Welcome back to The COO Solution Podcast! In this episode, host Derek Fredrickson is joined by serial entrepreneur and Cashflowy AI founder, Heidi DeCoux, for a refreshingly honest conversation about the financial mistakes that hold entrepreneurs back—and how to finally fix them.
If you’ve ever felt confused, overwhelmed, or simply out of touch with your numbers, this episode is for you. Heidi shares why most solopreneurs unknowingly set themselves up for burnout and struggle by avoiding their financials—and how a few simple shifts in structure, mindset, and systems can change everything.
Whether you’re mixing personal and business finances, skipping your “money dates,” or overpaying for clunky bookkeeping tools that don’t give you answers, this episode offers clear guidance to help you take back control.
In This Episode:
[01:15] Why Solopreneurs Stay Broke: The surprising reason even smart founders ignore their numbers.
[03:18] Outdated Tools, Overpriced Support: Why QuickBooks and human bookkeepers aren’t built for small businesses—and what to use instead.
[09:21] The Weekly (or Monthly) Money Date: How 15 minutes of financial clarity can shift your entire business trajectory.
[15:35] Mixing Business and Personal Finances: The hidden cost of blurring lines—and how to clean it up fast.
[22:30] Financial Agreements in Partnerships: How a simple Google Doc can protect your relationships and your revenue.
[26:38] Reducing Friction = More Sales: Why resisting credit card fees is costing you way more than you think.
[30:09] Why AI Wins: The accuracy, savings, and time freedom that come from using smart tools built for solopreneurs.
[34:46] Final Advice: Money clarity is your superpower—shine a light on your numbers and watch your business grow.
📌 Why This Matters
Most business owners don’t fail because of a lack of hustle or great ideas; they fail because they lack visibility into the numbers that drive their decisions. Heidi’s approach to financial empowerment is practical, human, and doable—even if you’re allergic to spreadsheets. This conversation is your permission slip to stop winging it with your money and start leading like a CEO.
✅ Action Steps for Listeners:
- Start a weekly or monthly money date, even if it’s just 15 minutes.
- Separate your business and personal finances this week.
- Track your 4 key KPIs (get the free Profit Clarity Playbook below).
- Explore how AI-backed tools like Cashflowy can help you reclaim time, energy, and profit.
Resources & Links:
Subscribe & Stay Connected
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👉 If you found this episode valuable, share it with a fellow business owner ready to scale smarter!
Transcript:
00:01
Derek Fredrickson
Hey there, everybody. It’s Derek Fredrickson here from The COO Solution podcast and very excited to welcome you today’s episode. Start Over Again.
Hey there, everybody. It’s Derek Fredrickson here from The COO Solution podcast and very excited to be with you today. I have a wonderful guest with a fantastic topic that every entrepreneur and business owner needs to know about. So let me introduce you to our guest today, Heidi Decoux. Hello, Heidi. Welcome to the show today.
00:30
Heidi Decouxx
Thanks for having me on. Excited to be here.
00:32
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah. So we’re going to dive into a topic that is one of those topics that, in my experience, and maybe yours as well, Heidi, is not the favorite of entrepreneurs and business owners, but probably one if not the most important. They’re usually quite excited about marketing and sales and big ideas. And we’re going to be talking about financials, we’re going to be talking about money and why it’s so important as entrepreneurs and business owners to not turn their head on the numbers and actually embrace what’s happening in the numbers. So looking forward to diving into today’s topic and conversation with you, Heidi. So, again, thank you for being here.
I always like to start with a question when we have guests on the show because we’re looking to kind of supplement and diversify the topics and the conversations that we share with our audience.
01:15
Derek Fredrickson
And so I usually like to ask a question. Why this topic? Like, why financials and money? Why is that a topic that is obviously important for our listeners? But why? Why for you? Why is it something that you’re passionate about? And also, why now, like, why is this episode and this conversation really pertinent to what’s happening currently in the marketplace?
01:36
Heidi Decouxx
So I’ve been working with solopreneurs, like a kind of a one person or one person ish business for 20 years. This is actually my fifth company that I’m building. I exited three previous companies I’m passionate about. Solopreneurs. I believe they are the backbone of our economy, their future. I wholeheartedly support them. And what I saw over and over again working with different niches of solopreneurs in different capacities is the money, like really putting their head in the sand around their money, not understanding their numbers and then not able to make smart business decisions because they didn’t know their numbers. And a lot of the bookkeeping, accounting solutions on the market, none of them are really made for a solopreneur, like a QuickBooks, a FreshBooks, you know, they’re all made for a bigger business.
