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Episode 266: You’re Watching The Wrong Number In Your Business
If you’ve ever told yourself you’ll build a business budget once you hit a certain revenue number, you’re not alone and you’re also not actually budgeting yet. That “once I make enough” thinking feels responsible. It isn’t. It’s usually the thing quietly keeping the revenue goal out of reach, because some part of you already knows how big a project a “real” budget would be, and putting it off feels safer than starting.
Below, I’m walking through the three ways business owners convince themselves the budget is handled when it isn’t and what a budget is actually for once you stop waiting for permission to build one.
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Resources
- Cashflow Calculator – https://aimeecerka.com/cashflow
- Prosperity Simplified – https://aimeecerka.com/prosperity
- Prosperity Biz Basics – https://aimeecerka.com/bizbasics
- Instagram – https://instagram.com/aimeecerka
- Podcast Links – https://aimeecerka.com/podcastlinks
You’re Watching The Wrong Number In Your Business Budget
If you’ve told yourself you’ll build a business budget once you hit a certain revenue number, you’re not behind — you’re just working from a belief that’s backwards. The idea that you need to “make enough” before a budget matters is one of the most common patterns I see in the businesses I work with, and it’s exactly the opposite of how it actually works. Your budget isn’t a reward for hitting a number. It’s the tool that tells you what that number should even be.
This is part of an ongoing series on the patterns that quietly sabotage cash flow — bookkeeping was last week, business budgeting is today. And there are three ways business owners convince themselves the budget is already handled, when it isn’t.
Bookkeeping And Budgeting Aren’t The Same Thing
Bookkeeping tells you what already happened. A budget is the proactive piece — deciding where the money goes before it arrives, not after. If you’re tracking recurring expenses through your bookkeeping but never turning that into a forward-looking plan, you have half the system. The forecasting is the part that’s missing.
Pattern One: Waiting For A Bigger Revenue Number
This is the belief itself: I’ll build a budget once I’m making more. But a budget isn’t something you graduate into — it’s the thing that shows you what “enough” actually looks like. Without it, there’s no way to know whether your number should be higher, lower, or exactly where it is.
There’s also a quieter cost to waiting. When a business budget feels like a big project you’re not ready to tackle, it’s common to subconsciously avoid the very growth that would force the issue. The brain is wired to protect you from big, uncomfortable projects — even when the discomfort isn’t actually dangerous.
Pattern Two: Doing The Math In Your Head
This looks like having it “figured out” — this goes here, that goes there — without ever writing it down as an actual system. It works, until it doesn’t. Carrying a budget in your head means carrying mental load that competes with everything else running a business requires: marketing, client delivery, being the CEO. A system that only exists in your memory isn’t a system you can trust when things get busy.
Pattern Three: Budgeting By Bank Balance
Checking your bank balance and deciding you’re “fine” is reacting, not budgeting. What’s sitting in an account right now doesn’t account for what’s already been promised elsewhere — a check written, an agreement made, an expense coming due. A bank balance is a snapshot. A budget is a plan.
It’s About Intention, Not Restriction
None of this is about limiting what you spend or telling yourself no. A real budget answers different questions: How much do you want to pay yourself? What are you actually reinvesting, and does that match the season your business is in? Those questions can’t be answered by a number in an account — only by a plan you built on purpose.
Building in buffers helps too. Life happens — a busy week, an illness, travel — and a budget with room built in means missing a week doesn’t mean falling behind.
Key Takeaways
- A business budget is proactive; bookkeeping is retrospective. You need both.
- Waiting for a “big enough” revenue number keeps the goal further away, not closer.
- Doing the math in your head or checking your bank balance are both reactive habits, not budgeting systems.
- A budget exists to answer what you actually need — not to restrict what you’re allowed to spend.
Where To Start
If any of this landed, the business budget is just one of 16 patterns that quietly affect cash flow and there’s a free way to find out which one matters most for you right now: the Cash Flow Calculator at https://aimeecerka.com/cashflow.
Below is the full transcript of the episode, where I walk through this in more depth.
Why “Enough Revenue” Isn’t The Real Problem
When’s the last time you actually opened a business budget? Not glanced at your bank account balance, but actually sat down and decided where the revenue, where the money’s gonna go before it arrives, before you sent it, or before you spent it.
If the answer is never, or it’s been a while, or I’m not ready, I’m not making enough yet, we’re gonna dive into the belief today that I hear more than any other when it comes to the business budget. And for most, it’s I’m not making enough to need a budget, and that is so backwards, for lack of a better word.
