. Right. I mean, if you're a parent out there who argues with grandparents? Not me.

Whitney Ramirez (02:07):

Goodness. Speaking of dollars,

Ashlie Marshall (02:09):

Yeah. Today we are going to be chatting about financial hardship in business specifically. Everybody has their own personal financial hardships I think, but our chitchat today is kind of about the adversities we've faced financially and how we have navigated through that and how we're doing on the other end of that.

Whitney Ramirez (02:41):

I think another thing that we didn't plan to talk about today, but is just how we recognize when our clients are going through financial hardship because they'll pause services and we're a digital marketing agency, so marketing is the first thing that they cut, but we're talking about our own today, but I also want to talk about how we leveraged our marketing to also overcome it.

Ashlie Marshall (03:14):

Exactly. I couldn't have said it better. Marketing is a huge piece of how you

Whitney Ramirez (03:22):

Get yourself out. And sales of

Ashlie Marshall (03:23):

Course. Well yes, but without the marketing, your sales are limited and there's nothing

Whitney Ramirez (03:30):

To support you

Ashlie Marshall (03:32):

Exactly what you're able to pull in and that keep that pipeline flowing. If you don't have a pipeline, your company has no lifeline. Yeah, exactly. So given that Whitney and I kind of stepped into our roles at the end of 2022, who that was kind of when we were given access to very intimate company details, we had already been functioning in somewhat of our roles in terms of setting culture and leading the team and being very present for the other team members, but we hadn't really been given the opportunity to dive into the deep intimate intricacies of the company and watching the owner of our company kind of struggle, not struggle with the decisions, but there's so much you're only one person and if you don't have another individual or multiple individuals who you trust that you can bring into that intimate circle, then decision-making is very limited because you get to this point where you're now making reactionary decisions as opposed to strategic decisions, and that is at no fault of their own.

(05:01):

Being on your own and making those decisions is very difficult. And I think we didn't realize how difficult it was at first, and then when we were given access and granted the opportunity to be more involved in the intimate workings, I definitely myself had an eye opening experience of, wow, this is a lot. Lot of things to keep on top of, a lot of things to make sure are, I guess somewhat structured as much as you can in order to create an area of strategy and planning and forward thinking. But we kind of spent the last year and a half really working to get ourselves in that position. And again, it was at no fault of our owner or anyone specifically, it was just we grew very quickly and it was hard

Whitney Ramirez (05:54):

To, it was like survival mode slash it's working in the in-between almost, it's like you're not suffering like you were, but you're also not thriving yet, but you're in the middle of that.

Ashlie Marshall (06:11):

And I think for me, what I experienced while we were going through the last year and a half was understanding how are we going to take this nearly sinking ship financially and sustain the business and then grow the business? And there were so many steps in between there that I literally had no idea what I was getting into, but I think you and I created this course of, okay, here's step one, here's step two. We set these sites on, okay, I'm going to be able to finish this in Q1 and then realizing that was stupidly unrealistic,

Whitney Ramirez (06:55):

Like

Ashlie Marshall (06:55):

Nope, that's going to be handled by the time we get to Q3, maybe Q4, and then realizing that things actually take longer when you're wearing seven different hats as opposed

Whitney Ramirez (07:06):

To

Ashlie Marshall (07:07):

If you were solely focused on the one thing that you need to create structure in,

Whitney Ramirez (07:14):

And you also don't, until you're kind of out of it, you don't realize how much you can accomplish in a short amount of time. Just yesterday we had someone servicing our embroidery machine and he's like, how long have you guys been around? And we're like, oh, five years. And he's like, you have all of this after five years. And we're like, yeah. And he is usually it takes people five years just to have a decent customer base. And then in my head I'm thinking, oh, I've only been involved for two years. So that's a huge compliment that we did in two years, what most companies struggled to do in five.

Ashlie Marshall (07:56):

Yeah. Well, and I feel like that is highly contributed to the success the agency had. All of the equipment for the shop was basically a reward from how well the agency was doing and how little the overhead was so early on. And then as you and I walked in the door and we're like, okay, we can really make this company thrive. And we started restructuring and you go through these growing pains where you're jumping in infrastructure and not necessarily jumping in revenue to equate to that infrastructure, and then it starts to kind of snowball. All of the things come down on you all at once and then you're like, oh, well here's all of our problems, but really there isn't any major problems. It's just growing pains. You're just growing to support the business that you've built

Whitney Ramirez (08:52):

And are set up for so much success too. If you're set up with the best equipment and a great team, you can build it fast, but you're building it at the normal person's speed where the equipment we have is we're able to do so much more and grow so fast because we have the resources to do so.

Ashlie Marshall (09:21):

Yep. It's true.