02:30
Heidi Decouxx
And so it’s extremely overwhelming for a solopreneur to use what feels like a very clunky, complex software so often. Then they end up hiring a human bookkeeper to help them with that software, which is an extreme expense for a solopreneur. That could be like 2, 3, $400 a month plus the cost of the software. And then they still don’t actually know their numbers. Message their bookkeeper and maybe like three days later they get a response. And usually it’s a follow up question. Yeah, statistically speaking a good competent human bookkeeper is about 70% accurate. They’re really just getting them like tax ready. They don’t actually understand their KPIs, which are performance indicators that should be running their decisions and running their business.
03:18
Heidi Decouxx
So then what happens is they end up being overworked and underpaid because they’re not focused on the right things because they simply don’t know what to focus on because they don’t understand what’s really going on in their business. And so when I knew that this was a consistent problem, I knew I wanted to build a software company. I, I’m an advocate for AI-backed humans. My belief is that when we properly AI-back a human, the human then has exponentially more life force, bandwidth, energy, time to do their good, important human work in the world, to rejuvenate themselves, to spend more time with friends, family, take care of their health, they want to raise kids, you know, that kind of thing. And so I’m a believer that an AI-backed human, so I’m like, you know, AI is moving fast.
04:07
Heidi Decouxx
Why don’t we leverage the power of AI to just auto-magically handle the finances and the cash flow management for solopreneurs and cash flow management being the critical piece there. So there are softwares that will just, you know, categorize their expenses and income stuff. But what we do is in addition to all of that and doing it in like this apple-esque beautiful dashboard is we actually show them what’s really happening with their cash, how much money they actually have. And these are your, you know, KPIs that you need to pay attention to. And based on what they’re saying, if they say this, focus on this, if they say that, focus on that and so they can spend their time and energy actually moving the needle in their business and making the income that they want to make, not overworking themselves, therefore doing better, higher quality work.
05:00
Heidi Decouxx
Yeah, so that’s really why I launched this. I knew that there was a big need in the market. I’m the one to do it because I know solopreneurs better than they know themselves. I love them.
05:11
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
05:12
Heidi Decouxx
Somewhere on our planet right now, there is somebody working on a business idea that will be the first billion dollar one person business. Just a matter of time before we see that. We have an opportunity right now for people to really chase their dreams, do their work in the world that they really care about, do it in a way that’s very time efficient and focused and to make multiple six figures, multiple seven figures, could even make 10 or 11 figures. Doing some type of a solopreneur business that’s really like a lifestyle business that. Yeah, a beautiful lifestyle for them. And I believe that’s where we’re headed. You know, like the big companies, even like Google and Meta and all that, they’re hiring fewer and fewer full time, you know, salary workers and we’re seeing more of a freelance marketplace. Right.
06:04
Heidi Decouxx
And solopreneurs are so well equipped to solve problems for people. Problems that AI can’t solve the human problem, but it can back you so that you can solve. You can use your human mind to solve it in a highly efficient way and be abundantly compensated for that.
06:20
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, I love, there’s so much there that we’re going to dive into. I love everything that you shared. But I think first of all, I love your enthusiasm, I love your kind of like mission and passion and interest. That’s obviously like the filter by which, you know, kind of drives what you want to do, but, and how you want to do it. But also why, which is a huge, like, why are you, like, as I said, like, why financials, why money? Why for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs. And we’ll dive into so many things that you just shared.
06:47
Derek Fredrickson
But I just want to, like, for example, that last point, it’s so critical that as you’re right as the work, the workforce or the workplace is shifting and you might have more, you know, freelancers or solopreneurs that are more like, I’ve got a skill set, I can go out and kind of market myself to the industry and get clients and make money.
07:05
Derek Fredrickson
And that’s all well and good, but even for that tiny little niche to be able to say, like, don’t forget that as you’re growing your business, like focus on your financials, like as you’re investing in yourself, as you’re investing in the work that you do with your clients, making sure that you’re looking at your numbers and then we’ll talk obviously about, like, the AI component and how that drives so much of it, because I love, especially now, like, having that conversation as it pertains to leveraging AI as a mechanism to help support and streamline what you’re doing in this area. And then the biggest lesson, I think, well, one of the biggest lessons that I think our viewers and listeners will get from today is the point that you shared around.
