Sustainability is extremely important to me, and last year I decided to take my business in the direction of becoming a certified B Corp business. This means being held to higher standards of social and environmental performance, along with other stringent factors.

If you’re a business owner, it’s really important to know what your responsibilities are when it comes to tax or GST debts. In today’s episode, I discuss the importance of lodging your activity statements on time and run through what you need to know about ATO debt.

I often come into touch with entrepreneurs who aren’t 100% clear on the best way to take money out of their businesses. Whether it’s for weekly pay, bonuses or receiving a loan from your company, there are a few ways to pay yourself for showing up every day.

Have you ever thought about selling your small business? Today I’m chatting with Lauren Gross, an associate lawyer from Velocity Legal, about everything you need to consider when selling your small business.

In this episode, we discuss gift card accounting. It is important to know how to record your gift card liability whether you sell one gift card every quarter or you sell a large number of the regularly. I’ll go over four different scenarios, including the sale of gift cards, refunds, giving gift cards to clients, and using gift cards as a form of payment. Additionally, I'll provide clarity on tax matters and how to comply with ATO guidelines. It's important to seek guidance from a tax accountant or bookkeeper for specific situations. This episode aims to prompt extra thinking about your systems and how to avoid mistakes when accounting for gift cards.

Starting a podcast wasn't a long-term goal of mine, but there were some good business reasons that motivated me to do so. In this episode, in this episode of Straight Up Small Business I explain these reasons and how getting help with audio production has been beneficial. My goal for this podcast was to establish my authority in the industry and prepare my business for future growth. I also wanted to serve small business owners and help them succeed.

A common problem we see today as business owners is having websites that don’t convert to inquiries or sales.

Today I talk with the fabulous Tahnee Sanders, founder of The Strategy Studio. Tahnee is a former journalist turned marketing strategist who leads female-led businesses to effective marketing strategy.

Creating a strong marketing ecosystem for our business is vital, and Tahnee gives us solutions on how to achieve this in order to drive people to our websites.

In this episode, I share my journey towards creating sustainable work habits over the past six months. Instead of racing through my life, my goal has been to take the time to "be" and learn. I believe that productivity should be about working smarter, not harder, and I share eight tips to help set you on the path towards creating productive work patterns.

These tips include ideas such as dedicated deep work, letting go of inbox zero, day theming, and mindset and learning. By becoming laser-focused and cutting down on time wasting, it's possible to make room for other things in life that really matter to you.

In this episode, I provide an overview of what you need to know about Single Touch Payroll 2 (SST2). For business owners who have staff or are employees themselves, this is relevant for you. And STP2 is already here, so there are things that you need to know.

January is the perfect time to create or update your business budget so, with your sparkling new budget in place, I’m going to run you through how you can use Xero in your business to take far more of your administration workload in 2023.

The business model for Old Quarter Coffee is built around sourcing beans ethically through direct partnerships with farmers, ensuring that every cup of their coffee is doing good in the world. Their goal is to improve the lives of everyone along the supply chain, from farm to cup.

In this interview, Amelia and I talk about coffee (obviously!). We also talk about knowing your numbers in business and what it’s like to run a business for good.

In this episode of Straight Up Small Business, I’m sharing with you 5 things that I’ll be doing in my business before 31 December. Making sure the team and I take time off to rest and recuperate, I’ll be getting organised and contacting clients and stakeholders to let them know our plans and ask them what support they need from us.

Today’s topic is cyber security, which is pretty topical at the moment given the widely reported attacks on large corporations in the last few months. When we hear about these in the news, it’s easy to think ‘shame on you’ to the large organisation for not protecting their client’s data properly. But what we don’t realise how easy it would be for a cyber attack to happen in our own business, and the enormity and implications of such an attack.

In this interview Taylor explains what a funnel is, the funnels every business owner should have, why funnels are so powerful for business and why we sometimes resist creating them.

Taylor also shares her learnings from the last four years in her own business, where she has moved from a hustle-and-grind mentality to one of freedom and flow. We discuss why female entrepreneurs find selling so hard, and how Taylor mixes the woo with the work, with incredible results. Taylor also shares some exciting personal news as well!

There are some common mistakes I see on a regular basis when it comes to bookkeeping for eCommerce businesses that use Shopify to sell their products. These mistakes are made by business owners and bookkeepers alike because, no matter how much knowledge or experience you might have, there is no instruction manual on how to do your Shopify bookkeeping in Xero.

Today I chat with the incredible tech entrepreneur Kiah Worling. I ask Kiah all the questions that I know will benefit other business owners including what the biggest time-wasting manual mistakes made in business are. Kiah also shares the top things that every entrepreneur should consider automating in their business, including payments, scheduling and content and marketing.

This is Part Two of my key accounting terms every entrepreneur should know series. I’ll cover terms that reside on the P&L report and goes into detail regarding the balance sheet.

Do you charge by the hour in your business? Do you get nervous to send invoices to your clients because it’s a shock as to how much time you spend on their work? Do you shave time off your invoices before you send them off? I used to do and feel all of these things until I stopped charging by the hour for my services. If you’re curious about how and why you should stop charging by the hour, then this episode is for you.

Today we are joined by Rachel Green, an SEO website copywriter who serves brands that are big on purpose. Rachel shares how she ended up in such a specific niche and the ways niching is a powerful way to stand out. Rachel does business her own way - in a manner that is purpose-driven, sustainable and brings her joy.

Over the years since starting my business, I’ve been at both the unhealthy and healthy end of the comparison spectrum. Now I’ve landed in a good place when it comes to dealing with this issue and in today’s episode, I share my tips for dealing with comparison.