We’re gonna talk about three ways that this shows up even when you think you’ve got a handle on it, how waiting for the right revenue number, or doing the math in your head, or checking the bank account balance is actually sabotaging your business. We can’t call those budgeting because those aren’t budgeting.
We’re gonna talk about what a business budget is actually for, and it’s not about limiting, it’s not about restriction, any of those things. Okay? So if you’ve ever told yourself, “I’m gonna put together a bit… Blah. I’m gonna put together a business budget once I hit this revenue goal”, this one is for you so let’s get to it.
This is Money Simplified, the podcast where I help female entrepreneurs go from stress and struggle to unstoppable with money. Money is more than just budgeting and P&Ls, and we’re gonna take you through all of it. Here, we blend proven financial strategy with mindset work and energetic alignment, so you can create unstoppable finances, build an unstoppable business, and truly enjoy your unstoppable life.
It’s time to take my wisdom, my expertise, to help you simplify money and go beyond the numbers. I’m your host, Aimee Cerka. Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.
Bookkeeping vs. The Business Budget
Welcome back to Money Simplified. We are talking today about business budgets, and really specifically, one of the biggest misconceptions that I hear, um, clients coming to me saying, it’s like, “I’m not making enough to need a business budget yet.” Okay? But here’s, like, the problem with that, okay? Your business budget isn’t just about, like, a revenue number.
So your bookkeeping, which we talked about last episode, if you missed that one, I would go back and check it out. We’re, we’re in, like, a series here where we’re going through all 16 of the patterns that I find show up and that we need to shift, and most of them are just tiny shifts, right? Like, different ways to approach things to truly unlock your cashflow in your business, okay?
So bookkeeping tells us what’s already happened. Your budget is the proactive part. It’s like, where do you want the money to go, right?
So your budget isn’t like a, “Oh, yay, we’ve got this figured out. There’s enough money here for this.” It’s like, how do you know what you actually have? How do you know what you’re actually needing to spend, right?
Like, if we’re not tracking your reoccurring monthly expenses, which your bookkeeping truly helps. So yes, your bookkeeping piece, being able to know what actually happens, helps you with the forecasting piece, which is the budget part.
Okay? So, um, kind of like last week, I’ve got three ways that you’re actually, like, sabotaging your business budget, and we feel like we’ve got it handled.
Pattern One: Waiting For A Bigger Revenue Number
Okay? So the first one we’ve kind of already talked about, right? That not ready yet. I gotta wait for a bigger revenue number. I’m not quite there yet. And this applies even if you’re still funding your business from your personal finances. My business budgeting system, Prosperity Simplified, does both.
Like, it… There is a seamless transition between funding your business from your personal finances and paying yourself from your business, and that’s an important thing because if you set up a business budget or you don’t have a business budget because you’re not making enough yet, you don’t… Like, I’m not gonna worry about that yet until I’m making enough.
How do you know what enough is? How do you know what the revenue’s coming in? How much do you know what you need? Are you going to be able to make this higher? Is it in the budget? Like, we build this on percentage-based budgeting, which if you’ve been around for a little bit, you know that I love percentage-based budgeting because it grows with you, right?
So everything that is important to you is scaled as your revenue goes. Grows. Goes. We don’t want it to go, right? We’re keeping some of it, at least.
But- When we’re not prepared, we don’t have a business budget in place, not until we hit that revenue goal, you know subconsciously it’s gonna be a big project to put a business budget together, right?
So we will self-sabotage, hold ourselves back, completely unaware, so we don’t hit the revenue goal because we know we’re gonna have this big project, and your subconscious brain is designed to keep your sa- keep you safe. It does an amazing job at it. Fantastic. Love that you’re safe.
All right? But again, I think we wanna be happy. There’s not lions and tigers chasing us, and we have to become aware of where we are protecting ourselves without even realizing it.
Pattern Two: Doing The Math In Your Head
Okay? So, waiting for the revenue. The second thing that I see with your business budget, maybe you feel like you’ve got one together, but you’re doing the math in your head.
Like, it’s everything, you’ve got it all figured out. It’s like, okay, this part goes here, this part goes there. So it- it’s not an actual system, and you’re spending so much mental power trying to remember everything. It’s like the whole we’re juggling, we got all the balls up in the air, right? Like, we can’t drop ’em.