07:43
Derek Fredrickson
When entrepreneurs are clear about their numbers and can see what’s happening with their KPIs, dashboard, and metrics, they can make well-informed decisions, it changes everything because obviously, again, like I said, they might be like, I don’t know that much about my numbers. I don’t get timely information from my bookkeeper. I get a report once a month from my accountant. It’s a bunch of charts and graphs. It’s like, I don’t like that. So they avoid it, right? They kind of covered it up in the sand.
08:09
Derek Fredrickson
But when they have a way to be able to get clear and be able to make informed decisions around what’s working, what’s not working, how to do more of what’s working and less of what’s not working, and then it gives them the confidence from that clarity to say, oh, okay, I know that we need to focus more on this revenue stream or we need to focus on maybe reducing expenses over here. It just gives them that much more knowledge and context, which is everything, whether it’s with finances or with marketing or with sales or with your team or anything else like that. So really excited to dive into a bunch of that for today.
08:42
Derek Fredrickson
So I think one of the things that I would love to talk about is that, you know, there are some things when it comes to a topic where, like this, that most listeners may not know what they don’t know about how to address that. So we’re going to talk about some of the problems or some of the mistakes that might be happening.
And I first want to start with, because you have some great kind of phrases or expressions that you’ve identified that help kind of crystallize what’s really going on.
So I want to start with this thing called No weekly money date, right? Like, that’s like, they’re not making a money date. So what is a money date? And how can a certain amount of time, let’s say 15 minutes a week, like, how can that change someone’s kind of financial trajectory?
09:19
Derek Fredrickson
So what is a money date? And just talk to us a little bit about that.
09:21
Heidi Decouxx
And if 15 minutes a week feels overwhelming, then we recommend do one hour a month. So this could either be weekly or monthly, depending on what feels good to you and that you can actually get your head around. Because the important thing is doing it.
And what that money date looks like is you’re assessing really what’s working and what’s not and assessing that against your goals. Right? So you have your short term and long term goal as to where you want to be financially and then looking at your business and how your business is currently supporting your personal financial goal or maybe not currently supporting that goal. Because what gets measured gets like, can grow, right? Like what gets measured gets focused on. And then that focus, you can actually turn the right levers if you know what they are.
10:18
Heidi Decouxx
Which is what we show you at CashFlowy. We literally call it CashFlowy because we want to show you, we want a, to make you feel flowy about your cash.
10:25
Derek Fredricksona
Oh, I like that. Yeah.
10:27
Heidi Decouxx
Fun marketing and branding and a fun community where all of our users get free access to our cash flower society because we want to bring lightness to it. We want to take away the heaviness because if there’s too much heaviness, you’re actually going to not make as good of decisions. Right. Need to be lighter and flowier. And we say, hey, knowledge is power. We want to show you what’s really going on with your cash, how much you actually have, why you’re struggling to actually pay yourself consistently or pay yourself what you are worth and should be paying yourself or why it’s not growing. And so we’re going to show you that and then we’re going to show you what to do about that. If your numbers are saying, you know, xyz, then you should focus on, say client retention. Okay, here’s.
11:11
Heidi Decouxx
And then in our free cash flow society, we’re going to be launching in the fall Free resources like here’s what you can do to help with clients retention or if your cash flow management saying this, you have a lead problem, you’re drying up here. You don’t have enough new leads coming in and you’re going to be in a cash crunch soon. So we need to work on that. Go to Cash for Society. We’re going to give you some tactile strategies you can execute immediately, help fix that lead flow problem, you know, whatever it is. And so then they’re not just throwing a bunch of random spaghetti at the wall, hoping that, you know, they can pay themselves at the end of the month, like they’re focusing on the right thing. So your money date is where you’re really looking at that.
11:50
Heidi Decouxx
You’re not just looking at some, you know, balance sheet is really mostly for your taxes. Not that, you know, helpful. You know, your P&L is only marginally helpful. You’re really looking at the numbers that matter and that drive the decisions that month in your business. Yeah, that’s what we’re showing you at Cashflowy.
12:10
Derek Fredrickson
Okay. And I love the distinction between. Yeah, I mean, you need to have a balance sheet. Right. Because that’s needed for, you know, accounting purposes. And that’s what’s going to be generated from your traditional bookkeeping software. Like you said earlier, QuickBooks or FreshBooks or you know, your accountant needs that or your P&L. Of course you need to see that to see like how your, you know, how much money you’re making and how much you’re spending and what’s the profit and everything else. But you know, I always look at cash flow because that’s like the. It’s the pulse of what’s happening right now and it’s the most timely.
