I CHOOSE MY BEST LIFE

In this episode, Sarah Frazer helps us see how life's plot twists and interruptions are actually the ways in which God is working.

Connect with Sarah on Facebook and Instagram.

Get your copy of I Didn't Sign Up for This: How to Rest in God's Goodness When Your Story Shifts.

I Choose My Best Life Podcast is one of the Top 20 Christian Women Podcasts

I Choose My Best Life

Books: Colorful Connections, Sacred Rest, Come Empty, Set Free to Live Free

Connect with Saundra:

Twitter: @DrDaltonSmith

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/drdaltonsmith

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrSaundraDaltonSmith

Rachel Miller joins Dr. Saundra to discuss honoring our unmet longing while not becoming a victim of it.

Download Rachel Miller's Prayer Guide for Unmet Longing.

Get your copy of When It Hurts to Hope: Honest Conversations about Living with Unmet Longing.

I Choose My Best Life Podcast is one of the Top 20 Christian Women Podcasts

I Choose My Best Life

Books: Colorful Connections, Sacred Rest, Come Empty, Set Free to Live Free

Connect with Saundra:

Twitter: @DrDaltonSmith

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/drdaltonsmith

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrSaundraDaltonSmith

In this episode, Danielle Cobo joins us to share ways to break through roadblocks standing between achieving our goals.

Check out Danielle's Unstoppable Grit Podcast.

Get your copy of Unstoppable Grit: Break Through the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals.

I Choose My Best Life Podcast is one of the Top 20 Christian Women Podcasts

I Choose My Best Life

Books: Colorful Connections, Sacred Rest, Come Empty, Set Free to Live Free

Connect with Saundra:

Twitter: @DrDaltonSmith

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/drdaltonsmith

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrSaundraDaltonSmith

Dieula Previlon shows how God meets us on our trauma-healing journey to remind us we are seen and known.

Connect with Dieula on Facebook and Instagram.

Get your copy of Does God See Me?: How God Meets Us in the Center of Our Trauma-Healing Journey.

I Choose My Best Life Podcast is one of the Top 20 Christian Women Podcasts

I Choose My Best Life

Books: Colorful Connections, Sacred Rest, Come Empty, Set Free to Live Free

Connect with Saundra:

Twitter: @DrDaltonSmith

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/drdaltonsmith

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrSaundraDaltonSmith

Cody Andras takes us on a journey to envision what it looks like to be one who walks with Jesus by your side.

Connect with Cody on Facebook and Instagram.

Get your copy of Jesus By Her Side: Finding the Nearness of God Through the Eyes of the Women in the Gospels.

I Choose My Best Life Podcast is one of the Top 20 Christian Women Podcasts

I Choose My Best Life

Books: Colorful Connections, Sacred Rest, Come Empty, Set Free to Live Free

Connect with Saundra:

Twitter: @DrDaltonSmith

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/drdaltonsmith

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrSaundraDaltonSmith

Dr. Tim Elmore joins me on this episode to help us identify leadership qualities in ourselves and those around us.

Connect with Dr. Tim on Facebook and Instagram.

Get your copy of I Can't Wait.

I Choose My Best Life Podcast is one of the Top 20 Christian Women Podcasts

I Choose My Best Life

Books: Colorful Connections, Sacred Rest, Come Empty, Set Free to Live Free

Connect with Saundra:

Twitter: @DrDaltonSmith

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/drdaltonsmith

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrSaundraDaltonSmith

Janet McHenry helps us discover our unique prayer personality and begin our journey to an authentic lifestyle of prayer.

Take Janet's Prayer Personality Quiz.

Get your copy of Praying Personalities: Finding Your Natural Prayer Style.

I Choose My Best Life Podcast is one of the Top 20 Christian Women Podcasts

I Choose My Best Life

Books: Colorful Connections, Sacred Rest, Come Empty, Set Free to Live Free

Connect with Saundra:

Twitter: @DrDaltonSmith

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/drdaltonsmith

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrSaundraDaltonSmith

In this episode, Erin Warren helps us to live a life of feasting on truth and daily releasing prayers of faith.