Whitney Ramirez (09:22):

But then it's frustrating like, wow, where would we have been if I both were contributing from day one

Ashlie Marshall (09:36):

Or at least a little sooner than we were? And we've talked about that we would've made different decisions in terms of bonuses, raises, promotions, restructuring sooner. There would've been things we would've done differently had we known all of the working parts and that may or may not have landed us in a different position than we are in now. I think we would have grown in client count and revenue reoccurring revenue probably more so than we have recently, but I'm not sure that any of those decisions being made differently at a sooner point in time would have made the dire situation we were in any different

Whitney Ramirez (10:26):

No, no. And I feel like everything happened. Everything that did happen taught us so much to where now even just two years in, we're better equipped than we were when we came in.

Ashlie Marshall (10:43):

I completely agree with that. And even now, decisions that I made financially last year, I made big decisions where I restructured our QuickBooks so that there's more separation in our two companies. That was one of the biggest things on my list, and I have learned since embarking on that journey that it is an ever revolving door. I will constantly be working on maintaining the separation in our numbers even though both of our companies operate under one LLC and one QuickBooks account. And so creating that separation in areas that I have the freedom to do so that our reports reflect the numbers appropriately was one of my big projects. Another really important decision that we made was moving away from being reliant upon credit cards, and our company is 99% running on cash right now, and I truly believe that that decision has solidified our financial standing and actually helped us to sustain the company and the team through our transition of turning the financial ship around.

Whitney Ramirez (11:57):

It just gives us a better idea of what do you really need or what are our true goals in terms of hitting profit goals and everything?

Ashlie Marshall (12:10):

Exactly, and understanding our expenses and like you said, what we truly need. What do we absolutely cannot get rid of in order to operate a smooth ship and keep our clients getting results and keep growing their businesses? The number one priority is maintaining the growth of our clients and pushing that. And one thing I actually learned over the course of the last 18 months has been getting a lot better at saying, no, no, we can't invest in that right now. Let's revisit that in 90 days or let's revisit that in 60 days and putting it on the calendar and having that projection out. Okay, I know that we're going to talk about this again, but I want to make sure that we hit these markers before I say yes to things. I suck at saying no. And I think I've gotten really good at it recently.

Whitney Ramirez (13:06):

I think we all have to at some point because if we don't, then we disappoint people more than we would've if we did say yes.

Ashlie Marshall (13:14):

Yeah, I agree with that. We also, so getting the financials separated and QuickBooks and moving away from the use of credit cards and the reliant reliability of that, we also did some restructuring in both companies. We definitely took, I think that was one of the first things that we did was we looked at the people who were employed at both companies and we reevaluated the tasks that they had, the tasks of everyone and seeing where we could restructure a little bit of that work and find where we maybe had hired in excess and we didn't need, I think the one thing that I loved so much about how we handled that for the most part was we tried to take care of our people as best we could.

(14:14):

In some cases, we gave options and we definitely tried to support the employee specifically in a transition of work and giving them the freedom to make those decisions and being very upfront and honest about what was going on. And I still look back on those situations and while it did suck to have to downsize a little bit, it was absolutely needed. And the people that we had those conversations with were so appreciative. I'll never forget sitting in that coffee shop with a few people having a meeting and they were so appreciative of the conversation and the manner in which we were handling it. And that really took me back and I was like, okay, this sucks, but there's this level of understanding and appreciation in the way that you handle these situations. And I was super, super happy about the direction we took. Then

Whitney Ramirez (15:19):

One story that I think is worth telling was Drew, and I know he'd be okay with me sharing this, but he was like Ashley said, a couple people had options on whether they wanted to stay in their current position or move to something better fitting for them. And then Drew had the option of like, Hey, is this a good fit for you? Are you happy here if you are stay? But if you're not and you feel like there is something better out there for you, we want you to have the option regardless of how we feel, and let him know the situation as a whole. And he took some time to think about it, and then I had sat down with him again and he said, I love working here and I love the people and I love being creative. I love drawing all day, but I also care about the company enough to know what the best decision is for me to go. And so I was just like, that's amazing that even though he was there for a short time, he saw where we were at and what was best for the company. And I thought that was just really cool. And it showed a lot about his character.

Ashlie Marshall (16:34):

Oh, 100%. And I remember you telling me about how he had made his decision because Whitney and I don't live in the same place, but I come up and we handle these things together as we possibly can as a united front. But I was there for those conversations. And then Drew specifically when he had finally made his decision, I remember you telling me how he was like, I want the company to succeed so badly that I'm going to make this decision to give it a chance to flourish. And that speaks volumes to the culture created to the conversation had about the options laid in front to why we were doing it. It speaks so much to when you handle a situation as shitty as it is in the right way and treating people people, you can have a very different outcome and you can have a very different perspective on the situation.