12:39
Derek Fredrickson
And I love what you were sharing about as an example, like the output of that were saying like, you know, the story of your numbers and what we mean by the story or what you mean by the story of your numbers is saying that great. So not only, you know, lead flow is down or client retention is something you want to focus on, which is the output, it’s the story from the numbers. But then it’s like, here’s what we can do about it. And I feel like that’s sometimes in the past where entrepreneurs get stuck because they may look at a spreadsheet or an output from an accountant or a bookkeeper and say, okay, I think I need to focus on this.
13:10
Derek Fredrickson
And then they kind of feel kind of stuck because they maybe don’t know what they need to be doing next as it pertains to addressing the financial piece as opposed to doing something that’s purely based on a marketing. Like if they say, oh, lead flow is down, I just had my marketing hat on, I need to go get more leads. Well, they might just go run a whole brand new like pay per click campaign and spend a bunch of money to get leads. Like that may not be the most financially strategic way to do it. Where maybe we look at low to no cost ways to generate leads that might be through referrals or word of mouth or your network or speaking or whatever that might Be. So I love the output of kind of the story.
13:47
Derek Fredrickson
But then furthermore, like, what’s the action that you can take? And as it pertains to what the entrepreneur really needs to be looking at, which is cash flow, which is just so much more of, like, how the business is doing now as opposed to, like, last month, my P & L was this. Well, last month is done. Now we’re in this month. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
14:03
Heidi Decouxx
Like, one of the free bonuses that we’re offering our founding members right now is a program that my best friend Selena Sue created and actually sold to, like, hundreds of people for around $1,200. And it’s 20. I think it’s 20 cash flow injection strategies execute immediately as a solopreneur, and she gives you templates, scripts, like, all of that. So it’s like, choose a few strategies and immediately inject cash into your business. So those are the kind of free resources that we’re giving, you know, included with our Cashflowy users. Because, again, we’re there to support them holistically. I’m not just like, here you go. This is what you need to do your taxes, like, have a life. Like, I genuinely want you to succeed. We are worstly, you know, just every day, like, focused on how to make you succeed.
14:52
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah. Okay, great. Love that. So you touched on that a little bit. I know this is a very important topic as well as it pertains to this, which is another kind of mistake, which is mixing personal and business finances together. And I. I get this a lot. I hear of this a lot, the clients we work with, because sometimes, you know, they. They kind of see, like, I. They are their business, and their business is them. Right. And so they see, like, great, I’m making this money over here, and I’m paying myself. But, like, that’s where things get blurry and they kind of, you know, there’s like, that gray area. So talk a little bit about, like, how can that be a little bit dangerous? Like, danger zone of blurring personal and business finance together.
15:27
Derek Fredrickson
And how do they start to get some of that separation in place? So we’re kind of clearing the path, if you will, between the personal and the business financial space.
15:35label itstack
Heidi Decouxx
Yeah. I mean, the first thing that you should do, like, anybody who has. You’re listening right now, and you have your personal business tied together, like job one, is to get that separated. Like, literally this week, you need to work on getting that separated for a variety of issues. Number one, it does make your bookkeeping complicated and hard and much harder to know. And understand your numbers. There’s also legal implications to that. There’s tax implications to that. There’s. So it’s just something you absolutely have to do if you’re running a business. If you know like which is what you’re doing. If you’re listening right now, you’ve got to treat it like a business and you have to run it properly. And so separate out your business and personal.
16:17
Heidi Decouxx
So what that means is you need to set up a business checking account if you’re in the U.S. Mercury is by far my favorite for you know, solopreneurs are fantastic interface, easier to use. So a business bank account, a business tax savings account that you’re going to, you know, put your tax savings into every month and then you want to have a business credit card. Now that doesn’t mean you have to go apply for a brand new credit card in your business’s name. You could do that. But another option is look at your personal cards and grab a card that you’re not currently using and say this is now my business card. Label it business, use it at the grocery store. And then that’s the card that you only put business on. You put all your subscriptions and everything on that. It’s all organized.
17:05
Heidi Decouxx
And then you would link that to your CashFlowy account. So when you set up a cashly account, you link your business bank accounts, you link your business credit card, your business PayPal, your business wise like all business accounts that you have, PayPal is another thing. You need to have a separate PayPal account exclusively. Your business is operating and nothing personal goes through it. Your stripe account, if you’re using wise like whatever your stack is based on your business that needs to set up for specific business and you just do not run personal through there. Now if something personal accidentally goes through, you do need to do a back out and that’s actually do that back out which you can do, you know, inside stackCashFlowy pretty easily. But you want to keep your information very clean.
