Hey there CEOs! Welcome to the Wedding Pro CEO Podcast! I’m your host, Brandee Gaar, and my mission is to help you, the wedding industry entrepreneur, build a profitable wedding business that you actually love!

In today’s episode, I’m going to give you three really simple, super easy-to-implement strategies to help you level up your financial game. And you know what the best part is? These strategies won’t cost you any additional money. So let’s get into it!

As wedding pros, we have a love/hate relationship with the financial aspects of our businesses. But one thing we tend to forget about our personal finances. As small business owners, we don’t have the luxury of a 401(k) with employer matching or a company retirement plan. That’s why it’s so important to think about building personal wealth alongside our business success!

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Tip #1: Open a business credit card

Now, I know some of you might be thinking, “But Brandee, that’s not wealth-building!” Hear me out! Many wedding pros avoid debt and don’t have a credit card for their business because of that same reason. I completely understand because I don’t believe in debt either! My husband Ira and I are very passionate about keeping a debt-free life and we work really really hard to make sure that we don’t have debt outside of our mortgage. So don’t tune me out yet!

I strongly believe in making our money work for us. If we’re going to spend money on our business, why not get something in return? By using a credit card for your business expenses instead of a debit card or bank transfers, we can earn rewards. Who doesn’t love some good rewards? Personally, I love to travel, so I use an American Express Platinum card for our business.I don’t really love exorbitant travel. I don’t need to go anywhere too crazy. But I do love to do many trips with my daughters or my husband or we love to all go away as a family on long weekends and things like that. So I love the ability to have airline points and hotel points. So that when we want to get away I can say “oh it’s free!”

Our business uses a platinum American Express. I love this credit card so much because there’s so many travel perks to it. You have lounge access at the airports you have 5 times points when you spend on travel. You get SO many upgrades! So if you enjoy travel or want your business to fund your trips, I highly recommend looking into the American Express Platinum card!! Of course, it’s essential to choose a credit card that aligns with your lifestyle. If travel isn’t your thing, consider a cash back card! There are a ton of options like the Chase Sapphire, Chase Ink, or Discover cash back cards. 2% might not seem like a lot but it definitely adds up when you’re spending thousands of dollars on business expenses each month.

Now, some of you might be hesitant because you don’t want to go into debt and I completely understand. The key here is to pay off your credit card balance in full every month. By doing that, you won’t incur any interest charges, and it’s not considered debt! It’s simply a way to maximize your spending and getting your money to work for you. Plus, it feels great to tell your family that your business funded your trip or provided extra bonuses!!

Tip #2: Open a High Yield Savings Account

Now this is one that I’ve only just recently learned about and I wish I would’ve known about it sooner! Most of us have a savings of a couple of months of expenses so that if the world melts down again, we all have some cash in the bank to help us get through any low months, right? So the goal is to have three to six months of your expenses in a savings account, and most of us have those savings account with our bank, and the bank gives us like 0.01% interest. It’s like minuscule how much interest that you’re gonna get.

Instead, consider opening a high-yield savings account that offers a four or five percent interest rate. With a high yield savings account, you can easily get the money as needed if you need it. This way, if you don’t need that money, it’s sitting there in a savings account just like it would be at your bank, but every year you’re going to yield a four to 5% interest on that money. There’s nothing difficult about this, I want you to let your money make more money for you by opening a high yield savings account.

Again, I highly recommend the American Express one, especially if you’re already an American Express customer, but there’s so many. If you just Google high yield savings account, you can see the different ones and research the one that’s really best for you and that you feel good about.

Tip #3: Make your personal finance a priority

So often on this show, in my programs, I’m constantly telling you how to build a profitable wedding business, right? I want to talk about your business finances. I want you to have lots of sales, low expenses, and great profit in between! It’s important to understand personal finance and to know how your business is funding that personal finance. The reason for that is because I don’t want you to just pay yourself a salary, I also want you to be in investing in retirement for your business. So I want that to be part of the overall expense of your business!

Author, speaker, and personal finance guru, Ramit Sethi has a book called I Will Teach You How to Be Rich. He also has a podcast called I Will Teach You How to Be Rich. And he also has a Netflix special called How To Be Rich. At first I was kinda like, I don’t know if I wanna learn from this guy, like I’m not all about, I just wanna be rich. I Think that feels icky to me. I don’t wanna just be rich. Right? But what he talks about is having a rich life and that that is different for each of us. And when I started listening to him, I was like, this is literally what I talk about to my business owners all the time. I’m constantly saying, I want you to design what a successful business looks like to you so that we can craft your journey to get there, because everybody’s version of success is different.

Make your personal finance a priority so that your business can start to fund your retirement or your wealth building post having your business!

“It’s important to understand personal finance and to know how your business is funding that personal finance.“

Brandee Gaar

Listen Now to Episode 192 of the Wedding Pro CEO Podcast, Building Wealth in the Wedding Industry: 3 Immediate Actions for Success

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Bye for now!!!😊

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