(17:37):

So that was one thing we did. We definitely don't want to be in that position again and have to do that again, but that's like last resort that everything has been thrown off the ship that can be thrown off the ship and keep it moving forward. And our team will always be the very last thing we ever even discuss having to do so in the future if it ever happens again, which I don't foresee that happening, but if it does, that's how we have handled it in the past. That's how we would handle it in the future.

(18:15):

We definitely, well, I put in a huge schedule for reoccurring financial maintenance. That was a task. And what was hardest about that was the unexpected things that I didn't even know were going to be an expense because I hadn't done it the year before, so I didn't know annual expenses and I didn't know different quarterly things, and so things would just slap us in the face and I'm like, where did that come from? I don't know what that is. And so I feel like the entire first year of being in my role was learning all the unexpected things. And even two months ago we got slapped with an unexpected thing and I had to learn more about that. So it's like I feel like every single day, every single week I'm learning something new in terms of our expenses and what's going to come up and what is a possibility it could come up and so on and so forth. So definitely a learning situation, but the things that Whitney and I have worked so hard to put in place in terms of structure and organization have definitely helped us figuring out what's needed and what's not. Getting our financial ship straightened out.

Whitney Ramirez (19:34):

And if you are experiencing financial hardship, I would say to heavily lean to sales and marketing and to put that as your top priority.

Ashlie Marshall (19:46):

The next big piece would be sacrifices, right? What sacrifices, and we talked about one, downsizing. I refer to that as a sacrifice. We definitely pulled in the purse strings as tight as we could without signaling to the remaining team members that there was any fires. I guess you could say that there was any negativity happening financially in the company. And it helped. Helped. We did it for a good period of time and it did help other sacrifices. Obviously Whitney and I made very deep sacrifices in terms of putting our team first. We definitely ensured that we gave incremental raises as they should have been given to the whole team besides ourselves. And we made that sacrifice because it was the right thing to do. It was exactly how it should have been handled. There's no other option there. And we diminished our own, I would say our own personal growth at some turns because we were so trying to shoulder everything between the two of us. And honestly, if I was in it again, I don't think I would handle it any differently.

Whitney Ramirez (21:25):

Probably not. I always go back to that. There's a speech where they're talking about you have so many balls and some are made of glass and some of them are made of plastic, and a glass ball is like your family or your husband or whatever, or your kids. And then a rubber ball is cleaning the house or forgetting to reply to an email and it's like you can only juggle so many. And so you pick every day which ones you can juggle that day, and sometimes you're going to break the glass, that's your parenting glass, and sometimes you're going to drop the emails in the clean house, but your family and your children are taken care of. And so it just always goes back to that for me, where you're always going to fail or have room for improvement in something at some point. And it could be different every day or you'll have seasons, I'm sure.

Ashlie Marshall (22:28):

I feel like I have seasons every single day in terms of personally, there are some days where I'm like, man, I got everything on my to-do list done. Today's work has been killing it, but my kids spent the entire day on the tablet and it's like, well, I did great at work, bombed the motherhood thing today. That was a complete disaster, but it's okay. Tomorrow's another day. And we definitely, again, if we were ever in that situation again, we would definitely choose the same in terms of putting our people and our team first. That's definitely one of the glass balls that we do our very darnedest not to drop. Can you think of any specific strategies that you can recall that we put in place that were we're detrimental to the success of our turning around of our financial hardship?

Whitney Ramirez (23:24):

I would say investing in ZoomInfo was a big turnaround because it allowed me as one person to do the work of a sales team and to figure out how to make cold outreach successful in a very short amount of time. And that not only helped us turn a corner, but also helped us to start maintaining and catching up every month. And even though it is an investment, I was getting sales five to 10 times over what we were paying. And so it made it so worth it and it allowed me to function as a sales team, and I am still utilizing it till to this day. We renewed our contract with them and it's been such a valuable resource for me. And I would really say that, and I was doing so much sales and marketing in my off time or downtime after Rome would go to bed, I would research on Instagram and grow local community-based networks on Instagram, on LinkedIn, Facebook. And then I just started researching how to really succeed at sales. And I remember this one video, this guy was the busier that you look, the busier you're going to be. And so I remember utilizing that as everything that I posted on social media and everything I did from a marketing standpoint, I tried to refer back to that and say, how can I show that we are busy and we're going to be even busier than I am showing that we are?

Ashlie Marshall (25:24):

Yeah, you definitely poured into this sales strategy like 100%. And that was a piece that our company had honestly been missing forever for since inception. I think that the early days, the owner founder, he had so many connections and so many people that knew him already that quickly became clients because he knew them and he was trustworthy and they trusted him and he did a great job, and so they continued to trust him and that's great, that's excellent. And then he didn't have to work too hard for sales, whereas now it's much different and you putting those strategies in place, and the minute we started using ZoomInfo, everything changed. It really did. And it does platform ZoomInfo. This is not a plug, but ZoomInfo was definitely, it pays for itself. Every month has been a very handy supportive tool and there are many others out there like it that also pay for themselves, and it really does depend on how you use it. If you

Whitney Ramirez (26:38):

Understand cold outreach and our creative and intelligent enough and know your audience, ZoomInfo is killer, but if you get ZoomInfo and you're like, it's not working, the problem is you. I hate to tell you

Ashlie Marshall (26:54):

Any platform for that matter that we don't have a lot of experience with others, but I do feel like they are very, if you're having a problem, it would be operator error. Okay.