17:53
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, I have a question about that. It’s something, I’d love to get your opinion on this because it’s something that I have an opinion on and I know that I get asked this quite often. I’d love to know what your opinion as well. So sometimes when we work with clients, they’re like you said, like your stack right. You know, you need obviously the bank account, you know, checking account, if you’ve got a credit card can isolate that for, for business use. So you’re avoiding the gray area. And sometimes I get questions from clients that ask, you know, I’m using, I want to stay with PayPal. I don’t want to, I don’t want to set up credit card for my program to receive payments because I have to pay the fee.
18:31
Derek Fredrickson
And I say, but also at the same time, it’s very easy for the buyer to be able to pay by credit card because they put in the credit card, there’s a monthly subscription or if there’s a six month program, like it’s done. PayPal can get a little wonky. You might have to follow up. There’s invoicing. Everything else, maybe they’ve changed it. But I’ve always looked at it like in my experience or my belief is that accepting credit cards to accept payment is like one of those. It’s the cost of doing business because it’s just standard. It’s, everybody does it in the way of like we as consumers. If I’m buying a program online, it’s easy for me to just put in my credit card. It’s saved in my browser and I can get it done.
19:07
Derek Fredrickson
And yes, the seller is paying a fee, but it’s the fee that allows them to be able to make sales more efficiently and effortlessly. So I love to have your opinion about that because some people say like, but I don’t want to pay the fee because I just want to like, but it’s the way to do business. So anyway, what’s your thought about that?
19:26
Heidi Decouxx
Do business in a way that is as frictionless as possible for your client and you just build your costs into your business. Your services and everything need to be priced to handle the delivery of them and part of this and the marketing of them and the sales of them and you know all of that, right? And that’s just part of the cost of doing business. It’s like in Cashflowy, we’re building out a world class invoicing system. Currently our invoicing system at the level that it’s currently at is, does have one click pay because we want to help you reduce the friction for your client to do business with you. So we’re one of the fewest.
20:04
Heidi Decouxx
So to, for those of you that don’t understand one click pay, let’s say that you’re using QuickBooks right now and let’s say that you’re using quickbooks to send your invoices. When you send an invoice to your client, your client actually has to set up a free QuickBooks account in order to pay that’s a huge amount of friction. Don’t do that to your people. Like so in cashflowy you set up an invoice and send it, they click one button and then they can choose, they can just pay the invoice. Now you tell within your cashflowy account you configure what the payment options are and we recommend enabling every payment option, credit card, PayPal, like we’re going to be actually doing adding stablecoin and now that legislation’s like up to that.
20:49
Heidi Decouxx
Like you know, you can do all of the things you could do sell, you know, so like enable every single thing so that when your client gets that invoice they just click their favorite option with one click pay.
21:01
Heidi Decouxx
Boom.
21:02
Heidi Decouxx
Now you’re getting paid faster. You’re not having to do as many follow ups people are. And then with your online, you know, services people are much more likely to buy if you don’t do that friction. Amazon, you know, which is like on its way to like a trillion dollar company, right? They figured out one click pay was game changing. You can read the story from ChatGPT on how one click pay catapulted Amazon sales because people hate friction. We have enough. And just like living on this planet, don’t give your customers more effective customers more friction. The more frictionless you make working with you, the more they’re going to buy, the faster they’re going to buy and the more they’re going to buy and stay with you.
21:47
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, I love that. Okay, good, we’re on the same page with that one. So we’ve made our statement, we’re moving on.
So another mistake, this is also one of those that I think a lot of people sometimes don’t even know that it’s a mistake that they might be making, which is there’s no agreement when working with a partner. So tell me a little bit about that in terms of like you’ve had some experience when you’ve seen couples kind of clash over finances. You know, we’re not going to get into that topic specifically. That could be a whole other episode.
22:11
Derek Fredrickson
But like talk about like having a simple contract in place and how that can help both the business and the relationship to avoid that, that clash that can exist when that again like worlds collide between not just personal and business, but now we’ve got like in the, in the joint perspective or with a partner in that way.