We can’t drop one. And then how are you showing up for your clients, and as a CEO and a CMO and all, all the things, right? How are you marketing your business? How are you doing client delivery if you’re trying to remember the business budget in the background like, “Okay, so I gotta do this, and this, and this, and it’s gotta have all the numbers in place”?
Okay? That’s not really business budgeting either. And maybe it’s not business budgeting from a CEO standpoint. Sure, you can get away with it, but are you truly a CEO of your business? Do you want to run your business like a business as a business owner? This isn’t a hobby. Let’s treat it seriously.
And we talked a lot, I think that was last week, about the amazing benefits that we have of running an online business. Like, I’m sitting here in my house. Like, the, the overhead that we have is so minimal.
That’s why we’re, so many of us are able to start businesses. But because we don’t necessarily have as much skin in the game, it can kind of expose us that we’re trying to take the cheap way out and not run our businesses as a business. Okay? And you know I say that with love.
Pattern Three: Budgeting By Bank Balance
All right, third one, this is probably, like, the second most popular. I really should have flipped two and three because this is a bank balance budgeting. So you’ll log in, you look at what’s sitting in your bank account, and you’re like, “Okay,” like, “I’m where I’m at.
We’re good, not worried about it. There’s money there,” and that’s your budget. What is sitting in your bank account is not your budget at all. That’s like reacting, and we don’t even know what the number is.
Maybe you wrote a check, maybe you have an agreement, maybe you’ve done those things and it’s all gonna disappear. And not all, but like you’re gonna spend a big chunk of money on an expense which might be a very valid, needed expense. Great. We invest into our businesses.
But if you’re just looking at the bank balance, that’s not your budget. Right? Okay, so those are the three ways that we are like, “Yeah, I’ve got a business budget handled,” and I don’t really have it handled.
Take The Cash Flow Calculator
If this is landing for you, the business budget is just one of the 16 patterns that we look at inside a free tool that I built called The Cash Flow Calculator. You don’t need to know any of your numbers. It’s an assessment style calculator. Simply go to https://aimeecerka.com/cashflow, and that link is also in the show notes, so you can grab it now.
All right, now back to the episode.
The Self-Sabotage Nobody Talks About
I know that I have, like even though I teach this, I have fallen back into this sometimes where I find like, okay, yeah, like I’m just looking at it after the fact. I’m not being as proactive. When things get busy, like balls drop, right?
We forget things, and that’s part of why when we set up the prosperity simplified system, like we build in buffers so that you’re good. So we’ll say this episode’s gonna drop on Tuesday. So we’ll just say for example Tuesday is your finance day, right?
So on this Tuesday, so it’s dropping on the 18th, so on the 18th you’re gonna take care of the next two weeks worth. So if you miss the following week ’cause you’re really busy with client delivery, you got sick, you’re out of town, whatever it might be, you’re still good.
You’re not behind, air quotes here. Because we build in the buffers. Because life lives, and we know that, right?
The Truth About “10K Months”
Okay, so when we’re talking about the, “Oh, I’m not ready yet. I need more revenue to be able to… Before I need a budget,” right? And most people we know, they throw out the 10K months, right? If I could have 10K months because, like then we’ll be set.
I’ll be good. That’s my goal. That’s when I’ll put this in place. That’s when I’ll do the bookkeeping, the business budget, all the things. Okay. It’s, it’s the popular number, right?
And again, we talked about the subconscious mind and the way that like, hey, we’re, we’re almost programmed with it, right? Because we hear it so often. So what number do you actually need though? Do you actually need 10K? Maybe it’s less. Mm, maybe it’s more.
But if you haven’t done the math, and again, it gets to be simple, that’s why my system is called Prosperity Simplified. Think of like Profit First, ’cause a lot of people have heard of Profit First, right? Love the idea of Profit First, but I find that so many people don’t implement it.
So I took about four different budgeting systems and combined it and created my own system. So it’s like the simplified version here because we need to be able to do it. So math is simple. We put in the little formulas. You don’t have to be sitting here doing math, right?
We, not everybody’s favorite subject in school. Not all of our best subjects, for sure. But again, you’re not gonna know what you actually need that number to be, what your goal should be. If we’re just pulling numbers out of hats, we don’t know without the budget.
Now, of course, once we have that number and we’re looking for growth, then you’re, you’re looking for more, and we’re playing with the magic money, and we’re doing all of those things, yes, but you’ve got the budget in place that you know what your foundation is. And everything else is bonus.
