How Ana Tackled Her Business Finances Head-on to Gain Financial Clarity and Start Believing in Herself
The impact of Charge with Confidence has extended into Ana’s personal life, and she no longer feels as though she is bad with money
Ana translates marketing content from English and Spanish into Brazilian Portuguese. She specialises in providing transcreation services as well as offering her clients copywriting and cultural consultancy. What’s important to Ana is helping her customers create content that speaks directly to their target audience.
When Ana enrolled in Charge with Confidence in December 2020, she had been running her freelance business for four years full-time but had been working on it part-time for eight years prior to taking the plunge. She wanted to get some clarity and create a structured approach to managing her finances on an ongoing basis.
The challenge: overcoming Ana’s belief that she was bad with finances to stop her doubting herself
Before signing up for Charge with Confidence, Ana realised that she was spending all the time she set aside for CPD trying to be a better translator. She felt as though she was doing really well in that area and was extremely good at her job. However, she simultaneously believed that she was a terrible business owner who needed to get a better handle on her finances.
Ana was scared of her finances and dreaded dealing with them. Despite having a major in economics and an MBA, she had always thought of herself as someone who was just bad with finances. She found them overwhelming and felt unable to apply everything she had studied and read to her own freelance business.
On top of this, although Ana was already working with clients based in Europe, I was very conscious of the fact that Ana is Brazilian and based in Uruguay. An Argentinian translator once told me that she didn’t think Latin Americans would get much value from the programme simply because rates there are too low. As a result, I was determined to make sure I gave Ana as much value as I possibly could!
The solution: showing Ana how to deal with her business finances and develop processes to manage them consistently
During Charge with Confidence, I explained to Ana how to deal with her business finances. I strongly believe that no one is inherently bad with money, but I do think it’s difficult for someone to be good with money if they’ve never been shown how to manage it. I therefore set out how Ana could go about ordering her finances and putting processes in place that she would be able to maintain.
In the first week of the programme, I shared my budgeting spreadsheet with the group’s participants. It goes into much more depth than the free version, looking at the different types of expenses, totalling them up, and assessing their necessity. This helped Ana analyse her figures and set herself a budget that she would be able to stick to in the long term.
I also showed Ana how to associate time with money and put a value on the hours she spends on client work. She now has a minimum hourly rate, which has encouraged her to view her customers’ budgets for projects in terms of how much time it buys them. If the budget doesn’t allow her enough time to get the job done to a high standard, she either walks away or negotiates a higher fee that allows her to earn what she needs to be making per hour.
These calculations have also enabled her to clearly identify the type of customers she wants to be working with and the markets she wants to operate in, validating her decision to work with European clients who are willing to pay her rates.
“The best thing Charge with Confidence did for me was give me the ability to say no with ease.”
The results: Ana no longer thinks of herself as someone who is bad with money and finds it easier to make decisions relating to her business
Five months down the line, Ana has stopped doubting herself. After completing Charge with Confidence and learning how to manage her business finances, I’m happy to report that Ana no longer believes she’s bad with money. She filed her taxes in April and said she’s never found it easier.
Ana also says that there has been a huge reduction in the mental noise surrounding her finances. She has gained clarity and focus while successfully identifying what’s important for her business. In particular, Ana has found that having a budget has made decision-making far simpler, reducing the mental burden.
On one occasion, Ana even wrote to tell me that the course had just paid for itself three times over! A client had sent her a copyediting task with a large fee attached to the job. In the past, Ana says that she would have accepted it straight away. However, on this occasion, having calculated how long it would take her to complete the work, she realised the overall amount wasn’t enough. She wrote back to the client explaining that they’d need to increase the budget by £500 to make sure enough time could be spent on the task. The client thought that was reasonable and accepted!
But besides gaining structure and clarity in her work, Ana has also used what she learnt during Charge with Confidence in her personal life. She and her husband have adapted the business budgeting spreadsheet to create a budget for their personal outgoings. While they’re out and about, they add any purchases they make to the Google Sheet on their phones, also managing to keep their personal finances organised as a result.
“As my business grew, I realized my ‘fear of finances’ was holding me back. In Charge with Confidence, I learned a straightforward method for financial management, which gave me some much-needed clarity and the confidence to say ‘no’ to clients that aren’t a good fit for me. I can’t recommend this course enough.”
I’m really pleased Ana feels as though she’s received such good value for money from the programme. She knows exactly which clients she wants to be targeting to make sure they can pay her rates and how much she needs to be asking them for. But perhaps most importantly, she’s changed the way she thinks about money and has started believing in herself. Ana now knows how to manage both her business and personal finances in a way that works for her and doesn’t feel overwhelming.
If you’d like to shut out some of the noise around your finances and get clear on the numbers in your business, you might want to consider doing Charge with Confidence. Click on the button below to find out more.