22:30
Heidi Decouxx
I will eventually like write a guidebook on a lot to say I was actually married, divorced and I know lots of couples struggles so very strong opinions in a lot of. So. So having something even whether or not you’re legally married, if you are like in some type of a significant partnership where there is some money cohabiting in some way together, you absolutely need to have clear agreements and just lay them out in a Google Doc. This doesn’t have to be that fancy. You don’t have to like hire a lawyer, just lay out in a Google Doc like what the plan is. So let me actually give you an example In a non romantic relationship. So me and all of my best friends, like our closest best friends, we are ride or dies.
23:26
Heidi Decouxx
We’ve seen each other through marriages and divorces and miscarriages and like all the things you would have each other’s back, will have each other’s back through the end of time. Do what we do. Anytime we do anything together where we’re joint paying, we have an agreement in writing. Not because anybody’s gonna screw anybody. That’s not what’s going to happen. We know that definitively. It’s because we don’t want to have any ambiguity around what it was. We don’t want to have miscommunication and we’re all busy and don’t want to remember what the deal is, right? We want to just go back to the doc and no. So just as an example, last time I was in New York and we did this photo shoot, a couple of us together. And so were splitting the cost of it.
24:11
Heidi Decouxx
So we had a Google Doc that said these are all of the costs. We have an assistant, we have, you know, some clothes rental and photography and da da da. This is how we’re splitting the cost. This is who’s paying for what and how they’re getting paid back. And what is all happening, Very simple. We just knocked that out in a zoom session in like 20 minutes. Laid out. And I do that with all of my friends for every single thing that we do together. And guess what? We don’t fight. We don’t have issues. There’s no miscommunication, there’s no, you know, nothing. Because it’s all laid out in writing, right? We did it together. And so with a partnership, it’s even more important that you’re laying out what the deal is, who is covering what costs and you know how.
24:53
Heidi Decouxx
And then it needs to change. Like if you are in some type of a romantic partnership and now you’re maybe living together and there’s significant finances together, I believe that you need to Annually. Look at that, right? So that because things change, you, somebody’s income went up or down, they’re bought property or did investments or like life changes every year, right? Maybe you had a kid, maybe like, so as life changes, that agreement needs to adjust based on your life changes.
25:22
Derek Fredrickson
I love that. It’s again, one of those things that I don’t think people prioritize because almost like they take it for granted that it’s just a fact of, you know, having a business or being in a relationship. But like it’s so important to like have a contract or have an agreement or just like I often say, put the thing on the table and have the conversation about it. Because when you don’t, it can tend to just get pushed to the side and then we kind of ignore it and then we throw other like, I don’t know, cover ups that sometimes surface. Like, you know, somebody has a different type of income source or somebody becomes, you know, you have a child or you decide to move or you take a.
26:01
Derek Fredrickson
More like all of these like significant life decisions that are impacting your financial picture and future. You can’t just put that to the side. You have to have that conversation to make sure that when you’re in a partnership, whether it’s a business partnership or a relationship partnership or whatever it is to like to be on the same page so there’s nothing left unspoken. Because when it’s left unspoken, it can start to really, you know, bubble up and cause issues and everything else. And so I love that example, even with your friends or whether it be with your spouse or partner or whatever. But like again, some of the themes from this episode is don’t ignore the financials.
26:38
Derek Fredrickson
Have the conversation and get the support, whether it be with a resource like CashFlowy AI or a person on your team or your partner to like have the conversation, focus on what’s needed to be decided on and then like take the next step. So I love that. So you’ve mentioned CashFlowy.AI a few times. I want you to, I know you’ve shared a few things here and there. I want to start first with just like tell us a little bit about the AI component with what you’ve built out. Like, I would ask why AI? Why now? But we know that, right? Because it’s in everything. It’s an all over, you know, so many different aspects of what we’re doing personally and professionally.
27:15
Derek Fredrickson
But how did you see your vision for what you wanted with CashFlowy and then embed in that AI component. So it’s cashflowy.ai. Like how and why did you see the connection and what’s the impact for those that are using that service?
27:31
Heidi Decouxx
I knew that for solopreneurs, they we need to a reduce the amount of money that they’re spending on their bookkeeping and accounting. If they have a human bookkeeper that’s not even very accurate or responsive and a software on top of that. So we want to reduce the expense, which you can do with AI. And then also, and probably even more importantly, we want to reduce the amount of time that they’re spending and half the time that they are spending, which we’re saying, you know, with cashflowy, you can personally handle all of your business financials in under an hour a month and in that, under that hour. So whether you’re doing 15 minute money dates or you’re doing a monthly one, you also are being smarter. Like you actually understand your cash flow management.