Whitney Ramirez (27:05):

Yeah,

Ashlie Marshall (27:10):

So that's kind of like we jumped into this role when it was overwhelming and a lot of things had fallen through the cracks and we worked really hard to trim the fat expense-wise and fill the holes that were gaping and learn the best strategy to do that. That wasn't just a temporary option. We really thought long-term through the things, the solutions that we were trying to create or build or strategize. And so that's really key. I feel like it's really important to, when you are finding yourself in a financial hardship with your business, it's really hard to slow down and look at the long-term strategic decisions compared to the quick short-term fixes. And not only that, determining which problems can be solved with a short-term fix for right now while I focus on these other problems that immediately need long-term solutions that are going to be a strategy to grow the company as opposed to just reactionary fixing something and just like those balls in the air, trying to pick which one do I really need to focus on and make sure it doesn't break, and which one can bounce for a little bit with this solution so that I can keep going forward.

(28:41):

That's really big, big part of it. When you're in financial hardship, try to take a breath and look at the big picture is really hard, but it's one

Whitney Ramirez (28:57):

Day at a time.

Ashlie Marshall (28:58):

One day at a time. So much goes into it. Not only the finances of the company, but tax implications and fluctuations in the economy that are coming up that you're trying to plan for while you're also trying to keep things moving forward. And do you need to open your streams of revenue? Do you have opportunity where you can create more opportunity for income? What can you do personally to shift things? There's so many factors that go into it, and when it comes to giving advice, I don't think that I am equipped to give advice, but I can tell you what I did and I can tell you that evaluating your current situation and knowing your industry and your client base is going to be key to figuring out what's going to work to grow your company and what's not.

Whitney Ramirez (30:02):

Yeah, because I'll say three things that we did is one, we did a full evaluation after we got access to everything. Two, we did open up new streams of revenue on both for both companies, and we also leaned into sales marketing. All three of those combined really helped to turn things around

Ashlie Marshall (30:32):

That pipeline, man. But you're a hundred percent right. We did all three things together because you can pour into yourselves in marketing and not have the organized, structured, internal systems to support that growth. And you're going to land right back in the same spot. You can't focus on one or the other. It has to be all together.

Whitney Ramirez (30:57):

Oh, yeah. The same time. And everyone has to be playing their part too,

Ashlie Marshall (31:02):

Not necessarily. I think this is key, especially with you, and you don't necessarily have to stay in a specific lane when you are working together. I feel like you and I definitely pass certain big tasks back and forth when we are slammed or when we are experiencing the need to focus somewhere else. And I undoubtedly think that that has been instrumental in our success. We're so flexible with each other and being able to say, Hey, I didn't get to this. Can you work on X, Y, Z? Or, Hey, I have some free time. What do you need help with? Give me a few things. And we do that back and forth all the time.

Whitney Ramirez (31:44):

And then Lindy being so focused on operations and doing the same thing is so critical.

Ashlie Marshall (31:51):

It's so critical. I am not sure we would've gotten where we are now without her in her role. She's grown so much over the past 18 months and she's killing it. I mean, there's no way that we would've been able to get as far as we've got without her in that role, killing it the way she is. So props to Lindy, time keeps going. It doesn't matter what you're faced with, everything keeps moving and you're either going to move forward with it or you're going to stay stagnant. And if you stay stagnant, your ship will sink. So be on top of it. Guys, do you have any last words of advice, Whitney? For others facing financial hardship?

Whitney Ramirez (32:39):

Focus on getting a little bit better every day. It'll add up over time.

Ashlie Marshall (32:44):

1% better. If you haven't read Atomic Habits, read it.

Whitney Ramirez (32:47):

It's

Ashlie Marshall (32:48):

Very good. Total killer book. 1% better every day adds up over time. And then one day you're like, wow, look at that.

Whitney Ramirez (32:57):

Okay, well, we're over time, so I guess we'll let you go now.

Ashlie Marshall (33:06):

Yep. If you guys like this episode, please leave us a review. Share it with your friends, somebody running a business, helping run a business, share it. And if you guys have questions, let us know. We're always up for conversation. Learning new strategies, something you did that helped you through your financial hardship. We're always available. Thanks for listening, guys. Thank you. Bye.

Whitney Ramirez (33:31):

Bye.

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