Connect with Erin on Facebook and Instagram.

Get your copy of Everyday Prayers for Faith: Finding Confidence in God No Matter What.

I Choose My Best Life Podcast is one of the Top 20 Christian Women Podcasts

I Choose My Best Life

Books: Colorful Connections, Sacred Rest, Come Empty, Set Free to Live Free

Connect with Saundra:

Twitter: @DrDaltonSmith

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/drdaltonsmith

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrSaundraDaltonSmith

Brant Hanson shares how we can choose to find joy and dance while living in a world that sometimes appears to have gone mad.

Learn more about the work being done at CURE International Children's Hospitals.

Get your copy of Life Is Hard. God Is Good. Let's Dance.: Experiencing Real Joy in a World Gone Mad.

I Choose My Best Life Podcast is one of the Top 20 Christian Women Podcasts

I Choose My Best Life

Books: Colorful Connections, Sacred Rest, Come Empty, Set Free to Live Free

Connect with Saundra:

Twitter: @DrDaltonSmith

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/drdaltonsmith

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrSaundraDaltonSmith

Danielle Brooks joins me on this episode to share how we can choose to amplify our freedom in life and business.

Check out Danielle's Amplify Your Income Resource Guide.

Get your copy of Profit & Proof.

Show Notes:

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith: Welcome everyone. This is Dr. Saundra and you're listening to I Choose My Best Life. Today we're chatting with Danielle Brooks, who's going to help us be able to choose to amplify our freedom and get to a place in our life and our businesses where it does not feel so stressful. So Danielle, I want to thank you for joining us and welcome you to the show.

Let me have you begin by sharing a little bit about yourself and the type of work that you do.

Danielle Brooks: Hello, Dr. Saundra. Thank you so much for inviting me and allowing me to be on your platform. So, a little about myself. I am a mom of four kiddos who are under seven years old, and I've been married for nine years to my college sweetheart.

And I've been a virtual CFO for the past 11 years. So, we help small business owners with their accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll all across the country.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith: Excellent. And that's perfect for this time of the year with everybody thinking about getting all their taxes and all their stuff together. So, I would love to go a little bit deeper into how you tend to work with small business owners.

Now, for you, I know this has been a journey of learning how to create freedom and flexibility in your life. What inspired you to start sharing that with other business owners?

Danielle Brooks: What inspired me to create freedom and flexibility for small business owners was truly my mom. She had been in business for seven years. Before I started helping her grow her business, and she had not had a vacation, she was working a whole lot more than I felt like she should at that point in her life.

And I honestly just wanted to help her. And so she asked me to help her with sales because I came from a sales background. I used to work for ExxonMobil in a sales territory role. When I asked her for her financials, because all my sales meetings started with the finances, she ultimately didn't have clean financials to present to me. She didn't have a profit and loss statement. She didn't have a balance. She didn't know what her numbers were. And so I ended up creating her financials from just basically creating all her accounting and bookkeeping system. Then, there is a time tracking for her staff.

Ultimately I was able to help save her over 40 hours per month. Within a year of working with me, she and my dad took two weeks off, and they went to Italy and Rome. they really just wanted more freedom for their own life at that stage in life. And she didn't really know how to do that because she had grown this business beyond where she had planned and was literally going week to week payroll to payroll and was just truly, I feel held hostage by her business and staff that she created for herself.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith: This is such an important topic for those who are business owners and entrepreneurs, and getting in when you first start off with the business, you're so motivated to see the business succeed. But I think sometimes it's easy to get to a point where you don't realize that you have become hostage to your business, that you've gotten into a place where you can't take time off, and you can't move with freedom within your company and have that flexibility in your life. And I know that you, as a business owner, have dealt with this as well, wanting to find that level of, I don't like to say, balance. I oftentimes say harmony. And one of the ways you found that to be possible is by hiring the right people.