28:19
Heidi Decouxx
You actually understand what’s going on in your business and what to do about it. And with AI, we can make that happen and we can do it at a, a fraction of like you’re losing. The average solopreneur is losing like $3,000 a year right now just managing their bookkeeping and account.
28:38
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
28:39
Heidi Decouxx
And that’s actually not taking into account how much money you’re losing in your business from missed opportunities, not focused on the right thing. Then we can add in all of the time that you’re losing every year that you could be taking care of your health, having fun, like, you know, whatever, learning a new language, traveling like whatever it is you want to do with your life. So you are losing a ton of time, you are losing a ton of missed revenue and you’re just losing money on just spending too much. Right. On just like trying to get this done and get it done not well.
29:15
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
29:15
Heidi Decouxx
So with AI, we could totally solve that. So here’s the thing. Like AI is in like Quick freshbooks is very minimal, but like quickbooks does have AI built in, but the AI is actually very stupid. Which isn’t Quickbooks’ fault. The reason is Quickbooks works with bigger complicated businesses. That’s what they’re designed for. They work with a million different businesses, each with a thousand different variables. It’s actually hard to make AI smart under those conditions. We serve Solopreneurs. Our AI is gonna feel magical to you because it is designed with this specific type of business, this specific type of goal and end result and objectives. Right. There’s some variables, but they’re minimal in comparison. And so that can be very smart. So I knew, I mean I believe in AI-backed humans and I knew that we could through the powers of AI.
30:09
Heidi Decouxx
And obviously our AI is getting smarter and smarter by the day. Right. We’re at about a 96 accuracy right now. So we’re already blowing a human way out of the water. And our AI chat, we’re really doubling down right now. And in the next couple of months it’s going to be insanely smart. You can talk to it, you can type to it and you can say how many dollars did I spend last year in software? How much am I spending on marketing, how much am I spending on average to acquire a new customer? How many outstanding invoices do I have? What do I need for this, for taxes and you know, whatnot. Right.
30:42
Heidi Decouxx
And so it’s, we’re making it smarter and we’re really, the more our users interact with it, we’re learning how do they word their questions, is it understanding their wording and stuff? So we’re because we’re just, we’re still technically in beta right now. So we’re bringing in beta founding members and we’re honing it. Hence why our price point is so incredibly low. Interesting. Now is the time to get in. It’s half off right now. And we’re locking in that half off rate for life. Meaning as Cashflowy gets smarter and more robust, we obviously will be price increase, price increase. And that will not affect our founding members. They’re going to stay at this incredibly low price for as long as they use Cashflowy. Love that because you’re part of us building it.
31:26
Heidi Decouxx
You’re the one that’s really like we’re finding out from them what features matter the most to you. And based on what they tell us, that’s what we are focused on. So every Friday we release new features. Right. And so our founding members decide what we’re releasing, like you’re telling you and how you want it. And do you like this button here? Do you like it over here? And you know, yeah, actually we’re also going to be giving our, the AI bookkeeper built into CashFlowy a name and personality. And in a couple months we’re going to go out to our beta founding members and say you get to decide. So you’re going to submit the name and personality you want. If we choose it, you know, you’re going to get like a $500 Amazon gift or something. You know, we’ll do something fun.
32:06
Heidi Decouxx
And so they’re going to get to vote. What’s the name and personality?
32:09
Derek Fredrickson
I love that.
32:10
Heidi Decouxx
Your AI Bookkeeper.
32:11
Derek Fredrickson
I love that. I love that.
32:14
Heidi Decouxx
You know, what do you want?
32:15
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, that’s amazing. Thank you for that. And I love what you share and I just want to like, anchor it again. As we kind of wrap up here, when you were describing what, what CashFlowy does and how it provides this service and the way that it provides it, leveraging AI and kind of the input with the users and everything else. But very practically, you mentioned three specific things that it does.
Number one, it’s actually going to do the work in some respect better than what they may be having now. Right. Because maybe they don’t have a strong, you know, bookkeeper is not providing the timely reports or they’re missing things, whatever it is, or they’re using a financial system that’s not, you know, applicable to their business or business stage.
32:56
Derek Fredrickson
And so one, it’s going to do it at a more, let’s just say, affordable, you know, kind of price point.
Number two, there’s all of the missed opportunities that the business owner doesn’t know that is there because they’re not looking at the information in a timely, irrelevant way because it’s not being provided to them.