Your Budget Is About Intention, Not Restriction
It’s golden, and then you can lifestyle, like, upgrade your lifestyle and everything is done proportionately, right? Okay. But your budget, and if you listen to this, none of this is about restriction. Your budget is not about restriction.
It’s not about you can’t hire this person, you can’t have this expense, you can’t do that. It’s not that at all. It’s about intention. How much do you wanna be able to pay yourself?
Because that’s one of the big ones we hear, right? Like, “I don’t have the money to pay myself.” If you don’t have the money to pay yourself, are we looking at the numbers ahead of time to see where we’re at? Are we looking at our expenses?
Do we actually need that much? How much are you reinvesting into your business? What kind of season are you in? Are you in a growth and you’re hands-on and we’re spending more? Are you in a scaling that’s less of your time and more investment?
Checkpoints, Not A Destination
Like, you can’t answer any of that without a number, and if we’re just flying by the seat of our pants just day by day trying to make it through, it’s like we’re waiting to arrive, but we never arrive. You’re driving without a destination. You’re just driving.
But we’ve gotta have like those step- those checkpoints, right? Because, you know, life is a journey, not a destination. We’ve all heard this, right? It’s not like a, you hit this point and it’s like, “Ah, I made it.”
You hit a goal. Great. Fantastic. I’m glad that you hit your goal. But it’s a pit stop along the way. And sit there and celebrate it and do all those things. We’re gonna get into more of that as we go throughout this series. But we’ve gotta know what the numbers are. Where are we wanting to go?
So last week we talked about bookkeeping and how that is the number one pattern where I see we cut little corners and it sabotages our cash flow. We’ll just do this from alignment. And notice what we talk about here, I give you all the tactical, the strategies, the how-tos, all the things. We can get into specifics, and we do that inside Prosperity Simplified.
Okay? But we’re talking about the principles, and the principles that help you show up as a business owner, as a CEO. These things are universally true. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you’re running. If it’s a nonprofit or a service-based business, a brick-and-mortar, we all have these same principles that we need to have in place.
When we’re avoiding them, it’s causing problems and it’s sabotaging our cash flow.
Your Next Step With Prosperity Simplified
All right. So if you want my full business budgeting system that gives you the step-by-step, the mindset, the strategy, the how-tos, it’s all there, right? When it comes to a business budget, that is Prosperity Simplified. It’s currently for sale $111. https://aimeecerka.com/prosperity gives you that one.
But if you’re not ready for the full system yet, I’ve designed essentially what I call a quick start to help you get into a little bit of momentum. Because often we put build a business budget on our to-do list, and it’s this massive item that becomes this thing that we just put off and put off and put off.
So if you only are ready for a one quick start action step, a smaller piece to put onto your to-do list to knock out, to make progress, get into momentum, all the things, right? Then start with Prosperity Biz Basics, okay? It’s a workshop style masterclass where I give you that first part to get into action with Prosperity Simplified.
If you grab the full Prosperity Simplified, you have the quick start included, okay? So Prosperity Biz Basics is the quick start version. It’s $33. I’m gonna put that link for you in the show notes ’cause I don’t remember that one off the top of my head. So check those out.
You Don’t Have To Do This Alone
If something in today landed for you and you haven’t already gone through my cash flow calculator, go take the cash flow calculator. It’s absolutely free. It’s gonna take a few minutes, and it’s gonna show you which one of these patterns to actually focus on first, whether that’s your business budget, whether it’s the bookkeeping, or if it’s something else entirely that we’re gonna get to as we go through the series.
The link’s gonna be in the show notes, or you can go to https://aimeecerka.com/cashflow. And remember, like, you were never meant to do this alone. That was never the plan. We’re meant to do this in community. You’re supposed to have support. That’s the way it works.
You do not have to figure this out alone. You’ve got this and I’ve got you.
We’ll see you next time. Bye for now.
Thank you so much for listening to Money Simplified. My favorite place to hang out is on Instagram. You can find me @AimeeCerka to catch all the behind the scenes in my stories. Send me a message to share your biggest takeaway, or just to say hi. I love hearing from podcast listeners. When you’re ready to take action on your mindset, your money, or the systems behind it all, I’m here for you.
Whether you’re snagging a free resource, exploring a mini course, diving into the fundamentals with Money Mastery Academy, getting in-depth support inside the Unstoppable Experience, or scheduling a complimentary bookkeeping consult to finally get hands-on help with your books, your next step is waiting for you.
https://aimeecerka.com/podcastlinks has all the information, and of course, that link is hanging out in the show notes for you. We’ll see you next time.
