I believe business owners are often underestimated when it comes to finances—sometimes it’s because we hold ourselves back from what we’re capable of achieving. In this episode, Luisa Alberto of People First Finance joins us to share how you can move towards achieving financial autonomy in your business. If you’re not paying attention to your finances or even pursuing the numbers you believe you’re capable of hitting, this episode is for you. If today’s episode resonates with you and you want to show support for the show, here’s an easy way to do so: Buy Me A Coffee! Luisa Alberto is the CEO of People First Finance, a Virtual CFO agency that provides accounting, tax planning and financial strategy services to women agency owners and service providers. She has almost 20 years years of Finance and Operations experience working alongside visionary leaders of successful startups, and earned her first entrepreneurial stripes as owner and operator of a boutique, made to order juice bar in San Francisco. Her mission is to ease the financial burden and overwhelm that holds too many talented women business owners back from reaching their fullest potential, and making a successful living as the brilliant creators they were born to be. Understanding Financial Autonomy Luisa Alberto went through her own financial disasters, which led to her own exploration of finances and financial autonomy. This experience has helped her to better serve her clients through her agency, People First Finance. Luisa believes it’s important for women to have their own experts who speak their language, understand the emotional side, honor their intuition when it comes to making financial decisions, and aren’t just sort of like cramming prescriptive financial principles down their throat, right? There’s more nuance to finance than that. She wanted to personalize the experience so that her clients could truly understand their finances and reach financial autonomy. Financial Autonomy as a Business For many business owners, specifically agency owners, the goal is for you to be able to work where you shine brightest and to be able to hire or set up systems so you can scale. There isn’t a direct relation to the amount of work and the number of hours that you as a CEO are working anymore. Financial autonomy is not just generating the revenue to support that infrastructure and growth, it’s also being able to learn about the levers that you can pull as a business owner. What about your taxes and tax strategy? Do you know what questions to ask? Part of financial autonomy is knowing what questions to ask to those who handle your accounting. No one cares about your money as much as you do. At People First Finance, Luisa and her team are equipping their clients with the knoweldge they need to build and set expectations for their business in order to achieve financial autonomy. Steps to Achieving Financial Autonomy Not all of us studied finances, so it can be hard and intimidating to explore financial autonomy. Here are a couple of steps to take if you’re ready to achieve it: * Be willing to confront your beliefs on finances. * Pay attention to your finances: revenue, expenses, and projections. * Explore your current client experience to maintain your recurring revenue.