And then number three, it’s the time back, so they’re not having to spend all of the time digging through the numbers and coming up with all the other suggestions and ideas to be able to, as you said, and I love the analogy, you can go like, learn a language or travel or take a vacation or go take a nap or you could take that time and invest it back into the business. So I think just looking at it in that way is as a driver.
33:35
Derek Fredrickson
And I think theme of this is like, obviously paying attention to your numbers, paying attention to the financials and the story that comes out of your money, but then getting the right resources and support, like cashflowy AI as it continues to evolve and improve and expand what it can do in a way that just simplifies and streamlines and automates and just kind of gives you, as I say, like another thought partner in your business. Like AI is kind of like that strategic thought partner and it’s in this case for finances. So I love what you’re up to. I love that this is your, like, your path in terms of where you’re headed and what you’re going to be doing and serving this market. So, yeah, it was great. Anything else Heidi. That you want to share with our audience for today.
34:20
Derek Fredrickson
Any other kind of tidbits or like you know, last, you know, words of advice or recommendations or anything else coming up. Based on this topic from today, you.
34:30
Heidi Decouxx
Know whether or not you choose to use Cashflowy, we do offer free trials so you can give it a try and see, you know, if you like it. And so you’ve got a no obligation, just free trial. But whether or not you use.
34:46
Derek Fredrickson
Is.
34:46
Heidi Decouxx
Like have this be the year that you get like control slash knowledge empowerment over your finances. Like book that money date whether it’s weekly or monthly. Figure out what our KPIs. There’s four main KPIs that you need to know and understand as a solopreneur. We have free. You can actually go to our. We have a free profit Clarity playbook. So if you go to CashFlowy.AI/resources, we have a bunch of free resources there, including a profit Clarity playbook. In that playbook we show you These are the four KPIs you need to know and understand. Here’s what they are, how to track them, which if you want to do it manually, you can. We give you the whole thing based on what they say. Here’s what you need to do. We actually give you some tips and strategies in there.
35:35
Heidi Decouxx
There’s more in depth stuff in Resources in our paid community, but it’s actually a pretty robust free guide that we have available. So don’t be scared of your money anymore. Like money loves clarity. Money loves when you shine a light on it. You know, take your flashlight and shine a light on it and you actually understand it. It’s going like it’s going to start flowing in so much more. You’re going to be focused on the right things which are going to actually move the needle, which are going to bring in more money. You’re going to be able to like actually slow down, take a breath, be running around like a chicken with your head cut off doing all of these things, right?
36:14
Heidi Decouxx
And so don’t be scared of it actually, like it is your power, it is your superpower to know and understand your money. And so like it’s time to just like come out.
36:25
Derek Fredrickson
I love it.
36:27
Heidi Decouxx
I am. Look at this. Eyes wide open. The good, the bad, the ugly. Because by shining a light and really looking at it and really understanding like what are KPIs, what do I need to know? Why do I need to know them? And then what do I do about them and track them. It’s gonna just open up a whole, like, new possibilities for your business.
36:48
Derek Fredrickson
I love it. I love it. This is such a. And thank you for that last piece as we wrap up, because I love it. This is part of what we do with our clients. You know, I often say we. You know, we. We basically can like, run your business for you, which helps you does. It’s not about taking control of the business, but it’s actually giving them control back. And I think what you’re describing is like allowing the entrepreneur owner to take control of their finances, which gives them so much more control and clarity about how to scale and grow and move the business. So it’s that element of getting the right model in place and looking at things in a, you know, a CEO perspective to make the right decisions and no longer kind of putting the financials to the side.
37:27
Derek Fredrickson
We can’t ignore it. We can’t cover it up. We can’t, like, stick our head in the sand and not look at the things that really matter, which, at the end of the day are the numbers. It’s the financials. So thank you, Heidi. This was fantastic. Great to have you for today’s show. And one more time, where can people find out about you and CashFlowy?
37:44
Heidi Decouxx
Yeah, go to CashFlowy.AI. Cashflowy AI. You can learn about the software, start a free trial if you go to cashflowy.ai/resources/, we have a ton of free, really valuable resources there. I’m mostly active on Instagram and getting active on LinkedIn, and it’s just Heidi Decoux. Heidi Decoux on Instagram. Heidi Decoux on LinkedIn. I’m sure you’ll put some links in the shownotes.
38:09
Derek Fredrickson
Excellent. Thank you, Heidi. And thank you everybody for tuning in today for the COO Solution podcast. And we’ll see you on the next episode. Thanks, everybody.
38:17
Heidi Decouxx
Bye.
38:18
Derek Fredrickson
Bye.