Can you elaborate on the importance of hiring the right people and how it improves business operations and can lead us to a place of freedom as an entrepreneur?

Danielle Brooks: Yes, I feel like so many people that start their business journey by themselves, the solopreneur, they've done everything in the business from what took place on the back end to the sales on the front end, and they're so used to know about all by themselves that once the business continues to grow, they don't honestly think about how to remove themselves from the business process.

And so I, I encourage small business owners to, from the very beginning, start putting processes in place, document how you do what you do. Before you even hire the first person, eventually, you can start letting some of those things go. And so I honestly encourage people to make a list of all the things they do.

You'll start without even knowing it, building out a job description, and then truly look at where it's taking the most time and effort for you to basically do whatever is taking the most time and effort from your business and your life, that's usually where I start to encourage people to look to hire.

And so for me, when I first started my business and it's taking care of the accounting and bookkeeping for small business owners, the bookkeeping portion took a lot of my time and energy. At that time, my business had grown with my family, but as a business started to pick up beyond helping my mom, I had two kids, and I'm over here trying to take care of like at least three things.

At that time, I had three clients where I was in their accounting bookkeeping at night while taking care of the kids throughout the day. My husband worked full-time. And so I looked at where all my time was going, and there really was the bookkeeping. So my first hire was the accountant to start releasing some of the bookkeeping responsibilities so I could focus on the strategy and consulting.

I needed clean financials, but I didn't have to produce those myself in order to provide a strategy for my clients.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith: Yeah, I think that's a hard one. I feel for a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners because when you may know that you need to hire someone, I think oftentimes the thought process is I don't have enough revenue to be able to bring in teams, or they're afraid of the responsibility of having these people that are on payroll.

What are some strategies or insights that you would share with them on how they can identify new revenue streams or even leverage existing ones to be able to have the freedom to do this and to get those right people on the team?

Danielle Brooks: So one thing I like to always encourage you when they are, of course, hesitant to hire, it's just like when you're as far as managing other financials, that there's always the investment comes before the return, you're going to have to invest money into the stock market before you see your return. And I feel like you have to invest time and energy in your team before you ultimately see your return and the freedom they're going to provide for you.

And so where I first start is having, once again, a clean bookkeeping system to determine how much money you're making and how much money you're spending. So we can, before you hire someone, make sure that you actually have the income to bring someone on, that you can actually afford to pay for somebody.

But then there may be a point where, hey, at the very beginning, you may be paying out more than what you're bringing in initially, but they're freeing up the time for you to now go out and sell and be the face of the business. So I would look at what, that's where I'm saying what's usually taking the most time from you and then focus on handing those things off to give you more time and energy to now grow the business, whether it's the sales side, producing the product that you're selling, but where I usually encourage people to have a clean bookkeeping system first to figure out.

How much it's costing you to run the business and then how much money you're making to ultimately determine how much you can afford to pay somebody.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith:The other thing about that is, oftentimes trying to make sure that you have time for some of the things that you want to do. I feel like that's a big part of the flexibility that we're looking for.

And the freedom we're looking for is proclaiming our time so that we're able to go to our child's soccer game or dance recital or whatever it may be, having some time freedom to be able to do those things. What are some practical strategies that you've incorporated within your own life to be able to build in some rest routines?

Danielle Brooks: So as the family has continued to grow, I honestly, I lean on my calendar a lot in order to block out the certain time that I'm going to spend with family, a certain time I'm going to be working. And I would also like to encourage, of course, a small business owner, usually, hey, when you first get started.

You're looking to just make money from anywhere. And you might be taking on more work than you should because you have this income goal. But a lot of times, when you just stay focused on and get really great at delivering a certain service, then the income can grow a lot faster than when you focus on one area versus having your focus spread out across a lot of different areas.

When I first started my business, I was speaking from experience. So, I didn't start out only doing accounting bookkeeping. I have always loved photography. I've been creative. I used to do graphic design. I did all these different things, but my income did not truly grow until I niched down to truly focus on one type of service.

And I did that also because, like I said, it was th